He shook his head.
“I wouldn’t have one for worlds,” he answered with decision, “unless I could get one to undertake the duties of free will. What! To have a professional secretary fingering my papers, and handling my treasures coldly, because it was his or her duty to do it!” And with a little playful assumption of horror, he added: “Do you know, I really think it would injure the pictures and the china too, to be subjected to the perfunctory care of some one specially engaged to look after them? No. I’m fanciful about my treasures. Whatever work is done in connection with them, must be done for love.”
The ingenuous words struck a responsive chord within the breast of Rhoda, and she did not say a word.
But the implied compliment to her thoughtful help was treasured up in her heart, and it made her happy for the day.
Lady Sarah’s return was delayed for a week, so that, when at last Mrs. Hawkes received word that she was to prepare her rooms, Rhoda had been a fortnight at the Mill-house, and was already feeling quite at home.
She spent the day between Caryl and Sir Robert; very often now, indeed, Caryl would insist upon her taking him into his father’s study, where he would lie in a corner watching Rhoda while she deciphered notes and copied inscriptions.
Sir Robert began to entrust more and more of his work to her, always prefacing any request with a humble apology for taking up so much of her time, and always receiving the quiet assurance that what he asked her to do was just what she had been wishing herself that she might do.
Caryl, his father said, was happier than he had ever been before.
“You fill just that place to him,” said Sir Robert enthusiastically, one evening, “that I had always hoped would be filled by my niece Minnie. But of course you don’t know her, so you don’t understand.”
Rhoda remained silent. She did know Minnie, and she knew, too, how hopeless it would have been to expect quiet sympathy from that young lady, if she had fulfilled her childish promise and grown up the mischievous torment she seemed to be inclined to develop into.
It seemed almost tragic to Rhoda that, while speaking thus of his niece, he left out all mention of his wife, who would have seemed to be the boy’s natural companion.
“You’ll be very, very glad to see mama again, won’t you, Caryl?” Rhoda asked that evening, when he had been put to bed and she was bending over him to bid him good-night.
“It doesn’t make so much difference to me whether she’s here or not,” replied the child, in the quaint, old-fashioned way children have who see few playfellows or companions of their own age.
Perhaps Rhoda looked rather shocked. So the boy added:
“Mama is not like you. She likes to be out in her motor-car all day, or playing tennis or dancing. She isn’t quiet, like you.”
“She will have brought you something pretty, I expect,” suggested Rhoda.
“Oh, yes, but she never brings the things that I like,” complained Caryl. “What I want is a book full of pictures of hunting. I know she won’t bring me that.”
Rhoda was struck with the pathos of this wish. For poor little Caryl, condemned to lie on his back and unable to run about and play like other children, had a passion for sport of all kinds, and was never happier than when watching a cricket or a football match; and even now, in early September, he was talking eagerly about the fox-hunting season, and asking Rhoda if she would take him to a meet of foxhounds when cub-hunting began.
She had begun by this time to dread Lady Sarah’s return, to wonder whether her presence at the Mill-house would be resented by the flighty beauty, who would certainly remember her, and who might perhaps look upon her as an interloper, and be jealous of the help she gave to Sir Robert and of the love which little Caryl had already bestowed upon her.
It was the next day that the mistress of the house was to arrive and Rhoda was now on thorns. In the old days, indeed, Lady Sarah had scarcely spoken to her, but she might not look upon her with the same indifference now.
For Rhoda was conscious that there were whispers abroad concerning herself; and she guessed that, although the whole of the household, with the single exception of Mrs. Hawkes, was changed since she was there last, the housekeeper must have told some of the servants about the bicycle accident and the flight of Miss Pembury on the night of the tragedy at the Mill-house, and that there was a certain curiosity abroad concerning her.
It was late in the day when Lady Sarah arrived, and coming up to the bedroom of her little son when he had retired for the night, found Rhoda in the room.
Rhoda, however, regretting that she should have been found there, and fearing that Lady Sarah would think she was trying to take the mother’s place already with the boy, kept in the background, and witnessed, unremarked by Lady Sarah, the meeting between mother and son.
“Well, Caryl, and how are you?” cried she, as she bent over him and gave him a light kiss on the forehead. “They tell me you’ve been getting on famously and that you’ve got an awfully nice companion now.”
“Yes. I love Rhoda, and so will you, mama. Rhoda, come here. You shall see her, mama,” cried the boy in excitement.
Lady Sarah stood up and Rhoda had a good view of her. She saw that the ten years which had passed since she met her first had only served to ripen her beauty. Lady Sarah, though not quite so slim and slender, so like a fairy as she had been in the days of her girlhood, was lovelier than ever. Her dark eyes were just as bright, her complexion was as brilliant, while a little dignity of manner now added to her charms.
She held out her hand graciously, and Rhoda came forward.
But the moment she came within the range of light thrown by the shaded electric lamp on the table at the foot of the bed, Lady Sarah’s face changed. A look of intense horror appeared in her face, and her hand dropped, as she met Rhoda’s eyes with a startled look, and, recognising her at once, said hoarsely, under her breath:
“Miss Pembury!”
CHAPTER V.
LADY SARAH’S RECOGNITION
Rhoda was abashed and shocked by the expression on Lady Sarah’s face. She had, indeed, felt rather nervous about the meeting, but she had not expected that the sight of her would cause so much dismay to Sir Robert’s wife.
There was not the least doubt that she recognised the girl in a moment.
She forgot all about her child in her excitement at the meeting, and it was not until Caryl had plucked at her sleeve three or four times, that she bent over him again, and answered him.
“Yes, yes, dear. I know it is Rhoda,” she said.
She had recovered herself, and the next moment she had come round the little bed, seized Rhoda’s hand, and was shaking it with warmth as unexpected as her manifest horror had been.
“Miss Pembury! Why, of course, I might have remembered the name! But for the moment I didn’t. It’s the Miss Rhoda Pembury who fell off her bicycle and was brought in here by Sir Robert, years and years ago, before we were married, isn’t it?”
“Ye-es,” stammered Rhoda, quite bewildered by this rapid change in the lady.
“Why didn’t he tell me? I should have been so much interested. He never said a word in his letters to let me know the pleasure in store for me.”
This expression was rather a strong one, Rhoda thought, considering that on the solitary occasion of her seeing Lady Sarah at the Mill-house that lady had hardly condescended to address a single word to her.
She hastened to give the reason for Sir Robert’s strange behaviour.
“He hasn’t recognised me, Lady Sarah,” she said.
“What!”
Lady Sarah paused a moment, in apparent incredulity, mingled with evident embarrassment and misgiving. Then she asked, quickly:
“Why didn’t you remind him?”
