"I daresay," said George, quietly. "But I never meant to make any mystery. Something you said about Lady Maxwell put me off telling you—then. I thought I would wait till we got home."
They were in George's study—the usual back-room on the ground-floor, which George could not find time to make comfortable, while Letty had never turned her attention to it. Tressady was leaning against the mantelpiece. He had turned up a solitary electric light, and in the cold glare of it Letty was sitting opposite to him, angrily upright. The ugly light had effaced the half-tones of the face and deepened the lines of it, while it had taken all the grace from her extravagant dress and tumbled flowers. She seemed to have lost her prettiness.
"Something I said about Lady Maxwell?" she repeated scornfully. "Why shouldn't I say what I like about Lady Maxwell? What does she matter either to you or to me that I should not laugh at her if I please? Everybody laughs at her."
"I don't think so," said Tressady, quietly. "I have seen her to-night in a curious and touching scene—in a meeting of very poor people. She tried to make a speech, by the way, and spoke badly. She did not carry the meeting with her, and towards the end it got noisy. As we came out she was struck with a stone, and I got a hansom for her, and drove her home to St. James's Square. We were just turning into the Square when Harding saw us. I happened to be with her in the crowd when the stone hit her. What do you suppose I could do but bring her home?"
"Why did you go? and why didn't you tell me at once?"
"Why did I go?" Tressady hesitated, then looked down upon his wife. "Well!—I suppose I went because Lady Maxwell is very interesting to watch—because she is sympathetic and generous, and it stirs one's mind to talk to her."
"Not at all!" cried Letty, passionately. "You went because she is handsome—because she is just a superior kind of flirt. She is always making women anxious about their husbands under this pretence of politics. Heaps of women hate her, and are afraid of her."
She was very white, and could hardly save herself from the tears of excitement. Yet what was working in her was not so much Harding Watton's story as this new and strange manner of her husband's. She had sat haughtily silent in the carriage on their way home, fully expecting him to question her—to explain, entreat, excuse himself, as he had generally been ready to do whenever she chose to make a quarrel. But he, too, said nothing, and she could not make up her mind how to begin. Then, as soon as they were shut into his room her anger had broken out, and he had not yet begun to caress and appease her. Her surprise had brought with it a kind of shock. What was the matter? Why was she not mistress as usual?
As she made her remark about Marcella, Tressady smiled a little, and played with a cigarette he had taken up.
"Whom do you mean?" he asked her. "One often hears these things said of her in the vague, and never with any details. I myself don't believe it. Harding, of course, believes anything to her disadvantage."