But that she possessed the shrewdness and adaptability of her sex and race was indisputable. Her brain was active if empty, and he had observed that during the long hour of the wedding reception she had talked with ease and volubility to every one, while sacrificing nothing of her girlish dignity. That she possessed grace, tact, the social talent, and was brilliantly, if superficially, accomplished, went far toward reconciling the future diplomatist to her complete indifference to Balzac, Flaubert, Meredith, Maupassant, Ibsen, and Turgénev. He chided himself for his unreasonableness in having deliberately created an ideal, and expected a girl just out of the school-room to fulfil it. And they had been married only a week. At least, if she had chattered almost incessantly, she knew when to drop a subject before it drove him mad, and she had suggested almost every phase of femininity. She had embroidered a bit one rainy morning when they could not roam in the woods; she had ridden horseback with him, played tennis and croquet, and sketched him in twenty different attitudes. Of her accomplishments and variety there could be no doubt. Nor of her young fascination. As they rose at the end of the dinner, although he involuntarily noticed again that the room dwarfed her, he also reminded himself that her cheek was like the traditional rose leaf, her pink mouth and even little teeth were worthy of a sonnet, and that she was altogether exquisite and desirable.
XLII
HIS HOUSE OF CARDS
For three weeks they roamed about the beautiful gloomy old park with its formal gardens, its old-fashioned English rose garden and shrubberies, and its many groves and alleys. The Italian garden was their favourite setting for the love drama still in progress; and Ordham could imagine no more beautiful picture composed by woman and Nature than Mabel leaning on the moss-grown balustrade above the sunken garden, with the high rigid cypresses and the setting sun behind her, and her hand resting lightly on one of the urns. But if Mabel had the gift of making pictures of herself, she was as often absorbed in the pleasures offered by perfect country weather. They rode, drove, played tennis and croquet, received and returned calls and dinners, and even attended a meet. But one day the weather changed abruptly. They awoke to the sound of a steady hopeless downpour. This, to married lovers, bent only on being happy, was but an enchanting variation. They explored the castle, ransacked trunks in a garret, searched for hidden springs in panels and secret drawers of cabinets, and, with the aid of a lantern and conducted by Mrs. Felt, investigated underground rooms that may once have done duty as dungeons.
Finally, exhausted and chilled, they retreated to the library fire, where Ordham extended himself on the hearthrug, and Mabel, again a picture in a red scarf over her white frock and thrown into high relief by LaLa, lay in a deep easy chair and discoursed of popping corn and roasting chestnuts. Suddenly she sat erect, struck by a brilliant idea.
“I’ll cable mother to-morrow to bring over a lot of poppers and boxes of corn. It will be such fun to teach people, and so original.”
“I am afraid there are only tile stoves in Italy,” murmured Ordham, sleepily.
“Oh! I had forgotten Italy! Dear, darling Jackie, do let us spend six months at Ordham. With all my dreams I had hardly the ghost of an idea of how fascinating, how perfectly heavenly, it would be to live here. And not only the castle—but England, this country life, everything! I can’t go away!”
“But Mabel—not only am I due in Rome one week from to-day, but we cannot outstay our welcome. Bridg is not the most generous and hospitable of mortals. It is a miracle that he lent us the place at all, and if we stayed too long—What is the matter?”
Mabel was staring down at him with a face deeply flushed and the light of a terrified defiance in her eyes.
“What is it?” repeated Ordham, uneasily. “You are not ill?”