A few days later the conjecture acquired still more force through a letter from Mr. Angelo, informing him that the will case of which he had spoken had been decided out of court, and that Mrs. Lauriston was entitled to an income of four thousand a year, and a house in Queen’s Gate which she could let or occupy at her discretion. The property was, by the late Captain Weston’s bequest, to be hers on her majority or on her marriage, whichever event should take place first; therefore if Mr. and Mrs. Lauriston would call at their office at an early date, Messrs. Smith and Angelo would put them in possession of all further details, and be able to complete certain necessary formalities. These formalities, however, turned out to be very few and very simple, and George was surprised at the ease with which such a young woman as Nouna could enter into possession of so considerable an income. As for her, she was crazy with delight, and on learning that she could have an advance to furnish her house and make in it what alterations she liked, she awoke into a new life of joyful activity which seemed almost to suggest some superhuman agency in enabling her to be in half a dozen places at once.
When at last, after having shown in the arrangement of her handsome home some of the skill of an artist, and herself superintended the work of the most intelligent artisans a distinguished firm in Bond Street could furnish, Nouna introduced her husband in triumph to the little palace on the south of the park, poor George was overwhelmed by a crowd of bitter and sorrowful feelings to which Nouna’s half-childish, half-queenly delight in the change from the home of his creating to the home of hers gave scarcely anything more than an added pang. What could he hope to be to her now but a modest consort half ignored amidst the pretty state with which she evidently meant to surround herself? What sense of authority over her, of liberty for himself, could he hope to have, when, instead of her sharing his prospects, he was simply sharing hers? Since she could so lightly part, with no sensation stronger than relief, from those associations with their first days of wedded love which he held so dear, what hold could he really have on her heart at all? And suddenly, in the midst of his grave reflections, Nouna herself, to-day clothed in a whirlwind, shattering or fluttering every object and every creature she came near, would fly at him down some corridor, or through some curtain, like an incarnate spirit of joyous triumph, and force him, with or without his will, to rejoice with her in her work. But with a laugh, and a rush of light words and a tempestuous caress, she would leave him again, it being out of the question that a man’s sober feet could carry him from attic to cellar with as much swiftness as she felt the occasion required of her, the new mistress. So George made his tour of inspection for the most part by himself, civilly declining the offer of the housekeeper as a guide. This he felt as a new grievance, this staff of servants, whom he and even Nouna had had no hand in choosing, Mr. Angelo, with his customary strange officiousness, having undertaken that and many other details of the new household. On this point, however, George could console himself; as soon as he and his wife were installed, he should make a bold demonstration of the fact that, however weak he might be in the dainty little hands of his wife, he was not to be ruled by anybody else, and intended, with that one important exception perhaps, to be master in his own house.
Even while he made these reflections, he was the unseen witness to a little scene which, in his irritable frame of mind, filled him with anger and suspicions. He was standing on the ground floor, at a bend in the hall, screened from view by a mass of the tall tropical plants with which it was a canon of taste with Nouna to fill every available nook, when his attention was attracted by a peculiar soft treble knock on the panels of the door of an apartment which he had not seen, but which he had been told was the housekeeper’s room. Looking through the great leaves, which he separated with his hand, he saw Mrs. Benfield, the housekeeper, standing at the door. The next moment a key was turned and the door opened from inside, another woman let her in, and immediately the door was re-locked. George, already not in the best of humours, would not stand these mysteries in a place which, as long as he chose to live in it, he was determined should be his own house. He crossed the hall, and knocked sharply on the panels.
“Who is it?” asked Mrs. Benfield’s voice.
“It is I, your master.”
There was a pause of a few seconds, and George could hear the rustling of women’s gowns. Then the door was unlocked and thrown wide with much appearance of deferential haste by Mrs. Benfield.
“I am sorry to have kept you so long, sir; but the locks are new and a little stiff just at first, and I——”
George did not hear the rest of her explanation. He was looking at the woman whom the housekeeper introduced as a friend of hers, avowing that she had been afraid it would be considered a liberty to have a visitor so soon; but she was so anxious to have a sight of the young master and mistress that——
George interrupted. “Of my wife? Pray come with me then, she will be quite pleased to find herself an object of so much interest.”
He spoke courteously and with suppressed excitement, making a step forward to where Mrs. Benfield’s visitor sat close against the window and with her back to the light. For he had a strong suspicion of the identity of this stranger, who shrank into herself at the suggestion, and said she thanked Mr. Lauriston, she would rather not be seen; she felt rather uncomfortable at having come.