“You are right,” he said; “you are always all that is right and good and delicious? Ha!”
There was no question about the cousinly relations between them. So natural and spontaneous a caress needed no explanation.
The house was apparently empty when he got back, but he made sufficiently noisy an entry to advise the drawing-room, in any case, that he was returned, and personally ready, since he did not enter “full of wrath,” like Hyperion, to accept apologies. Eventually he went in there, as if to look for a paper, in case of its being occupied, and, with the same pretext, strolled into his wife’s sitting-room. Then, still casually, he went into his dressing-room, where he had slept last night, and satisfied himself that she was not in her bedroom. Her penitence, therefore, which would naturally be manifested by her waiting, dim-eyed, for his return, had not been of any peremptory quality.
He went out into the garden, and surveyed the damage of last night’s rain. There was no need to punish the plants because Amy had been guilty of behaviour which her own cousin said was infamous: he also wanted something to employ himself with till lunch-time. As his hands worked mechanically, tying up some clumps of chrysanthemums which had a few days more of flame in their golden hearts, removing a débris of dead leaves and fallen twigs, his mind was busy also, working not mechanically but eagerly and excitedly. How different was the sympathy with which he was welcomed and comforted by Millie from the misunderstandings and quarrels which made him feel that he had wasted his years with one who was utterly unappreciative of him. Yet, if Amy was sorry, he was ready to do his best. But he wondered whether he wanted her to be sorry or not.
At half-past one the bell for lunch sounded, and, going into the drawing-room, he found that she had returned and was writing a note at her table. She did not look up, but said to him, just as if nothing had happened—
“Will you go in and begin, Lyndhurst? I want to finish my note.”
He did not answer, but passed into the dining-room. In a little while she joined him.
“There seems to have been a good deal of rain in the night,” she said. “I am afraid your flowers have suffered.”
Certainly this did not look like penitence, and he had no reply for her. In some strange way this seemed to him the dignified and proper course.
Then Mrs. Ames spoke for the third time.