He started. He tried to smile, but there was no smile in him.
'Was I, Lettice? Forgive me.' The talk that was coming would hurt him, yet somehow he desired it. He would give his little warning and take the consequences. 'I was devouring your beauty, as the Family Herald says.' He heard himself utter a dry and unconvincing laugh. Something was rising through him; it was beyond control; it had to come. He felt stupid, awkward, and was angry with himself for being so. For, somehow, at the same time he felt powerless too.
She came to the point with a directness that disconcerted him. 'Who has been talking about me?' she enquired, her voice hardening a little; 'and what does it matter if they have?'
Tom swallowed. There was something about her beauty in that moment that set him on fire from head to foot. He knew a fierce desire to seize her in his arms, hold her for ever and ever—lest she should escape him.
But he was unable to give expression in any way to what was in him. All he did was to shift his cushions slightly farther from her side.
'It's always wiser—safer—not to be seen about too much with the same man—alone,' he fumbled, recalling Mrs. Haughstone's words, 'in a place like this, I mean,' he qualified it. It sounded foolish, but he could evolve no cleverer way of phrasing it. He went on quicker, a touch of nervousness in his voice he tried to smother: 'No one can mistake our relationship, or think there's anything wrong in it.' He stopped a second, as she gazed at him in silence, waiting for him to finish. 'But Tony,' he concluded, with a gulp he prayed she did not notice, 'Tony is a little——'
'Well?' she helped him, 'a little what?'
'A little different, isn't he?'
Tom realised that he was producing the reverse of what he intended. Somehow the choice of words seemed forced upon him. He was aware of his own helplessness; he felt almost like a boy scolding his own wise, affectionate mother. The thought stung him into pain, and with the pain rose, too, a first distant hint of anger. The turmoil of feeling confused him. He was aware—by her silence chiefly—of the new distance between them, a distance the mention of Tony had emphasised. Instinctively he tried to hide both pain and anger—it could only increase this distance that was already there. At the same time he saw red.… Her answer, then, so gently given, baffled him absurdly. He felt out of his depth.
'I'll be more careful, Tom, dear—you wise, experienced chaperone.'