For a second his thoughts escaped his control, and settled on the pleasantness that bare ugly work-a-day room had meant to him all the winter through. The sodden winter streets, swept by bitter winds, horrible in fog and snow, through which he had hurried on his way had had something heavenly about them. "Ah, le beau temps passé!"
He pulled himself together with a sharp shock of reproach. He was to marry Nelly in less than three months' time, and he was an honourable man. When Nelly was his wife he meant that every thought of his heart should belong to her. He must see Mary Gray no more. Yet as he pushed the thought of her away from him it came to him that another man might find the ugly gas-lit room, the wet winter streets with their bawling crowds and flaring lights, something of the same magical world that he had found them. Supposing that man were Ilbert? Well, supposing it were so, what business had he to resent it? But however he might ask himself rhetorical questions, the jealousy of the natural man swept over him in passion and fury. He said to himself that now he knew why he had always hated Ilbert. It was a prevision of this hour.
And at the moment the General was offering up his heartfelt thanks that Nelly's happiness was secure in the keeping of one so steady and reliable, if rather dull and slow, as Robin Drummond.
CHAPTER XXI
TWO WOMEN
The travellers came home the first week of June. During the weeks that had come and gone since Easter they had wandered about as the fancy took them. Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice. They followed a path of wonders; but, somewhat to her father's dismay, Nelly did not prove the passionate pilgrim he had expected. She looked on listlessly at the wonder-world. Now that her first exaltation had died away it did not seem so simple a matter to make others happy. There was no royal road, she discovered, to the happiness of others any more than to her own.
Her father said to himself that Nell would be all right as soon as the wedding was over. He had not come to the point of thinking yet that marriage with Robin Drummond was not the way the Finger of God had pointed out to him. It was impossible not to notice Nelly's listless step and heavy eyes. The Dowager put down these things to ordinary delicacy, something the girl would outgrow.
"She wants a husband's care," she said. "To be sure, my dear Denis, you have done your best for her. But what, after all, could you know about girls?"
"As much as Robin Drummond, ma'am," the General said, with a growl; and was not placated by the Dowager's tolerant smile.