But a week later—our “labors” being “protracted” to that extent and longer—I had an encounter that gave me indirect news of him, as well as direct news of other members of the Rillington-cum-Dundrannan family. To my surprise, I met my cousin Waldo in the Rue de la Paix. Nina and he—and Eunice—were on their way home. In the first place, Sir Paget had written that Aunt Bertha was seedy and moping, and wondering when they would be back. In the second, Nina had got restless and tired of Mentone, while he himself was so much better that there was no longer any reason to stay there on his account.
“In fact, we got a bit bored with ourselves,” Waldo confessed as he took my arm and we walked along together, “after we lost you two fellows. Dull for the ladies. Oh, I know you couldn’t help yourself, old fellow; this job here was too big to miss. But we lost Godfrey too.” His voice fell to a confidential pitch, and he smiled slyly as he pressed my arm. “Well, you know, dear Nina is given to making her plans, bless her! And she’s none too pleased when they don’t come off, is she? I rather fancy that she had a little plan on at the Villa—Eunice Unthank, you know—and a nice girl she is—and that Godfrey didn’t feel like coming up to the scratch. So he tactfully had business at the works that kept him away from the Villa. Do you see what I mean?”
“Well, I suppose he was better away if he didn’t mean to play up. If he’d stayed, it might have put ideas in the girl’s head that——”
“Exactly, old chap. Though we were awfully sorry he went, still that was the view Nina took about it. I think she was right.”
Facts had supplied a sufficient explanation of my disappearance from Villa San Carlo; here plainly was the official version of Godfrey’s. In order to cover a great defeat, Lady Dundrannan, with her usual admirable tactics, acknowledged a minor one. It was a quite sufficient explanation to offer to unsuspecting Waldo; and it was certainly true, so far as it went; the Eunice-Godfrey project had miscarried.
“I liked the girl and I’m sorry,” said Waldo. “But there’s lots of time, and of course, the world being what it is, he can always make a good marriage.” He laughed gently. “But I suppose women always like to manage a man’s future for him, if they can, don’t they?”
His ignorance of the great defeat was evidently entire; his wife had looked after that. But it was interesting to observe that—as a concomitant, perhaps, of his returning physical vigor—his mind gave hints of a new independence. He had not ceased to love and admire his wife—there was no reason why he ever should—but his smile at her foible was something new—since his marriage, I mean. The limit thus indicated to his Dundrannanization was welcome to me, a Rillington. What the smile pointed to was, the next moment, confirmed by the sigh with which he added, pursuing what was to him apparently the same train of thought, “Nina’s against our living at Cragsfoot when I succeed.”
“Well, if you will marry thumping heiresses, with half a dozen palaces of their own——”
“Yes, I know, old man. Still—well, I can’t expect her to share my feeling about it, can I?” He smiled again, this time rather ruefully. “In fact, she’s pressing me to settle the matter now.”
“What do you mean? Sir Paget’s still alive! Is she asking for a promise, or what?”