“You shall hear. Shall we talk about it now, or wait till after dinner? I think I’d rather wait. I’ve got a bit of a headache.”
“After dinner, then,” murmured Mary.
This was very unlike her. Had she had nothing on her conscience, nothing she was afraid of, she would never have ceased questioning and worrying him to get it all out of him.
He went up to his room, and asked her to leave him, and this she actually did. She wanted time to think!
With the weak good nature that was in Nigel, curiously side by side with a certain cruel hardness, he now felt a little sorry for her. It must be awful to be waiting like this. And she really had been in the wrong. It was an appalling thing to do—mad, hysterical, dangerous. It might have caused far more trouble than it had! Suppose Percy had believed it all!
Nigel thought of scandals, divorces, all sorts of things. Yes, after all, Kellynch had really been kind; and clever. He was not a bad sort. Then Nigel found that last little letter of Bertha’s. How sweet it was! But he saw through it now, that she was deeply happy and didn’t want to be bothered with him. She forgave the scene his wife had made at the party, as not one woman in a hundred would do—but she didn’t want him. The moment she realised that he wanted to flirt with her, that there was even a chance of his loving her, she was simply bored. Yes, that was it—gay, amusing, witty, attractive Nigel bored her! Dull, serious, conventional Percy did not! She was in love with him.
In books and plays it was always the other way: it was the husband that was the bore; but romances and comedies are often far away from life. Curious as it seemed, this was life, and Nigel realised it. He destroyed her letter and went down to dinner.
They were quiet at dinner, talked a little only for the servants. Nigel asked about the little girl.
“How’s Marjorie getting on with her music lessons?”