"Pity he doesn't hit it off with his wife, isn't it?" remarked Mrs. Fellowes, who, Mark could see, was one of those who had imbibed a prejudice against the man he had come to love. "Perhaps you didn't know he was married, Mr. Cheveril, but he is! His wife lives in Belgravia and he here. It is said he didn't even go to see her the last time he was at home, and yet they are not legally separated, and I believe, he sends her heaps of money!"
"Well, you see, I don't know the Honourable Mrs. Worsley," said Mark shortly. In one of his rare moments of self-revelation the elder man had laid bare to the younger the history of an ill-assorted marriage and its consequences, which, Mark decided, more by inference than from details, was the source of much that had warped a life, which Felix Worsley himself described as like "a blasted jungle tree"; though Mark thought he could still trace in it the noblest characteristics of the English oak.
"Well, I must say the Collector of Puranapore has a warm partisan in you, Mr. Cheveril," returned Mrs. Fellowes warmly, "and I like you for it!"
The pair in front had now turned their steps and came towards them.
"I'm reminding Mrs. Rayner that if I walk her off her feet she won't be able to dance so lightly with you to-night as I desire to see, Cheveril," said Mr. Worsley, with a smile which his Assistant had learnt to love.
On being introduced to Mrs. Fellowes he seemed to find that he had various links with her and they paired off together, leaving the two old friends in company.
"Oh, Mark, how delightful he is," exclaimed Hester, her face all aglow. "I haven't seen anybody so nice since I parted with my father!"
"Ah, then you have capitulated, just as I hoped. But I'm not going to be hard on you for your former state of siege. I knew the victory was sure, and it has come partly because he took to you at once, I could see. My chief is sometimes rather bearish, I admit. I tremble for the offences he may give at the gathering to-night. He's a grand bit of marble, Hester—to take up our simile of St. Thomas's Mount!"
"But has the chipping process begun, Mark? Though he was so nice to me I confess he talked very hopelessly, very cynically, about some things."
"Oh, yes, the process is going on! But we must not forget in that process one day is as a thousand years with the Great Sculptor," said Mark softly, as he glanced up at the dark blue vault where the great moon was already rising, silvering the vast expanse of waters.