"Dying?" said George to himself. "Poor devil! he must hate something."
* * * * *
He sped up the hill, and found Letty still on the sofa and in the last pages of her novel. She did not resent his absence apparently,—a freedom, so far, from small exaction for which he inwardly thanked her. Still, from the moment that she raised her eyes as he came in, he saw that if she was not angry with him for leaving her alone, her mind was still as sore as ever against him and fortune on other accounts—and his revived ardour drooped. He gave her an account of his adventures, but she was neither inquiring nor sympathetic; and her manner all the evening had a nervous dryness that took away the pleasure of their tête-à-tête. Any old friend of Letty's, indeed, could hardly have failed to ask what had become of that small tinkling charm of manner, that girlish flippancy and repartee, that had counted for so much in George's first impressions of her? They were no sooner engaged than it had begun to wane. Was it like the bird or the flower, that adorns itself only for the wooing time, and sinks into relative dinginess when the mating effort is over?
On this particular evening, indeed, she was really absorbed half the time in gloomy thoughts of Lady Tressady's behaviour and the poorness of her own prospects. She lay on the sofa again after dinner—her white slimness and bright hair showing delicately against the cushions—playing still with her novel, while George read the newspapers. Sometimes she glanced at him unsteadily, with a pinching of the lips. But it was not her way to invite a scene.
Late at night he went up to his dressing-room.
As he entered it Letty was talking to her maid. He stopped involuntarily in the darkness of his own room, and listened. What a contrast between this Letty and the Letty of the drawing-room! They were chattering fast, discussing Lady Tressady, and Lady Tressady's gowns, and Lady Tressady's affairs. What eagerness, what malice, what feminine subtlety and acuteuess! After listening for a few seconds, it seemed to him as though a score of new and ugly lights had been thrown alike upon his mother and on human nature. He stole away again without revealing himself.
When he returned the room was nearly dark, and Letty was lying high against her pillows, waiting for him. Suddenly, after she had sent her maid away, she had felt depressed and miserable, and had begun to cry. And for some reason hardly clear to herself she had lain pining for George's footstep. When he came in she looked at him with eyes still wet, reproaching him gently for being late.
In the dim light, surrounded with lace and whiteness, she was a pretty vision; and George stood beside her, responding and caressing.
But that black depth in his nature, of which he had spoken to her—which he had married to forget—was, none the less, all ruffled and vocal. For the first time since Letty had consented to marry him he did not think or say to himself, as he looked at her, that he was a lucky man, and had done everything for the best.