“That’s what you want, isn’t it, Roger?”
“Want her to be killed, or them to be married?”
“Well, as you say, so many people are being killed. One more or less, if it’s in such a good cause as their marriage—”
“It’s certainly a good cause. But I don’t like the dilemma,” said Oldmeadow.
He knew from the way she looked at him, discreet and disguised as her recognition was, that he was hiding something from her. Casting about his mind, in the distress that took the form of confusion, he could himself find nothing that he hid, or wished to hide, unless it was the end of Adrienne’s story as Barney’s wife. That wasn’t for him to show; ever; to anyone.
“Perhaps she’s gone back to America,” said Mrs. Aldesey presently, “California, you know. Or Chicago. She may very well be engaged in great enterprises out there that we never hear of. They’d be sure to be great, wouldn’t they.”
“I suppose they would.”
“You saw her once more, didn’t you, at the time you saw Palgrave,” Mrs. Aldesey went on. “Lady Lumley told me of that. And how kind you had been. Adrienne had spoken of it. You were sorry for them both, I suppose; for her as well as for him, in spite of everything. Or did she merely take it for granted that the kindness to him extended to her?”
“Not at all. It was for her too,” said Oldmeadow, staring a little and gathering together, after this lapse of time that seemed so immense, his memories of that other tea-table set up in the chaos: Palgrave’s tea-table on that distant day in Oxford. What was so confusing him was his consciousness that it hadn’t been the last time he had seen Adrienne. “I was as sorry for her as for him,” he went on. “Sorrier. There was so much more in her than I’d supposed. She was capable of intense suffering.”
“In losing her husband’s affections, you mean? You never suspected her of being inhuman, surely? Lady Lumley blamed poor Barney for all that sad story. But, even from her account, I could see his side very plainly.”