The horror inspired by her cool, confident declaration choked his utterance. He raised his riding crop in his clenched fist as though he were impelled to strike her. "You—you—" he articulated, but no suitable stigma was evolved by his seething brain. His arm fell, but he stood with set teeth and bristling mien, like a wild boar at bay.
His fury had the effect of enhancing Lydia's appearance of calm. "There is no use in getting excited. I'm only telling you what is likely to happen if we have recourse to desperate measures. She's a girl, and I brought her into the world—had all the stress of doing so. Why shouldn't I have her? I've heard lawyers say that when parents separate the courts consider what is for the best good of the children. Surely it is for the best good of a baby girl of two that she should go with her mother. That's the modern social view, Herbert, and a man has to make the best of it."
As she proceeded Lydia had warmed to the plausible justice of her argument. Recognizing that she had put herself in the best possible position for the time being, she rose to go. Maxwell, gnawing at his lips, stood pondering her dire words. The appalling intimation that he might lose his precious child had numbed his senses with dread. He knew his wife's cleverness, and that there must be some truth in her statement. Might she not even at the moment be premeditating an attempt to carry her away? Every other thought became at once subordinate to his resolve to safeguard his treasure. As though he suspected that his wife had risen under a crafty impulse to get the start of him, he blocked her pathway by stepping between her and the door.
"I forbid you to touch her," he said frowningly. "She shall never leave this house. I am going to give my orders now and they will be obeyed."
Maxwell stood for a moment as though waiting to see what response this challenge would elicit, then, with a forbidding nod, he strode from the room and shut the door after him.
His departure was a relief to Lydia. All she had desired was to be alone. She dropped again upon the sofa and sat looking into space. There was only one course: she must have an understanding with Harry Spencer. What would he say? What was he prepared to do for her sake? She thought to herself, "He said once that my time would come. It has come, and, as he prophesied, I am just like the others—only more so. More so because they might be ready to give him up; they might not have the courage to persevere and sacrifice everything else for the one thing which is worth while—love. And I thought it would never come—that I was cold, as Herbert says, and likely to be bored all my life. Now, against my creed, against my will it has come, and I cannot do without him." For a moment she sat in reverie, then murmuring, "I must know—and the sooner the better," she stepped to the desk with an impulsive movement and wrote.
VII
Lydia's note was a summons to Spencer to go to drive with her on the following morning. When he arrived she was ready with her village cart and a fast cob. Regardless of appearances, her project was to seek some distant spot where they would not be interrupted. The woods near Duck Pond—in which they had passed pleasant hours together twice already—commended themselves to her, and thither she directed their course under the mellow October sunshine. She spoke of their jaunt as a picnic, the edible manifestations of which she disclosed to him stowed in neat packages behind. But she vouchsafed no immediate explanation of the true purpose of this impromptu expedition. She was biding her time until they should walk together in the sylvan paths, free from all danger of interference. Since matters were approaching a climax, she was glad also to give herself up for the moment to the glamour of sitting at his side and realizing their affinity. Of all the men of her acquaintance he was the only one who had never bored her; who seemed to divine and cater to her moods; who amused her when she craved entertainment, and was alive to the precious value of opportune silence. He seemed to her possessed of infinite tact—and Lydia experienced an increasing repugnance when her social sensibilities were jarred. That had been one great trouble with Maxwell; he was forever doing the right thing in the wrong way. His very endearments were awkward, whereas her present companion's slightest gallantry gave a pleasant fillip to her blood.