CHAPTER XV
London was in full season. But it was a cold May, and both the town andits inhabitants wore a gray and pinched aspect. Under the east wind anunsavory dust blew along Piccadilly; the ladies were still in furs; thetrees were venturing out reluctantly, showing many a young leaf bittenby night frosts; the Park had but a scanty crowd; and the drapers,oppressed with summer goods, saw their muslins and gauzes in the windowsgive up their freshness for naught.
Nevertheless, the ferment of political and social life had seldom beengreater. A Royal wedding in the near future was supposed to account forthe vigor of London's social pulse; the streets, indeed, were alreadyputting up poles and decorations. And a general election, expected inthe autumn, if not before, accounted for the vivacity of the clubs, theheat of the newspapers, and the energy of the House of Commons, whereall-night sittings were lightly risked by the Government and recklesslychallenged by the Opposition. Everybody was playing to thegallery--_i.e._, the country. Old members were wooing theirconstituencies afresh; young candidates were spending feverish energieson new hazards, and anxiously inquiring at what particular date in thecampaign tea-parties became unlawful. Great issues were at stake; forold parties were breaking up under the pressure of new interests andpassions; within the Liberal party the bubbling of new faiths was atits crudest and hottest; and those who stood by the slow and saferipening of Freedom, from "precedent to precedent," were in much anxietyas to what shape or shapes might ultimately emerge from a brew so strongand heady. Which only means that now, as always, Whigs and Radicals wereat odds; and the "unauthorized programme" of the day was sending itsfiery cross through the towns and the industrial districts of the north.
A debate of some importance was going on in the House of Commons. TheTory Government had brought in a Land Bill, intended, no doubt, ratheras bait for electors than practical politics. It was timid andill-drafted, and the Opposition, in days when there were still somechances in debate, joyously meant to kill it, either by frontal attackor by obstruction. But, in the opinion of the Left Wing of the party,the chief weapon of its killing should be the promise of a much largerand more revolutionary measure from the Liberal side. The powerful RightWing, however, largely represented on the front bench, held that youcould no more make farmers than saints by Act of Parliament, and thatonly by slow and indirect methods could the people be drawn back to theland. There was, in fact, little difference between them and the frontbench opposite, except a difference in method; only the Whig brains werethe keener; and in John Ferrier the Right Wing had a personality and anoratorical gift which the whole Tory party admired and envied.
There had been a party meeting on the subject of the Bill, and Ferrierand the front bench had, on the whole, carried the indorsement of theirpolicy. But there was an active and discontented minority, full ofrebellious projects for the general election.
On this particular afternoon Ferrier had been dealing with theGovernment Bill on the lines laid down by the meeting at GrenvilleHouse. His large pale face (the face of a student rather than apolitician), with its small eyes and overhanging brows; the straighthair and massive head; the heavy figure closely buttoned in the familiarfrock-coat; the gesture easy, animated, still young--on these well-knownaspects a crowded House had bent its undivided attention. Then Ferriersat down; a bore rose; and out flowed the escaping tide to the lobbiesand the Terrace.
Marsham found himself on the Terrace, among a group of malcontents:Barton, grim and unkempt, prophet-eyes blazing, mouth contemptuous; theScotchman McEwart, who had been one of the New Year's visitors toTallyn, tall, wiry, red-haired, the embodiment of all things shrewd andefficient; and two or three more. A young London member was holdingforth, masking what was really a passion of disgust in a slangynonchalance.
"What's the good of turning these fellows out--will anybody tell me?--ifthat's all Ferrier can do for us? Think I prefer 'em to that kind ofmush! As for Barton, I've had to hold him down by the coat-tails!"
Barton allowed the slightest glint of a smile to show itself for aninstant. The speaker--Roland Lankester--was one of his few weaknesses.But the frown returned. He strolled along with his hands in his pocketsand his eyes on the ground; his silence was the silence of one in whomthe fire was hot.
"Most disappointing--all through!" said McEwart, with emphasis. "Thefacts wrongly chosen--the argument absurd. It'll take all the heart outof our fellows in the country."
Marsham looked up.
"Well, it isn't for want of pressure. Ferrier's life hasn't been worthliving this last month."
The tone was ambiguous. It fitted either with defence or indictment.
The London member--Roland Lankester, who was a friend of Marion Vincent,and of Frobisher, represented an East End constituency, and livedthere--looked at the speaker with a laugh. "That's perfectly true. Whathave we all been doing but 'gingering' Ferrier for the last six months?And here's the result! No earthly good in wearing one's self tofiddle-strings over this election! I shall go and keep pigs in Canada!"
