“It doesn’t sound frightfully thrilling to me, and I’m under the impression you’re only trumping it up to conceal some scandalous amour with a ballet-girl.”
Miss Ley’s visit to Barnes seemed welcome neither to Jenny nor to Basil, who looked harassed and unhappy, and only with a visible effort assumed a cheerful manner when he addressed his wife. Jenny was still in bed, very weak and ill, but Miss Ley, who had never before seen her, was surprised at her great beauty; her face, whiter than the pillows against which it rested, had a very touching pathos, and, notwithstanding all that had gone before, that winsome, innocent sweetness which has occasioned the comparison of English maidens to the English rose. The observant woman noticed also the painful, questioning anxiety with which Jenny continually glanced at her husband, as though pitifully dreading some unmerited reproach.
“I hope you like my wife,” said Basil, when he accompanied Miss Ley downstairs.
“Poor thing! She seems to me like a lovely bird imprisoned by fate within the four walls of practical life, who should by rights sing careless songs under the open skies. I’m afraid you’ll be very unkind to her.”
“Why?” he asked, not without resentment.
“My dear, you’ll make her live up to your blue china teapot. The world might be so much happier if people wouldn’t insist on acting up to their principles.”
Mrs. Bush had been hurriedly sent for when Jenny’s condition seemed dangerous, but in her distress and excitement had sought comfort in Basil’s whisky bottle to such an extent that he was obliged to beg her to return to her own home. The scene was not edifying. Surmising an alcoholic tendency, Kent, two or three days after her arrival, locked the sideboard and removed the key. But in a little while the servant came to him.
“If you please, sir, Mrs. Bush says, can she ’ave the whisky; she’s not feelin’ very well.”
“I’ll go to her.”
Mrs. Bush sat in the dining-room with folded hands, doing her utmost to express on a healthy countenance maternal anxiety, indisposition, and ruffled dignity. She was not vastly pleased to see her son-in-law instead of the expected maid.