"I hope so, too," sighed Lady Crawleigh.
If she spoke without conviction, it was because her brain was giddy with successive shocks. The secret of Dolly May's death was kept for exactly five days after the inquest. Then a gaunt woman, giving no name, demanded to see Barbara and, on hearing that she was in the country, bearded Lord Crawleigh, who promptly threatened her with attentions from the police. All previous courts of enquiry were trivial by comparison with the inquisition now erected; but, as the attack developed, Barbara's resistance developed equally, and she warned her parents that, on the day when she came of age, she would move into a house of her own where she could receive friends of every complexion and practice magic of every colour. If the form of the threat was old, its clarity and vigour were new; Barbara had less than six months to wait for her majority and independence.
Lady Crawleigh was still reeling under the shock of one scandal averted and a second in prospect, when her energies were claimed by a new problem. From an untraced source came the report that Barbara was becoming very intimate with young Waring. He had spent a week-end at the Abbey, unobtrusively burying himself in the smoking-room for most of the time; and Barbara had included him in big and small dinner-parties in Berkeley Square. Save that he was a Protestant with only the few hundreds that he earned, he was unexceptionable; Eton, New College and the bar covered past and present, and for the future he stood second in succession to Penley and his uncle's title; in temperament and character he was reported to be dull and wholly dependable. It was a paradox of Barbara's position, her mother felt, that, when the interlocked Catholic families had been ruled out, she seemed to have no associates except nonentities like Gerald Deganway and John Gaymer, who were family furniture rather than friends, or young politicians, like George Oakleigh, or literary freaks, like Mr. Arden, or the really rather dreadful people like the stout young man with all the cars, Mr. Webster, who was always getting her into one scrape or another: the less said about them, the better. Barbara was lamentably gregarious in her friendships, but in these latter days all girls were allowed so much liberty, they seemed to know so much and to be so intolerant of restraint....
Lady Crawleigh was not at present equal to a struggle on the question of religion. The Church had become unyielding about mixed marriages; that was the wretched Sonia Dainton's excuse for breaking off her engagement to Jim Loring, and, when she had nothing else to disturb her mind, Lady Crawleigh was haunted by the fear that Barbara, who was deplorably lax, would make some terrible scandal by marrying a Protestant without getting a dispensation. Of course, it would not be a true marriage, and no Catholic would consent to know her,—but it was the sort of thing that Babs would do.
The untraced rumour, like many another, travelled far before reaching those most intimately concerned. Jack Waring had devoted so many years to a middle-aged pose and the ostentatious avoidance of all social life that his own friends commented in outspoken amusement on his recantation. In the winter months of 1913 he began to appear at dances, though he still refused to take an active part. "Who's the man with Babs Neave?" quickly became "Who's the man who's always with Babs Neave?" and, before long, "Is anything going to happen about Babs Neave and Jack Waring?" Derision at the fall of a misogynist passed through speculation to resentment.
"Jack simply monopolizes Babs nowadays," complained Summertown one night in the New Year at a dance in his mother's house. He was aggrieved at being unable to attract Barbara's notice and had summoned Deganway, Arden and Oakleigh to a meeting of protest in the smoking-room. "Wonder what she sees in him," he grumbled. "He's a good fellow and all that sort of thing—capital company on a desert island, if you wanted plenty of bar shop, but he's taking all the bubble out of her. I tried to rope her in for my party at the Albert Hall, but, when she heard who was coming, she refused. Damned offensive, I thought. Said that people had been talking about her so much that she had to be very careful. And old Jack nodded—you could see she was doing it to please him; it'll be an awful chuck-away if she marries him."
"She will not marry him," Arden predicted. "If for no other reason, Lady Lilith has still to discover a heart."
"What's she doing it for, then?" asked Oakleigh. "I'm very fond of Jack, he's a thoroughly good fellow, but he's rather a bore."
"What man can choose from among a woman's motives?" demanded Arden. "Perhaps she finds a difficulty in getting rid of him. There was a time when she was certainly intrigued, when she pursued him relentlessly. Perhaps she feels a glow of respectability from his presence; one's cook, if not a cordon bleu, was recommended to one as 'a regular communicant.'... Perhaps she chose him to see what she could make of him, as le Bon Dieu chose the Jews. But she will not marry him.... One has a certain instinct."
He shook his head sagaciously and dismissed the subject. But a new mile-stone had been reached when four men could be found gathering to discuss Jack's marriage to Barbara as even a remote possibility. Similar discussions had for some weeks taken place in little groups round the walls of the ball-rooms. Lady Knightrider, who had known Jack longest and best, confided to a friend that he was an excellent influence, a man who would stand no nonsense from the girl; he was fearless and unmoved by Barbara's tantrums and had once spoken very sensibly when she revived the absurd project of leaving her parents and taking a house by herself. That evening Phyllis Knightrider epitomised and retailed a conversation which she had not been intended to hear by saying to Barbara, as they drove to the dance, "Mother's quite made up her mind that you ought to marry Jack Waring. She says he's the only man she knows who can keep you in order."