The group strolled along the Terrace, leaving behind them an animatedcrowd, all busy with the same subject. In the middle of it they passedFerrier himself--flushed--with the puffy eyes of a man who never getsmore than a quarter allowance of sleep; his aspect, nevertheless,smiling and defiant, and a crowd of friends round him. The wind blewchill up the river, crisping the incoming tide; and the few ladies whowere being entertained at tea drew their furs about them, shivering.
"He'll _have_ to go to the Lords!--that's flat--if we win this election.If we come back, the new members will never stand him; and if wedon't--well, I suppose, in that case, he does as well as anybody else."
The remarks were McEwart's. Lankester turned a sarcastic eye upon him.
"Don't you be unjust, my boy. Ferrier's one of the smartestParliamentary hands England has ever turned out"
At this Barton roused.
"What's the good of that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strongLancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? TheLabor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run _straight!_--asthe party wants him to run."
"All right. _Ad leones!_ Ferrier to the Lords. I'm agreeable. Only Idon't know what Marsham will say to it."
Lankester pushed back a very shabby pot-hat to a still more rakishangle, buttoning up an equally shabby coat the while against the eastwind. He was a tall fair-haired fellow, half a Dane in race and aspect:broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, with a Franciscan passion for povertyand the poor. But a certain humorous tolerance for all sorts andconditions of men, together with certain spiritual gifts, made himfriends in all camps. Bishops consulted him, the Socialists claimed him;perhaps it was the East End children who possessed him most wholly.Nevertheless, there was a fierce strain in him; he could be a fanatic,even a hard fanatic, on occasion.
Marsham did not show much readiness to take up the reference to himself.As he walked beside the others, his slender elegance, his handsome head,and fashionable clothes marked him out from the rugged force of Barton,the middle-class alertness of McEwart, the rubbed apostolicity ofLankester. But the face was fretful and worried.
"Ferrier has not the smallest intention of going to the Lords!" he said,at last--not without a touch of impatience.
"That's the party's affair."
"The party owes him a deal too much to insist upon anything against hiswill."
"Does it!--_does_ it!" said Lankester. "Ferrier always reminds me of acat we possessed at home, who brought forth many kittens. She loved themdearly, and licked them all over--tenderly--all day. But by the end ofthe second day they were always dead. Somehow she had killed them all.That's what Ferrier does with all our little Radical measures--loves 'emall--and kills 'em all."
McEwart flushed.
"Well, it's no good talking," he said, doggedly; "we've done enough ofthat! There will be a meeting of the Forward Club next week, and weshall decide on our line of action."
"Broadstone will never throw him over." Lanke
ster threw another glanceat Marsham. "You'll only waste your breath."
Lord Broadstone was the veteran leader of the party, who in the event ofvictory at the polls would undoubtedly be Prime Minister.
"He can take Foreign Affairs, and go to the Lords in a blaze of glory,"said McEwart. "But he's _impossible!_--as leader in the Commons. Theparty wants grit--not dialectic."
Marsham still said nothing. The others fell to discussing the situationin much detail, gradually elaborating what were, in truth, the firstoutlines of a serious campaign against Ferrier's leadership. Marshamlistened, but took no active part in it. It was plain, however, thatnone of the group felt himself in any way checked by Marsham's presenceor silence.
Presently Marsham--the debate in the House having fallen to levels ofdulness "measureless to man"--remembered that his mother had expressed awish that he might come home to dinner. He left the House, lengtheninghis walk for exercise, by way of Whitehall and Piccadilly. Hisexpression was still worried and preoccupied. Mechanically he stopped tolook into a picture-dealer's shop, still open, somewhere about themiddle of Piccadilly. A picture he saw there made him start. It was adrawing of the chestnut woods of Vallombrosa, in the first flush andglitter of spring, with a corner of one of the monastic buildings, nowused as a hotel.
_She_ was there. At an official crush the night before he had heardChide say to Lady Niton that Miss Mallory had written to him fromVallombrosa, and was hoping to stay there till the end of June. So thatshe was sitting, walking, reading, among those woods. In whatmood?--with what courage? In any case, she was alone; fighting her griefalone; looking forward to the future alone. Except, of course, for Mrs.Colwood--nice, devoted little thing!
