Mrs. O'Rane tried to seem pleased by the compliment when she was only thankful for the warning.
"I'd better go to the school, I think," she said. "They may say I'm not good enough, and I don't like disappointing people. Thanks most awfully. Good-bye."
She hurried away as a portly figure in uniform clattered down the steps, screwing an eye-glass in place, while his driver stiffened to attention.
2
On the morning after my council of war with the Oakleighs, I telegraphed to Dainton that I was motoring down and suggested that I should pick him up at Crowley Court and drive him into Melton for an interview with O'Rane. He must have guessed, I should have thought, that my mission overnight had failed, but I could see, when we met, that he and his wife were emptily hoping. Both were waiting at the door when I arrived; both looked past me into the empty car, as I got out.
"You couldn't get her to come?" Dainton enquired anxiously. "Ah!"
He was a flabby, ineffectual little man at the best of times, and the shock had made him pathetically more flabby. God knows! it was not my tragedy, and I cannot boast that I am capable of an unusually brave show under affliction, but I wanted to make Dainton throw out his chest and hold his head up—and do some hard manual work and a few physical exercises. I wished, for her elevation, too, that his daughter could see the state to which she had reduced him; she was not sufficiently clever or detached to realise how much his limp indulgence had contributed to her pampered, neurotic wilfulness, but the consequences were there for all to mark. Lady Dainton shewed no sign of weakness. She had not slept much, I dare swear, since her husband returned, but she was collected and equal to every demand.
"I expect we shall find lunch waiting," she said, as I came in. "We can only give you cold comfort, I'm afraid. When we turned the house into a hospital, Roger and I only kept two rooms for ourselves, so, if you find my nurses running in to see me every two minutes, don't you know?... I'm glad you were able to come, because we're spending your money here and I want you to see that we're spending it properly."
A table had been laid for us in a room which from its "Vanity Fair" cartoons, gun-cases, "Badminton Library" and estate-maps, I judged to be Dainton's study. The servants were hardly out of the room before he turned to me.
"What happened?" he demanded anxiously. "Catherine knows everything."