Joanna neither moved nor spoke, though her breath sighed and caught. The sounds from the tennis court, meanwhile, increased both in volume and in animation, causing Adrian to look up.
Challoner stood as near to the net as is permissible, volleying or smashing down ball after ball, until his opponents began to lose heart and science and grow harried and spent. And Adrian, watching, found himself, though unwillingly, impressed by and admiring the force, not only the great brute strength but determination of the man, which bestowed a certain dignity upon the game, raising it from the level of a mere amusement to that of a serious duel. And across the intervening space Challoner became sensible of that unwilling admiration—the admiration of a quasi-enemy, curiously supplementing another admiration of which he was also conscious—namely, that of Margaret Smyrthwaite, of the woman who craves to be justified, by public exhibition of his skill and prowess, of the man to whom she meditates intrusting her person and her fate. This excited Challoner, flattering his pride, stimulating his ambition and belief in himself.—Yes, he would show them all what he was made of, show them all what he could do, what he was worth! So that now he no longer played simply to win a set at tennis from a harmless, lanky Busbridge boy and amazon-like Marion Chase; but to revenge himself for Adrian Savage's past distrust of him, detection and prevention of his shady little business tricks, played to revenge himself for the younger man's superiority in breeding, knowledge of the world, culture, talents, charm of manner and of looks. He gave himself to the paying off of old scores in that game of tennis, all his bullying instinct, his necessity to beat down and trample Opposition under foot, actively militant. Yet since Margaret Smyrthwaite's approval, not to mention her goodly fortune, came into reckoning, the bullying instinct made him deadly cool and cunning rather than headlong or reckless in his play.
Presently Joanna silently motioned Adrian once again to take up his sordid story. And with a feeling of rather hopeless weariness he obeyed, recounting his scouring of Paris, accompanied by a private detective. Told her of clues found, or apparently found, only again to be lost. Told her, incidentally, a little about the haunts of vagabondage and crime and vice, of the seething, foul-smelling, festering under-world which there, as in every great city, lies below the genial surface of things, ready to drag down and absorb the friendless and the weak. So doing—while he still watched Challoner, and divined much of the human drama—finding expression in his masterful manipulation of racket and ball—Adrian's imagination took fire. He forgot his companion, gave reign to his natural eloquence and described certain scenes, certain episodes, with only too telling effect.
"But you must have been exposed to great danger," she broke in breathlessly at last.
"Ah! like that!" he cried, shrugging his shoulders and laughing a little fiercely. "Danger is, after all, an excellent sauce to meat. I had entire confidence in the loyalty and discretion of my companion, and we were armed."
Joanna got up, pushing away her chair, which scrooped upon the quarries.
"And you did all this for me—for my sake, because Bibby is my brother!" she exclaimed. "You risked contracting some illness, receiving some injury! For me, because of Bibby's relation to me, you endangered your life!"
"But in point of fact, I didn't suffer in the least, my dear Joanna," he replied, rising also. "I enlarged my acquaintance with a city of which I am quite incorrigibly fond; which, even at her dirtiest and naughtiest, I very heartily love. And here I am, as you see, in excellent health, perfectly intact, ready to start on my voyage of discovery again to-morrow, if there should seem any reasonable hope of its being crowned with success. Common humanity demands that much of me. One cannot let a fellow-creature, especially one who has the claim of kinship, perish in degradation and misery without making every rational effort to rescue and rehabilitate him."
Joanna hardly appeared to listen. She moved to and fro, her arms hanging straight at her sides, her hands opening and closing in nervous, purposeless clutchings.
"No," she declared violently, "no! When I think of the risks which you have exposed yourself, and the shocking and cruel things which might have happened to you, I cannot control my indignation. When I think that Bibby might have been the cause of your death no vestige of affection for him is left in me. None—none—I cast him out of my heart. Yes, it is dreadful. Looking back, all the anguish of which my brother has been the cause is present to me—the constant anxiety which his conduct gave rise to, the concealments mamma and I had to practise to shield him from papa's anger, the atmosphere of nervousness and unrest which, owing to him, embittered my girlhood. He was the cause of estrangement between my parents; between papa and myself. He was the cause of the break-up of our home at Leeds, of the severing of old friendships and associations, of the sense of disgrace which for so many years lay upon our whole establishment. It destroyed my mother's health. It emphasized the unsympathetic tendencies of my father's character. And now, now, when so much has happened to redress the unhappiness of the past, to glorify and enlarge my life, when my future is so inexpressibly full of hope and promise, it is too much, too much, that my brother should reappear, that he should intervene between us, Adrian, between you and me—endangering your actual existence. And he will come back—I know it, I feel it," she added wildly. "I believed him dead because I wished him dead. I still wish it. But that is useless—useless."