“I felt awfully about it; simply awfully,” Alicia declared.
Odd, retracing the sorry little scene as he looked from his library windows, found that from it unconsciously he had dated an epoch, an epoch of resignation that had donned good-humor as its shield. Alicia could disappoint him no longer.
In the first month of their married life, each revelation of emptiness had been an agony. Alicia was still mysterious to him, as must be a nature centered in its own shallowness to one at touch on all points with life in all its manifestations; her mind still remained as much a thing for conjecture as the mind of some animals. But Alicia’s perceptions were subtle, and he only asked now to keep from her all consciousness of his own marred life; for he had marred it, not she. He was carefully just to Alicia.
Mary remained at the Manor until all Alicia’s guests had arrived. Mrs. Marchant, an ugly, “smart,” vivacious widow, splendid horsewoman, and good singer; Gladys le Breton, who was very blonde and fluffy as to head, just a bit made-up as to skin, harmless, pretty, silly, and supposed to be clever.
“Clever, I suppose,” Mary said to Lady Mainwaring, “because she has the reputation of doing foolish things badly—dancing on dinner-tables and thoroughly bête things like that. She has not danced on Peter’s table as yet.”
Miss le Breton skirt-danced in the drawing-room, however, very prettily, and Peter’s placid contemplation of her coyness irritated Mary. Miss le Breton’s coyness was too mechanical, too well worn to afford even a charitable point of view.
“Poor little girl,” said Peter, when she expressed her disapproval with some severity; “it is her nature. Each man after his own manner; hers is to make a fool of herself,” and with this rather unexpected piece of opinion Mary was fully satisfied. As for Lord Calverly, she cordially hated the big man with the good manners and the coarse laugh. His cynical observation of Miss le Breton aroused quite a feeling of protecting partisanship in Mary’s breast, and his looks at Alicia made her blood boil. They were not cynical. Sir John Fleetinge was hardly more tolerable; far younger, with a bonnie look of devil-may-care and a reputation for recklessness that made Mary uneasy. Peter was indifferent good-humor itself, but she thought the time might come when Peter’s good-humor might fail.
The thought of Mr. Apswith was cheering; but she hated to leave Peter dans cette galère.
Peter, however, did not much mind the galère. His duties as host lay lightly on him. He did not mind Calverly at billiards, nor Fleetinge at the river, where they spent several mornings fishing silently and pleasantly together. Fleetinge had only met him casually in London clubs and drawing-rooms, but at close quarters he realized that literary tastes, which might have indicated a queer twist according to Sir John and an air of easy confidence in Mrs. Odd, would not make a definite falling in love with Mrs. Odd one whit the safer; he rather renounced definiteness therefore, and rather liked Peter.
Mary departed for London with Lady Mainwaring, and Alicia, as if to show that she needed no chaperonage, conducted herself with a little less gayety than when Mary was there.