‘I quite understood it was you who would mind.’ There was rancour in the voice that had spoken those few words, and the rancour had gone to Ella’s heart. Was he angry with her?—displeased? Should she not have asked the Barrys to come in? She loses her colour and shrinks back a little, and Carew, glancing from her to Wyndham, whilst the latter is murmuring his greetings to Susan, tells himself that Wyndham is a brute, with a big, big B, and that in some way this mysterious girl—this lovely girl—has her life made miserable by him. This is, as we know, manifestly unfair, as it is really Wyndham whose life is being made distinctly uncomfortable by this ‘lovely, mysterious girl.’ But Carew is too young to see a second side to any question that has his sympathy.
‘I think we must go now,’ says Susan, holding out her hand to her new acquaintance. ‘It is very late—too late’—smiling—‘for a formal visit.’ Wyndham winces. Is his informal? ‘But we shall pay that soon, now that we know we may come. And, of course, you and your—’
She pauses, the thought coming to her that she really does not know if Mr. Wyndham is actually this pretty girl’s landlord. And, besides, ‘your landlord’—how badly it sounds! ‘You and your landlord!’ Oh, impossible! She had been very near making a great mistake.
So she hesitates, and Wyndham misinterprets her pause. He feels furious. What was the word she was going to use? ‘Lover,’ no doubt, in the innocence of her young and abominably stupid heart. He feels brutal even towards the unconscious Susan just now. Yes, that is what all the small world round here will think. His colour rises, and he feels all at once guilty, as though the very worst facts could be laid to his charge, whilst all the time he is innocent. Innocent! Oh, confound it! the situation is absolutely maddening ... and if it comes to the old man’s ears! Lord Shangarry is not one to be easily entreated, or to be convinced, either.... An obstinate old man, who, if he once caught an idea into his old brain, would find it very hard to let it go again.
‘And, of course, you and Mr. Wyndham,’ says Susan now, hastily, not understanding Wyndham’s frown, ‘have many matters to discuss.’
The speech is wound up very satisfactorily, after all.
‘Certainly not. I beg you won’t go on my account,’ says Wyndham stiffly.
‘Not for that,’ says Susan gaily, ‘but because father will be wondering where we are.’ Wyndham, who has already heard a little of the gossip that is beginning to circulate around the Cottage, almost groans aloud here. Father would be wondering indeed if he only knew. ‘By-the-by, Mr. Wyndham, now that’—she looks at Ella and holds out her hand to her—‘she tells us she would like to see us here sometimes, we can come, can’t we?’
She smiles delightfully at Wyndham, and the wretched man smiles back at her in a way that should have moved her to tears had she seen him, but, providentially, after a mere passing glance at him, she has given her attention to Ella, who pleases her imagination immensely.
‘Certainly, if Miss Moore wishes it,’ says he. ‘You know this place is no longer mine. Miss Moore is my tenant now. She is, therefore, at liberty to do what she likes with it. You must not ask me what she can or cannot do. I am that most disagreeable of all things, a landlord—nothing more.’