"Don't let us discuss it any more, Humphrey," she said, in a grieved voice, "please! I am sorry I said so much."
"I was wrong," said Kent; "I have vexed you."
"No; I am not vexed," she replied, in a tone that intimated she was only hurt.
"Cynthia, don't be angry!... Make it up!"
She turned instantly, with a touch of her hand, and a quick, pleased smile; and he set himself to efface the effect of his ill-humour, with entirely successful results. As they strolled back to the hotel side by side, he felt her to be a long way from him—there was even a sense of physical remoteness. Mentally, she did not seem so near as in the days of their earliest acquaintance. He caught himself wishing that he could debate a certain point in construction with Turquand, and from that it was the merest step to perceiving that Mentone would be jollier if Turquand were with him instead. He was appalled to think that such a fancy should have crossed his brain, and strove guiltily to believe that it had not; but once again he felt spiritless and blank, and it was a labour to maintain the necessary disguise. He observed forlornly that Cynthia always appeared happiest in their association when the ineptitude of it was weighing most heavily upon himself.
[CHAPTER VIII]
Mrs. Kent placed few obstacles in the way of her husband's industry, and installed in Leamington Road, Streatham, he began his novel, and deleted, and destroyed, and re-wrote, until at the expiration of three weeks he had accomplished Chapter I. Primarily he did not experience so many domestic discomforts to impede him as Turquand had predicted. Mrs. Walford had obtained a very respectable and nice-looking servant, whose only drawback was a father in a lunatic asylum and the frequently expressed fear that if she were given too much to do she might go out of her mind on the premises. Ann was so "superior," and a "general" had really proved so difficult to get, that the thought of an hereditary taint had not been allowed to disqualify her. Cynthia confessed to finding it a little awkward when a duty was neglected, but apart from this Ann was an acquisition.
The author's working hours were supposed to be from ten o'clock till seven, with an interval for luncheon, but the irregular habits of bachelorhood made it hard for him to accustom himself to them, and it was often agreed that he should take his leisure in the afternoon, and reseat himself at his desk in the alluring hours of lamplight, when the neighbours' children were at rest and scales ceased from troubling. To these neighbours he found that he was an object of considerable curiosity. He had not lived in a suburb hitherto, and he discovered that for a man to remain at home all day offered much food for conjecture there. Subsequently, in some inexplicable manner, his vocation was ascertained, and then, when Cynthia and he went out, people whispered behind their window-curtains and stared.
Of his wife's family he saw a good deal, both at The Hawthorns and at No. 64, Leamington Road, and his liking for his brother-in-law did not increase. There was an air of condescension in Mr. Cæsar Walford's self-sufficiency that he found highly exasperating. The bass's debut had been fixed, during their absence, for the coming season, and he repeated the newest compliments paid to him by his master with the languid assurance of an artist whose supremacy was already acknowledged by the world. The latest burst of admiration into which Pincocca had been betrayed had always to be dragged by his parents from reluctant lips, but he never forgot any of it.