‘Mr. Lenox, how long have you known Sir Mark Forsyth? Are you acquaintances or friends?’
Maurice considered that point without removing his eyes from the heather. ‘Rather more than acquaintances, I should say, and on the way to becoming friends. I’ve known him two years on and off. But I’ve never yet been to Wynchcombe Friars, his Hampshire place. He’s crazy about it. They say you never know the real Forsyth till you’ve seen him there. I’m going there this autumn, to be converted from Futurism and Experimental Art in general! At least that’s his notion. He’s a splendid chap. Chock-full of ideas. A bit reactionary, some of them. He’s dead against what we should call industrial progress, and what he calls sacrificing the man to the machine. They’ve got a great scheme on, he and his mother and Macnair, for joining up all the scattered attempts at reviving handicrafts and guilds⸺’
‘Oh, bother their crafts and guilds!’ Miss O’Neill broke in with scant ceremony. ‘Sheer fads! Result of riches and idleness. I want to know is he the kind of man to take up a girl violently—you see how it’s been—just to pass the time?’
‘No!’ Maurice rapped out the negative with unusual vehemence. ‘As a matter of fact, I believe he intends to offer her his heart and his title and all his worldly goods before we get back to them.’
Miss O’Neill started visibly. ‘What—on a fortnight’s acquaintance?’
‘Yes. A trifle steep, isn’t it? And, for a man in his position, a wife’s a rather important item.’
‘Something more than an amiable housekeeper—is that your meaning?’ Miss O’Neill rounded on him, a flash of temper in her eyes. ‘I thought better of you, Mr. Lenox. But you’re all alike in the grain. A man in Sir Mark’s position must have a beautiful figure-head for his dinner-table: a graceful, accommodating doll, that he can hang with jewels and silks and satins. But my Bel’s no doll-woman, for all her soft manners and sweet temper. No doubt he flatters himself that, in a fortnight, he’s read her from cover to cover: and he’ll be telling her, sure as fate, that he’s the one man on earth to make her happy, and think he’s paying her the compliment of her life into the bargain!’
Good-natured Maurice began to feel that Forsyth had been a trifle inconsiderate, saddling him with a virago whom he was quite at a loss how to appease.
‘Well—compliment or no, she’s free to refuse him,’ he remarked soothingly; ‘and after all, it’s the natural thing.’
Miss O’Neill pounced on the words almost before they were out. ‘Of course it’s the natural thing for a man like Sir Mark—spoilt by his mother, one can see with half an eye—to snatch at a beautiful woman. And where does a girl’s freedom come in when a man dazzles her brain with extravagant lover’s talk? Besides—he’s rich. She’s poor. It almost amounts to bribery. I hate the whole thing. I came away for her sake, to give her a chance of knowing him better, just in case⸺But if it’s true, what you say, I shall go straight down again⸺’