“Well, I—I thought I’d wait till you came, to see whether you would remember me,” she stammered.
“Of course I do. Although you have altered a great deal,” said Lady Sarah, with a gracious smile. “You were rather a pretty girl then, but you didn’t promise to develop as you have done.”
Rhoda smiled and blushed. Nothing, certainly, could be more engaging than Lady Sarah’s manner, nothing more flattering than her words. But still Rhoda could not but feel all the while that there was some reason for this surprising and even uncalled for graciousness. From all she had heard, Sir Robert’s wife, though a very charming and beautiful woman, was far from being always sympathetic or amiable in her own house, and there seemed to be no particular reason why she should be so very nice.
Rhoda, while rather ashamed of her misgivings, felt them quite strongly.
“I suppose you scarcely recognised the old place?” went on Lady Sarah, still in the same tone of smiling good humour, quite forgetting the small boy in his bed, who was lying with his eyes fixed upon Rhoda, waiting for the ladies to come back to him.
“It is very much changed,” said the girl.
Lady Sarah laughed.
“Inside and out I’ve effected marvellous transformations, I flatter myself. You know my family has suffered horribly from want of money, as all decent families do now-a-days. If this horrid Budget with its Land clauses passes, why, Papa and Mama will simply have to pack a small handbag with necessaries, such as hair-dye and face powder, and trudge off to the nearest workhouse.”
Rhoda laughed. But Lady Sarah affected to be shocked at her levity.
“Oh, it’s quite true, indeed,” she said. “However, that will explain to you how I felt when I got married and found myself at last with an occasional eighteenpence of my own. I went mad, mad, I really did. I made up my mind to have a house I could live in comfortably, and I was generous enough to let my husband have something he liked too. Do you know, before he married me, fond as he was of his pictures and china and things, it had never occurred to him to build a place to put them in? But I changed all that. I practically rebuilt the house, as you see; let in a little light and air into the musty corners; let him have a gallery which has become the joy of his heart. And—well, I didn’t forget myself either, while I was about it.”
And she laughed the merry, careless laugh of a happy child. It was all put on, but so well that Rhoda was fascinated, sure as she could not but feel that there was some reason for this lavish expenditure of Lady Sarah’s fascinations upon a person so obscure as herself.
“Mama!” piped the small voice from the bed.
“Oh! Caryl! I’d forgotten him.”
Lady Sarah took Rhoda by the hand, and brought her to the bed, and they both kissed the boy before they left him. He was as much surprised, Rhoda could not but feel, as she herself was, at the warmth of his mother’s manner to the newcomer in the household.
Lady Sarah turned with a most graceful movement to the girl as they went out of the room.
“Nothing could have pleased me better,” said she quite earnestly, “than to find he has some one with him to whom he can take a fancy. It’s half the battle, with a poor child like Caryl, to have faces about him that he likes.”
“It’s very kind of you to say so.”
“I suppose they didn’t show you my rooms?” she went on. “Really you must see them. Come with me.”
“Oh, some other time, Lady Sarah. You must be dreadfully tired after your journey!”
“Tired! Not a bit. I’m never tired. Come. I insist.”
She carried Rhoda off to her own suite of apartments; and the girl was charmed, as indeed she was prepared to be, with the sumptuous elegance and refinement of taste, which were everywhere apparent in the furniture and fittings of the beautiful suite of rooms on the first floor which were specially consecrated to the use of the mistress of the house.
All was as different as possible from the richness and heaviness which were the prevailing notes downstairs. Lady Sarah explained this by saying that she had studied her husband’s taste in the fitting up of the library, study and dining-room, as those were the only rooms in which he took an interest.
“I didn’t like to part with all the old things. It would have broken his heart, for one thing; and for another, the old furniture, though of course it’s just not old enough, is not so bad after all, and its mature years give a sort of dignity even to mahogany. But up here I am queen, and I have everything just as I like it. Come and see these sweet little French water-colours. Aren’t they too divy for words?”
She turned on the electric light with her own hands, and let a flood of soft light upon the silk-panelled walls, pale blue and pink set in white enamel; upon the exquisite mantelpiece with its picture above in the manner of Fragonard; the dainty Sèvres clocks, all telling a different time; the cushions, couches, boudoir piano in a painted case, and all the other luxurious trifles that make up so much of the happiness of women of Lady Sarah’s type.
Suddenly the dainty mistress of the place threw herself upon a couch, and beckoned with pretty imperiousness to Rhoda to sit beside her.
“Come here,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”
She had not yet divested herself of her hat and scarf, though she had thrown off her travelling cloak and given it to her maid as soon as she entered the house, even before receiving the welcoming kiss of Sir Robert.
Now she began to pull off her gloves, and as Rhoda slowly obeyed the invitation and sat down beside her, Lady Sarah suddenly bent her head, and said with infantile prettiness:
“Do help me to find the hatpins. I’ve been wearing this terrible hat all day!”
The little task was performed without the least difficulty, as the hatpins in question were huge discs of tortoiseshell and gold impossible to overlook. Then Lady Sarah, thanking her profusely, put the hat beside her on the couch, and ruffling up her dark hair with a sigh of relief, put one little white hand sparkling with diamonds through Rhoda’s arm, and said coaxingly:
“And now do tell me what made you think of coming to us?”
“Oh-ho!” thought Rhoda. “This, then, is the reason of my amiable reception! You are curious.”
But all she said was:
“I was happy here, ten years ago, and Sir Robert saved my life. I thought I should like to see the old house again, and when I got here, and saw your dear little boy, I was delighted to stay.”
Lady Sarah was watching her with a piercing expression.
“Then when you came here you didn’t know whether you would stay or not?”
“No. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know whether the house was still inhabited by Sir Robert. There was no name given in the advertisement.”
It was quite clear to Rhoda that Lady Sarah did not believe her, but as her incredulity was not expressed in words, it was impossible to meet and combat it. They were both silent for a few moments while Lady Sarah smoothed out her gloves with a reflective air.
Suddenly Rhoda turned to her:
“Do you mind my coming? I wanted to know that.”
“Mind! I’m quite delighted to have you here. The great anxiety I had about my boy was to get some one to be with him whom he could love, and I could trust. Well, who could fill the post better than you? I am delighted. And to find that you have been helping Sir Robert. He tells me you copy his notes for him. It’s really too good of you, when he writes such a shocking hand too! I shall have to take you away with me when I go to town, on purpose to decipher his letters to me. I never get much farther myself than the bottom of the first page.”
This was all she would say, and when Rhoda left her to dress for dinner, which had been put off till her return, the girl felt perplexed and uneasy.
