For a moment William Roper looked disappointed. He had looked to become famous that very day. But he realized his great importance in the affair, and his face cleared.
"I understands, sir," he said with a dark solemnity.
"Not a word," said Mr. Flexen yet more impressively.
CHAPTER VIII
That morning Olivia went to meet Grey in a mood very different from that of the afternoon before. Then she had moved on light feet, in high spirits, expectant, even excited. She had not known what was coming, but the prospect had been full of possibilities; and, thanks to the sudden appearance of the cat Melchisidec at the crucial moment, she had not been disappointed. Today she would have gone to meet the man who loved her in yet higher spirits, for there is no blinking the fact that she was wholly unable to grieve for her husband. He had with such thoroughness extirpated the girlish fondness she had felt for him when she married him, that she could not without hypocrisy make even a show of grieving for him. His death had merely removed the barrier between her and the man she loved.
But today she did not go to her tryst in spirits higher for the removal of that barrier. She went more slowly, on heavier, lingering feet. Her eyes were downcast, and her forehead was furrowed by an anxious, brooding frown.
The sight of Colonel Grey, waiting for her at the door of the Pavilion, smoothed the furrows from her forehead and quickened her steps. When the door closed behind them he caught her in his arms and kissed her. It was early in her widowhood to be kissed, but she made no protest. She did not feel a widow; she felt a free woman again. It is even to be feared that her lips were responsive.
Antony, too, was changed. He was paler and almost careworn. There was no doubt of his joy at her coming, no doubt that it was greater than the day before. But it was qualified by some other troubling emotion. Now and again he looked at her with different eyes—eyes from which the joy had of a sudden faded, rather fearful eyes that looked a question which could not be asked. Her eyes rather shrank from his, and when they did look into them it was with a like question.
But they were too deeply in love with one another for any other emotion to hold them for long at a time. Presently in the joy of being together, looking at one another, touching one another, the fearfulness and the question passed from their eyes.
There was nothing rustic about the Pavilion inside or out. It was of white marble, brought from Carrara for the fifth Baron Loudwater at the end of the eighteenth century; and a whim of her murdered husband had led him to replace the original, delicate, rather severe furniture by a most comfortable broad couch, two no less comfortable chairs with arms, a small red lacquer table and a dozen cushions. He had hung on each wall a drawing of dancing-girls by Degas. Since the coverings of the couch and the cushions were of Chinese silken embroideries, the interior appeared a somewhat bizarre mixture of the Oriental and the French.