“The party was rather dull,” assented Sophy, who until this moment had thought it brilliant, “but there was some good music.”
“One can have that for filthy lucre at the St. James’s Hall. I adore Oscar de Lampion’s love ditties, but not at the price of perspiring in a mob of second-best people.”
“It was my fault that we went to Lady Dalborough’s,” said Sophy, remorsefully.
“Oh, I forgive anybody for going there—once. You will be wiser next year.”
His eyes were watching Eve across the table, while he talked with Sophy. She was very pale, and instead of the delicate blush rose of her complexion there were hectic spots under the eyes, which accentuated her pallor. He who once cared for her almost to the point of passion, felt a thrill of pain at seeing in a face a hint of the consumptive tendency which he had heard of about Peggy. “Those girls are all consumptive,” some village gossip had said to him, with the morbid relish of gloomy possibilities which is an outcome of village monotony. He was shocked to think that she, too, perhaps, was doomed; but the thought suggested no pity for her husband—not even that pity which would have prevented him striking at his enemy through her. The rage that consumed him knew no restraining power. If he had lived in the Middle Ages that rage would have meant murder—but bloodshed in the nineteenth century involves too many inconvenient possibilities to be thought of lightly by a man of landed estate. It means throwing up everything for the rapture of gratified revenge—melting all the pearls of life into one fiery draught.
“Why is not Vansittart with you?” he asked Sophy, still looking at Eve.
“He had business in the City this morning.”
“Business—in the City? What could take Vansittart to the City? That seems quite out of his line.”
“Yes, it does, don’t it,” said Sophy, impressed by the significance of his tone, which seemed to veil a deeper meaning. “What should a Hampshire squire have to do in the City?”
Sefton did not dwell upon the question. He saw that he had awakened vague suspicions in Sophy’s mind, the first faint hint of a domestic mystery. He talked of other things—of people—lightly, delightfully, Sophy thought. He told her of two marriages which had just occurred, on the summit of the fashionable mountain—took her behind the scenes, as it were, and introduced her to the inner life of the chief actors in those elegant ceremonials—the impecunious father of one bride selling his daughter to a man she hated, the angry mother of the bridegroom in the other marriage raging against the girl her son had chosen.