For, while nothing could be more charming than her words and her manner, Rhoda felt it was not possible that so much enthusiasm could be quite genuine.
She would have felt still more puzzled if she could have overheard the conversation which took place immediately afterwards between Sir Robert and his wife. Lady Sarah went into her dressing-room, and, being able to dress in the most surprisingly rapid fashion when she chose, emerged thence a quarter of an hour later radiant and refreshed, in a clinging gown of golden-brown satin, veiled in net of gold thread, and trimmed with a huge bunch of red velvet flowers on the left hand side of her bodice. With a butterfly of gold thread in her dark hair, and a single row of big diamonds round her throat, Lady Sarah looked as beautiful as a Princess in a fairy tale.
She glided quickly down the stairs before the dinner-gong sounded, and presented herself in the study in a sort of whirlwind.
“Robert,” she said, “I have seen this lady whom you’ve engaged as companion to Caryl. Do you know who she is?”
The baronet was taken aback. His wife’s manner was much more earnest than usual; and he, accustomed to her little flippant ways and to her manner of making light of everything, could not understand the change in her.
“Who she is!” he repeated in a dazed way. “She’s a Miss Rhoda Pembury, and a most amiable and obliging young lady.”
Lady Sarah stamped her pretty foot impatiently.
“Yes, yes, of course I know that. It’s her métier to be obliging. But do you know who she is, and that she has introduced herself into the household on false pretences?”
Sir Robert looked amazed and incredulous.
“What false pretences?” stammered he at last.
She laid her hand impressively on his arm.
“Have you forgotten the girl who fell off her bicycle, the girl you saved from being run over?”
An exclamation, which was one almost of relief, broke from the baronet’s lips.
“Of course,” cried he. “Pembury, Miss Pembury! I knew I’d heard the name, I was almost sure I’d seen the face. But till this moment I confess I didn’t recognise her, though from time to time I felt sure I’d seen her before. I wonder——”
He broke off, with a frown of annoyance and perplexity on his face. His wife knew what he meant.
“You wonder what she wants here?” she said significantly. “Well, so do I. I can’t help thinking it is a very strange thing to do to sneak back into the house without making herself known, and I shall be very much surprised if we are not made to regret her reappearance!”
Sir Robert, who was not at all quick of perception, being an absent-minded, mild-natured man, wholly without suspicion or mistrust, looked more perplexed than ever.
“Why should we regret it?” he said. “She has grown into a most charming woman, gentle, sympathetic, and very clever and kind. I cannot even now realise that such a woman has grown out of the shy, lanky, white-faced girl who fell off the bicycle. I can’t see anything wrong about her coming; and since I didn’t recognise her I don’t see why she should have felt it necessary to remind me who she was. She made no attempt at disguise, you know. I feel ashamed of my own stupidity in having forgotten her name.”
The fact was that Rhoda Pembury’s first appearance at the Mill-house was made at a time when the baronet, very much in love with Lady Sarah, was not in a condition to receive vivid impressions of any other person.
Lady Sarah brought him back to her point.
“Doesn’t it seem to you strange that she should have said nothing to you about—about what happened here on the night she went away?”
Sir Robert’s brow clouded.
“She has too much tact,” he said, “to refer to anything so disagreeable.”
“Oh yes, she has tact enough,” retorted his wife with vivacity. “I hate to have to refer to this horrid subject, dear, but I warn you that I mistrust this girl. I think it most mysterious that it should have been impossible to get at her when she was wanted at the inquest, but that she should turn up here in this mysterious fashion ten years later, and worm herself into your confidence in the absence of your wife.”
Sir Robert was still too much under the influence of his wife, on those rare occasions when she took the trouble to fascinate him again, not to be impressed by what she said. Nevertheless his gratitude to Rhoda, modified though it was by shame at his own forgetfulness, was strong enough to make him feel bound to stand up for her.
“I can’t think there is any harm in her,” he said gently. “What is it you mean to suggest?”
Lady Sarah gave a little enigmatic shrug.
“Oh, I don’t suggest anything. Only don’t, like the unsuspicious, kind-hearted old goose you are, trust her with too many of your secrets. That’s all.”
“Secrets! Why, I haven’t any.”
Lady Sarah laughed.
“Well then, don’t encourage her to confide to you too many of hers!” she said, as, at the sound of the dinner gong, she tucked her little hand affectionately within her husband’s arm and led him away to the dining-room.
Rhoda was waiting in the hall, having been apprised that she was expected to join them at dinner. During Lady Sarah’s absence Sir Robert had dined alone, and she had, by Caryl’s earnest request, dined in the room adjoining his bedroom, with the door open so that he might see her from his little bed.
In the first glance she exchanged with Sir Robert, Rhoda was shrewd enough to see that the ingratiating Lady Sarah had made mischief for her. Sir Robert was, indeed, more ashamed of his own obtuseness in not having recognised in the accomplished woman the half-fledged girl of ten years before, than imbued with his wife’s suspicions of her. But what she had told him was enough to cause some alteration in his manner, and poor Rhoda felt the difference keenly.
Sir Robert had a horror of anything that recalled the murder of Langton, or the disagreeable rumours which had ensued. And the consequence was that during dinner he was taciturn and appeared almost morose, so that the conversation was left almost entirely to Lady Sarah and Rhoda.
When the ladies left the room he remained in the dining-room, but Lady Sarah, who was just as sweet as ever to Rhoda, excused herself from another tête-à-tête with the girl by saying that she knew her husband was sulking about something, and that she must go and have it out with him.
When Sir Robert, therefore, left the dining-room to join the ladies in the drawing-room, he found himself intercepted by Lady Sarah, who, sliding her hand along his sleeve in her most caressing manner, told him she wanted a talk with him, and led him off to his study.
Sir Robert had been married long enough to the capricious beauty to know that a raid of this kind always had its object. As soon, therefore, as they had reached the large and lofty apartment known as the study, he gently withdrew his arm, and placing an easy chair for her, threw himself into another, and said, not unkindly, but with an air of resignation:
“Well, and what is it you want now, my dear?”
Lady Sarah laughed with a very pretty appearance of confusion.
“Now, that’s unkind,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t want anything but the pleasure of seeing how well and happy you look. I think, Bertie, it suits you for me to be away!”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“I have to get used to it, don’t I? Well, and now what is it that has brought you here to-night?”
“Won’t you believe, then, that I’m anxious to have one of our nice little talks, after being all this time away?”
She crossed her feet, threw herself back in her chair, and putting one pretty little white jewelled hand on each arm of her chair, smiled at him bewitchingly.
It was impossible to resist her, and Sir Robert put one of his own hands upon one of hers.
“My dear, it’s always a pleasure for me to talk to you,” he said.
