The belief that he had done so, at all events, depressed that young woman to such a degree as to impart an inattentive languor to her nightly dancing lesson to Jock. That unworthy animal took a base advantage of her absent-mindedness, and executed his part of the performance on all four feet, in a shabby, ambling run, which, not even by his partial mistress, could be classified as a “trick.”
“You seem to have tired yourself with your walk,” observed Camilla, noticing the limp air of relief with which Miss Ransome subsided into a chair at the end of a display which was generally a source of unmixed enjoyment to her. “Of course, I have no wish that you should overdo yourself; there is never any sense in extremes.”
Bonnybell drooped her head in silent acquiescence. Circumstances prevented her defending herself from the charge of over-exercise by stating the fact that the longest walk she had to-day taken had been from one end of Lady Tennington’s conservatory to the other, and she felt unequal for the moment to the framing of new inventions, which one of her hearers would be perfectly aware to be such.
“Perhaps it is because the wind has not caught your face to-day,” continued Mrs. Tancred, in caustic but not hostile allusion to Bonnybell’s former explanation of her excess of bloom, “but you look pale to-night. Neither Edward—I think I may answer for you,” with a scarcely inquiring spectacled glance at her husband—“nor I will take it amiss if you feel inclined to go to bed.”
The girl accepted, with apologetic courtesy, which she tried not to make too eager. Not even the sight of the piled books by her bedside, heaped there with an intention of midnight study, could lessen the sense of relaxed tension in being alone. She was tired, dispirited, anxious, with sore disquiet for the future.
Edward knew that she was a liar, and hated her for being one. More shame for him! If he had been in her grievous straits, he would have lied too. It was very unsympathetic and borné of him not to understand that! Now that Charlie Landon was aware that she was in the neighbourhood, he would never leave her in peace. Did she not read an intention of persecution in the baffled anger of his face when it was made clear to him by Flora that his escort was to be dispensed with?
Yes, the future was heavy with clouds, and she regarded it, as has been said, with some disquiet. Yet her repentance for the past was by no means complete. If Edward and Charlie—unnatural alliance of names!—weighed down one scale of the balance, did not Toby in the other make it greatly out-dip them? The campaign against Toby—hitherto existing only in aspiration and intention—had passed into the domain of fact. It had really and seriously opened, and how artistically too, by that sudden inspiration or an appeal for help. A stroke of such genius had enabled her to skip over at least a dozen preliminary steps, and rushed him into the propitious situation of benefactor and rescuer before he knew where he was.
“Never in my life have I managed to get hold of anything good or pleasant without having to pay heavily for it,” she said to herself in bitter retrospect, “and I suppose that it will always be so; but, at all events, this time I have something to show for my efforts! ‘Quite safe to walk anywhere between the belt of firs on the left of the big covert and the group of Spanish chestnuts near the gazebo.’ Quite safe for me, I suppose he meant! I would not swear that it was quite as safe for him!”
She fell asleep with an angelic smile on her parted lips at the thought of Toby’s insecurity, the pile of unopened books forgotten beside her.
An hour later a figure, who had carefully chosen that one of the electric burners to turn up whose light would not fall on the sleeper’s face, stood by Bonnybell’s bedside.