"Not so bad as that, Sir Marcus," she remonstrated; "I don't think philanthropists are commercial contractors exactly, at least not the ones I've met. They are mostly egoists and mostly unbusinesslike, but not thieves, no."
"Isn't that what I said?" said Sir Marcus, testily. It was not; but she did not wish to risk her reputation with him, and she listened patiently while he poured out his own schemes for the education of the country laborer, or rather of the Murville laborer, until she repeated her first remark to herself with a yawn, and wrote round to Digby, after Sir Marcus had left, to come and tell her what to do next.
She had seen a good deal of Digby lately; he knew all about her ambitious schemes and her failure to carry them out, and he was eager to sympathize with her whenever she would allow him; while she accepted his sympathy as one who did not want it particularly, but liked to command it at will. And during the growth of his baby's teeth, which rendered both conversation and work difficult in the flat in Victoria Street, the musician often found his way to Lady Joan's house in Pont Street in the hours that he would otherwise have spent in writing music. It is true that he honestly tried for some time to write classical lullabies to his daughter in the pantry, that being the corner in the flat furthest removed from the nursery, while his wife sang her to sleep in the cradle to the homely ditty of "Hush-a-by-baby," and that he always nursed her when he was asked, and did not swear when he made her cry and was blamed for his clumsiness but after a time he made no objection when his wife sent him round to take her excuses and to dine alone with Lady Joan, until it became no uncommon thing for him to spend his evenings with her, while Norah stayed at home and nursed the baby. They were all three totally regardless of public opinion in the matter, though it might well have come to their ears that Norah was being very generally pitied by the musician's lady friends, not for her loneliness, but for her neglect of the treasure she seemed so unconscious of possessing, and that the musician was allowed to go scathless as he always was, and that Lady Joan was hated without exception. But the musician, who had done what he liked since his infancy, meant to go on doing it now in defiance of all the scandals that were about; and Lady Joan, for her part, always went out of her way to add to them if she could; while Norah only ignored them altogether, and smiled to herself, and so deceived every one who knew her, including her husband.
"Yes?" she said to Mrs. Reginald Routh, when that lady remarked one day, during a short call, that Mr. Digby always seemed to be in Pont Street, "it is very unfortunate he should miss you so often; but Joan has wanted him a good deal lately, and I have been only too glad, when baby has been fretful, to send him round to see her. There is such a platonic friendship between them, you know."
"Platonic, do you call it, Mrs. Digby?" said her visitor, with her accustomed smile. "Do you know, my dear Mrs. Digby, that from what I know of Plato,—and I attended all Mr. Digby's lectures on Plato and Schopenhauer, and their relation to music and Socialism, which was before you knew him, of course,—I don't fancy he would have countenanced such goings on in his ideal Republic? Of course you know best, and I should not dream of interfering between a wife and a husband; but I should certainly say myself, if I were asked, that that young woman's behavior in Pont Street is more fit for the Old Testament than for Plato. Perhaps you have not read any Plato, though?"
"No; only the Old Testament; and that I was obliged to do for myself, you see, because there were no lectures upon it," rejoined Norah, gravely; and she bore the swift scrutiny of Mrs. Reginald Routh without flinching. Mrs. Reginald changed the subject; it was the only thing left her to do, and she did it well.
"Of course I should not speak so strongly, dear Mrs. Digby, if I had not known your husband so well and so intimately before he met you at all. And perhaps if I had had your good fortune," here she glanced in a telling manner at the baby on Norah's knee, "and could have had a small soul to develop, I, too, should have become a womanly woman, with no desire for intellectual improvement. Ah, Mrs. Digby, you have in your child what we childless wives have failed to find in our search after wisdom. I frankly own that you are to be envied."
And she had her revenge, for Norah believed her.
Digby came in when she had gone.
"Joan has sent round for me to help her out of a difficulty. Any message, childie? I shall be back to dinner. And have you seen my warm gloves?"