They were coming back, those two. They had not prolonged their tête-à-tête. The aspect of affairs was not quite so black as it had seemed ten minutes ago. He did not purposely listen to what they were saying. The sharp bend of the path, screened at this point by a clump of hazels, divided him from them. Short of calling out to them to warn them of his vicinity he could not have avoided hearing what he did hear: only five short sentences.
“I am very sorry. It was a false scent,” said Mr. Sefton.
“And we are no nearer knowing anything?”
“No nearer. I sincerely regret your disappointment.”
There was a lingering tenderness in his tone that made Vansittart feel a touch of the original savage that lives in all of us—a rush of boiling blood to brain and heart which hints at the hereditary taint transmitted by bloodthirsty ancestors. A few more steps and he and Miss Marchant were face to face, as she and her companion turned the corner of the hazel clump. She looked at him piteously through a veil of tears as they passed each other. Sefton had power to make her cry. Surely that implied something more than common acquaintance, nay, even more than friendship. All the tragedy of an unhappy love affair might be in those tears.
He looked back. She and Sefton had parted company. He was talking to some men on the bank. She had joined her sisters on the ice, and was standing with her skates in her hand, as if debating whether to put them on or not.
Should he go and entreat to be allowed to kneel at her feet, and do her knightly service by buckling stiff buckles and battling with difficult straps? No, he would not be such a slave. Let Sefton wait upon her; Sefton, who had all her confidence; Sefton, who could bring tears to those lovely eyes.
Vansittart rambled off across the frozen pasture, turning his back resolutely upon the noise of many voices, the ringing of many skates.
“It was a false scent.” What could that possibly mean? How in the language of lovers could that phrase come in? A false scent. “I deeply regret your disappointment.” What disappointment? Why should she be disappointed, and Sefton regretful? In any love affair between those two there could seem no reason for disappointment. The man was free to marry whom he pleased. Did he mean honourably by this girl; or was he only fooling her with attentions which were to end in unworthy trifling? Was he taking a base advantage of her dubious position to essay the seducer’s part? From all that he had heard of Sefton’s character Vansittart doubted much that he was capable of a generous love, or that he was the kind of man to marry a girl whose father was under a cloud.
And she?—was she weak and foolish, innocently yielding her heart to a man who meant evil? or was she her father’s daughter, a schemer by instinct and inclination, like Becky Sharp? Vansittart tried to put himself in Joe Sedley’s place, tried to realize how a man may see honesty and sweet simplicity where there are only craft and finished acting. To poor vain Josh Becky had seemed all truth and girlish innocence. Only one man of all Becky’s admirers had ever thoroughly understood her, and that man was Lord Steyne.