And she had replied:
“I don’t want pearls, palaces or motor-cars. They’re all symbols, my dear, of the Unreal. Ordinary comfort of food and warmth and decent clothes—yes. But that’s all. So long as you string my heart with love—and my mind with noble thoughts.”
She longed passionately to live with him, above herself. And yet, here at the outset, was she living below herself. She would wake in the morning and, sleepless, grow hot and clammy at the thought of her deception. And the whole of her Medlow life drifted miserably through her consciousness: the schoolgirl’s bitter resentment of the supercilious nose in the air attitude of the passing crocodile of Blair Park; of the vicar’s daughters’ condescending nod—he was a Canon of somewhere and an “Honourable” to boot—at “that pretty Miss Gale”; her recognition, when she came to years of sense, of the social gulf between her family and the neighbouring gentry whose lives, with their tennis parties and dances and social doings, seemed so desirable and so remote. To bring her wonderful husband into that world of “homely folk,” the excellent, but uncultivated Trivetts, the more important tradespeople, the managers of the mills, the masters of the County School, her father’s world, and to see him rigidly excluded from that to which her mother and he himself belonged, was more than she could bear. She tortured herself with the new problem of snobbery—rating herself, in this respect, beneath Lydia, who was frankly cynical as to both her own antecedents and her late husband’s social standing. But for the life of her she could not bring herself to explain to Alexis the real impossibility of Medlow. When she tried, she found that his foreign upbringing failed to seize the fine shade of her suggestion.
His gay carelessness eventually lulled her conscience. As soon as Olifant had done with “The Towers,” they could transfer the furniture to whatever habitation they chose and let the house.
“I feel you couldn’t find it in your heart to sell the old place,” he said. “Besides—who knows—one of these days——”
She thought him the most delicately perceptive of men.
“No, dear,” she said, her cheek against his. “I couldn’t sell it.”
Then all Medlow danger was over. She breathed freely. But still—the little cloud of deceit hung over her serene mind and cast ever so tiny a shadow over her rapturous life.
They had been four weeks in the deliciously sure uncertainty of “Quien Sabe,” when, one noon while they were drying themselves in the hot sand and sunshine of their tiny bay, after a swim, Myra came down gaunt through the whin-covered hill-side with a telegram in her hand. With the perversity of her non-recognition of the household paramountcy of her master, she handed the envelope to Olivia. The name was just “Triona.” Olivia was about to open it instinctively when Alexis started to a sitting position, and, with an eager glance, held out his hand.
“I think it’s for me. I was expecting it. Do you mind?”