He moved on, consumed with regrets and discomfort. During the two monthswhich had elapsed since Diana had left England, he had, in his ownopinion, gone through a good deal. He was pursued by the memory of thatwretched afternoon when he had debated with himself whether he shouldnot, after all, go and intercept her at Charing Cross, plead hismother's age and frail health, implore her to give him time; not tobreak off all relations; to revert, at least, to the old friendship. Hehad actually risen from his seat in the House of Commons half an hourbefore the starting of the train; had made his way to the Central Lobby,torn by indecision; and had there been pounced upon by an important andfussy constituent. Of course, he could have shaken the man off. But justthe extra resolution required to do it had seemed absolutely beyond hispower, and when next he looked at the clock it was too late. He wentback to the House, haunted by the imagination of a face. She would neverhave mentioned her route unless she had meant "Come and saygood-bye!"--unless she had longed for a parting look and word. Andhe--coward that he was--had shirked it--had denied her lastmute petition.
Well!--after all--might it not simply have made matters worse?--for herno less than for him? The whole thing was his mother's responsibility.He might, no doubt, have pushed it all through, regardless ofconsequences; he might have accepted the Juliet Sparling heritage,thrown over his career, braved his mother, and carried off Diana bystorm--if, that is, she would ever have allowed him to make thesacrifice as soon as she fully understood it. But it would have been oneof the most quixotic things ever done. He had made his effort to do it;and--frankly--he had not been capable of it. He wondered how many men ofhis acquaintance would have been capable of it.
Nevertheless, he had fallen seriously in his own estimation. Nor was heunaware that he had lost a certain amount of consideration with theworld at large. His courtship of Diana had been watched by a great manypeople: and at the same moment that it came to an end and she leftEngland, the story of her parentage had become known in Brookshire.There had been a remarkable outburst of public sympathy and pity,testifying, no doubt, in a striking way, to the effect produced by thegirl's personality, even in those few months of residence. And the factthat she was not there, that only the empty house that she had furnishedwith so much girlish pleasure remained to bear its mute testimony to hergrief, made feeling all the hotter. Brookshire beheld her as a charmingand innocent victim, and, not being able to tell her so, found relief inblaming and mocking at the man who had not stood by her. For it appearedthere was to be no engagement, although all Brookshire had expected it.Instead of it, came the announcement of the tragic truth, the girl'shurried departure, and the passionate feeling on her behalf of peoplelike the Roughsedges, or her quondam critic, the Vicar.
Marsham, thereupon, had become conscious of a wind of unpopularityblowing through his constituency. Some of the nice women of theneighborhood, with whom he had been always hitherto a welcome anddesired guest, had begun to neglect him; men who would never havedreamed of allowing their own sons to marry a girl in Diana's position,greeted him with a shade less consideration than usual; and the Liberalagent in the division had suddenly ceased to clamor for his attendanceand speeches at rural meetings. There could be no question that by somemeans or other the story had got abroad--no doubt in a most inaccurateand unjust form--and was doing harm.
Reflections of this kind were passing through his mind as he crossedHyde Park Corner on his way to Eaton Square. Opposite St. George'sHospital he suddenly became aware of Sir James Chide on the other sideof the road. At sight of him, Marsham waved his hand, quickening hispace that he might come up with him. Sir James, seeing him, gave him aperfunctory greeting, and suddenly turned aside to hail a hansom, intowhich he jumped, and was carried promptly out of sight.
Marsham was conscious of a sudden heat in the face. He had never yetbeen so sharply reminded of a changed relation. After Diana's departurehe had himself written to Chide, defending his own share in the matter,speaking bitterly of the action taken by his mother and sister, andlamenting that Diana had not been willing to adopt the waiting andtemporizing policy, which alone offered any hope of subduing hismother's opposition. Marsham declared--persuading himself, as he wrote,of the complete truth of the statement--that he had been quite willingto relinquish his father's inheritance for Diana's sake, and that it washer own action alone that had separated them. Sir James had rathercoldly acknowledged the letter, with the remark that few words were beston a subject so painful; and since then there had been no intimacybetween the two men. Marsham could only think with discomfort of thescene at Felton Park, when a man of passionate nature and romantic hearthad allowed him access to the most sacred and tragic memories of hislife. Sir James felt, he supposed, that he had been cheated out of hisconfidence--cheated out of his sympathy. Well!--it was unjust!
* * * * *
He reached Eaton Square in good time for dinner, and found his mother inthe drawing-room.
"You look tired, Oliver," she said, as he kissed her.