Lady Sarah gave a pretty little sigh.
“That’s better,” she said. “And you know, Bertie, if I do have to ask you for things, and of course I have to very often, it’s only because you’re rich, and I’m poor, and because I’ve nobody to go to but you, when I want money.”
Sir Robert had withdrawn his hand, but he could not help a little amusement at the neatness with which she had come back to the important point.
“Of course it’s perfectly natural and right that you should come to me for money, and as long as I have it I always give it you, don’t I?”
Out of her half shut eyes she threw at him a reproachful glance. “You have plenty,” she said plaintively.
“And I think I may truly say, dear,” replied he, in the gentlest of voices, “that as long as I have plenty you have plenty too.”
Lady Sarah sat up quickly.
“I haven’t any now,” she said. “I’ve come back without a cent! Look here. That’s my very last sovereign!”
And opening her great brown eyes with a charming plaintiveness, she turned inside out a gold chain bag studded with pearls, which she wore suspended round her neck at the end of a very long chain, and displayed in triumph the solitary coin.
She was shrewd enough not to like the expression she saw on her husband’s face. Yet it was in the kindest of voices that he said:
“Well, dear, give me your bills, and I will settle them for you.”
But this did not happen to be what Lady Sarah wanted. She frowned petulantly.
“No, I’d rather have the money to settle them myself,” she said.
He shook his head.
“I gave you plenty of money to go away with. But I must see the bills now.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
“Well, my dear, you are just a little extravagant, aren’t you?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Am I?” she asked flippantly. “What is being extravagant? Is it buying new clothes when the old ones are worn out? Or is it,” and she cast a glance, which was full of sly, mischievous humour, at her husband’s grave face, “is it making an enormous collection of pictures at fabulous prices, and of antiques which may or may not be genuine, without being able to say whether, twenty years hence, they will have gone up in value, or down?”
Sir Robert winced.
“At any rate my pictures are a better investment than your frocks,” he said: “but we won’t quarrel about that. Ladies love pretty things, and the prettier the lady the more she loves them. I recognise that and I submit. So let me have the bills, and I’ll pay them.”
A furtive look of fear came into her face and died out again, and then she said:
“It’s very good of you, Bertie, but I really do want some money for myself too, money to spend as I like, to waste, perhaps. Won’t you let me have a couple of hundred to do as I like with?”
Sir Robert shook his head with decision.
“It’s more than I can do just now, dear,” he said. “Twenty pounds is the very utmost I can manage apart from the milliner’s bills, which, I suppose, will not be light.”
An angry light flashed out of her beautiful dark eyes. Sir Robert was the last man to be mistrustful or suspicious, but even he found a vague fear intruding into his mind when he noted the seriousness of her displeasure.
“Do you lose much money at bridge?” he asked quite suddenly.
She lost colour a little, but answered contemptuously:
“At bridge! No, of course not. I hate it, for one thing, and when I have to play I always take care not to lose much.”
But Sir Robert’s suspicions once roused were not easily laid.
“Do you gamble on the Stock Exchange?” he asked abruptly.
A look of genuine horror appeared in her eyes.
“I think I would as soon play pitch-and-toss!” she answered lightly.
His tone became more imperative:
“Do you bet on horses, or what? The money must go somewhere.”
Again there was that same furtive look, but again she treated the question with hilarious contempt.
“Of course I don’t do any of those things. However, if you won’t trust me with a little money, I suppose I must submit. Never mind me and my poor little wants now. Let us have a chat about you and your pleasures. What have you been buying while I’ve been away? Some nice pictures? Some queer old china figures? Some real bargains in Chippendale chairs at twenty-five guineas a-piece? Come, let’s take a walk through the gallery, and you shall show me the very latest arrivals.”
Whether he believed in her interest or not, or whether he was glad that her importunities had ceased, Sir Robert was quite ready to show off his latest acquisition.
“I’ve got some lovely old French tapestries,” he said, “that even you will admire, little Vandal that you are.” He felt in his pockets and then exclaimed: “Oh, I haven’t got the key of the gallery. Miss Pembury has charge of it now, for she’s begun to make me a catalogue, and she is in there every morning before anybody else is up.”
“Ah!” said Lady Sarah sharply.
Sir Robert looked at her quickly, but she would give no explanation of what was in her mind, and the expedition to the gallery was given up for that evening.
CHAPTER VI.
JACK ROTHERFIELD
Nobody would have supposed, to judge by Lady Sarah’s attitude to Rhoda, that any suspicion or mistrust of her had ever entered her pretty head.
On the contrary, she went out of her way to be charming to her boy’s companion, openly congratulating herself on having provided him with such an amiable friend, and told Rhoda, with merry laughter, that she considered herself a most magnanimous person not to be jealous of such a formidable rival.
“Who would ever have thought that the thin, pale girl with the colourless hair would be transformed into—you?” she cried, “with your stately walk and dignified figure! You make me look so small, and so frivolous and empty-headed, that I shall end by being jealous of you with my own husband as well as my boy!”
Rhoda frowned painfully.
“I don’t like to hear you say those things even in fun. Caryl looks upon me just as he would upon a nurse who was kind to him. He speaks of you with bated breath, as if you were a goddess. And it’s the same with Sir Robert. All I can do is to make myself useful, and I have to work hard to keep my hold upon both of them; I have to keep a smile always ready for little Caryl and to indulge his whims; to keep my place in his heart I have to be always working, working hard. As for Sir Robert, I’m afraid his appreciation of me is confined to my capacity for making out his handwriting, and his admiration is given only to my beautiful capitals, and not to me. If I thought that you meant that I presumed upon my position——”
“But I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!” cried Lady Sarah briskly. “I’m unfeignedly thankful for what you have done for both of them, and there never was in this world a person less capable of jealousy than I. But you are too modest. For I see Sir Robert lets you have the key of his gallery. I’m sure he’d rather die than trust it to me.”
Rhoda’s fair face became suffused with a hot blush.
“I won’t let him give it me again,” she said quickly.
Lady Sarah put a peremptory little hand upon her arm.
“Yes, yes, you will,” she said. “You are much more to be trusted than either Sir Robert or I. For he is so absent-minded that he might leave it in a shop in payment for a postage stamp, while I am so dreadfully careless that I should certainly leave it sticking in the door. Now come, don’t be cross, but put on your hat and I’ll take you to the Priory with me and introduce you to my old mother. She’s rather a dear when you come to know her well, though you may find her uninteresting at first.”
Rhoda would have made excuses, but Lady Sarah was accustomed to have her own way, and upon the whole Rhoda was not displeased to have an opportunity of seeing Vale Priory and its occupants.
