The news of Harold’s death placed Christina in a most awkward position, and she hardly knew how to adapt herself to it.
For a long time she sat in thought, and the end of her musing was to go to her husband and tell him what she wished to do.
“You must go to the house, I must be represented. I know perfectly well Polly will want to treat me rudely, but I don’t intend to be treated rudely. I consider the whole affair most objectionable. If my family had wanted to come to Dynechester, I am the proper person to have received them. As it is, I cannot go to your cousin’s house, so you must go in my place.”
Sir Mark was in an obstinate mood.
“You don’t catch me going near Val—no, thank you!” he said, with decision. “I don’t want any more rows. I am sick of quarreling. Very sorry, Chris, but if you want anyone to go you must go yourself. I can’t see, myself, why you need mix yourself up in these things now. The boy is dead, and you can’t do him any good, and you haven’t been too kind to your mother and sister, remember, since you have been my wife.”
Christina tightened her thin lips.
“Mark, I wish you to go,” she said. She was more angry than she could have described.
This was not the first time by many that her husband had let her see he was growing tired of her tyranny, just as he was growing tired of her beauty. Christina had never prized her husband’s infatuated adoration of her, never wanted his love, but neither did she want to be so soon dethroned.
“I wish you to go,” she repeated, but Sir Mark merely shrugged his shoulders, rang the bell for another brandy and soda, and picking up a sporting newspaper, threw himself into a chair, and dismissed the subject.
Christina swallowed her anger as well as she could. She felt that she was gradually being hemmed about by all sorts of unforeseen disagreeables. For some indefinite purpose of her own she determined to be associated with the somber proceedings at the house where Valentine lived. To write to Polly was impossible, therefore she resolved to write to some other person, and that other person should be Valentine himself.