"It's the east wind, I suppose--beastly day!"
Lady Lucy surveyed him, as he stood, moody and physically chilled, withhis back to the fire.
"Was the debate interesting?"
"Ferrier made a very disappointing speech. All our fellows are gettingrestive."
Lady Lucy looked astonished.
"Surely they ought to trust his judgment! He has done so splendidly forthe party."
Marsham shook his head.
"I wish you would use your influence," he said, slowly. "There is aregular revolt coming on. A large number of men on our side say theywon't be led by him; that if we come in, he must go to the Lords."
Lady Lucy started.
"Oliver!" she said, indignantly, "you know it would break his heart!"
And before both minds there rose a vision of Ferrier's future, as hehimself certainly conceived it. A triumphant election--the Liberals inoffice--himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of theCommons--with the reversion of the Premiership whenever old LordBroadstone should die or retire--this indeed had been Ferrier's workingunderstanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and onthe whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the leadership ofthe Commons, with whatever compensations, could only mean to him, and tothe world in ge
neral, the failure of his career.
"They would give him Foreign Affairs, of course," said Marsham, after apause.
"Nothing that they could give him would make up!" said Lady Lucy, withenergy. "You certainly, Oliver, could not lend yourself to any intrigueof the kind."
Marsham shrugged his shoulders.
"My position is not exactly agreeable! I don't agree with Ferrier, and Ido agree with the malcontents. Moreover, when we come in, they willrepresent the strongest element in the party, with the future intheir hands."
Lady Lucy looked at him with sparkling eyes.
"You can't desert him, Oliver!--not you!"
"Perhaps I'd better drop out of Parliament!" he said, impatiently. "Thegame sometimes doesn't seem worth the candle."
Lady Lucy--alarmed--laid a hand on his.
"Don't say those things, Oliver. You know you have never done so well asthis year."
"Yes--up to two months ago."
His mother withdrew her hand. She perfectly understood. Oliver oftenallowed himself allusions of this kind, and the relations of mother andson were not thereby improved.
Silence reigned for a few minutes. With a hand that shook slightly, LadyLucy drew toward her a small piece of knitting she had been occupiedwith when Marsham came in, and resumed it. Meanwhile there flashedthrough his mind one of those recollections that are only apparentlyincongruous. He was thinking of a dinner-party which his mother hadgiven the night before; a vast dinner of twenty people; all well-fed,prosperous, moderately distinguished, and, in his opinion, less thanmoderately amused. The dinner had dragged; the guests had left early;and he had come back to the drawing-room after seeing off the last ofthem, stifled with yawns. Waste of food, waste of money, waste oftime--waste of everything! He had suddenly been seized with a passionatesense of the dulness of his home life; with a wonder how long he couldgo on submitting to it. And as he recalled these feelings--as of dustin the mouth--there struck across them an image from a dream-world.Diana sat at the head of the long table; Diana in white, with herslender neck, and the blue eyes, with their dear short-sighted look, hersmile, and the masses of her dark hair. The dull faces on either sidefaded away; the lights, the flowers were for her--for her alone!
He roused himself with an effort. His mother was putting up herknitting, which, indeed, she had only pretended to work at.
"We must go and dress, Oliver. Oh! I forgot to tell you--Alicia arrivedan hour ago."
"Ah!" He raised his eyebrows indifferently. "I hope she's well?"
"Brilliantly well--and as handsome as ever."
"Any love-affairs?"
"Several, apparently--but nothing suitable," said Lady Lucy, with asmile, as she rose and gathered together her possessions.
"It's time, I think, that Alicia made up her mind. She has been out agood while."
It gave him a curious pleasure--he could hardly tell why--to say thisslighting thing of Alicia. After all, he had no evidence that she haddone anything unfriendly or malicious at the time of the crisis.Instinctively, he had ranged her then and since as an enemy--as a personwho had worked against him. But, in truth, he knew nothing for certain.Perhaps, after the foolish passages between them a year ago, it wasnatural that she should dislike and be critical of Diana. As to hercoming now, it was completely indifferent to him. It would be a goodthing, no doubt, for his mother to have her companionship.
As he opened the door for Lady Lucy to leave the room, he noticed hergray and fragile look.
"I believe you have had enough of London, mother. You ought to begetting abroad."
"I am all right," said Lady Lucy, hastily. "Like you, I hate east winds.Oliver, I have had a charming letter from Mr. Heath."
