And again she laughed, not impishly, but with a hardness altogether astonishing to her auditor.
"Think," she cried, "of my sorry fate!—Not only a wretchedly ailing husband on my hands, needing attention day and night, but a wretchedly disconsolate young lover as well. For poor Marshall will be inconsolable—only too clearly do I foresee that.—Picture what a pair for one's portion week in and week out!—Whereas you, enviable being, are sure of the most inspiring society. Everything in this quiet room"—
She indicated the laden writing-table with a quick, flitting gesture.
"So refreshingly removed from the ordinary banal hotel salon—is eloquent of the absorbing, far-reaching pursuits and interests amongst which you live. Who could ask a higher privilege than to share your father's work, to be his companion and amanuensis?"—She paused, as emphasising the point, and then mockingly threw off—"Plus the smart beau sabreur Carteret, as devoted bodyguard and escort, whenever you are not on duty. To few women of your age, or indeed of any age, is Fortune so indulgent a fairy godmother as that!"
Astonished and slightly resentful at the sharpness of her guest's unprovoked onslaught, Damaris had dropped the little bunch of trinkets and backed into her corner of the sofa.
"Colonel Carteret has gone," she said coldly, rather irrelevantly, the statement drawn from her by a vague instinct of self-defence.
"Gone!" Henrietta echoed, with equal irrelevance. For she was singularly discomposed.
"Yes, he started for England last night. But you must know that already,
Henrietta. He wrote to you—he told me so himself."
But having once committed herself by use of a word implying ignorance, Mrs. Frayling could hardly do otherwise than continue the deception. Explanation would be too awkward a business. The chances of detection, moreover, were infinitesimal. There were things she meant to say which would sound far more unstudied and obvious could she keep up the fiction of ignorance. This, quickly realizing, she again and more flagrantly fibbed. The voluntary lie acts as a tonic giving you—for the moment at least—most comforting conceit of your own courage and perspicacity. And Henrietta just now stood in need of a tonic. She had been strangely overcome by the force of her own emotion—an accident which rarely happened to her and which she very cordially detested when it did.
"Someone must have omitted to post the letter, then," she said, with a suitable air of annoyance. "How exceedingly careless—unless it has not been sent over from the hotel to the Pavilion. I have been obliged, more than once, to complain of the hall porter's very casual delivery of my letters. I will make enquiries directly, if I don't find it on my return. But this is all by the way. Tell me, dearest child, what is the reason of Colonel Carteret's leaving so suddenly? Is it not surprisingly unexpected?"