And so, before mid-day, she and Lady Sarah got into the motor-car, and after climbing the long hill out of Dourville, and down the other side of it into the vale, they reached the pretty, old-fashioned mansion which had been in the family of the Marquis of Eridge for a couple of centuries.
The house was in almost every respect a great contrast to Sir Robert’s residence, as altered by the taste of Lady Sarah. It was old, it was shabby, it was not in the best of repair. But there was some charm about it, as there always is about a house which has been lived in by refined people for two or three generations. It bore the stamp of its owners, and although these were not remarkable in any way, Lady Sarah with her brilliant beauty having indeed been regarded as a “sport” and a surprise to those who knew the stock from which she came, there was something pleasing in the atmosphere of the old place, something of dignity in the occupants of the house, something of beauty in the dwelling itself.
The river flowed within a hundred yards of the garden front of the house, and on the other side the ground sloped gently upwards, a smooth expanse of grass, dotted by well-grown trees.
In a low armchair near the large window of the largest drawing-room sat the Marchioness of Eridge, a tall, massive woman with grey hair and that look of vacuous and vague displeasure with things in general which results from lofty pretensions and the possession of means inadequate to maintain them.
Her two unmarried daughters, both older than Lady Sarah, and altogether lacking in their sister’s brilliant good looks, were working, the one with her knitting, the other with some sort of fancy work, at another window.
Lady Sarah, followed more sedately by Rhoda, came in like a whirlwind, and stirred the quiet ladies into something like life as if by magic.
“What, Philippa! Aileen! Both indoors! On a morning like this! How can you?”
Her mother smiled, the two other ladies looked up with a little flush of pleasure in their pale faces, as Rhoda was introduced to them, in a highly complimentary fashion, by Lady Sarah, who expatiated upon her goodness to Caryl, and incidentally mentioned that she was the heroine of the bicycle accident of ten years before.
There was great interest at this, and Rhoda saw curiosity in the three faces. But Lady Sarah skimmed lightly away from that subject and told of her own travels and of her future plans.
“I’m going over to the chrysanthemum show at Canterbury to-morrow,” she said. “And I want to know whether one of you would like to come too. Jack is coming to-night, and he will take us.”
Lady Eridge drew herself up.
“Jack Rotherfield!” exclaimed she. “Do you really mean that he’s coming again? Why, he’s always at your house. Does Sir Robert approve?”
There was a little spot of red colour in Lady Sarah’s cheeks as she said quickly:
“Why shouldn’t he approve? He was Jack’s guardian once. And now, though it’s nine years ago, naturally they feel the same towards each other still.”
“He doesn’t come to see Robert, for he only comes when you are at home,” said Lady Eridge, in some displeasure. “People must notice it, and I am surprised that Robert doesn’t notice it himself.”
“I hope you won’t put any ridiculous notions into Robert’s head, mama,” said Lady Sarah. “Jack and I have always been the best of friends, and it would distress me very much if anything were said which would make it difficult for him to feel at home in Robert’s house.”
“Did you see him at all while you were away?” asked Lady Eridge.
But Lady Sarah found it convenient not to hear the question. She was by this time talking to her sisters, who were full of inquiries as to what she had been doing with herself during her stay abroad, and what she had done with Minnie.
Minnie was in town with some cousins, Lady Sarah said. She was evidently displeased at her mother’s rebuke, and she did not stay very long.
Lady Eridge, who was very gracious to Rhoda, invited her to come to tea on the following day.
“It was I,” she explained to the girl, “who suggested to my daughter that she should try to find some nice lady to be a companion to poor little Caryl, and I should have called to see you before now, Miss Pembury, but that my daughters and I have been staying in Yorkshire ever since you came.”
Rhoda, who was much pleased at her reception, but vaguely disturbed by something she had heard, thanked the marchioness, and left the house with Lady Sarah, who proceeded to explain to her that the quiet life led by the ladies of her family made them rather narrow and old-fashioned in their views.
“They think it shocking of me to be away from home so much,” said she, “and they can’t see that it is better that I should be home now and then in a good temper, than always here in a bad one.”
Rhoda laughed, but said nothing. She perceived already that Sir Robert’s dream of happiness with the woman he loved for his wife had failed of realisation.
It was in some perturbation of spirit that she awaited the arrival of that Jack Rotherfield who, as she suddenly remembered, had been certainly better loved by Lady Sarah before her marriage than was her own fiancé.
She scarcely knew what she feared, or if she did, she did not like to put her fears into shape. But the warning of the marchioness, coming so soon after her discovery that Lady Sarah’s heart was not in her own home, was distressing to the loyal and straightforward girl.
Rhoda was on the terrace that afternoon with Caryl, when the sound of a male voice as well as that of Lady Sarah in the drawing-room attracted her attention.
“That’s Jack!” said Caryl. “I thought he’d be here soon. He’s always here when mama comes back.”
Rhoda said nothing. But these words did not tend to make her more at ease. There came a hush in the voices when Caryl called out, and then Lady Sarah appeared at the drawing-room window.
A moment later the handsome face of Jack Rotherfield appeared over her shoulder.
He was looking as merry as ever, and, after turning to say a few words to him, Lady Sarah came out and re-introduced him to Rhoda, whom he greeted with as much apparent pleasure as if she had been an old friend.
It was quite impossible not to like him, for he had as much personal fascination as Lady Sarah herself; and it was impossible not to be struck by the fact, when brought thus face to face with them together, that they would have made a much better-matched pair, with their common interest and their liveliness of temperament, than did frivolous, pleasure-loving Lady Sarah and her absent-minded and grave lord.
Caryl was sent upstairs with his nurse, against the wish of Rhoda, who was forced to stay to have tea with Lady Sarah and Jack.
They all entered the drawing-room together, and Lady Sarah asked Rhoda to pour out the tea. Then Jack Rotherfield came up to take a cup to Lady Sarah.
Rhoda turned to him with a smile as he held out his hand. Then Lady Sarah spoke to him and he turned for a moment, answering her. Rhoda, still holding the cup, glanced down at his hand, and perceived that across the back of it, extending from the one side to the other, was a distinct scar.
In an instant there flashed back into her mind the remembrance of the night when she left the Mill-house, of the struggle she had heard in the drawing-room, and of the hand she had seen in the moonlight, with the red mark of a cut across it.
Unable to restrain her feelings, she uttered a sharp cry.
“What’s that?” she gasped, as she pointed to the scar.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SCARRED HAND
Rhoda, with her eyes fixed on the scarred hand, did not see either of the faces turned towards her, did not catch the quick look exchanged between Jack Rotherfield and Lady Sarah, or note their rapid loss of colour.
