But he takes not the slightest notice; and presently, after a few half whispered sentences, he and Pauline rise together for the ostensible purpose of examining some early rose-blooms in the pleasure-ground, leaving her alone.
"Horrid man!" she mutters indignantly. "How can Pauline stand him? She knows perfectly well too that Tom objects to his coming here. If his morals are as bad as his manners, I don't wonder he does, I'm sure! And, oh dear me, I remember the days when I used to imagine a Guardsman an angel of fascination and manly grace, something every girl must fall down before and worship at the first glance, not an insolent goat-faced clown like—Well, I am getting bitter! I hope he'll go soon, in time for me to go over that bill with Pauline before Tom returns. I wonder has he seen it yet? If he has, I shall not be able to look him in the face. One hundred and eighty-four pounds! More than the whole six of us had to live on for two years! One hundred and eighty-four pounds! It grows bigger every time I think of it. One—"
"Addie, Addie, my love!"
She starts, and then leans forward in an attitude of breathless, puzzled expectancy, her hands clasped. Was she dreaming? Did her senses deceive her? Surely a voice whispered her name, a voice that takes her back with a thrill of reluctant pain to a summer night four years ago.
She turns and finds herself clasped in a man's arms, feels a shower of kisses falling on her scared and shrinking face.
CHAPTER XXII.
Armstrong is detained at his office until late this evening. Feeling inclined for exercise after his long sedentary day, he gets out of the trap near the place where he found Addie lying under the tree, and, walking across the grove, enters the shrubbery path bordering the tennis-ground, where the sound of voices at the further end attracts his attention. Dusk has already fallen, but he can clearly distinguish the figures of a man and woman walking arm-in-arm in front of him. His face darkens.
"Miss Pauline and one of her admirers," he mutters contemptuously. "She is carrying matters a little too far. I will let her know that these twilight rambles are not to my taste, and that as long as she remains an inmate of my house she must restrict her flirtations to more decorous hours—at least, out of doors."
He walks quickly after the pair along the mossy sward, then suddenly, when within thirty yards of them, he stops short and shrinks instinctively behind the sheltering ash-boughs, for he sees that the girl is not Pauline, but his own wife, and that her hands are clasped with an appearance of affectionate abandon on the arms of a man who, as well as he can make out in the gloom, is a perfect stranger.