CHAPTER XXI
At Christmas-time Mrs. Cuthbert Baynhurst joined the Yelverton party unexpectedly. She wore her beautiful sables, and looked quite radiant when she arrived. As usual, she seemed to charge the atmosphere with excitement of a pleasant nature.
"It is so nice to be here!" she declared. "You can't think how tired I am of foreign beds and cooking. Agnes, I hope you are going to give me beef and plum-pudding every day."
Mrs. Brenton received her beautiful guest warmly; nevertheless, it was quickly evident to Camilla that there was something on the older woman's mind.
"Don't hesitate to send me away if you don't want me," she said easily. "I can easily go back to town, or to Lea Abbey, or—well, anywhere, you know."
"Of course I shan't turn you away," said Agnes Brenton. Then she added, colouring a little, "Only I must wire to Rupert; we expected him for Christmas."
Camilla laughed ever so prettily.
"Dear soul, why should you? We have met already several times. You see," she added, quite seriously, "when things went so horribly bad with Cuthbert and me two months ago, I was obliged to send and ask Rupert to come and help me. And he was so kind. He arranged everything. You know, don't you, that Cuthbert and I have agreed to separate—at any rate, for a little while? Perhaps when he does not find life quite so easy he may alter. His temper, my dear Agnes, is something beyond description; and he is so lazy, and so difficult! And then there are the children. My duty is really to them first of all; and I have neglected them terribly. Rupert suggests I should go back to my own little house, and have a chaperone to live with me. I supposed that Caroline would be quite enough, but from something Rupert said, I fancied, perhaps, she had some new plans in her mind."
"I have heard nothing," said Mrs. Brenton.
She had listened to this speech with a confusion of feeling. Camilla's easy acceptance of a most difficult position was not, perhaps, so very extraordinary, but other people worked a little more slowly.
"I don't quite approve of the little house. Why not stay here?" Mrs. Brenton added.
"My dear Agnes! Have I not already outraged your friendship? Do you realize that you have been burdened with my children over a year?"
"What is a year! Besides, you know perfectly well there has been no burden. Haven't I been clamouring to have the children with me for ages? It has given both Dick and me a new spell of life to have these little souls about us, and if you will only make up your mind to stay on indefinitely, it will be a real happiness."
"Thank you, darling," said Camilla; "it sounds delightful. I will talk it over with Rupert when he comes."
She said this in the most natural way possible.
But Haverford was not at Yelverton for Christmas. He wired from the north that he was ill—had caught a violent cold, and was unable to travel.
He was not too ill, however, to forget his Christmas remembrances.
Packages kept arriving by every post, and the children were in a ferment of excitement. They rushed to their mother as each new gift arrived, and Camilla confessed to Caroline that she was frantically jealous of the attachment between Rupert and the little creatures.
"Of course, it is the best thing that could happen, I know that; but, after all, they are my children, and I ought to come first. As it is, I believe I am not even placed now. Rupert comes first—before any one; you are second; and Agnes a good third."
"You are talking nonsense," said Caroline, in her calmest way; "the children love you more and more every day."
Camilla smiled, frowned, and sighed.
"Well, it may be so; at all events, I don't mind Rupert, or you, or Agnes. It would have killed me if the old man had taken them, and turned them against me, as he certainly would have done. Oh, Caroline, that reminds me; has Betty chosen something for Violet Lancing's girl? If not, let her send this bangle. I mean to be kind to that girl for Horace's sake."
A moment or two later Camilla said with a laugh—
"I wonder if Rupert will send me a Christmas present.... I suppose I must not expect it."
But she got one—a very lovely and unique necklace, composed of pieces of jade strung on a fine chain, alternated with emeralds.
Caroline's gift was a writing-table, and when the heavily laden post-bag was opened on Christmas morning there was a letter also.
She kept it for several hours unopened, and then stole out into the cold garden to read it. It was not very long. He had the trick of going straight to the point. But it was a letter that moved her deeply—that made her heart beat and her eyes dim. He called her "dearest," and once he wrote "dear capricious Caroline."
He did not claim her boldly this time, nor did he plead too much. There was a directness in his simplicity that almost made her waver. But she delayed answering till the morrow; and all that evening, as she felt the old irresistible fascination of Camilla's beautiful presence hold her in sway, she felt equally her heart grow steady and that strange rush of joy die down.
"It is impossible ... impossible," she said to herself; and though she put her words as gently as she knew how, she wrote and for a second time refused to be his wife.