“A younger brother, who had been ordered home from India on sick leave. No, I didn’t care for him,” she went on emphatically, reading the expression of sympathy on the girl’s face. “But he was livelier than his grave brother, my husband, and we were very good friends. Nobody would have thought that there was any harm in that if old Lady Mallyan hadn’t interfered. You can guess now, I suppose, who Lady Mallyan is!”
Mabin nodded emphatically without speaking.
“She came posting to the place to find out the evil which was only in her own mind. We had been getting on quite well together, my husband and I. I was rather afraid of him, but I liked him, and he was kind to me. I believe he was really fond of me; and that I should have grown fond of him. I was fond of him in a way; but he was fifteen years older than I, and very quiet and grave in his manners. But he let me do what I liked, and took me to all the dances and races I wanted, and was proud of me, and seemed pleased that I should enjoy myself. But when his mother came, everything was changed. She had great influence with him, and she told him that he was spoiling me, and making me fit for nothing but amusement, and that these constant gayeties were ruining my character. And so he told me, very gently, very kindly, that I must settle down, and live a quieter life.
“I was sorry, disappointed, and not too grateful to Lady Mallyan. Would you have been? Would anybody have been? But I submitted. There were some scenes first, of course. I had been spoiled; I am bad-tempered, I know; and I was indignant with her for her interference. What harm had I been doing, after all? I was not unhappy, however, and it was easy to reconcile myself to everything but to her. For she seemed to have settled down in my husband’s house, and I did not dare to hint that I resented this. Then things went on smoothly for a time. I had given up my balls, and nearly all what my mother-in-law was pleased to call ‘dissipations.’ But now that I was oftener at home, I naturally saw more of Willie, my husband’s brother, than before, since he was not strong enough to go out so much as Sir Geoffrey and I had done.
“We were all very anxious about him, as he seemed to be on the verge of consumption. He was very bright and amusing, however, even then, and I was certainly more at ease with him than I was with my mother-in-law, or even with my own husband, who was a silent and undemonstrative man. But it was shameful of Lady Mallyan to suspect that I cared more for him than for my husband; it never entered into his head or mine to suppose any one would think such a wicked thing; and certainly Sir Geoffrey would never have thought of such a thing except at the suggestion of his mother.
“I cannot tell you, child, of the wretchedness this miserable old woman brought about, in her jealousy at Sir Geoffrey’s love for me, and her anxiety to get back the influence over him which she thought I had usurped. Of course if I had been an older woman, as old as I am now, for example, I should have rebelled; I should have insisted on her leaving the house where she had brought nothing but misery. I should have known how to take my proper place as mistress of the house in which she was only an interloper.
“But I did not know how to do it, although I knew what I ought to do.
“So it went on, the misery of every one growing greater every day, Willie and I feeling a restraint which made us afraid to exchange a word under her eyes; my husband growing shorter in his manner, more reserved in his speech, having had his mind poisoned against his brother and against me.
“At last a crisis came. Willie told us that he was going away. I knew he was in no fit state to travel, but I did not dare to tell him to stay, or to tell the fears I felt for him. When he was ready to go, I spoke out to him at last. We were in the drawing-room, standing by the fire, and I told him it was his mother who had made us all miserable and afraid to speak to one another, and I begged him to come with me to Sir Geoffrey, and to back me up in telling him the truth, in insisting that Lady Mallyan should leave the house.
“ ‘If you go away now, without speaking to Geoffrey,’ I said, ‘I shall be left in the power of this hateful, wicked woman for the rest of my life. For she will never leave of her own accord; and I dare not speak to Geoffrey about her with no one to back me up.’