In a certain sense she had been dragged to the place by her mother.
Lady Mallowe had many resources, and above all she knew how to weary her into resistlessness which was almost indifference.There had been several shameless little scenes in the locked boudoir.But though she had been dragged, she had come with an intention.She knew what she would find herself being forced to submit to if the intruder were not disposed of at the outset, and if the manoeuvering began which would bring him to London.He would appear at her elbow here and there and at every corner, probably unaware that he was being made an offensive puppet by the astute cleverness against which she could not defend herself, unless she made actual scenes in drawing-rooms, at dinner-tables, in the very streets themselves.Gifted as Lady Mallowe was in fine and light-handed dealing of her cards in any game, her stakes at this special juncture were seriously high.Joan knew what they were, and that she was in a mood touched with desperation.The defenselessly new and ignorant Temple Barholm was to her mind a direct intervention of Providence, and it was only Joan herself who could rob her of the benefits and reliefs he could provide.With regard to Lady Joan, though Palliser's quoted New Yorkism, "wipe up the earth," was unknown to her, the process she had in mind when she left London for Lancashire would have been well covered by it.As in feudal days she might have ordered the right hand of a creature such as this to be struck off, forgetting that he was a man, so was she capable to-day of inflicting upon him any hurt which might sweep him out of her way.She had not been a tender-hearted girl, and in these years she was absolutely callous.The fellow being what he was, she had not the resources she might have called upon if he had been a gentleman.He would not understand the chills and slights of good manners.In the country he would be easier to manage than in town, especially if attacked in his first timidity before his new grandeurs.His big house no doubt frightened him, his servants, the people who were of a class of which he knew nothing.When Palliser told his story she saw new openings.He would stand in servile awe of her and of others like her.
He would be afraid of her, to begin with, and she could make him more so.
But though she had come to alarm him so that he would be put to absolute flight, she had also come for another reason.She had never seen Temple Barholm, and she had discovered before they had known each other a week that it was Jem's secret passion.He had loved it with a slighted and lonely child's romantic longing; he had dreamed of it as boy and man, knowing that it must some time be his own, his home, and yet prevented by his uncle's attitude toward him from daring to act as though he remembered the fact.Old Mr.Temple Barholm's special humor had been that of a man guarding against presumption.
Jem had not intended to presume, but he had been snubbed with relentless cruelty even for boyish expressions of admiration.And he had hid his feeling in his heart until he poured it out to Joan.To-day it would have been his.Together, together, they would have lived in it and loved every stone of it, every leaf on every great tree, every wild daffodil nodding in the green grass.Most people, God be thanked! can forget.The wise ones train themselves beyond all else to forgetting.
Joan had been a luckless, ill-brought-up, passionate child and girl.
In her Mayfair nursery she had been as little trained as a young savage.Since her black hour she had forgotten nothing, allowed herself no palliating moments.Her brief dream of young joy had been the one real thing in her life.She absolutely had lain awake at night and reconstructed the horror of Jem's death, had lived it over again, writhing in agony on her bed, and madly feeling that by so doing she was holding her love close to her life.
And the man who stood in the place Jem had longed for, the man who sat at the head of his table, was this "thing!" That was what she felt him to be, and every hurt she could do him, every humiliation which should write large before him his presumption and grotesque unfitness, would be a blow struck for Jem, who could never strike a blow for himself again.It was all senseless, but she had not want to reason.Fate had not reasoned in her behalf.She watched Tembarom under her lids at the dinner-table.
He had not wriggled or shuffled when she spoke to him in the gallery;he did neither now, and made no obvious efforts to seem unembarrassed.
He used his knife and fork in odd ways, and he was plainly not used to being waited upon.More than once she saw the servants restrain smiles.She addressed no remarks to him herself, and answered with chill indifference such things as he said to her.If conversation had flagged between him and Mr.Palford because the solicitor did not know how to talk to him, it did not even reach the point of flagging with her, because she would not talk and did not allow it to begin.Lady Mallowe, sick with annoyance, was quite brilliant.She drew out Miss Alicia by detailed reminiscences of a visit paid to Rowlton Hall years before.The vicar had dined at the hall while she had been there.She remembered perfectly his charm of manner and powerful originality of mind, she said sweetly.He had spoken with such affection of his "little Alicia," who was such a help to him in his parish work.
"I thought he was speaking of a little girl at first," she said smilingly, "but it soon revealed itself that 'little Alicia' was only his caressing diminutive."A certain widening of Miss Alicia's fascinated eye, which could not remove itself from her face, caused her to quail slightly.