"I've tried my very best to make him jealous."
"What? Oh, Angel, you must be mad. That was playing with matches in a powder-mill. Do you want to ruin your life? Pray what was the result of your experiment?"
"Ignominious failure. Philip likes me to be popular and admired. I thought he would be annoyed if I went out driving with Major Shafto, who makes amends for his former hatred by an unbounded appreciation. I rode and drove with him, I danced with him five times running, and sat out conspicuously where Philip must see me; and all he said for my trouble and hours of boredom was, 'I'm so glad to find that you and old Billy are such capital friends. 'Twas never thus in childhood's hour!' and he laughed. I declare, I could have thrown a plate at him. Then I flirted desperately with General Warner, such an old darling! and Philip merely remarked, 'My dear child, the General is enchanted with you—poor old boy—he has a daughter of your age at home. I've not seen him so happy and so lively for ages.' Now," concluded Angel with a dramatic gesture, "what can you do with a husband like that?"
"I should leave him severely alone and try no more experiments. Pray tell me, Angel, could you be jealous?"
"I should think so," she answered in a flash, "furiously, fiendishly jealous; but that is a secret."
From this long digression we must return to Angel, where she was perched on the edge of the old well, thinking hard, as she rested her chin on her hand and watched with abstracted eyes the long line of cattle going towards their village, amid the usual cloud of powdery white dust. Suddenly she sat erect; she saw Mrs. Gordon and Alan Lindsay approaching her. What good friends they were! and yet people declared that there was no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman, that platonics were invariably platonic on one side alone. What would these scoffers say to Elinor Gordon and Alan Lindsay? Of course the fact of Mrs. Gordon having literally dragged Alan Lindsay out of the jaws of death was a strong and solid foundation for their liking—a woman always feels tenderly towards the patient she has nursed from infantile weakness back to strong, manly vigour; and they had so much in common, their minds seemed to reflect one another, they sometimes said the same thing, they liked the same books and authors, they held similar opinions on various interesting questions, and when they differed, it was delightful to hear them argue; it was like two expert swordsmen fighting with foils—and occasionally without them. They would talk and urge and exhort, whilst Mr. Gordon fell asleep after dinner and snored lustily in the tent verandah, or returned to his great Persian poem; and Angel, who took but scanty part in these brilliant debates, being generally put to the sword at once, sat and knitted a sock, full of thoughts of Philip.
Angel watched the advancing pair with the critical, far-seeing eyes of her childhood. How lovely Elinor was, with her soft dark eyes, her high-bred air. How happy she looked, almost radiant. They made a distinguished looking couple. They seemed born for one another. What a pity that—that—well, did Alan Lindsay ever think it was a pity? Was it honestly friendship only, on his part? Did she fancy that sometimes his voice and eyes—oh, how hateful! How dared she imagine such vile things? Was it possible that anyone would think of Elinor as aught but a martyr and a saint? Nevertheless Angel felt the waking of a presentiment as the couple arrived face to face with her, and within speaking distance.
"How solemn you look—what is the matter, Mrs. Gascoigne?" called out Lindsay, "you might be Patience on a monument, or an angel looking for truth at the bottom of this well."
"Am I—so—solemn?"
"I should think so," said Mrs. Gordon, laughing. "You look as if you were trying to stare into the future. Pray what did you see—what were you thinking about?—in short, a penny for your thoughts."