It was quite a long time before anybody spoke. Then Lady Sarah, crossing the room slowly and with apparent carelessness, asked:
“What’s the matter?”
Rhoda looked up, but there was a mist before her eyes; she said nothing, but rose unsteadily from her chair and took a couple of steps toward the window.
She was stopped, however, before she reached it, and found Lady Sarah’s hand within her arm.
“Don’t go away, Miss Pembury. Tell me, are you ill? What is it?”
The light bright voice was unchanged. But Rhoda, still breathing heavily, though the mist seemed to be clearing away, glanced quickly at her, and perceived that she was still of a deadly pallor.
“Let me go,” whispered the girl. “I—I’m not well—I—I feel faint.”
“I’ll take you into the garden. Jack, bring out a chair, and find a sunshade.”
Rhoda shuddered at the name, and looked round. Jack Rotherfield was pale also, although he tried to carry it off in an unconcerned manner. Rhoda would have escaped, but she was firmly held, and made to sit in the verandah, while her companions stood one on each side of her.
Rhoda had noticed, without being sufficiently herself to take in the significance of the fact, that there had been a short colloquy between them. Now Lady Sarah suddenly seized Jack’s right hand, and holding it close under Rhoda’s face, said:
“This was what shocked you, wasn’t it? The mark on his poor hand? I’ll tell you all about it.”
Rhoda bowed her head. She knew that she was going to hear a trumped-up story, but she had to listen. What the real truth was as to Jack Rotherfield’s connection with the tragedy that took place at the Mill-house ten years before she did not yet know, but that it was not what she was going to hear she was quite sure.
“Do you remember—I’m awfully sorry to have to remind you of it, for it’s an unpleasant subject, but I must—Do you remember the night you went away from here all those years ago?”
“Yes,” said Rhoda below her breath.
“And do you know that, on that very night, the poor butler, Langton, was found lying dead in the drawing-room?”
Rhoda bowed her head.
“Well, the next day the place was in a dreadful state, everybody excited and half-crazy. We were all following out the track of the burglar who had got in and murdered the poor man. And standing by the drawing-room window, with Sir Robert and me, Jack, opening it quickly, thrust his hand through the glass, and cut it right open. I fainted. Coming so soon after the ghastly discovery we had made, it made me quite ill. Sir Robert carried me to the sofa, and the doctor, who was in the house with the police, bound up Jack’s hand first, and then came up and attended to me, and then mama took me home!”
Rhoda bowed her head in silence. Lady Sarah waited for some sort of an apology for her behaviour, but she made none. After rather a long pause, during which Rhoda suddenly looked up and perceived a stealthy interchange of looks of alarm between the other two, she got up and murmured something about going back to Caryl.
“Not yet,” said Lady Sarah, “you are not well enough yet to be teased by the boy. Sit still, and I will bring your tea out to you. Jack, fetch Miss Pembury’s cup, and mine too, there’s a good boy. And then go and ask Sir Robert if he will come and have some too.”
Jack hesitated, but she gave him another look, and he obeyed.
Within five minutes Rhoda was sitting with her tea-cup in her hand, Lady Sarah was beside her, and Jack was returning along the terrace with Sir Robert.
When she was alone with the other lady, Rhoda seized the opportunity to say:
“I’m sorry I cried out as I did, but——”
She could not go on, and after a pause, Lady Sarah finished her sentence for her.
“The sight of a scar or wound distresses you. I understand. Some people are very sensitive to anything like that. But it’s not really painful now, you know. At the moment it happened I thought it must be, for it looked so dreadful. But even then I think perhaps I suffered more at the sight of the wound than Jack did himself.”
“Yes.”
Lady Sarah turned quickly to her husband, who was now in sight.
“Bertie,” she said, “Tell Miss Pembury how Jack cut his hand.”
Rhoda rose quickly from her chair.
“Oh, no,” she said hastily, “I don’t want to hear any more, really.”
But Lady Sarah insisted.
“You must,” she said, with peremptoriness, which betrayed the importance she attached to the apparently small matter.
Sir Robert was not at all pleased at his wife’s question, recalling an episode in his life which he would fain have forgotten.
“He put his hand through a window,” he said briefly, “and the mark shows still, as I dare say you have noticed, Miss Pembury.”
Rhoda said “Yes” under her breath, but there was still upon her face a dazed look of incredulity which irritated Lady Sarah.
The girl took the first opportunity of escaping upstairs, but she was in no state to amuse little Caryl, so she hastened to her own room, locked herself in, and sitting down, breathless and trembling, on a chair near the window, gave herself up to her distress, her doubts and her fears.
What did it mean? What could it mean but one thing?
There stood out clearly in her recollection the remembrance of the terrible night of her escape from the Mill-house, and the sight of the moonlight streaming on the hand with the red wound across it. That the hand she had seen that night was the hand of Jack Rotherfield she was quite sure. Her impression of the red mark she had seen that night was so strong, that nothing would have shaken her in this conviction. True, it was difficult to understand the story she had just heard, and wholly impossible to believe that Sir Robert was not telling the truth when he said he had seen the hand gashed by the broken window.
But Rhoda, who mistrusted Lady Sarah as strongly as she trusted her husband, thought that the clever little lady, who had certainly succeeded in throwing dust in Sir Robert’s eyes before her marriage, was quite capable of having deceived him by a trick. How it was managed the girl could not quite understand; but she felt sure that Jack, having been concerned in the death of Langford, was the man with the wounded hand whom she saw on his way upstairs; and she believed that the wound had been received in a struggle with the poor butler, and that, in order to avoid bringing suspicion upon himself, the young man had been artful enough to conceal his injury until the following day, when, taking an opportunity when there were several people present, he had thrust his wounded hand through the window as if by accident, and led those present to believe that the cut was freshly made.
Some such trick as this Rhoda felt sure had been played, but it sickened her to think that, in that case, Lady Sarah must have been a party to the stratagem, by which Jack shielded himself and deceived Sir Robert at the same time.
What was the whole truth concerning that night? Rhoda wondered.
It was now quite clear to her that, by accident or by design, it was Jack Rotherfield who caused the death of the butler. If it was an accident, why had he not told the truth about the night’s events? If it was more than that, what was the reason of his quarrel with the servant?
Certain dark suggestions did pass through her mind, but she would not encourage them. The thing was a mystery, an ugly mystery, and the ugliest part of it undoubtedly was that Lady Sarah was evidently in the confidence of the young man, and that he and she were still engaged together in practising a deception upon the lady’s husband.
Rhoda shuddered at the thought.
If Lady Sarah could deceive her trusting and indulgent husband to the extent of keeping such a secret from his ears for ten years, how was it possible to believe that she did not deceive him even farther?
