The silence that followed her speech crept into every corner of the room. Lionel did not look puzzled any more. He stood up very straight and stiff; only his eyes changed. He could not look at her; they were filled with contempt. He gave her a moment or two to disavow her words; he would have given his right hand to hear her do it.
“I beg your pardon,” he said at last. “I have overstated the case if you imagine your husband is an invalid. I think, if you don’t mind,” he added, “I’ll see if my things are ready.”
“Please do,” she said, groping in her mind for something left to hurt him with. “And another time perhaps you will know better than to say for my husband what he is perfectly competent to say for himself.”
“You are quite right,” Lionel said quietly; “another time I shall know better.” The rain against the windows sounded again; she had not heard it before.
He did not come back to say good-by. She heard him talking to Winn in the hall, the dogcart drove up, and then she saw him for the last time, his fine, clear-cut profile, his cap dragged over his forehead, his eyes hard, as they were when he had looked at her. He must have known she stood there at the window watching, but he never looked back. She had expected a terrible parting, but never a parting as terrible as this. Mercifully she had kept her head; it was all she had kept.
CHAPTER VII
It was shortly after Lionel’s departure that Estelle realized there was nothing between her and the Indian frontier except the drawing-room sofa. She fixed herself as firmly on this shelter as a limpet takes hold upon a rock. People were extremely kind and sympathetic, and Winn himself turned over a new leaf. He was gentle and considerate to her, and offered to read aloud to her in the evenings.
Nothing shook her out of this condition. The baby arrived, unavailingly as an incentive to health, and not at all the kind of baby Estelle had pictured. He was almost from his first moments a thorough Staines. He was never very kissable, and was anxious as soon as possible to get on to his own feet. At eight months he crawled rapidly across the carpet with a large musical-box suspended from his mouth by its handle; at ten he could walk. He tore all his lawn frocks on Winn’s spurs, screamed with joy at his father’s footsteps, and always preferred knees to laps.
His general attitude towards women was hostility, he looked upon them as unfortunate obstacles in the path of adventure, and howled dismally when they caressed him. He had more tolerance for his mother who seemed to him an object provided by Providence in connection with a sofa, on purpose for him to climb over.
Her maternal instinct went so far as to allow him to climb over it twice a day for short intervals. After all he had gained her two years.