The book in his hands, Basset had hastened to be rid of it. Cynically he had told himself that he did so, lest he too might give way to the ignoble impulse to withhold it. Audley was his rival, but that he might have forgiven, as men forgive great wrongs and in time smile on their enemies. But the little wrongs, who can forgive these—the slight, the sneer, the assumption of superiority, the upper hand lightly taken and insolently held?
Not Peter Basset, at a moment when he was being tried almost beyond bearing. For every day, between the finding of the body and the funeral, and often more than once in the day he had to see Mary, he had to advise her, he had—for there was no one else—to explain matters to her, to bear her company. He had to quit this meeting and that Ordinary—for election business stops for no man—and to go to her. He had to find her alone and to see her face light up at his entrance; he had to look back, and to see her watch him as he rode from the door. Nor when he was absent from the Gatehouse was it any better; nay, it was worse. For then he was forced to think of her as alone and sad, he had to picture her brooding over the fire, he had to fancy her at her solitary meals. And alike, with her or away from her, he had to damp down the old passion, as well as the new regret that each day and each hour and every kind look on her part fanned into a flame. Nor was even this all; every day he saw that she grew more grave, daily he saw her color fading, and he did not know what qualms she masked, what nightmares she might be suffering in that empty house—nay, what cause for unhappiness she might be hiding. At last—it was the afternoon before the funeral—he could bear it no longer, and he spoke.
“You ought not to be here!” he said bluntly. “Why doesn’t Audley fetch you away?” He was standing before the fire drawing on his gloves as he prepared to leave. The room was full of shadows, for he had chosen a time when she could not see his face.
She tried to fence with him. “I am afraid,” she said, “that some formalities will be necessary before he can do that.”
“Then why is he not here?” he retorted. “Or why doesn’t he send some one to be with you? You ought not to be alone. Mrs. Jenkinson at The Butterflies—she’s a good soul—you know her?”
“Yes.”
“She’d come at a word. I know it’s not my business——”
“Or you would go about it, I am sure,” she replied gently, “with as much respect to my wishes as Lord Audley shows.”
“Your wishes? But why—why do you wish——”
“Why do I wish to be alone?” she answered. “Because I owe something to my uncle. Because I owe him a little thought and some remembrance. He made my old life for me—would you have me begin the new one before he is in the grave? This was his house—would you have me entertain Lord Audley in it?” She stood up, slender and straight, with the table between them—and he did not guess that her knees were trembling. “Please to understand,” she continued, “that Lord Audley and I are entirely at one in this. We have our lives before us, and it were indeed selfish of us, and ungrateful of me, if we grudged a few days to remembrance. As selfish,” she continued bravely—and he did not know that she braced herself anew—“as if I were ever to forget the friend who was his friend, whose kindness has never failed me, whose loyalty has never—” she broke down there. She could not go on.