Without another word he subsided again into his chair, and fell to reading the paper. Gundred retired to her settle, feeling how glad she ought to feel thus triumphantly to have vindicated her sense of decency. But her satisfaction was hollow; her soul had received a shock when her hands had been so suddenly dropped—a nasty jarring shock such as one receives in a dream, stepping into vacancy where one had expected solid ground. Her hands fell slowly to her sides, cheated, frustrated; then set languidly about opening her letters, as if diverted from their proper use. It was a minute or two before she could concentrate her attention. In her turn she experienced something of that snubbed, humiliated sensation which she had so often inflicted on her husband. Then good training conquered personal disappointment, and she began to read. In an instant her attention was chained.
‘Kingston,’ she cried, looking up, ‘here is a letter from Isabel Darrell, of all people in the world. She wants to pay us a visit. Why, I declare,’ she added, ‘Isabel writes from London. I must say she loses no time.’
‘Isabel Darrell?’ questioned Kingston. ‘Who is she, and what does she want with us—especially now, when we are supposed to be on our honeymoon?’
‘My cousin,’ Gundred reminded him. ‘Her mother was my father’s sister, Isabel Mortimer. Don’t you remember, I told you about her? Poor Aunt Isabel! She married a dreadful man who came over from Australia or New Zealand, and took her back there, and led her a most terrible life, I am afraid. Aunt Isabel died three years ago, and now her husband seems to have died, too, and the daughter has come to England to see her own people. We shall have to have her here, Kingston. I must write at once. I’ll let her have a line by this morning’s post. But I do wish Aunt Agnes ever wrote letters: we ought to have heard of Isabel’s arrival at least a week ago. We must certainly send for her at once.’
Gundred wanted her husband to protest against this sacrifice of their privacy, perhaps to forbid it. If he had done so, she would have resisted his objections, and eventually have made a wifely virtue of yielding to them. But the best of people are not without their small ungenerosities, and Kingston Darnley was in a mood to punish his wife for her obstinate chilliness. If their privacy were to give no real intimacy, it might just as well cease.
‘Capital!’ said Kingston. ‘We want someone to liven us up a bit. Write to your cousin and tell her to come here at once. She’ll be someone for you to talk to.’
‘Won’t she—yes?’ assented Gundred, wounded indeed, but quite successful in concealing the fact. ‘Poor thing! I will send her a wire. She can be here by dinner-time. How odd of her, though, to think one likes being interrupted on one’s honeymoon! Do you suppose they do that kind of thing in the colonies?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I dare say she heard we had been here for more than a fortnight, and thought we must have had about enough of it.’
‘Well, it will be very nice. Would you like to see her letter?’
‘I don’t mind,’ answered Kingston indifferently. In the circumstances wild horses would not have forced him to confess how much he resented the invasion. Not even to himself would he confess it. But already he had conceived a keen dislike for his cousin, Isabel Darrell.