"If that flattery were only sincere, it would be sweet to my ears, Miss Judith."
"It's sincere enough. I didn't mean it as flattery. I spoke rather in a spirit of resignation."
"The same spirit will animate our friend perhaps—the addition, I mean."
"It may; it's rather in the air at Hilsey. But he mayn't have been here long enough to catch it. I rather think he hasn't."
"You invest the position with exciting possibilities! Unless I fight hard, I may be done out of my motor rides!"
"That would leave me calm," she flung at him over her shoulder as she went into the house.
He walked up and down a little longer, smiling to himself, well content. The prospect of the summer seas was before his eyes too. He had counted the cost of the voyage, and set it down at six months' decorous retirement—enough to let people who felt that they must be shocked be shocked at sufficient leisure. After that, he had no fear of not being able to take his place in the world again. Nor need Bernadette fear any extreme cold-shouldering from her friends. It was a case in which everybody would be ready to make excuses, to find the thing more or less pardonable. Why, one had only to tell the story of how, on the eve of the crisis, the threatened husband took to his bed!
As Arthur watched Bernadette at dinner, serene, gracious, and affectionate—wary too by reason of that tiny slip—his suspicions seemed to his reason again incredible. Judith must be wrong, and he himself wrong also. And her friend Sir Oliver—so composed, so urbane, so full of interesting talk about odd parts of the world that he had seen and the strange things which had befallen him! Surely people who were doing or contemplating what they were suspected of could not behave like that? That must be beyond human nature? He and Judith must be wrong! But there was something within him which refused the comforting conclusion. Not the old adoration which could see no flaw in her and endure no slur on her perfection. His adoration was eager for the conclusion, and pressed him towards it with all the force of habit and preconception. It was that other, that new, current of feeling which had rushed through him when he stood in the hall and saw them framed, as it were, by the doorway of her room—a picture of lovers, whispered the new feeling, sparing his recollection no detail of pose or air or look. And lovers are very cunning, urged the new feeling, that compound of anger and fear—the fear of another's taking what a man's desire claims for himself. He had honestly protested to Judith that his adoration had been honest, pure, and without self-regard. So it had, while no one shared or threatened it. But now—how much of his anger, how much of his fear, came from loyalty to Godfrey, sorrow for Margaret, sorrow for Bernadette herself, grief for his own broken idol if this thing were true? These were good reasons and motives for fear and anger; orthodox and sound enough. But they had not the quality of what he felt—the heat, the glow, the intense sense of rivalry which now possessed him, the piercing vigilance with which he watched their every word and look and gesture. These other reasons and motives but served to aid—really was it more than to mask?—the change, the transmutation, that had set in at such a pace. Under the threat of rivalry, the generous impulse to protect became hatred of another's mastery, devotion took on the heat of passion, and jealousy lent the vision of its hundred eyes.
But Bernadette too was watchful and wary; her position gave her an added quickness of perception. Oliver's contemptuous self-confidence might notice nothing, but, as she watched the other two, the effect of his persuasions wore off; she became vaguely sensible of an atmosphere of suspicion around her. She felt herself under observation, curious and intense from Arthur, from Judith half-scornful, half-amused. And Judith seemed to keep an eye on Arthur too—rather as if she were expecting, or fearing, or waiting for something from him. Bernadette grew impatient and weary under this sense of scrutiny. Surely it was something new in Arthur? And was not Judith in some way privy to it?
"What are the plans for to-morrow?" asked Sir Oliver, as he sipped his glass of port. "Can we go motoring? I've brought my car, you know, in case yours is wanted."