Part 4 (2/2)

”Then you do want to see more of me?” he said eagerly.

Lady Loudwater lost her smiling air; she became demureness itself, and she said: ”Well, you see--thanks to Egbert's vile temper--we have so few friends.”

Grey frowned; she was always quick to elude him. Then he growled: ”What a name! Egbert!”

”He can't help that. It was given him. Besides, it's a family name,” she said in a tone of fine impartiality.

”It would be. Hogbert!” said Grey contemptuously.

Mrs. Truslove and Mr. Manley were not the only people to ignore the essential bullness of Lord Loudwater.

They went on a few steps in silence; then she said: ”Besides, I don't mind his outbursts. I'm used to them.”

”I don't believe it! You're much too delicate and sensitive!” he cried.

”But I _am_ getting used to them,” she protested.

”You never will. Has he been bullying you again?” he said, looking anxiously into her eyes.

”Not more than usual,” she said in a wholly indifferent tone.

”Then it is usual! I was afraid it was,” he said in a miserable voice.

”What on earth is to be done about it?”

”Why, there's nothing to be done, except just grin and bear it,” she said bravely enough, and with the conviction of one who has thought a matter out thoroughly.

”Then it's monstrous! Just monstrous, that the most charming and loveliest creature in the world should be bullied by that infernal brute!” he cried, and put his arm around her.

The Countess was on the very point of slipping out of it when the cat Melchisidec came out of the bushes a dozen yards ahead of them, and with Melchisidec came a very distinct vision of Lord Loudwater's flushed, distorted, and revolting face as he swore at her at breakfast that morning.

She did not slip out of the encircling arm, and Grey bent his head and kissed her lightly on the lips.

It was the gentlest, lightest kiss, the kiss he might have given a pretty child, just a natural tribute to beauty and charm.

But the harm was done. The population of Great Britain cannot really be more than one and a half persons to the acre, and the great majority of them live, thousands to the acre, in towns; yet it is indeed difficult to kiss a girl during the daytime in any given acre, however thickly wooded, without being seen by some superfluous sojourner on that acre; and whether, or no, it was that the green frock and hat brought the Countess the bad luck the fortuneteller had foretold, there was a witness to that kiss.

Undoubtedly, too, it was not the right kind of witness. If it had been an indulgent elder not given to gossip, or a chivalrous young man not averse himself from kisses, all might have been well. But William Roper, under-gamekeeper, was a young man without a spark of chivalry in him, and he had been soured in the matter of kisses by the steadfast resolve of the young women of the village to suffer none from him. He was an unattractive young man, not unlike the ferrets he kept at his cottage. He was the last young man in the world, or at any rate in the neighbourhood, to keep silent about what he had seen.

Even so, no great harm might have been done. He might have blabbed about the matter in the village, and the whole village and the servants of the Castle might have talked about it for weeks and months, or even years, without it reaching the ears of Lord Loudwater. But William Roper saw in that kiss his royal road to Fortune. Ambitious in the grain, he was not content with his post of under-gamekeeper; he desired to oust William Hutchings from the post of head-gamekeeper, and though there were two under-gamekeepers senior to him with a greater claim on that post, occupy it himself. Here was the way to it; his lords.h.i.+p could not but be grateful to the man who informed him of such goings-on; he could not but promote him to the post of his desire.

He wholly misjudged his lords.h.i.+p. Ordinary grat.i.tude was not one of his attributes.

Olivia slipped out of Grey's arm, and they walked on up the aisle. But they walked on, changed creatures--trembling, a little bemused.

William Roper, the ill-favoured minister of Nemesis, followed them.

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