“Was this the way to welcome a husband? No wonder they did not ‘get on’ if Alice conducted herself in this fashion.”
As to her husband, as far as Mary could judge, there was nothing outwardly amiss with his manners or appearance. She took the opportunity of studying him whilst he was busily puzzling his brains over the backgammon board.
About his good looks there could be but one opinion; but did not a certain curve of the nostrils speak of pride? Was not firmness almost too weak a word to convey the expression of his mouth and chin? Would not a man with less patrician beauty and a more yielding disposition be better calculated to make a woman happy?
As she thought all this with a contemplative gaze, she suddenly found a pair of dark eyes fixed on herself with evident interest and amusement.
“Am I so fortunate as to remind you of anyone, Miss Ferrars?”
“No,” she replied hastily. “Please excuse my rudeness, I had no idea that I was staring so hard; but you must remember that you are actually the first Victoria Cross I have ever seen; and pardon me.”
“Surely you did not expect to see anything unusual in my appearance on that account?” he asked with a smile. “I daresay you have seen many as deserving of the distinction, if not more so. It is all a matter of luck.”
“Is that the way you speak of your honours?” said Miss Saville, pouncing down remorselessly on a blot. “I have no doubt you are very proud of the cross all the same, and that you earned it well,” she added with conviction.
A bald desultory conversation was kept up and solely supported between Miss Saville and her nephew. Even Mary, from her opulent resources, could find but little to say, for Alice’s demeanour paralysed all efforts at sociability. Alice, leaning back in her chair with an air of serene divine beatitude, enacted the part of a blanket of the heaviest and wettest description.
A very dreary evening at last came to an end, and when the ladies had departed Reginald strolled out into the pleasure-grounds to have a smoke and a think.