'She really is an interesting little person, your Althea,' Gerald said to Helen. 'You were wrong not to find her interesting. She is so wise and calm and she knows such a lot.'
'I'm too ignorant to be interested in knowledge,' said Helen.
'It's not mere knowledge, it's the gentle temperateness and independence one feels in her.'
Helen, somehow, did not feel them, or, at all events, felt other things too much to feel them preeminently. It was part of her unselfconsciousness not to guess why Althea's relation to her had slightly changed. She could hardly have followed with comprehension the suffering instability of her friend's character, nor dream that her own power over her was so great, yet so resented; but something in their talk about Mr. Kane had made Helen uncomfortable, and she said no more now, not wishing to emphasise any negative aspect of her attitude to Althea at a time when their relation seemed to have become a little strained. And she was pleased that Gerald should talk about political economy with Althea—it was so much better than flirting with Frances Pickering.
No one, indeed, unless it were Franklin Kane, gave much conjecture to Gerald's talks with his hostess. Lady Pickering noticed; but she was vexed, rather than jealous. She couldn't imagine that Gerald felt anything but a purely intellectual interest in such talks. It was rather as if a worshipper in some highly ritualistic shrine, filled with appeals to sight and hearing, had unaccountably wandered off into a wayside chapel. Lady Pickering felt convinced that this was mere vagrant curiosity on Gerald's part. She felt convinced that he couldn't care for chapels. She was so convinced that, moved to emphatic measures, she came into the open as it were, marched processions and waved banners before him, in order to remind him what the veritable church was for a person of taste. Sometimes Gerald joined her, but sometimes he waved a friendly greeting and went into the chapel again.
So it was that Althea suddenly found herself involved in that mute and sinister warfare—an unavowed contest with another woman for possession of a man. How it could be a real contest she did not know; she felt sure that Lady Pickering did not love Gerald Digby, that she herself loved him she had not yet told herself, and that he loved neither of them was obvious. It seemed a mere struggle for supremacy, in which Lady Pickering's role was active and her own passive. For when she saw that Lady Pickering looked upon Gerald as a prey between them, that she seized, threatened and allured, she herself, full of a proud disdain, drew away, relinquished any hold, any faintest claim she had, handed Gerald over, as it were, to his pursuer; and as she did this, coldly, gravely, proudly, she was not aware that no tactics could have been more effective. For Gerald, when he found himself pursued, and then dropped by Althea at the feet of the pursuer, became more and more averse to being seized. And what had been a gracefully amorous dialogue with Lady Pickering, became a slightly malicious discussion. 'Well, what do you want of me?' he seemed to demand of her, under all his grace. Lady Pickering did not want anything except to keep him, and to show Althea that she kept him. And she was willing to go to great lengths if this might be effected.
Gerald and Althea, walking one afternoon in the little wood that lay at the foot of the lawn, came upon Lady Pickering seated romantically upon a stone, her head in her hands. She said, looking up at them, with pathetic eyes of suffering, that she had wrenched her ankle and was in agony. 'I think it is sprained, perhaps broken,' she said.
Now both Althea and Gerald felt convinced that she was not in agony, and had perhaps not hurt her ankle at all. They were both a little embarrassed and a little ashamed for her.
'Take my arm, take Miss Jakes's,' said Gerald. 'We will help you back to the house.'
'Oh no. I must sit still for a little while,' said Lady Pickering.' I couldn't bear to stir yet. It must be only a wrench; yes, there, I can feel that it is a bad wrench. It's only that the pain has been so horrible, and I feel a little faint. Please sit down here for a moment, Gerald, beside me, and console me for my sufferings.'