Yes, Virginia had heard of it. She said so in an even monotone which had in it no suggestions either of approval or disapproval. She was astonished to feel Miss Erroll’s hand on her arm.
“Miss Virginia,” said that young lady, with a sweet and whole-souled blush, “I’m going to ask you to do me a tremendous favor. I—I would like so much to see Jack’s—Mr. Roden’s room just as he left it, don’t you know—with his boots and coats and whips lying about. I don’t want your father or any of the servants to know, because they would think me crazy; but I’m sure you’ll understand.”
Virginia led the way without a word. The mastiff pup made playfully affectionate dabs at her round chin with his rose-leaf tongue. Roden’s bedroom was on the ground-floor. He did not occupy the majestically gloomy apartment in which his first night at Caryston had been spent. This room was in the east wing of the house, plentifully perforated with small casements, and panelled from floor to ceiling. This panelling had all been painted white, and the result of the heavy coatings, renewed from time to time, was a rich, ivory-like smoothness of tint and tone. A little single iron bedstead stood in one corner of the room, between two windows. There were some capital old sporting prints upon the walls, numberless hunting-crops and riding-canes stacked on the high mantle, spurs, gloves, tobacco-bags, cartridges, and what not heaped pell-mell on tables and chairs, about twenty pairs of boots and shoes ranged along one side of the room, some on and some not on trees. Garments of divers kind were pitched recklessly about. It is perhaps needless to say, after the foregoing description, that confusion reigned supreme.
Miss Erroll, at first shyly conscious of Virginia’s presence, soon began to move about after her usual airy fashion. She lifted the brier-wood pipe, so often smoked in Virginia’s presence, and pressed her lips playfully to its glossy bowl.
“Aren’t women geese, Miss Virginia, when they care for any one?” she said, turning to laugh at the girl over her graceful shoulder.
She was entirely at her ease now, and went about from object to object, touching some and merely looking at others, with a little conscious air of possession which was like the turning of a rusty knife in the girl’s heart. She tossed an old shooting-coat from the bed’s foot to a chair, remarking, as she did so, “What careless creatures the best of men are! I shall have to give Master Jack a lesson in the old proverb concerning places and things—when—when I am Mrs. Jack!” she ended, merrily.
Turning over some things on a table near one of the windows she came across an old-fashioned netted purse of red silk, with steel rings and tassels—the purse Virginia had netted for him during such odd moments as she could steal from her many occupations. She watched Miss Erroll now with hungry eyes, the eyes of a wounded lioness who watches, helpless, the taking away of one of her cubs. Her heart beat against her homespun bodice with short, quick throbs. She stooped and set the struggling puppy upon the floor. It seemed to her as though she had been holding fire in her arms.
“Oh, this is so pretty!” said unconscious Mary. “This is so very quaint and pretty! I must have it. Of course he’d give it me. I’m just going to take it without saying by your leave;” and with that she slipped it in the pocket of her habit.
Virginia shut her eyes for a moment, dizzy with pain and anger; but the red light which seemed to surround and envelop her when she did so made her fainter than ever. She lifted her dark lids and stared out at the blank strip of sky above the box-bushes outside the window, vacantly, unseeingly.
She had no distinct recollection of the remainder of Miss Erroll’s visit. That one fact concerning the taking away of the purse which Roden had promised to keep always alone remained distinctly in her mind. She had tried honestly to overcome the all-powerful, unreasoning dislike of Miss Mary Erroll, and the result had been worse than if it had not been tried. The discordant, insistent yapping of the mastiff pup irritated her almost beyond endurance. He seemed bent on intruding upon her his regret for the departure of his former mistress.