“Was the game worth the candle?” she asked, as they went through the terrace gates. “You had said a minute before, the Lord would do well to remove the child.”
“Probably not, but when a man happens to be in a desperate hurry he can’t stop to go all round a question. I must go to the stables myself, there is something wrong with Boccaccio’s off hoof. Shall I help you up the steps—you look white?”
“No, thank you—I wish—I wish—” she said slowly; she never finished her sentence, but went wearily into the house without turning her head.
“I wish to Heaven I knew what he thinks of it all—how much he minds!” she whispered to herself, with noiseless passion, as soon as she got into her room.
“Even in this dead-level life a big thing has come and gone, and has left me precisely as it found me.”
She smote her hands together sharply, then she rang for her maid; she dared not be alone, her control over herself was on its last legs.
If she had looked into Strange’s den half an hour later she might have got some idea of how much he minded, but he ate a good dinner and afterwards tied flies with a steady hand, and made several quite decent jokes as he watched her standing at the open window, looking with careless interest at his work.
She wore a Watteau gown of pale primrose, with purple pansies scattered here and there over it; she held a great yellow fan in her hand and stood bathed in the yellow twilight.
“If I boxed her ears,” he thought, “I wonder what she would do or say? Any way it couldn’t hurt her more than those devilish experiments of hers hurt me. I have a good mind to try—if her ears weren’t altogether so perfect I swear I would. Ah, my good girl, you are playing with fire!”
He paused to fix a wren’s tail feather in its place.