"Oh, I'll be discreet. There isn't much to be discreet about, is there?"
"That's not my fault," he allowed himself to remark as he rose to take leave.
"Oh, you're not going yet?" she cried. "If you do I shall think it was simply a duty call. And it's so long since I've seen you." Her innate desire—it was almost an instinct—to have every man leave her with as much difficulty as possible imparted a pathetic earnestness to her tone. "Perhaps I shan't have many more chances of seeing you."
"Many—after I'm married," he reminded her, smiling.
"No, I'm serious now," she declared. "You—you know what's going to happen, Lord Bowdon?"
"Yes, I know."
"Of course when Jack comes home I shan't be so free. Besides—!" She did not end the sentence; the suppressed words would obviously have raised the question of Jack Fenning's acceptability to her friends. For his part Bowdon immediately became certain that Jack was a ruffian. He held out his hand, ostensibly in farewell; Ora took it and pressed it hard, her eyes the while demanding much sympathy. Bowdon found himself giving her intense sympathy; he had not before realised what this thing meant to her, he had been too much occupied with what it meant to him. He could not openly condole with her on her husband's return, but he came very near that point in his good-bye.
"Your friends will always want to see you, and—and be eager to do anything in the world they can for you," he said. The pressure of her hand thanked him, and then he departed. As he walked out of the hall-door, he put his hat very firmly on his head and drew a long breath. He was conscious of having escaped a danger; and he could not deny, in spite of poor Ora's hard fortune, that the return of Mr. Fenning was a good thing.
Good or bad, the coming was near now. The brief and business-like letter had reached Bridgeport, Connecticut, and had elicited a reply by cable. In eight days Mr. Fenning might be expected at Southampton. As the event approached, it seemed to become less and less real to Ashley; he found himself wondering whether a man who is to be hanged on Monday has more than the barest intellectual belief in the fact, whether it really sinks into his consciousness until the rope is absolutely round his neck. Accidents by sea and land suggested themselves to an irresponsible and non-indictable fancy; or Jack had merely meant to extort a gift of money; or his unstable purpose would change. The world that held himself and Ora seemed incapable of opening to receive Jack Fenning; something would happen. Nothing did happen except that the last days went on accomplishing themselves in their unmoved way, and when Ashley went to bed each night Jack Fenning was twenty-four hours nearer. Ora's conduct increased the sense of unreality. She wanted him always with her; she dissipated his scruples with radiant raillery or drowned them in threatened tears. On the other hand, she was full of Jack Fenning now; often talking about him, oftener still about how she would receive him. She sketched his career for Ashley's information; the son of a poor clergyman, he had obtained a berth in a shipowner's office at Hamburg; he had lost it and come home; he had made the acquaintance of a Jewish gentleman and been his clerk on the Stock Exchange; he had written a play and induced the Jewish gentleman to furnish money for its production; disaster followed; Jack became an auctioneer's clerk; the Jewish gentleman, with commendable forgivingness, had put him in the way of a successful gold mine (that is, a successfully floated gold mine); he had made two thousand pounds. "Then he married me," Ora interpolated into her summary narrative. The money was soon spent. Then came darker times, debts, queer expedients for avoiding, and queerer for contriving, payment, and at last a conviction that the air of America would suit him better for a time. The picture of a worthless, weak, idle, plausible rascal emerged tolerably complete from these scattered touches. One thing she added, new to her hearer and in a way unwelcome: Jack was—had been, she put it, still treating him as belonging to the past—extremely handsome. "Handsomer than you, much," she said, laughing, with her face very near his over his shoulder as he sat moodily by the window. He did not look round at her, until, by accident as it seemed and just possibly was, a curl of her dark hair touched his cheek; then he forgave her the handsomeness of Jack Fenning.