Mr. Heath had been for some months Marsham's local correspondent on thesubject of the new Liberal hall in the county town. Lady Lucy hadrecently sent a check to the Committee, which had set all their buildinganxieties at rest.
Oliver looked down rather moodily upon her.
"It's pretty easy to write charming letters when people send you money.It would have been more to the purpose, I think, if they had taken alittle trouble to raise some themselves!"
Lady Lucy flushed.
"I don't suppose Dunscombe is a place with many rich people in it," shesaid, in a voice of protest, as she passed him. Her thoughts hurt her asshe mounted the stairs. Oliver had not received her gift--for, afterall, it was a gift to him--very graciously. And the same might have beensaid of various other things that she had tried to do for him during thepreceding months.
As to Marsham, while he dressed, he too recalled other checks that hadbeen recently paid for him, other anxious attempts that had been made toplease him. Since Diana had vanished from the scene, no complaisance, noliberality had been too much for his mother's good-will. He had neverbeen so conscious of an atmosphere of money--much money. And there weremoments--what he himself would have described as morbid moments--whenit seemed to him the price of blood; when he felt himself to be a mere,crude moral tale embodied and walking about. Yet how ridiculous! Whatreasonable man, knowing what money means, and the power of it, but musthave flinched a little under such a test as had been offered to him? Hisflinching had been nothing final or damnable. It was Diana, who, in herignorance of the world, had expected him to take the sacrifice as thoughit were nothing and meant nothing--as no honest man of the world, infact, could have taken it.
* * * * *
When Marsham descended he found Alicia already in possession of thedrawing-room. Her gown of a brilliant shade of blue put the room out ofjoint, and beside the startling effect of her hair, all the washed-outdecoration and conventional ornament which it contained made a worseeffect than usual. There was nothing conventional or effaced aboutAlicia. She had become steadily more emphatic, more triumphant, moreself-confident.
"Well, what have you been doing with yourself?--nothing but politics?"The careless, provocative smile with which the words were accomplishedroused a kind of instant antagonism in Marsham.
"Nothing--nothing, at least, worth anybody's remembering."
"You spoke at Dunscombe last week."
"I did."
"And you went to help Mr. Collins at the Sheffield bye-election."
"I did. I am very much flattered that you know so much about mymovements."
"I always know everything that you are doing," said Alicia,quietly--"you, and Cousin Lucy."
"You have the advantage of me then"; his laugh was embarrassed, but notamicable; "for I am afraid I have no idea what you have been doingsince Easter!"
"I have been at home, flirting with the Curate," said Alicia, with alaugh. As she sat, with her head thrown back against the chair, thelight sparkling on her white skin, on her necklace of yellow topazes,and the jewelled fan in her hands, the folds of blue chiffon billowinground her, there could be no doubt of her effectiveness. Marsham couldnot help laughing, too.
"Charming for the Curate! Did he propose to you?"
"Certainly. I think we were engaged for twenty-four hours."
"That you might see what it was like? _Et apres?_"
"He was afraid he had mistaken my character"
Marsham laughed out.
"Poor victim! May I ask what you did it for?"
He found himself looking at her with curiosity and a certain anger. Tobe engaged, even for twenty-four hours, means that you allow yourbetrothed the privileges of betrothal. And in the case of Alicia no manwas likely to forego them. She was really a little too unscrupulous!
"What I did it for? He was so nice and good-looking!"
"And there was nobody else?"
"Nobody. Home was a desert."
"H'm!" said Marsham. "Is he broken-hearted?"
Alicia shrugged her shoulders a little.
"I don't think so. I write him such charming letters. It is allsimmering down beautifully."
Marsham moved restlessly to and fro, first putting down a lamp, thenfidgeting with an evening paper. Alicia neve
r failed to stir in him theinstinct of sex, in its combative and critical form; and hostile as hebelieved he was to her, her advent had certainly shaken him out of hisdepression.
She meanwhile watched him with her teasing eyes, apparently enjoying hisdisapproval.
"I know exactly what you are thinking," she said, presently.
"I doubt it."
"Heartless coquette!" she said, mimicking his voice. "Never mind--herturn will come presently!"
"You don't allow my thoughts much originality."
"Why should I? Confess!--you did think that?"
Her small white teeth flashed in the smile she gave him. There was anexuberance of life and spirits about her that was rather disarming. Buthe did not mean to be disarmed.
"I did not think anything of the kind," he said, returning to the fireand looking down upon her; "simply because I know you too well."
