"I'm a little bothered," he said. "Look here, mother; supposing—well, supposing a man were horribly, irretrievably, fond of a woman,—and would be a regular cur if he let her know;—would you condemn him for building up a kind of rampart, playing with fire that he knew couldn't burn him, to keep him from losing his head, and hurting the thing he—the thing that was precious to him? Oh, damn it all, you can't possibly understand."
It was plain as a pikestaff. Lady Henrietta was justified of her mischief-making. Something must be done. There was law and order in any tactics that might vex the siren who was still robbing her of her boy. Never in this world would there be peace between her and Julia.
"If," she said, "you want me to believe that you married Susan to stick her up like a ninepin between you and a woman who threw you over, who can't bear us to imagine you are consoled——!"
She broke off indignantly, but Barnaby would not quarrel. He got up and laid his hand caressingly on her shoulder.
"Don't excite yourself, mother," he said. "I was talking nonsense. So are you.... If I were you I wouldn't meddle. It's more dangerous than you know."
Then he went away to change out of his hunting clothes, and she watched his departure with a wistful exasperation, lying back on her sofa.
"What a nuisance a heart is!" she said to herself. "He would have had it out with me but for that."
CHAPTER VII
Susan was in the garden.