The best thing to be said for the volatile beauty that her friendship with Jack Rotherfield was perfectly open, that he was constantly the guest of her husband, who certainly had no doubts of the loyalty either of his wife or of his late ward.
Why, therefore, Rhoda told herself, should she worry herself about the matter, since Sir Robert did not?
But argue as she might, she knew that there was more in the story than had become known; and while refusing to believe that even the artful Lady Sarah could go the length of wronging the man who trusted her so nobly she knew that the wife was lacking in sterling loyalty, and that, while she might be, and probably was, careful of herself and of her position, she bestowed more confidence upon Jack Rotherfield, if she did not more affection, than she gave to her own husband.
The knowledge which had come to her so suddenly that day, the conviction that she had in her hands now the clue to the mystery of the murder, made Rhoda so uneasy that she felt sure she would not be able to remain long in the household.
How could she go from husband to wife, and back again, with a light enough heart and a free conscience, when she was burdened, as she now was, with part, at least, of such an important secret?
Would Lady Sarah wish her to remain at the Mill-house? Rhoda thought not. It could not be pleasant to the proud little mistress of the house to feel that there was some one under the same roof who knew so much as Rhoda did, and she could not fail to look upon the girl as a spy, and to wonder whether she would keep to herself what she knew.
Rhoda felt that she must prepare for an early departure.
She was very sorry; for she had already attached herself deeply to little Caryl, while her feeling for the grave, gentle Sir Robert, having lost the quality of girlish enthusiasm which she had cherished for him ten years before, had become deeper, more pathetic, in the knowledge that he was not being treated as he had every right to be by the woman he loved so loyally and indulged in such a princely fashion.
It was in a very nervous condition that Rhoda rejoined the family at dinner that evening. She expected to find a difference in Lady Sarah’s manner towards her, but she was surprised indeed to find what that difference proved to be.
If she had been kind before, charming, merry, amiable, now Lady Sarah was infinitely more fascinating, more bent on making herself agreeable to her son’s companion.
With the most tender concern she asked after the headache which had been Rhoda’s excuse for leaving them that afternoon. Most sweetly she insisted that the girl was devoting herself too closely to her care of Caryl, and that, in order to get some relaxation, she must go to-morrow to the Chrysanthemum Show.
“Oh, no, it would leave me no time,” objected Rhoda. “You know Lady Eridge has asked me to tea at the Priory to-morrow afternoon.”
“Never mind. You shall go to the Show, too, and, as one of my sisters will be with me, I will drop you both at the Priory as we come back.”
It was of no use to attempt to thwart Lady Sarah; she never heeded any objection to her plans; and Sir Robert, smiling, told Rhoda so when she still kept up an attempt at protest.
Jack Rotherfield seemed quite untroubled by the discovery Rhoda had made that afternoon. He chatted so gaily, was so charming, so merry, and babbled on about things in general with so much easy gaiety that Sir Robert, who delighted in his conversation, was more animated than Rhoda had ever seen him before.
She was the only member of the party who was grave, pre-occupied and unhappy. She knew that Lady Sarah and Jack noticed this, and that Sir Robert was the only person present who failed to observe the depression from which she was suffering.
Later in the evening, when she would have escaped upstairs, she was detained and made to play and sing. She accompanied Jack Rotherfield in his songs, receiving his thanks and compliments upon her skill with coldness and shrinking which she did her best, not very successfully, to hide.
When she went upstairs she had a good cry. Sir Robert, the one of all the rest whom she liked and respected, had been slightly conscious, towards the end of the evening, of a difference in her manner, and had been perplexed and slightly displeased by it, while the two persons who overwhelmed her with civility and kindness were those from whom she would have preferred to receive as little attention as possible.
Truly her position was growing difficult, and she was sure that before long it would be impossible.
However, on the following day she recovered her spirits a little, feeling so sure that she would not stay long at the Mill-house that she determined to enjoy her time there as much as she could, and to trouble herself as little as possible about those causes of uneasiness which she could not help.
After a pleasant morning with Caryl, she was whirled off to Canterbury in the motor-car with Lady Sarah, Jack Rotherfield, and Lady Aileen, enjoyed herself in spite of her own wishes, and was landed with Lady Aileen at the door of the Priory in time for tea.
Lady Eridge was most gracious, and so were her two daughters, while the marquis, who came in quietly while they were all chatting round the little fire, without which the marchioness always felt chilly when the sun went down, was kind and good-natured, asked Rhoda the same questions two or three times over, and being rather deaf, always failed to catch the answers.
It was not until Lady Eridge had found an opportunity to speak to the visitor apart from the rest, that she broached the subject which Rhoda felt must have been in her thoughts all the time.
“And so you like the life at the Mill-house?” she began, after she had looked round nervously, and put out one waxlike hand to try to detect the bugbear of her sheltered life, “a draught.”
“Oh, yes, I like it very much. They are all kind to me, and I’m as fond of Caryl as if I’d lived with him for years.”
“And I hear you are a great help to Sir Robert?”
“Oh, no, not a great help. I’m interested in his work, and so grateful to him for what he did for me ten years ago in saving my life, that I’m most eager to do anything I can. It isn’t much, of course.”
“You are doing the things that my daughter ought to do herself,” said Lady Eridge.
“Do you mean that I ought not to do them?” asked Rhoda anxiously.
But the old lady answered quite eagerly:
“By no means. I am hoping that she will see now just what she ought to be doing herself, and that she may be induced to take up her duties,” said Lady Eridge. “As it is, she spends far too much time away from home. If she found an interest in her husband’s pleasures she would not find so much temptation to go abroad and to town.”
“Somehow it doesn’t seem natural to expect her to take an interest in making catalogues, and work of that sort,” said Rhoda. “She is so brilliant, so—so lively, that I’m sure she would look upon such occupations as too dry for her.”
“Since they are not too dry for you, why should they be for her?”
“Well, I was always a staid, quiet person, not a bit like Lady Sarah.”
The marchioness looked at her keenly, and Rhoda blushed.
“Do you think,” suggested the girl in a hesitating manner, “that it is right for me to do what I am doing? It seemed so natural, when I first came, and found Sir Robert rather helpless in the midst of the notes that he couldn’t read, to take up the easy and pleasant work of helping him, that I fell into it without, perhaps, considering whether I was not taking too much upon myself. Now I begin already to realise that my position is a little difficult, and to wonder whether I ought to go away.”
The old lady laid her hand impressively upon the girl’s arm.
“No, my dear, you are to stay,” she said earnestly. “I was delighted to see you yesterday, and again to-day, and to believe more and more that we have found in you just the link which has been wanting. You have a mission in that household, Miss Pembury, a delicate one perhaps, but one that I am sure you will perform in the most efficient manner.”
