"You were a little—eh? Weren't you, dear? Not much; just a gentlemanly glow."
"And it's your way of taking revenge for it. And a d——d cruel woman's way it is."
She laid her hand on his arm. "Bryan, don't worry me now. I've got a lot to go through to-night. It's harder than anybody thinks. There's some sense in what you say. But we can talk about it some other time.... Oh! look up there! What's happening?"
A big browny-red closed motor-car rolled along the upper terrace and stopped at the great doorway. In a moment servants—visitors seemed to run together, to range themselves in two lines, one on each side of the wide curved steps. Framed in the dark gothic arch, the Lord of Beverbrook appeared, noble, white of hair and moustache, with a serene and lofty humility in his bent head that was strangely impressive. The rest is Apotheosis. Before it we veil our dazzled eyes.
He had not gone to bed at two o'clock the next morning. He sat, completely dressed, smoking and looking out his bedroom window over the silvering terraces and park. The great gay house was abed: the night very still. Only to his left, above the low quadrangle of some stables or outhouses, could be seen a dim shaft of light. A murmur of voices, the sound of water running and splashing about a hose-pipe, seemed to come from that direction.
His thoughts were busy, but not directly with the girl whose interests and his own were by now tacitly associated. The night had been a new triumph for her—in a way the crown upon all the rest—but such triumphs by now were discounted in advance, felt almost to be in the order of nature. No. It was the telegram he was thinking of, the telegram that he had intercepted on the lawn at Cowes. He had not so much forgotten it till now as mentally pigeon-holed it for future consideration. This habit, acquired in business, he unconsciously followed in all the concerns of life.
Who was making himself this beggar's advocate in London. Who was "Prentice." Curse him! whoever he was. Few though the words had been, they contained a hint of some previous understanding or rendezvous. Who were the conspirators that wanted to drag a girl away from the light and laughter that was her due, (influences so desirable from every point of view) into the chill shadow of a hospital death-bed. He had long ceased to be jealous of Ingram, as of a man whom the world that was his friend had taken in hand and beaten handsomely, but there is no hatred so merciless and lawless as that with which contempt is mingled. The suppression of the telegram never struck him as dishonor, although he was not a cruel or a treacherous man. He counted it a fair counter-stroke to what he esteemed a blow in the dark, a stab from behind. Letter by letter and word for word the hateful thing was printed on his brain, but who does not know the instinct of return to a message in which substance and significance are so inversely proportioned? To have read nine times is no reason for not reading a tenth. The screed has not changed, but the mood may have; and, with the new mood, who knows what fresh meaning may not leap at us.
He got up, opened the wardrobe, and felt in the pockets of his blue coat. It was not in either of them. He considered awhile. Had he packed it, with the letters, into his dispatch case? If so, it had gone aboard to his secretary, which didn't matter much. But—no. He distinctly remembered feeling it in his pocket during the crossing to the mainland. Plainly gone, then. But where?
He took the coat off the rack and looked at it as though he would read its history since dinner. His own man was not with him, but he had stopped at Beverbrook before and knew the valeting was a little overdone. R—— was so natty himself. He had flung it on the bed when he dressed. Whoever did the room had taken it to be brushed or pressed, and the telegram had fallen out of the pocket. How could he be sure? Oh! he knew. There had been a tiny smear of white paint under the left cuff. If the coat had been taken away——He took it to the light. The white smudge was gone.