"I dare say he is afraid to trust everything to his curates," observed
Malling, prosaically.
"He needn't be—now," she replied.
In that "now," as she said it, there lay surely a whole history. Malling understood that Lady Sophia, suddenly perhaps, had given her husband up. Since Malling had first encountered her she had cried, "Le roi est mort!" in her heart. The way she had just uttered the word "now" made Malling wonder whether she was not about to utter the supplementary cry, "Vive le roi!"
As he looked at her, with this wonder in his mind, Henry Chichester came into the room.
There was an expression of profound sadness on his face, which seemed to dignify it, to make it more powerful, more manly, than it had been. The choir-boy look was gone. Malling of course knew how very much expression can change a human being; nevertheless, he was startled by the alteration in the curate's outward man. It seemed, to use the rector's phrase, that he had "shed his character." And now, perhaps, the new character, mysteriously using matter as the vehicle of its manifestation, was beginning to appear to the eyes of men. He showed no surprise at the sight of Malling, but rather a faint, though definite, pleasure. The way in which Lady Sophia greeted him was a revelation to Malling, and a curious exhibition of feminine psychology.
She looked up at him from the low chair in which she was sitting, gave him her left hand, and said, "Are you very tired?" That was all. Yet it would have been impossible to express more clearly a woman's mental, not affectional, subjugation by a man, her instinctive yielding to power, her respect for authority, her recognition that the master of her master had come into the room.
Her "Vive le roi!" was said.
Chichester accepted Lady Sophia's subtle homage with an air of unconsciousness. His interior melancholy seemed to lift him above the small things that flatter small men. He acknowledged that he was tired, and would be glad of tea. He had been down in the East End. The rector had asked him to talk over something with Mr. Carlile of the Church Army.
"You mean that you suggested to the rector that it would be wise to see
Mr. Carlile," said Lady Sophia.
"Is the rector coming in to tea?" asked Chichester.