Alice, whose hair and costume were slightly disordered by her friend’s enthusiastic hugging, drew back rather flushed and out of countenance.
“Mary,” she said, averting her face as she rearranged the roses in her dress, “you are very good, and mean very kindly, but”—and she paused—“but I must tell you something I never meant to tell you. Reginald and I do not get on very well together. We—we—do not suit; but do not take any notice, please,” she entreated as she looked at her friend appealingly. “You will soon see”—and she stopped; then continued: “Reginald is my guardian, you know; and he and I thought the best thing to do was to marry. But he is far more devoted to his profession than to me. His sword is his real wife, and I—I—get on very well alone, as you have seen, and will see.”
“What shall I see?” asked Mary. “I see that you are the handsomest couple I have ever come across, and I have no doubt you are equally well matched in other respects.”
“Well, qui vivra verra,” replied Alice, as she opened the door and disappeared, anxious to avoid her friend’s inquiries. Reginald, having hurried his toilette, hastened down to the drawing-room in the hopes of seeing Alice for at least a few minutes alone. Her greeting had been cold and constrained; but she was taken by surprise. She was agitated, and his lovely shy Alice was the last to offer or accept caresses in public. It would be different when they met alone.
He stood for some time in the deep window, looking out into the park. How still and green and cool it all looked after the bustle and heat and glare in India! “There was no place like home after all,” he thought as his eyes roved over the undulating sward and the clumps of splendid timber, and he watched the rooks soaring nestwards and heard the corncrake’s discordant yet familiar “Craik-craik.” The door, which was ajar, was at this instant pushed open, and with a swish of long trailing skirts Alice advanced into the room. At first she seemed to hesitate, but on second thoughts approached the window.
“What a lovely evening it is, is it not?” she remarked, unfurling an enormous black fan with a grace all her own.
“Lovely indeed!” replied her husband, turning his back to the landscape and scanning her critically.
After a pause of thirty seconds (employed by his wife in steeling herself with recollections of the past), “Alice,” he asked with a gesture of appeal, “have you nothing to say to me?”
“To say to you?” she repeated, with raised brows and an air of most perfect indifference. “No, nothing particular; unless that I am afraid you had a very warm journey here to-day. Early in the afternoon it was absolutely broiling.”
“Well, yes, it was warm—a good deal warmer than the welcome you gave me. But you can make up for that now,” coming closer. “Alice, are you not going to say you are glad to see me?”