t was, curiously enough, a crippling awkwardness and embarrassment that Amabel felt rather than fear or antagonism, during that evening and the morning that followed. Augustine had left the room directly after Sir Hugh's departure. When she saw him again he showed her a face resolutely mute. It was impossible to speak to him; to explain. The main facts he must see; that her husband was making love to her and that, however deep her love for him, she rejected him.
Augustine might believe that rejection to be for his own sake, might believe that she renounced love and sacrificed herself from a maternal sense of duty; and, indeed, the impossibility of bringing that love into her life with Augustine had been the clear impossibility that had flashed for her in her need; she had seized upon it and it had armed her in her reiterated refusal. But how tell Augustine that there had been more than the clear impossibility; how tell him that deeper than renouncement was recoil? To tell that would be a disloyalty to her husband; it would be almost to accuse him; it would be to show Augustine that something in her life was spoiled and that her husband had spoiled it. So perplexed, so jaded, was she, so tossed by the conflicting currents of her lesser plight, that the deeper fears were forgotten: she was not conscious of being afraid of Augustine.
The rain had ceased next morning. The sky was crystalline; the wet earth glittered in Autumnal sunshine.
Augustine went out for his ride and Amabel had her girls to read with. There was a sense of peace for her in finding these threads of her life unknotted, smooth and simple, lying ready to her hand.
When she saw Augustine at lunch he said that he had met Lady Elliston.
"She was riding with Marjory and her girl."
"Oh, she is back, then." Amabel was grateful to him for his everyday tone.
"What is Lady Elliston's girl like?"
"Pretty; very; foolish manners I thought; Marjory looked bewildered by her."
"The manners of girls have changed, I fancy, since my day; and she isn't a boy-girl, like our nice Marjory, either?"