Lady Sarah screwed up her pretty features expressively. It was plain that the prospect had no charms for her. But she was silent a moment and then she threw out her arms with a sigh.
“That’s what I shall have to do, I suppose,” said she. “But it will be horrid—for both of us. Well,” she rose and nodded casually without putting out her hand: “at least now you understand me better than you did, even if you can’t find any excuses for my shocking behaviour.”
She was quite her old self again, mocking, laughing, contemptuous, charming.
Rhoda wondered, when she was alone, whether there was any possibility of touching her heart, or of making her realise her responsibilities in life.
She seemed to be absolutely without any sense of them; and although Rhoda was inclined to believe her account of the relations between her and Jack, realising as she did that there were no depths in the wayward woman, no heart-yearnings to be satisfied, she asked herself, in a kind of terror, whether such negative virtues were not even more hopeless to deal with than would have been the stormy passion of a guilty love.
CHAPTER XVI.
A FRUSTRATED ELOPEMENT
On the following morning Sir Robert went to Jack’s room before that young man was up, and sitting on the edge of his bed, gave him such a searching catechism, ending with such a severe lecture, that his late ward was surprised at the thoroughness with which the baronet, his fears once roused, tackled the subject of his wife’s flirtation.
The result of this was satisfactory in the main to Sir Robert. Jack appeared to be perfectly frank and only slightly ashamed of himself. He protested that he and Lady Sarah had never been more to each other than sympathetic companions and devoted friends, and that, while he admitted he was fonder of her than he had ever been of any woman, they had never exceeded the limits of innocent flirtation; and Jack reminded the baronet that he must have been aware, all this time, that they did flirt.
Sir Robert scarcely knew how to meet this.
It was true that his wife had openly flirted with Jack before him; but coquetry was ingrain in her nature, and when she had nobody else to amuse herself with, she even, upon occasion, coquetted, much to his delight, with her husband himself.