Jenny threw herself into the corner of the brougham, her body well away, but her eyes on my face. For many minutes she sat like this; I turned my eyes away from her; the silence was uncomfortable and ominous. At last she spoke.
"You've guessed something, Austin?"
I turned my head to her. "I couldn't help it."
She nodded, rather wearily, then smiled at me. "The signal's at 'Danger,'" she said.
CHAPTER XII
SAVING A WEEK
Seen in retrospect, the history of the ensuing days stands out clearly; subsequent knowledge supplies any essential details of which I was then ignorant and turns into certainties what were, in some cases, only strong suspicions at the moment. If it be wondered—and it well may be—that any woman should choose to live through such a time, it is hardly less marvelous that she could stand the strain of it. Brain and feelings alike must have been sorely taxed. Jenny never faltered; she looked, indeed, tired and anxious, but she had many intervals of gayety, and, as the crisis approached, she was remarkably free from her not unusual little gusts of temper or of petulance. To all around her she showed graciousness and affection, desiring, as it seemed, to draw from us expressions of attachment and sympathy, making perhaps an instinctive attempt to bind us still closer to her, to secure us for friends if anything went wrong in the dangerous work on which she was engaged.
She had a threefold struggle—one with Fillingford, one with Octon, the last and greatest—really involving the other two—with herself. Fillingford was pressing for her answer now. It was not so much that any heat of emotion, any lover's haste, urged him on; he had begun to be fearful for his dignity, to be apprehensive of the whispers and smiles of gossip, if Jenny played with him much longer. She had made up her mind to accept him. Not only were there the decorative attractions and the wider sphere of influence; she felt that in a marriage with him lay safety. She was not afraid of him; it would be a partnership in which she could amply hold her own—and more than that. The danger pointed out in her father's warning—so congenial to her that it sank deep into her own mind and was never absent from it—would here be reduced to a minimum. There the attractions of the project stopped. She was not the least in love with him; I do not think that she even considered him an actively agreeable companion. An absence of dislike and a genuine esteem for his honorable qualities—that was all she could muster for him. No wonder, perhaps, that, though her head had decided, her heart still pleaded for delay.
With Octon the case was very different. There she was fascinated, there she was in thrall—so much in thrall that I am persuaded that she would deliberately have sacrificed the attractions of the Fillingford alliance, braved her neighbor's disapproval, imperiled the brilliant fabric of popularity and power which she had been at such pains to create—save for one thing. She was fascinated to love by the quality which, above all others, she dreaded in marriage. In that great respect wherein Fillingford was harmless, Octon was to her mind supremely to be feared. The very difficulty she now felt in sending him away was earnest of the dominion which he would exercise. Since he was a lover, no doubt he made the usual lover's vows—or some of them; very likely he told her that her will would be his law, or spoke more impassioned words to that effect. Such protestations from his lips carried no conviction. The man could not help being despotic. She was despotic, too. If he would not yield, she could not answer for it that she would, and perhaps aspired to no such abdication. Her foresight discerned, with fatal clearness, the clash of their opposing forces, accentuated by the permanent contrast of their tastes and dispositions. The master of Breysgate Priory might again break Lady Aspenick's whip or insult the Mayor of Catsford! Trifles from one point of view, but Jenny would not have such things done. They were fatal to popularity and to power; they broke up her life as she had planned it. There would arise an inevitable conflict. In victory for herself—even in that—she saw misery. But she could not believe in victory. She was afraid.