CHAPTER XXI. A COMBINED FORCE.
“Hear, but be faithful to your interest still.
Secure your heart, then fool with whom you will.”
Mrs. Vansittart walked to the gate of the malgamite works, thinking that Von Holzen was following her on the noiseless sand. At the gate, which the porter threw open on seeing her approach, she turned and found that she was alone. Von Holzen was walking quietly back towards the factory. He was so busy making his fortune that he could not give Mrs. Vansittart more than a few minutes. She bit her lip as she went towards her horse. Neglect is no balm to the wounds of the defeated.
She mounted her horse and looked at her watch. It was nearly five o'clock, and Percy Roden was doubtless waiting for her in Park Straat. It is a woman's business to know what is expected of her. Mrs. Vansittart recalled in a very matter-of-fact way the wording of her letter to Roden. She brushed some dust from her habit, and made sure that her hair was tidy. Then she fell into deep thought, and set her mind in a like order for the work that lay before her. A man's deepest schemes in love are child's play beside the woman's schemes that meet or frustrate his own. Mrs. Vansittart rode rapidly home to Park Straat.
Mr. Roden, the servant told her, was awaiting her return in the drawing-room. She walked slowly upstairs. Some victories are only to be won with arms that hurt the bearer. Mrs. Vansittart's mind was warped, or she must have known that she was going to pay too dearly for her revenge. She was sacrificing invaluable memories to a paltry hatred.
“Ah!” she said to Roden, whose manner betrayed the recollection of her invitation to him, “so I have kept you waiting—a minute, perhaps, for each day that you have stayed away from Park Straat.”
Roden laughed, with a shade of embarrassment, which she was quick to detect.
“Is it your sister,” she asked, “who has induced you to stay away?”
“Dorothy has nothing but good to say of you,” he answered.
“Then it is Herr von Holzen,” said Mrs. Vansittart, laying aside her gloves and turning towards the tea-table. She spoke quietly and rather indifferently, as one does of persons who are removed by a social grade. “I have never told you, I believe, that I happen to know something of your—what is he?—your foreman. He has probably warned you against me. My husband once employed this Von Holzen, and was, I believe, robbed by him. We never knew the man socially, and I have always suspected that he bore us some ill feeling on that account. You remember—in this room, when you brought him to call soon after your works were built—that he referred to having met my husband. Doubtless with a view to finding out how much I knew, or if I was in reality the wife of Charles Vansittart. But I did not choose to enlighten him.”