Alicia reddened a little. It was one of her attractions that she flushedso easily.
"Because you know me too well?" she repeated. "Let me see. That meansthat you don't believe my turn will ever come?"
Marsham smiled.
"Your turn for what?" he said, dryly.
"I think we are getting mixed up!" Her laugh was as musical as heremembered it. "Let's begin again. Ah! here comes Cousin Lucy!"
Lady Lucy entered, ushering in an elderly relation, a Miss Falloden,dwelling also in Eaton Square: a comfortable lady with a comfortableincome; a social stopper of chinks, moreover, kind and talkative; whowas always welcome on occasions when life was not too strenuous or thecompany too critical. Marsham offered her his arm, and the little partymade its way to the dining-room.
* * * * *
"Do you go back to the House, Oliver, to-night?" asked his mother, asthe entree went round.
He replied in the affirmative, and resumed his conversation with Alicia.She was teasing him on the subject of some of his Labor friends in theHouse of Commons. It appeared that she had made the Curate, who was aChristian Socialist, take her to a Labor Conference at Bristol, whereall the leaders were present, and her account of the proceedings and thetypes was both amusing and malicious. It was the first time that Marshamhad known her attempt any conversation of the kind, and he recognizedthat her cleverness was developing. But many of the remarks she made onpersons well known to him annoyed him extremely, and he could not helptrying to punish her for them. Alicia, however, was not easily punished.She evaded him with a mosquito-like quickness, returning to the chargeas soon as he imagined himself to have scored with an irrelevance or anabsurdity which would have been exasperating in a man, but had somehowto be answered and politely handled from a woman. He lost his footingcontinually; and as she had none to lose, she had, on the whole, thebest of it.
"ALICIA UPRIGHT IN HER CORNER--OLIVER, DEEP IN HISARMCHAIR"]
Then--in the very midst of it--he remembered, with a pang, anotherskirmish, another battle of words--with another adversary, in adifferent scene. The thrill of that moment in the Tallyn drawing-room,when he had felt himself Diana's conqueror; delighting in her rosysurrender, which was the mere sweet admission of a girl's limitations;and in its implied appeal, timid and yet proud, to a victor who was alsoa friend--all this he was conscious of, by association, while thesparring with Alicia still went on. His tongue moved under the stimulusof hers; but in the background of the mind rose the images andsensations of the past.
Lady Lucy, meanwhile, looked on, well pleased. She had not seen Oliverso cheerful, or so much inclined to talk, since "that unfortunateaffair," and she was proportionately grateful to Alicia.
Marsham returned to the drawing-room with the ladies, declaring that hemust be off in twenty minutes. Alicia settled herself in a corner of thesofa, and played with Lady Lucy's dog. Marsham endeavored, for a little,to do his duty by Miss Falloden; but in a few minutes he had driftedback to Alicia. This time she made him talk of Parliament, and the twoor three measures in which he was particularly interested. She showed,indeed, a rather astonishing acquaintance with the details of thosemeasures, and the thought crossed Marsham's mind: "Has she been gettingthem up?--and why?" But the idea did not make the conversation sheoffered him any the less pleasant. Quite the contrary. The mixture ofteasing and deference which she showed him, in the course of it, hadbeen the secret of her old hold upon him. She reasserted something of itnow, and he was not unwilling. During the morose and taciturn phasethrough which he had been passing there had been no opportunity ordesire to talk of himself, especially to a woman. But Alicia had alwaysmade him talk of himself, and he had forgotten how agreeable itmight be.
He threw himself down beside her, and the time passed. Lady Lucy andMiss Falloden had retired into the back drawing-room, where the oneknitted and the other gossiped. But as the clock struck a quarter toeleven Lady Lucy called, in some astonishment: "So you are not goingback to the House, Oliver?"
He sprang to his feet.
"Heavens!" He looked at the clock, irresolute. "Well, there's nothingmuch on, mother. I don't think I need."
And he subsided again into his chair beside Alicia.
Miss Falloden looked at Lady Lucy with a meaning smile.
"I didn't know they were such friends!" she said, under her breath.
Lady Lucy made no reply. But her eyes travelled through the archwaydividing the two rooms to the distant figures framed within it--Alicia,upright in her corner, the red gold of her hair shining against thebackground of a white azalea; Oliver, deep in his arm-chair, his longlegs crossed, his hands gesticulating.
Lady Niton's sarcasms recurred to her. She was not sure whether shewelcomed or disliked the idea. But, after all, why not?