At half-past four his servant brought in a small tea-equipage
For several hours he worked at the revision of a certain manuscript, polishing and remodelling with infinite care and pains. Not even content with the correct and tasteful arrangement of his sentences, he read them over to himself aloud, lest by any chance there should have crept into them some trick of alliteration, or juxtaposition of words not entirely musical. In his work he gained, or seemed to gain, a complete absorption. The cloudy disquiet of the last few hours appeared to have passed away,—to have been, indeed, only a fugitive and transitory thing.
At half-past four his servant brought in a small tea-equipage—a silver tray, with an old blue Worcester teapot and cup, and a quaintly cut glass cream-jug. He made his tea, and drank it with his pen still in his hand. He had scarcely turned back to his work, before the same servant re-entered carrying a frock coat, an immaculately brushed silk hat, and a fresh bunch of Neapolitan violets. For a moment Matravers hesitated; then he laid down his pen, changed his coat, and once more passed out into the streets, more brilliant than ever now with the afternoon sunshine. He joined the throng of people leisurely making their way towards the Park!
CHAPTER VI
For nearly half an hour he sat in his usual place under the trees, watching with indifferent eyes the constant stream of carriages passing along the drive. It seemed to him only a few hours since he had sat there before, almost in the same spot, a solitary figure in the cold, grey twilight, yet watching then, even as he was watching now, for that small victoria with its single occupant whose soft dark eyes had met his so often with a frank curiosity which she had never troubled to conceal. Something of that same perturbation of spirit which had driven him then out into the dawn-lit streets, was upon him once more, only with a very real and tangible difference. The grey half-lights, the ghostly shadows, and the faint wind sounding in the tree-tops like the rising and falling of a midnight sea upon some lonely shore, had given to his early morning dreams an indefiniteness which they could scarcely hope to possess now. He himself was a living unit of this gay and brilliant world, whose conversation and light laughter filled the sunlit air around him, whose skirts were brushing against his knees, and whose jargon fell upon his ears with a familiar and a kindly sound. There was no possibility here for such a wave of passion,—he could call it nothing else,—as had swept through him, when he had first read that brief message from the woman, who had already become something of a disturbing element in his seemly life. Yet under a calm exterior he was conscious of a distinct tremor of excitement when her carriage drew up within a few feet of him, and obeying her mute but smiling command, he rose and offered his hand as she stepped out on to the path.
“This,” she remarked, resting her daintily gloved fingers for a moment in his, “is the beginning of a new order of things. Do you realize that only the day before yesterday we passed one another here with a polite stare?”
“I remember it,” he answered, “perfectly. Long may the new order last.”
“But it is not going to last long—with me at any rate,” she said, laughing. “Don’t you know that I am almost ruined? Mr. Thorndyke is going to close the theatre. He says that we have been losing money every week. I shall have to sell my horses, and go and live in the suburbs.”