“Oh yes, I understand that quite well,” he replied, with a quickness that did honour both to him and to her.
There was a pause.
“I burned it at once,” she added.
“Oh!” There was no shade of feeling in the monosyllable. “I remember the letter you speak of,” he went on very quietly; “what I cannot understand is why you have told me of it? I can hardly think it was for the sake of saying something unpleasant.”
“It was because I am fond of Lady Susan,” she said desperately.
In the silence that followed it seemed to her as though she had thrown a heavy stone into deep water, without hope of result beyond the broken mirror and the flagging ripple.
CHAPTER XI
Next morning, while the last of three white frosts was vanishing from the grass, Hugh stood in the hall at French’s Court, pinning a bunch of violets into his red coat. Tops and waistcoat, tie and pin, obeyed to a hair-breadth the minute rigour of male fashion in the hunting-field, the violets made their bold yet not exasperating contrast with the scarlet, and Hugh’s pale face was almost picturesque in its gay and vivid setting. Taking up his flask, he went to the dining-room and filled it at the sideboard with old liqueur brandy; he poured out a glass from the same bottle, and was going to raise it to his lips, when he heard voices outside the open door. One of the voices was his wife’s, and he heard it with that sense of severance from her affairs that had been his since he and his gun-cases had reappeared at French’s Court the evening before. He was not usually sensitive to social temperatures, but it seemed to him that there was something flat and ungenial about the whole party. Bunbury was spasmodically agreeable, Slaney was silent, his wife was heavy-eyed and listless; he encouraged and nurtured the bitter conviction that no one wanted him.
“I suppose you’re riding Gambler to-day?” Major Bunbury was saying to some one in the hall.
“No,” replied Lady Susan, speaking rather quickly and indistinctly, “I’m riding Mr. Glasgow’s old horse, Solomon, you know. He came over last night. I’ve always wanted to try him.”