“Why must they always play their tricks and be pretty and witty?” he thought. “Except when one wants to make love to them they ought to sit still.” And with a malicious desire to annoy Nance he began making much of Linda, persuading her to lie down on the sofa and wrapping an exquisite cashmere shawl round her feet.
To test the truth of his surmise as to the cause of their predicament, he unexpectedly brought in Brand’s name.
“Our friend Adrian,” he remarked, “refuses to allow that Mr. Renshaw’s a handsome man. What do you ladies think about that?”
His device met with instant success. Linda turned crimson and Nance made a gesture as if to stop him.
“Ha! Ha!” he laughed to himself, “so that’s how the wind blows. Our little sister must be allowed no kind of fun, though we ourselves may flirt with the whole village.”
He continued to pay innumerable attentions to Linda. Professing that he wished to tell her fortune he drew his chair to her side and began a long rigamarole about heart lines and life lines and dark men and fair men. Nance simply moved closer to the fire while this went on and warmed her hands at its blaze.
“I must ask him to fetch us a trap from the Inn,” she thought. “I wish Adrian would come. I wonder if he will, before we go.”
Partly by reason of the fact that he had himself arranged her drapery and partly because of a touch of something in the child’s face which reminded him of certain pictures of Pintericchio, Baltazar began to feel tenderer towards Linda than he had done for years towards any feminine creature. This amused him immensely and he gave the tenuous emotion full rein. But it irritated him that he couldn’t really vex his little protégé’s sister.
“I expect,” he said, replacing Linda’s white fingers upon the scarlet rug, “I expect, Miss Herrick, you’re beginning to feel the effects of our peculiar society. Yes, that’s my Venetian boy, Flambard”—this was addressed to Linda—“isn’t he delicious? Wouldn’t you like to have him for a lover?—for Rodmoor is a rather curious place. It’s a disintegrating place, you know, a place where one loses one’s identity and forgets the rules. Of course it suits me admirably because I never consider rules, but you—I should think—must find it somewhat disturbing? Fingal maintains there’s a definite physiological cause for the way people behave here. For we all behave very badly, you know, Miss Herrick. He says it’s the effect of the North Sea. He says all the old families that live by the North Sea get queer in time,—take to drink, I mean, or something of that sort. It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? But I suppose that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to you? You take—what do you call it?—a more serious view of life.”
Nance turned round towards him wearily.