"Ah, yes," said Jenny, "I must try not to lose Lady Aspenick." She looked thoughtful. "Yes, I must try." She seemed to anticipate some difficulty.
Her plan of campaign was indicated, if not revealed. She had come back; she was going to try to "get back." What had happened was to make a difference only just where, and in so far as, she herself decided that it must. About that she had not been explicit, but it was evidently a great point with her—a thing which profoundly affected her inner life. But her outer life was not to be affected—her external position was not in the end to suffer. And this ambition, this plan, was somehow connected with her "legacy" from Leonard Octon.
Suddenly she spoke again. "When a mask is on, you can't see the face. I shall wear a mask—don't judge my face by it. I've taken it off for you to-day. I have given you the means of judging. But I shall wear it day by day—against everybody; even against you generally, I expect, though I may sometimes lift a corner up for you."
What had I seen while the mask was off? A woman profoundly humiliated in herself but resolute not to accept outward humiliation? It was hardly that, though that had an element of applicability in it. A woman ready—even determined—to pay a great penalty for what she had done, but resolved to evade or to defy the obvious and usual penalties? There was truth in that, too. But more remained. It seemed as though, with the hurricane of which she spoke, there had come an earthquake. It had left her alive, and in touch with life; life was not done. But it was different—forever and irrevocably different. Her relations to life had all been shifted. That was the great penalty she accepted—and she was prepared to accept its executions, its working-out, seeing in that, apparently, the logically proper, the inevitable outcome of her act. The obvious penalties were not to her mind inevitable; she would admit that they were conventionally proper—but that admission left her free to avoid them if she could. The outward punishment she would dodge; before the inward she would bow her head. And the sphere of the penalty must be the same as the sphere of the offense. Her intellect had not offended, and that was left free to work, to expatiate, to enjoy. On her heart fell the blows, as from her heart had come the crime. There it was that the shifting of relations, the change of position, the transformation of feelings, had their place.
An intelligible attitude—but a proud, indeed a very arrogant, one. Only Jenny should punish Jenny—that was pretty well what it said. She herself had decreed her penalty. It might be adequate—perhaps she alone could know the truth of that—but it was open to the objection that it was quite unauthorized. Neither in what it included nor in what it excluded did it conform to any code of religious or social obligation. It was Jenny's sentence on Jenny—and Jenny proposed to carry it out. Centralization of power seemed to shake hands with anarchy.
Jenny's mood grew lighter on her last words. "To-night we'll send a paragraph to the Catsford paper to announce my return," she said, smiling. "I'm not skulking back!"
"It will occasion interest and surprise."
"It's not the only surprise I've got for them," laughed Jenny. Then, suddenly, she held up her hand for silence. From the terrace outside the window I heard a merry sweet-toned laugh. Jenny rose and went to the window, and I followed her.
Old Chat was on the terrace, and beside her stood a girl, not tall, very slender. Her arm was through Chat's, her back toward us, her face in profile as she turned to talk—and she was talking briskly and in excited interest—to her companion. The profile was small, regular, refined; I could not see the eyes; the hair was a golden brown, very plentiful.
"Who's that pretty girl?" I cried.