“Oh, no, no,” cried Rhoda. “I am not so ambitious. And indeed I would much rather retire into the background altogether.”
Lady Eridge interrupted her.
“You will not hesitate, I am sure,” she said, “to give up your own wishes when you realise what a useful office you could perform if you could succeed in drawing these two nearer together.”
“I don’t think you quite realise, Lady Eridge,” replied Rhoda earnestly, “the difficulty of interfering in any way between husband and wife.”
“I shouldn’t call it interference.”
“But that’s what it must come to,” persisted Rhoda. “And the task requires a great deal more tact and cleverness than I possess. Lady Sarah is cleverer than I am, and she is more likely to do what she pleases with me, than I am to make her do anything she doesn’t care to do of her own free will.”
But obstinacy was a trait which Lady Sarah had inherited from her mother, and the Marchioness went on:
“I don’t want you to preach to her, or anything of that kind. It is by example that I want you to lead her back to her duty.”
Rhoda shook her head.
“Indeed you’re asking too much of me, Lady Eridge, and I couldn’t undertake anything of the sort. My only fear is that I shall soon find my present modest position in the household too difficult for me, and that I shall have to go away.”
“Why is it difficult?”
Rhoda hesitated. Not for worlds would she have betrayed a suspicion of the real difficulties which beset her path, of the mystery of which she now had an inkling, and of which she feared to obtain further knowledge. How could she suggest to the marchioness that Jack Rotherfield was, if not actually the murderer of poor Langton, at least concerned actively in his death, and that Lady Sarah appeared to have been, if not an accomplice, at least an accessory after the fact?
“How do Sir Robert and Mr. Rotherfield get on together?” asked Lady Eridge as if carelessly, though Rhoda knew well the thought that was in her mind.
“Quite well. Sir Robert is very fond of him, and I have never seen him laugh or talk so much as he did last night at dinner when Mr. Rotherfield was there.”
“Yes. He is a most amusing companion, I must admit. But I think he is too flippant and too extravagant to be a safe friend for a young married woman. You will perhaps be surprised, Miss Pembury, that I speak to you so openly. But you have been initiated into the family circumstances, and you must have noticed for yourself that there is not that sympathy between my daughter and her husband that there ought to be, and that she is too much inclined to spend her time in frivolous pleasures. She is too extravagant, and I think that Mr. Rotherfield encourages her in it. Certainly she seems to grow more and more wasteful in money matters.”
“Wouldn’t she listen to you, if you were to speak to her on the subject? I certainly could not,” said Rhoda.
Lady Eridge shrugged her shoulders.
“Unfortunately it is impossible to influence her by preaching. That is why I am hoping so much from your example.”
“You must not hope, Lady Eridge. If Lady Sarah were to have the least suspicion that I was to be held up to her as a pattern, my life would at once become unendurable. And I should be sorry to have to go, for Caryl’s sake.”
Lady Eridge leaned back with a sigh.
“I shall persist in hoping,” she said gently. “And in believing that you may be working for good without your own knowledge.”
When Rhoda went away she was oppressed by a new sense of responsibility and uneasiness. New difficulties seemed to be cropping up at every step. The idea of her influencing the wilful, artful wife of Sir Robert was laughable, or would have been so if she had not felt that there was something pitiful in the anxiety of the mother to bring wholesome influences to bear upon her self-willed, extravagant daughter.
Of course Rhoda knew that she could do nothing, unless indeed she could contrive to put in a word of warning to Sir Robert to tighten his hold a little on his erratic wife.
But how was she to dare to intervene?
She was walking more and more slowly, weighed down by her anxieties, when she heard rapid footsteps behind her, and then her name uttered in Jack Rotherfield’s voice:
“Miss Pembury!”
The next moment he had caught her up, and was laughing down merrily into her face. In spite of all that she knew and all that she guessed, Rhoda found it impossible to be as stiff and cold to him as she wished. How could she retain her belief that he was guilty of manslaughter, if not of actual murder, when he could laugh so merrily, and speak so light-heartedly, that she could scarcely believe the man of thirty to be more than a boy still?
“I’ve been tearing after you for three fields and a half, and now I’m completely blown and can only pant!” he cried, with an affectation of laboured breathing which hardly interfered with his volubility. “I’ve been hanging about to escort you back to the Mill-house. I knew you’d take the short cut through the fields, and it’s hardly safe or pleasant for a young lady so late as this.”
“Oh, I can take care of myself,” said Rhoda.
She was rather dry of manner, and she would not even thank him, though his amiability made her feel ungracious.
He assumed an appearance of intense dejection.
“So you’re one of the strong-minded sisterhood,” he said dolefully. “Now I shouldn’t have thought it of you. It isn’t what one would have expected you to turn out, when I knew you first, ten years ago.”
Rhoda was silent. She looked at him cautiously out of the corners of her eyes, and saw in his the anxiety she had expected to see. He wanted to “pump” her, she knew, concerning the extent of her information as to the doings of the night of the death of Langton.
“You were as timid as a hare, a little shy girl with big eyes! But you were always nice to me then, much nicer than you are now. Why aren’t you as nice to me as you used to be?”
“I don’t think I quite know what you mean by ‘nice,’ ” Rhoda answered. “There must be a difference, I suppose, between the manner of a girl of seventeen and that of a woman of twenty-seven.”
“You haven’t taken a dislike to me for anything?”
She could scarcely repress a shudder, but she answered hastily:
“Of course not. Why should I?”
“I fancied that you had though, without any reason,” persisted he. “I thought it rather ungrateful of you, because I was so awfully glad to meet you again.”
“Thank you.”
“Glad too, for Lady Sarah’s sake and Sir Robert’s, because they’re so pleased with your devotion to Caryl, and with the way you’ve dropped into the family interests.”
To Rhoda’s great joy they had reached the high road, and she was able to escape him by getting on a tram-car which would take her into Dourville. He got in too, but there were other passengers inside, so that he had to make his conversation more general and less embarrassing.
But she could not help fancying, when she got home and thought over their walk, that he had had something to say which he had had no opportunity of saying, and she resolved to do her best to avoid him for the future.
As she came to that conclusion, she became conscious, to her own surprise, that in spite of his merry eyes, his liveliness and his charm, in spite of her belief that his guilt in the matter of Langton’s death could not have been that of murder, she was more afraid of Jack Rotherfield than she had ever been of any man in her life before.
And she realised that in the rare moments when she got a glimpse of his features in repose, there were lines in his face which should not have been there, lines which indicated that, under all his surface gaiety and charm, there was all the hardness and the capacity for cruelty of an utterly selfish nature.