The question was unlike Camilla, habitually severe upon gossip and incurious of her neighbours’ affairs. It was evidently born of that Sunday serenity of mind which made her wish to keep up the cheerful trickle of family talk which her own grim paucity of words and severity of aspect quenched.
Edward hesitated for a moment, and Bonnybell gasped. Too well was she acquainted with the piece of news communicated to Mr. Tancred by his friend with the cold in her head, or more probably by that mother whom she had before utilized as a cat’s-paw.
“News? Did they? Oh yes, by-the-by, they told me that Lady Tennington is leaving Tennington at once. She has had such heavy losses at bridge lately that she wants to let it on a long lease.”
“I wish her sincerely success.”
That dry comment closed the subject, and dinner passed without any nearer approach to peril.
But it was a wakeful Miss Ransome who surveyed that night, from a bed where sleep was for a long time not even sought, the dangers of the past and the perplexities of the future. Thankfulness, deep and pure, at the tidings conveyed at dinner by Edward took the first place. If Flora left the country, her abhorred guest would have no excuse remaining for frequenting it, since no other house in the neighbourhood was open to him; and not even for the pleasure of persecuting herself would Charlie face the discomforts of a country inn. What a dirty trick, and how like him, to have her shadowed! to waylay her as soon as he saw her alone and unprotected! to try to frighten her into unjustifiable promises of giving up what he knew would be the making of her, by threats and reminders! If she had been compelled to promise, if Edward had not appeared in the nick of time, much she would have kept to it! She laughed among her pillows. One advantage of her enemy’s disreputability was that, whatever he said no one would believe him! But if she had not been a fool she would have consented to the other man’s urgent entreaties to be allowed to escort her as far as the bridge, to see her safely inside the pleasure-grounds. In the dread of incurring one risk she had run head foremost into another and far more serious one. Though now safe as in the heart of a cloister, a shiver of disgusted fear at the remembrance of that hated rencounter ran over her.
Well, “All’s well that ends well.” Of course, it—the other thing—must come out now. She would have preferred that the announcement, with its attendant clamour—she gave an anticipatory chuckle of enjoyment at the thought of the Dower House faces, as she had last seen them, sitting in awful judgment upon her—should have followed, instead of preceding, Charlie’s departure from the neighbourhood. But, of course, it must come out now. Edward had behaved well on the whole, but he had not pretended to believe her cock-and-bull story.
“If I had had time, I could have made up a better one. Time is everything,” she reflected regretfully. “Charlie said one true thing. I shall be bored to death! Bored will not be the word for it! And how I hate being kissed! If I could only persuade him that I am so excessively modest that I cannot bear it just yet! The diamonds! I wonder, are they really fine, or only the usual sort of thing? The stones in the ring were good, but they are frightfully set.” Here she fell asleep.
It was on her return next day from a perfectly legitimate and safe constitutional within the limits of the garden that Miss Ransome was met by the announcement that Mr. Tancred would be glad to speak to her in the library. With no preliminary preening of her feathers, she followed the servant’s lead. Her heart rather dumped down, not from fear of the unknown, since she knew pretty well what was coming, but from a failure of exhilaration at the prospect.
Edward was standing, his graceful height seeming to be even better in keeping with the grave stateliness of the room, warmly red and brown with book-backs gently redolent of Russia leather, than usual, when contrasted with the rather fleshy and extremely agitated young man beside him.