With Sir Mark’s death his title would die, as he left no son, and there was no other heir, and with his death Sunstead and all its domains would pass to his Cousin Valentine, eldest son of his father’s sister.
This was something that Christina had always known, something she had always hated to know, because in her imagination it was a prospect that could give to Valentine’s sister all that Christina desired to take from her.
Up to that time, too, when other feelings had begun to dawn in her thoughts of Valentine himself, she had given him an equal share of resentment with Grace; but by degrees this resentment had gone, and now as Christina stood in the summer twilight beside his tall form, she remembered only that she would be free, possibly was already free, and that this man about whom she had dreamed and pondered so much, would be master in her husband’s place, and that, as such, was more desirable to her in every respect.
The memory of what Sacha had said about Polly’s attraction for Valentine came back to sting her; but Christina put the sting aside. Would it be possible for Polly or any other woman to stand against her? True, Valentine had given her no right to imagine he was conquerable, but then Christina had not been placed as she would be placed in the future.
A wife and a widow were two widely different creatures in the moral philosophy of such a man as Valentine, and Christina fell back on the only salve she had been able to find during these past weeks for her vanity, the certainty that had she been unmarried she would have brought Valentine to her feet whenever she had desired.
The easy complacency with which Sacha had tried to embark on a flirtation with her had but emphasized the deliberation of Valentine never to approach her.
This had been her one touch of self-satisfaction and consolation, and the fact that Valentine should have set aside all his rules and have hastened to be with her on this particular evening, framed itself in Christina’s wholly selfish mind now as meaning everything that it did not mean.
She cast her thoughts far ahead in this moment, and she instantly set herself a rôle to play now and in the immediate future.
“I will go with you,” she said, in a low, troubled sort of way. “Of course I will go, if you tell me poor Mark really wants me; but——” She paused. “But,” she went on, more hurriedly, “he has not wanted me much of late; he has made his life so far apart from me—it is only natural I should hesitate lest I make a mistake now.”
“There can never be a mistake in being generous under certain circumstances,” Valentine said, gently.