And Ivy herself? Ivy was counting the hours—to her intense relief they had now become hours instead of days—to the time when Lady Dale and her daughter would leave the yacht at Dieppe.
During the three weeks that had elapsed since their memorable meeting at the Savoy, Ivy Lexton and Miles Rushworth had been constantly together. It had all been very much above board—indeed, quite as often as not, Jervis Lexton had been of the company when the two lunched or dined, went to the play, or, pleasanter still, motored down to Ranelagh to spend an enchanting evening.
But Rushworth had a definite philosophy of life. To pursue a woman who, whatever the undercurrents to her life might be, appeared happily married, would have seemed to him a despicable, as well as a cruel and unmanly thing to do. Also, he prided himself on being able, when he chose to do so, to resist temptation, and he felt convinced he could handle what might become a delicate situation not only with sense, but even with comfort to himself. This was made the easier to him because he put Ivy Lexton on a pedestal. God alone knew how he idealised her, how completely he believed her soul matched her delicately perfect, ethereal-looking body.
While Ivy was chatting gaily to her companion, she was yet almost painfully aware of the two who stood talking together in so earnest and intimate a way. She was feeling what she had never felt in her life of twenty-six years: that is, bitterly, angrily jealous of a girl whom she thought stupid, dull, and unattractive.
Miles Rushworth’s attitude to herself disconcerted her. She could not, to use her own jargon, get the hang of him. It was so strange, in a sense so disturbing, that he never made love to her. Then, now and again, she would remember Mrs. Thrawn, and Mrs. Thrawn’s predictions.
She had followed the fortune-teller’s advice with regard to Roger Gretorex. She had insisted that it would be better for them both neither to see nor to write to each other till she came back to London in September; and he had had perforce to agree to her conditions.
The yacht made Dieppe the next morning, and at breakfast there rose a discussion as to how the party could spend their time on shore to the best advantage. Rushworth at once observed that he would not be able to take part in any expedition ashore. He had received important business telegrams, and he had a number of letters to dictate to a stenographer whose services he had already secured.
Miss Chattle, who knew he would value a quiet working day, suggested a motor expedition to a celebrated shrine a hundred kilometres inland from Dieppe. She declared that if they started at once they could be back in comfortable time for dinner.
And then it was that Ivy, as in a lightning flash, made up her mind as to how she would spend today.
“I get so tired motoring, so I’d rather stay behind.” She turned to her host, “While you’re doing your work, I can take a walk in the town. Though I’ve been to Paris two or three times, I’ve never been anywhere else in France.”
“That’s a good idea! We might meet at the Hotel Royal about one o’clock, and have lunch together.”
Half an hour later Miss Chattle shepherded the rest of the party into two roomy cars, while Rushworth escorted Lady Dale and her daughter on to the quay, where a carriage was waiting for them.
Lady Dale went forward to speak to the driver, and Rushworth turned to the girl he still intended should be his wife.
“If we don’t meet again before the end of September, I do want just to say one thing to you, Bella.”
He spoke in so peculiar, and in so very earnest, a tone, that Bella’s heart began to beat.
“What is it you want to say?” she asked, her voice sinking almost to a whisper.
“I’ve said it before, and now I want to say it again—”
Bella looked at him fixedly. Thank God, she hadn’t betrayed herself. But what was this he was saying?
“I do want you to make real friends with Mrs. Lexton—I mean, of course, after you and Lady Dale are back at Hampton Court, when Jervis Lexton will have begun work in my London office. His wife, poor little soul, hasn’t any real friends, from what I can make out.”
“Yet she seems to know a good many people, Miles. When we were looking through those picture papers yesterday, she seemed to know almost everyone who had been snapshotted at Goodwood!”
“I was thinking of real friends—not of those stupid gadabouts who are here, there, and everywhere,” he said with a touch of irritation.
And then they heard Lady Dale’s voice.
“I think we ought to be off, Bella. It’s nearly half-past ten, and you know they lunch early at the château.”
Rushworth wrung Bella’s hand. “I’m sorry you’ve had to leave the yacht so soon.”
But his voice had become perceptibly colder. He was disappointed, even a little hurt. He had always thought his friend Bella not only kind, but full of sympathy and understanding. Yet she had spoken of his new friend with a curious lack even of liking, let alone sympathy.
When Miles Rushworth came back from seeing the Dales off, he found Ivy Lexton sitting on the now deserted deck. There was a pile of newspapers on the little table which had been brought up close to her deck-chair, and she was pretending to read the Paris New York Herald. Convinced that Miles Rushworth intended to be with
