"Not to take a remnant from the ducal bargain counter,"she was saying mentally.That was why her smile was a little hard.What if the remnant from the ducal bargain counter had prejudices of his own?
"If he were passionately--passionately in love with me," she said, with red staining her cheeks, "he would not come--he would not come--he would not come.And, because of that, he is more to me--MORE! And more he will become every day --and the more strongly he will hold me.And there we stand."Roland lifted his fine head from his paws, and, holding it erect on a stiff, strong neck, stared at her in obvious inquiry.
She put out her hand and tenderly patted him.
"He will have none of me," she said."He will have none of me." And she faintly smiled, but the next instant shook her head a little haughtily, and, having done so, looked down with an altered expression upon the cloth of her skirt, because she had shaken upon it, from the extravagant lashes, two clear drops.
It was not the result of chance that she had seen nothing of him for weeks.She had not attempted to persuade herself of that.Twice he had declined an invitation to Stornham, and once he had ridden past her on the road when he might have stopped to exchange greetings, or have ridden on by her side.
He did not mean to seem to desire, ever so lightly, to be counted as in the lists.Whether he was drawn by any liking for her or not, it was plain he had determined on this.
If she were to go away now, they would never meet again.
Their ways in this world would part forever.She would not know how long it took to break him utterly--if such a man could be broken.If no magic change took place in his fortunes --and what change could come?--the decay about him would spread day by day.Stone walls last a long time, so the house would stand while every beauty and stateliness within it fell into ruin.Gardens would become wildernesses, terraces and fountains crumble and be overgrown, walls that were to-day leaning would fall with time.The years would pass, and his youth with them; he would gradually change into an old man while he watched the things he loved with passion die slowly and hard.How strange it was that lives should touch and pass on the ocean of Time, and nothing should result--nothing at all! When she went on her way, it would be as if a ship loaded with every aid of food and treasure had passed a boat in which a strong man tossed, starving to death, and had not even run up a flag.
"But one cannot run up a flag," she said, stroking Roland.
"One cannot.There we stand."
To her recognition of this deadlock of Fate, there had been adding the growing disturbance caused by yet another thing which was increasingly troubling, increasingly difficult to face.
Gradually, and at first with wonderful naturalness of bearing, Nigel Anstruthers had managed to create for himself a singular place in her everyday life.It had begun with a certain personalness in his attitude, a personalness which was a thing to dislike, but almost impossible openly to resent.Certainly, as a self-invited guest in his house, she could scarcely protest against the amiability of his demeanour and his exterior courtesy and attentiveness of manner in his conduct towards her.She had tried to sweep away the objectionable quality in his bearing, by frankness, by indifference, by entire lack of response, but she had remained conscious of its increasing as a spider's web might increase as the spider spun it quietly over one, throwing out threads so impalpable that one could not brush them away because they were too slight to be seen.She was aware that in the first years of his married life he had alternately resented the scarcity of the invitations sent them and rudely refused such as were received.Since he had returned to find her at Stornham, he had insisted that no invitations should be declined, and had escorted his wife and herself wherever they went.What could have been conventionally more proper--what more improper than that he should have persistently have remained at home? And yet there came a time when, as they three drove together at night in the closed carriage, Betty was conscious that, as he sat opposite to her in the dark, when he spoke, when he touched her in arranging the robe over her, or opening or shutting the window, he subtly, but persistently, conveyed that the personalness of his voice, look, and physical nearness was a sort of hideous confidence between them which they were cleverly concealing from Rosalie and the outside world.
When she rode about the country, he had a way of appearing at some turning and making himself her companion, riding too closely at her side, and assuming a noticeable air of being engaged in meaningly confidential talk.Once, when he had been leaning towards her with an audaciously tender manner, they had been passed by the Dunholm carriage, and Lady Dunholm and the friend driving with her had evidently tried not to look surprised.Lady Alanby, meeting them in the same way at another time, had put up her glasses and stared in open disapproval.She might admire a strikingly handsome American girl, but her favour would not last through any such vulgar silliness as flirtations with disgraceful brothers-in-law.When Betty strolled about the park or the lanes, she much too often encountered Sir Nigel strolling also, and knew that he did not mean to allow her to rid herself of him.In public, he made a point of keeping observably close to her, of hovering in her vicinity and looking on at all she did with eyes she rebelled against finding fixed on her each time she was obliged to turn in his direction.He had a fashion of coming to her side and speaking in a dropped voice, which excluded others, as a favoured lover might.She had seen both men and women glance at her in half-embarrassment at their sudden sense of finding themselves slightly de trop.She had said aloud to him on one such occasion--and she had said it with smiling casualness for the benefit of Lady Alanby, to whom she had been talking: