“Upon my soul, I hadn’t thought of it! And I’ve packed up all my things, and your car’s come and fetched them, Mr. Naylor. Still, of course I could—”
“Oh, we’ve no right, no claim, to trouble you, Mr. Beaumaroy. Only my wife is—”
“Fire’s an obsession with me, I’m afraid,” said the stout woman, with a rumbling giggle. The sound of her mirth was intolerably disagreeable to Mary.
“I really think, my dear, that you’ll feel easier if I stay myself, won’t you? You can send me what I want to-morrow, and rejoin me when we arrange—because we shall have to settle what’s to be done with the place.”
“As you please, Mr. Radbolt.” Beaumaroy’s tone was, for the first time, a little curt. It hinted some slight offense—as though he felt himself charged with carelessness, and considered Mrs. Radbolt’s obsession mere fussiness. “No doubt, if you stay, Mrs. Wiles will agree to stay too, and do her best to make you comfortable.”
“I shall feel easier that way, Radbolt,” Mrs. Radbolt admitted, with another rumble of apologetic mirth.
Beaumaroy motioned his guests back to the parlor. His manner retained its shade of distance and offense. “Then it really only remains for me to wish you good-bye—and all happiness in your new property. Any information in my possession as to Mr. Saffron’s affairs I shall, of course, be happy to give you. Is the car coming for you, Mr. Naylor?”
“I thought it would be pleasant to walk back; and I hope Doctor Mary will come with us and have some tea. I’ll send you home afterwards, Doctor Mary.”
Farewells were exchanged, but now without even a show of cordiality. Naylor and Doctor Mary felt too much distaste for the chief mourners to attain more than a cold civility. Beaumaroy did not relax into his earlier friendliness. His apparent dislike to her husband’s plan of staying at the Cottage roused Mrs. Radbolt’s suspicions again; was he a rogue after all, but a very plausible, a very deep one? Only Mr. Radbolt’s unctuousness—surely it would have smoothed the stormiest waves—saved the social situation.
“Intelligent people, I thought,” Beaumaroy observed, as the three friends pursued their way across the heath towards Old Place. “Didn’t you, Mr. Naylor?”