Turning from public affairs to those of private persons, Mona Ridsdale’s behaviour, as regarded a certain one of such private persons, had become, all things considered, strange. We say “all things considered” advisedly, because the change in her demeanour was unaccountable, to say the least of it. The sweet, subtle charm of those days of convalescence, seemed, with the accomplishment of that convalescence, to come to an abrupt termination. Her patient fairly off her hands, Mona seemed to encase herself with a cold reserve, as in a shell. Had she mistaken her feelings after all? Had she given herself away too much, and now desired to draw back before it was too late? Her behaviour puzzled those around her. Suffield noticed it, but like a wise man held his tongue. His wife noticed it, and being a woman, did not hold, hers. She remonstrated, giving her relative what she termed a little bit of her mind—result, anger, and a lively passage of arms.
There was one whom this behaviour did not puzzle, and that was Roden Musgrave himself. To him it afforded no surprise; for it was precisely such as might have been expected. The only thing that did surprise him was that he himself should have been temporarily lulled into believing in, not so much the genuineness, as the durability of the feeling Mona had shown; that a cool, practised head, such as his, should have been thrown off its level, even for the moment. He had been ill, which might account for it. Well, he was well now, and awakened from that fantastic dream. Mona had undoubtedly saved his life by her cool, ready courage; yet now he hardly felt grateful to her. Possibly, she herself regretted she had done so now, in that the failure of her efforts would have spared her the small degree of vexation which might attend her sudden change of front. Those words, those acts at the time, had been wrung from her by a certain warm, hysterical superabundance of feeling which must find an outlet somewhere. This it had found, and the volcano was quiescent again—until the advent of some fresh cause of eruption; some freak cause, be it understood. Clearly hers was one of those surcharged, excitable temperaments, which, craving a new sensation, will conceive an ardent passion, flaming with fiercely consuming brilliancy and heat, only to sink, like a burnt-out building, as quickly as it flared—to die into dark, cold, unprofitable ashes. He had seen such before—not once, nor twice—and the outcome was ever the same.
He remembered his first instincts with regard to her. Why had he suffered himself, even partially, to lose sight of them? Well, fortunate that it was only partially, and there was no harm done. Yet, after all, he was human.
Few and far between now were his rides out to Suffield’s farm, and then for a visit of but short duration. His spare time he spent mostly in buck-shooting among the mountains, and his ordinary working time was now, since the war, pretty full. For her part, Mona seldom came into Doppersdorp.
But if Roden’s visits to the Suffields were infrequent, the same could not be said for those of Lambert. Quick to perceive the state of affairs, the young doctor judged his own opportunity to have come round again, and was not slow to improve it. If Musgrave was out of the running, now was his own time to chip in, as he put it; and truth to tell, his efforts in that direction were received very graciously.
“I’m surprised at you, Mr Musgrave,” said Mrs Van Stolz one evening. “You are letting the doctor cut you out most completely.”
“Cut me out?”
“Yes. He is always at the Suffields’ now. I thought when you were invalided there, your chance had come, but you seem to have thrown it away again, somehow.”
“My chance! My dear Mrs Van Stolz, what on earth ‘chance’ are you alluding to?”