Mrs. Vansittart laughed, and, before answering, acknowledged stiffly the stiff salutation of a passer.
“Then it is suggested that I am waiting for Mr. Roden to be rich enough in order to marry him?”
“It is the talk of gossips and servants.”
Mrs. Vansittart looked at him with an amused smile. Did he really know so little of the world as to take his information from gossips and servants?
“Ah,” she said, and that was all. She rose and made a little signal with her parasol to her coachman, who was waiting in the shadow of the Kursaal. As she drove home, she wondered why Von Holzen was afraid that she should marry Percy Roden, who, as it happened, was coming to tea in Park Straat that evening. Mrs. Vansittart had not exactly invited him—not, at all events, that he was aware of. He was under the impression that he had himself proposed the visit.
She remembered that he was coming, but gave no further thought to him. All her mind was, indeed, absorbed with thoughts of Von Holzen, whom she hated with the dull and deadly hatred of the helpless. The sight of him, the sound of his voice, stirred something within her that vibrated for hours, so that she could think of nothing else—could not even give her attention to the little incidents of daily life. She pretended to herself that she sought retribution—that she wished on principle to check a scoundrel in his successful career. The heart, however, knows no principles; for these are created by and belong to the mind. Which explains why many women seem to have no principles and many virtuous persons no heart.
Mrs. Vansittart went home to make a careful toilet pending the arrival of Percy Roden. She came down to the drawing-room, and stood idly at the window.
“The talk of gossips and servants,” she repeated bitterly to herself. One of Von Holzen's shafts had, at all events, gone home. And Percy Roden came into the room a few minutes afterwards. His manner had more assurance than when he had first made Mrs. Vansittart's acquaintance. He had, perhaps, a trifle less respect for the room and its occupant. Mrs. Vansittart had allowed him to come nearer to her; and when a woman allows a man of whom she has a low opinion to come near to her, she trifles with her own self-respect, and does harm which, perhaps, may never be repaired.
“I was too busy to go to the concert this afternoon,” he said, sitting down in his loose-limbed way.
His assumption that his absence had been noticed rather nettled his hearer.