He drifted about during the autumn from one shoot to another. It was his ordinary occupation for three months of the year, yet now it seemed unusual. It seemed outside a new continuity of existence which had begun for him.
But he devoted himself to settling his affairs, and was able in consequence, as has been narrated, to propose himself as an unwelcome relative when Arthur Nevern was in town.
Caragh had looked forward doubtfully to meeting Lettice again, under conditions which might suit her so much less well as a background than the open downs and the sea. But his forebodings were gloomy enough to be disappointed.
She had some art in dress, as he had noted from her evening frocks, and if in the daytime she seemed for town sometimes a trifle decorative, it was a decoration on which those who passed her bestowed an approving eye. She needed a certain amplitude to set her off. The big fur collar, and the expansive hat made the modelling of her face seem daintier than it was. With her hat off, her prettiness owed everything to the fair fine hair that curled almost to her eyes. Maurice had once brushed it back in a playful moment, but he never risked the disillusionment again. He needed every aid to his attachment that artifice could supply.
She seemed, on her part, to be aware that her beauty required management. It was not of a sort to be worn with a disdainful indifference as to how it might strike you.
It had to be looked after, or it didn't strike you at all. She kept a conscious eye upon her fringe, and she left occasionally, as Caragh had noticed, a harmless confederate with her complexion on the lapels of his coat.
He brushed off the powder with a mixed sense of regret and gratitude. He was sorry she needed it but, since the need was there, better she had the wit to know it and the ambition to look her best. Better far than to suppose with an arrogant vanity that to his infatuation nothing could come amiss.
Of what, indeed, came most amiss she probably had not a suspicion. The breezy life of Ballindra had admitted few mental interests, and, in the country, character, which it develops, often has the air of mind. In Lettice, whose character was charming, the resemblance had deceived Caragh. But in London, where character sinks and mind is on the surface, his estimate was corrected.
He endured dreary plays in which she delighted; he sat bravely at ballad concerts; he listened without a groan to her enthusiasms upon domestic art; he tried to read the books she praised.
The outlook was depressing. The same fear touched him that must have fallen upon Babel. Here, for life was a companion who on its finer interests would never understand a word he said. He might, perhaps, bring her painfully to a sense of her unsuspected ineptitude; might make her mechanically conscious of the commonplace; might shake her faith in ignorance as a standard of art. He might in fact taint the sincerity of her admirations. That was all.