Always, too, the remembrance of the significance of Toni's sacrifice would keep Owen humble before her. He knew now, beyond all possibility of doubt, that it had nearly broken her heart to leave him; and though her tragically childish notion of setting him free by eloping with Leonard Dowson often brought a tender, half-quizzical smile to his lips, Owen fully appreciated the love and eager longing which had driven Toni to that futile step.
If Toni had found her soul, Owen too had gained something which his character had hitherto lacked; and in his new humility and comprehension there was the germ, also, of a new content for both of them.
Toni caught her breath in a sob of rapture as the old house came into view.
Everyone about the place, servants, gardeners, chauffeur, had worked their hardest during the last excited weeks to bring the whole place to the highest pitch of perfection; and to Toni's longing eyes the beautiful old house, in its setting of tall trees, smooth green lawns, and brilliant, many-hued flowers, had never looked so eminently attractive, so alluringly home-like before.
There were tears in her eyes as she sprang out of the car and greeted the waiting Andrews, who stood beside the open door. In the background Kate and Maggie hovered, all smiles and blushes; and it was evident that whatever construction a censorious world might have put upon Toni's rash departure, these faithful souls, at least, believed no evil.
As a matter of fact very little of the truth ever did leak out. When it was known, as Herrick took good care it should be known, that Mr. Rose had gone to Italy to join his wife, who was wintering there, and would return with her after a few weeks spent together by the shores of the Mediterranean, gossip was at once checked and dumbfounded.
If there had been anything wrong, said the neighbourhood, if Mrs. Rose had left her husband secretly as had been asserted, surely the fact of Mr. Rose's going to Italy to join her would not have been given quite so much publicity.
Not only were there paragraphs in all the society papers—here Barry's hand was discernible—but there were even portraits of the rising young author and his wife, taken together in the garden of their whitewashed villa outside Naples; and it was decided, finally, that Mrs. Rose's hasty departure had been, after all, a good deal less mysterious than it had at first appeared.
There was some consolation, to the more determined gossips of the neighbourhood, in spreading a rumour that the young mistress of Greenriver was far gone in consumption, and had been ordered to winter abroad; but Toni's appearance, on the day of her return, was quite sufficient to give the lie to that particular canard.