“Keep the two men apart, and treat both of them—both—with kindness.”
His Excellency then rose, kissed her hands once more, and took his departure. Sara, when the door was closed, paced the floor with swift and desperate steps, as though she were encircled by thoughts which, linked together, danced round her way so that whether she retreated or advanced, swayed to the right or to the left, they held her fast.
CHAPTER XIX
Lord Garrow, under his daughter's command, had issued invitations for a dinner-party that same evening to a few friends, who, it was hoped, would support the Meeting which Reckage was endeavouring to organise as a protest against Dr. Temple's nomination. The guests included Reckage himself, Orange, Charles Aumerle, the Dowager Countess of Larch, Hartley Penborough, Lady Augusta Hammit, and the Bishop of Calbury's chaplain,—the Rev. Edwin Pole-Knox.
Sara, arrayed in white satin and opals, sat at the piano playing the Faust of Berlioz, and wondering whether she had really arranged her table to perfection, when the footman brought the following note—dashed off in pencil—from Lord Reckage:—
Almouth House.
An extraordinary thing has happened. Agnes has run away with David Rennes. She seems quite broken and her letter is too touching, too sacred to show. As for him, it is difficult to say what he could give, or what I would accept, as an excuse. She, however, has my full forgiveness, and perhaps good may come of so much sorrow and duplicity. I must see you after the others have gone to-night. My plan is to leave early—probably with Orange and Aumerle, but I will return later. I need your counsel. B.
Sara, who was always in league with audacity, clapped her hands at the tidings of Miss Carillon's bold move. She was not surprised, for, as we have seen, she had read the girl's character truly, and warned Orange that some event of the kind would happen. But the pleasure she took in this confirmation of her own prophetic gifts was alloyed by the fear that Reckage, now at liberty, would prove a masterful, jealous, and embarrassing lover. Nor were her forebodings on this score lessened when he arrived, evidently in a strange mood, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time. His eyes travelled over her face with a consuming scrutiny to which she was unaccustomed and for which she found herself unprepared. For a moment she experienced the disadvantages of a guilty conscience, and although she had, so far, merely considered various plans for using his devotion without peril to her own independence, she felt that the moment for deliberation was past, that the duel between them had begun.
“You have my note,” he said, “and I would rather not talk about Agnes to-night. On that point I am in a stupor. I can't realise the disaster at all. I might seem unfeeling, whereas I am insensible, or unconscious, or mentally chloroformed—anything you like to call it.”