He put his finger on the line to which he had come in this tiresome document, which his solicitor assured him required his immediate attention.
“An hour or two, darling; the longer the better,” he said. “What is it? Are you sure I know? Something nice I hope. Ah, is it about my birthday perhaps? The last affair that dear father was busy over were plans for my birthday. Of course I have counter-ordered everything and we must keep it next year. Well, what is it? I won’t interrupt any more.”
Colin leaned back with his hand still under Violet’s arm, as if to draw her with him. She bent with him a little way and then disengaged herself.
“I hate what lies before me,” she said, “and I ask you to believe that I have struggled with myself. I have tried, Colin, to give the whole thing up, to let it be yours. But I can’t. I long to be Lady Yardley in my own right, as you told me I should be on Uncle Philip’s death. All that it means! I fancy you understand that. But I think I might have given that up, if it was only myself of whom I had to think. I don’t know; I can’t be sure.”
She paused, not looking at him. She did not want to know till all was done how he was taking it. Of course he anticipated it: he knew it must be, and here was the plain point of it....
“But I haven’t got only myself to think about,” she said. “Before many months I shall bear you a child; I shall bear you other children after that, perhaps. I am thinking of them and of you. Since we married I have learned things about you. You are hard in a way that I did not know was possible. You have neither love nor compassion. I must defend my children against you; the only way I can do it is to be supreme myself. I must hold the reins, not you. I will be good to you, and shall never cease loving you, I think, but I can’t put myself in your hands, which I should do, if I did not now use the knowledge which you yourself conveyed to me. You did that with your eyes open; you asked for and accepted what your position here will be, and you did it chiefly out of hatred to Raymond. That was your motive, and it tells on my decision. You hate more than you love, and I am frightened for my children.
“It is true that when I accepted Raymond, I did it because I should get Stanier—be mistress here anyhow. But I think—I was wavering—that I should have thrown him over before I married him and have accepted you, though I knew that marriage with you forfeited the other. Then you told me it was otherwise, that in forfeiting Stanier, I found it even more completely.”
Colin—he had promised not to interrupt—gave no sign of any sort. His finger still marked the place in this legal document.
“I have sent for my father’s solicitor,” she said, “and they have told me he is here. But before I see him I wanted to tell you that I shall instruct him to contest your succession. I shall tell him about the register in the Consulate at Naples and about your mother’s letters to your uncle. You said you would let me have them on your father’s death. Would you mind giving me them now, therefore? He may wish to see them.”
Colin moved ever so slightly, and she for the first time looked at him. There he lay, with those wide, child-like eyes, and the mouth that sometimes seemed to her to have kissed her very soul away. He had a smile for her grave glance; just so had he smiled when torturingly he tried to remember exactly what had happened in the Old Park on the day that Raymond shot pigeons. But even while she thought of his relentless, pursuing glee, the charm of him, the sweet supple youth of him, all fire and softness, smote on her heart.