“You must have over-tired yourself, my dear; you are as pale as a sheet,” he remarked, looking at her keenly. “Here, come with me.” He led the way into the dining-room, that large, cool, pleasant apartment in which Regina had so often sat admiring him, and, going to the sideboard, poured her out a glass of port.
“Here, drink this down at once. I am sure you have been over-doing it. Have you been to any of those beastly meetings?”
“I have not been to a meeting, though I looked in at the offices of the S.R.W.”
“I feel very much inclined to say ‘Damn the S.R.W.,’” said Alfred Whittaker, warmly. “I can’t bear to see you looking so jaded and worn-out as you do now. Here, drink this down; it will pull you together better than anything else.”
He was an old-fashioned man, who believed in a glass of port, and Regina, with unwonted meekness and the same happy feeling of being ministered to that she had felt in the pastry-cook’s shop, obediently swallowed the pleasant potion.
“I shall be very glad,” Alfred Whittaker continued, “when we are off on our holiday, for I never felt the need of one so badly as I do this year. I suppose it is the excitement of Maudie’s wedding, but I can’t bear to see you looking as you do now.”
“I am better—I feel better,” said Regina, nervously. It was hard for her to resist the inclination to fling herself upon Alfred’s broad bosom and tell him everything that was in her mind. It would have been better if she had done so, but she resisted the inclination from a desire not to give way to unusual weakness.
“Now sit down quietly by the window and rest while I run up and change my coat.”
It was his habit to make what might be called a half-toilette for dinner—to take off his frock-coat and substitute for it a sort of smoking-jacket, quite a glorified garment, in which Regina admired him as some women admire their husbands when they get drunk, with that curious admiration for the breaking off of shackles, even merely conventional ones. It was a delight to Regina, strong-minded, commanding, magnetic, almost eccentric nature that she was, to give her husband’s behests instant obedience, and she sat down in the huge armchair by the window with a sigh of relief. Well, some hussy might have got hold of him, yes—but his heart was with her.
She owned to herself that there was a little bit of the hypocrite in her, but she forgave herself the infinitesimal sin because Alfred had noticed instantly that she was paler than usual. Ought she to have told him that she had been using powder, and that she was not really more worn-out than usual? Perhaps so, and yet, she told herself, no woman on earth could have forced herself to be so strictly just. Then there was a sound of the gong in the hall, and Alfred came down, Julia coming with him.