"Oh, my dear, it is me," she said, "though I am glad it is a me which is a stranger to you. I hope, as a rule, I don't play pitch-and-toss with other men's souls; but there are circumstances—and those have now arisen—in which I see no other way. At all costs to him I will fulfil my promise to Diana. I will do my best that Daisy shall never know. I do not care what it costs him. And yet that is not quite true. I do care, because I like him. But I cannot measure his possible suffering against Daisy's. It is through him that the need of doing this has come. He has got to suffer for it; and I assure you it isn't he alone who pays, it is I also."
Jeannie rose.
"And I do not yet know if I shall succeed," she said. "He may look with a scornful wonder on my—my somewhat mature charms. He may—though I do not really expect it—still intend to settle down and marry—Daisy. She will accept him, if he does—I have seen enough to know that—and we shall then have to tell her. But I hope that may not happen."
She took up her candle.
"I must go to bed," she said, "for I am dog-tired. But I don't feel so fretted now I have told you. I wish I did not like him. I should not care if I did not. Good-night, dear Alice."
All next day until evening Jeannie continued these tactics. Genial, eager, sympathetic with others, she treated Lord Lindfield, whenever it was necessary to speak to him at all, with the unsmiling civility which a well-bred woman accords to a man she scarcely knows, and does not wish to know better. And all day she saw the growing effect of her policy, for all day he grew more perplexed and more preoccupied with her. She gave him no opportunity of speaking with her alone, for she had planned her day and occupations so that she was all the time in the company of others, and hour by hour his trouble increased. Nor did the trouble spare Daisy. Nothing could be clearer to her eye, with such absolute naturalness did Jeannie manage the situation, than that she now, at any rate, was standing quite aloof from Lord Lindfield.
A few days ago Daisy had told herself that she was glad her aunt liked him, but it should be added that to-day she was equally glad that Jeannie apparently did not. Yet the trouble did not spare Daisy, for if Aunt Jeannie was utterly changed to Lindfield, he seemed to be utterly changed too. He was grave, anxious, preoccupied, and the meaning of it escaped the girl, even as it had escaped Lady Nottingham.
The party had been gradually gathering in the verandah before it was time to dress for dinner that night, and Jeannie, à propos of the dressing-bell, had just announced that a quarter of an hour was enough for any nimble woman, with a competent maid.
"She throws things at me, and I catch them and put them on," she said. "If I don't like them I drop them, and the floor of the room looks rather like Carnival-time until she clears up."