Part 15 (1/2)

”I am doing it for you, not for them. I like to see you pleased.”

She went to take off her hat with moisture in her eyes, being overpowered by his munificence. When she reached her room she walked about a little, because she was excited, and then sat down to think of the relief her next letter would carry to Mrs. Osborn. Suddenly she got up, and, going to her bedside, knelt down. She respectfully poured forth devout thanks to the Deity she appealed to when she aided in the intoning of the Litany on Sundays. Her conception of this Power was of the simplest conventional nature. She would have been astonished and frightened if she had been told that she regarded the Omnipotent Being as possessing many of the attributes of the Marquis of Walderhurst. This was, in fact, true without detracting from her reverence in either case.

Chapter Ten

The Osborns were breakfasting in their unpleasant sitting-room in Duke Street when Lady Walderhurst's letter arrived. The toast was tough and smoked, and the eggs were of the variety labelled ”18 a s.h.i.+lling” in the shops; the apartment was also redolent of kippered herring, and Captain Osborn was scowling over the landlady's weekly bill when Hester opened the envelope stamped with a coronet. (Each time Emily wrote a note and found herself confronting the coronet on the paper, she blushed a little and felt that she must presently awake from her dream.) Mrs. Osborn herself was looking far from amiable. She was ill and nervous and irritable, and had, in fact, just been crying and wis.h.i.+ng that she was dead, which had given rise to unpleasantness between herself and her husband, who was not in the mood to feel patient with nerves.

”Here's one from the Marchioness,” she remarked slightingly.

”I have had none from the Marquis,” sneered Osborn. ”He might have condescended a reply--the cold-blooded beggar!”

Hester was reading her letter. As she turned the first page her expression changed. As has previously been suggested, the epistolary methods of Lady Walderhurst were neither brilliant nor literary, and yet Mrs. Osborn seemed to be pleased by what she read. During the reading of a line or so she wore an expression of slowly questioning wonder, which, a little later on, settled into relief.

”I can only say I think it's very decent of them,” she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed at last; ”really decent!”

Alec Osborn looked up, still scowlingly.

”I don't see any cheque,” he observed. ”That would be the most decent thing. It's the thing we want most, with this d.a.m.ned woman sending in bills like this for the fourth-rate things we live on, and for her confounded tenth-rate rooms.”

”This is better than cheques. It means our having something we couldn't hope for cheques enough to pay for. They are offering to lend us a beautiful old place to live in for the rest of our stay.”

”What!” Osborn exclaimed. ”Where?”

”Near Palstrey Manor, where they are staying now.”

”Near Palstrey! How near?” He had been slouching in his chair and now sat up and leaned forward on the table. He was eager.

Hester referred to the letter again.

”She doesn't say. It is a sort of antiquity, I gather. It's called The Kennel Farm. Have you ever been to Palstrey?”

”Not as a guest.” He was generally somewhat sardonic when he spoke of anything connected with Walderhurst. ”But once I was in the nearest county town by chance and rode over. By Jove!” starting a little, ”I wonder if it can be a rum old place I pa.s.sed and reined in to have a look at. I hope it is.”

”Why?”

”It's near enough to the Manor to be convenient.”

”Do you think,” hesitating, ”that we shall see much of them?”

”We shall if we manage things decently. She likes you, and she's the kind of woman to be sympathising and make a fuss over another woman--particularly one who is under the weather and can be sentimentalised over.”

Hester was pus.h.i.+ng crumbs about on the tablecloth with her knife, and a dull red showed itself on her cheek.

”I am not going to make capital of--circ.u.mstances,” she said sullenly.

”I won't.”

She was not a woman easily managed, and Osborn had had reason on more than one occasion to realise a certain wicked stubbornness in her. There was a look in her eye now which frightened him. It was desperately necessary that she should be kept in a tractable mood. As she was a girl with affections, and he was a man without any, he knew what to do.

He got up and went to her side, putting his arm round her shoulders as he sat in a chair near her. ”Now, little woman,” he said. ”Now! For G.o.d's sake don't take it that way. Don't think I don't understand how you feel.”

”I don't believe you know anything about the way I feel,” she said, setting her narrow white teeth and looking more like a native woman than he had ever seen her. A thing which did not aid his affection for her, such as it was, happened to be that in certain moods she suggested a Hindoo beauty to him in a way which brought back to him memories of the past he did not care to have awakened.