Alice moved over to the card-table. Sir Richard played continually but never improved. He sat down now with the air of one who condescended; he covered his mistakes with the assurance that it was his partner who was playing abominably, and he explained carefully and politely at the end of the game the things that she ought to have done. Mrs. Maradick and Mrs. Lawrence played with a seriousness and compressed irritation that was worthy of a greater cause.
Tony had slipped out of the room, and Lady Gale crossed over to Maradick by the window.
“How quickly,” she said, “we get to know each other in a place like this. We have only been here a week and I am going to be quite confidential already.”
“Confidential?” said Maradick.
“Yes, and I hope you won’t mind. You mustn’t mind, because it’s my way. It always has been. If one is going to know people properly then I resent all the wasted time that comes first. Besides, preliminaries aren’t necessary with people as old as you and I. We ought to understand by this time. Then we really can’t wait.”
He looked into her face, and knew that here at least there would be absolute honesty and an explanation of some kind.
“Forgive me, Lady Gale,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’ve been in the dark and perhaps you’ll explain. Before I came down here I’d been living to myself almost entirely—a man of my age and occupations generally does—and now suddenly I’m caught into other people’s affairs, and it’s bewildering.”
“Well, it’s all very simple,” she answered. “Of course it’s about Tony. Everyone’s interested in Tony. He’s just at the interesting age, and he’s quite exciting enough to make his people wonder what he’ll turn into. It’s the chrysalis into the—well, that just depends. And then, of course, I care a great deal more than the rest. Tony has been different to me from the rest. I suppose every mother’s like that, but I don’t think most of them have been such chums with their sons as I’ve been with Tony. We were alone in the country together for a long time and there was nobody else. And then the time came that I had prepared for and knew that I must face, the time when he had things that he didn’t tell me. Every boy’s like that, but I trusted him enough not to want to know, and he often told me just because I didn’t ask. Then he cared for all the right things and always ran straight; he never bent his brain to proving that black’s white and indeed rather whiter than most whites are, as so many people do. But just lately I’ve been a little anxious—we have all been—all of us who’re watching him. He ought to have settled down to something or some one by this time and one doesn’t quite know why he hasn’t; and he hasn’t been himself for the last six months. Things ought to have come to a head here. I don’t know what he’s been up to this week, but none of us have seen anything of him, and I can see that his thoughts are elsewhere all the time. It isn’t in the least that I doubt him or am unhappy, it is only that I would like some one to be there to give him a hand if he wants one. A woman wouldn’t do; it must be a man, and——”
“You think I’m the person,” said Maradick.
“Well, he likes you. He’s taken to you enormously. That’s always been a difficulty, because he takes to people so quickly and doesn’t seem to mind very much whom it is; but you are exactly the right man, the man I have wanted him to care for. You would help him, you could help him, and I think you will.”