“Everything was nicely cut and dried in my absence, it seems.”
“Well—er——”
“The crowd evidently lost sight of the fact that I had carried off the prospective bride.”
“N-no. Miss Jaques called attention to it.”
“Guess her head is screwed on straight, padre. She made a bad break in attacking Miss Wynton; but when she set about Bower she was running on a strong scent. Sit tight, Mr. Hare. Don’t take sides, or whoop up the wrong spout, and you’ll see heaps of fun before you’re much older.”
Mightily incensed, the younger man turned away. The vicar produced his handkerchief and trumpeted into it loudly.
“God bless my soul!” he said, and repeated the pious wish, for he felt that it did him good, “how does one whoop up the wrong spout? And what happens if one does? And how remarkably touchy everybody seems to be. Next time I apply to the C.M.S. for an Alpine station, I shall stipulate for a low altitude. I am sure this rarefied air is bad for the nerves.”
Nevertheless, Hare’s startling communication was the one thing needed to clear away the doubts that beset Spencer at the dinner table. He had seen Mrs. de la Vere enter Helen’s bedroom when he left the girl in charge of a gesticulating maid; but an act of womanly solicitude did not explain the friendship that sprang so suddenly into existence. Now he understood, or thought he understood, which is a man’s way when he seeks to interpret a woman’s mind. Mrs. de la Vere, like the rest, was dazzled by Bower’s wealth. After ignoring Helen during the past fortnight, she was prepared to toady to her instantly in her new guise as the chosen bride of a millionaire. The belief added fuel to the fire already raging in his breast.
There never was man more loyal to woman in his secret meditations than Spencer; but his gorge rose at the sight of Helen’s winsome gratitude to one so unworthy of it. With him, now as ever, to think was to act.
Watching his chance, he waylaid Helen when her vigilant chaperon was momentarily absorbed in a suggestion that private theatricals and the rehearsal of a minuet would relieve the general tedium while the snow held.