“I see,” he replied, consideringly. “Thank you for the suggestion. It can do no harm to be prepared. But I flatter myself if any one can steer their way through a tangle of the kind, I can do so. Thanks, Michael, all the same,” and with his serenity quite restored, he got up from the breakfast-table.
The expression of Michael’s face when he found himself alone grew hard and dark.
“What evil genius,” he said to himself, “brought me down here at this crisis? I wish I were at the antipodes! I almost think I shall go back to town at once, but—it is just possible that, mixed up as I am in this affair, I may be of use to her. Heaven knows what is going to come of it all! That unlucky secret of hers, and Bernard’s smallness of character! Will she be disillusioned? or does he really care enough for her to rise above himself? And will she perhaps spend the rest of her life in worshipping an ideal and never find out her mistake? Such things have been with such a woman.” He sighed and turned away from the window where he had been standing.
“No,” he said, “I’ll stay and see it out.”
That same afternoon, when writing in the room which at Merle was always considered his own, Michael heard through the open window the sound of voices on the terrace below. One he recognised immediately as belonging to Mrs Marmaduke Headfort, then a man’s voice, which he supposed to be that of her husband; Michael had never met Captain Headfort. Himself of course unobserved, he approached the window. Yes, there was a third visitor. It was the first time he had seen Miss Raynsworth in her own character, and suddenly there flashed upon him the full strangeness of the position.
“I shall have to be introduced to her,” he thought. “Will little Mrs Headfort be equal to it? She knows at least that her sister and I were travelling companions, even if she has been told no more as to my part in it. And how will the girl herself stand it? I know how essentially candid she must be. I must do my best to make it as little awkward as possible. They have come over to tea, no doubt; I will keep out of the way till we meet in the drawing-room.”
A moment or two later his cousin put his head in at the door.
“The Headforts are here, Michael,” he said. “We are going through the woods to the old fish-ponds; do you care to come or not?”
Michael shook his head.
“I am not quite ready,” he said; “you’ll be back to tea, I suppose? You can introduce me to your friends then. To Miss Raynsworth and Headfort, I mean—Mrs Headfort of course I know.”