He released her and had the satisfaction, for once, of perceiving that she believed he meant what he said. Presumably she came to the conclusion that, in the circumstances, discretion was the better part of valour, for she made no attempt to challenge his determination in the matter.
At the same time, unknown to him, she compelled Jean to pay for the silence enforced upon her at home. With a species of venom, absurdly childish in its manifestation, she essayed to excite Jean’s envy by constantly enlarging to her upon the subject of Blaise’s perfections as a husband, drawing entirely imaginary descriptions of the attention he paid her and of his constant solicitude for her welfare, and vaunting her happiness at being his wife.
“I am so proud to have won so fine and splendid a husband,” she would declare fervently. “Would you not feel the same, Miss Peterson, if you were me?”
And Jean would make answer, outwardly unmoved:
“Indeed I should. You ought to be a happy woman, Mrs. Tormarin.”
The quiet composure which Jean invariably opposed to these knat-like attacks annoyed Nesta intensely. Endowed with all the petty jealousy of a small nature, she herself, had the situation been reversed, would have found this pinprick kind of warfare insupportable, and it made her furious that her best thought-out and most spiteful efforts failed to goad Jean into any expression of either anger or distress. The “cold Englishwoman’s” armour of indifference and reserve seemed impervious to no matter what poison-tipped dart she loosed against her.
Nesta felt that, as the woman in possession, she was missing half the satisfaction in life by reason of her inability to triumph openly over the other woman—the woman without the gate. Finally, at the end of her resources of innuendo and allusion, she tried the effect of open warfare.
She had driven over to Charnwood to call and, as Claire was away, spending the afternoon with friends, Jean had perforce to entertain her undesired visitor alone. It was just as she was preparing to take her departure that Nesta launched her attack.
“You look so ill, Miss Peterson,” she remarked commiseratingly. “So pale and worn! It does not suit you, I am sure, for of course you must have been very pretty at one time for my husband to have wished to marry you.”
Jean stared at her without reply. The outrageous speech almost took her breath away, by its sheer, impudent bravado.