Part 16 (1/2)

Delia suddenly looked up in her questioner's face. Her gravity broke up in a broad smile.

”Because there's so much else to do.”

”What else?”

The look of excited defiance in the girl's eyes sharpened.

”Do you really want to know?”

”Certainly. The Suffrage and that kind of thing?” said Madeleine Tonbridge lightly.

”The Suffrage and that kind of thing!” repeated Delia, still smiling.

Captain Andrews who was standing near, and whose martial mind was all in confusion, owing to Miss Blanchflower's beauty, put in an eager word.

”I never can understand, Miss Blanchflower, why you ladies want the vote! Why, you can twist us round your little fingers!”

Delia turned upon him.

”But I don't want to twist you round my little finger!” she said, with energy. ”It wouldn't give me the smallest pleasure.”

”I thought you wanted to manage us,” said the Captain, unable to take his eyes from her. ”But you do manage us already!”

Delia's glance showed her uncertain whether the foe was worth her steel.

”We want to manage ourselves,” she said at last, smiling indifferently.

”We say you do it badly.”

The Captain attempted to spar with her a little longer. Winnington meanwhile stood, a silent listener, amid the group round the tea-table.

He--and Dr. France--were both acutely conscious of the realities behind this empty talk; of the facts recorded in the day's newspapers; and of the connection between the quiet lady in grey who had come in with Delia Blanchflower, and the campaign of public violence, which was now in good earnest alarming and exasperating the country.

Where was the quiet lady in grey? Winnington was thinking too much about his ward to keep a constant eye upon her. But Dr. France observed her closely, and he presently saw what puzzled him anew. After a conversation, exceedingly bland, though rather monosyllabic, on Miss Marvell's part, with the puzzled and inarticulate Rector, Delia's chaperon had gently and imperceptibly moved away from the tea-table.

That she had been very coldly received by the company in general was no doubt evident to her. She was now sitting beside that strange girl Marion Andrews--to whom, as the Doctor had seen, she had been introduced--apparently--by the Rector. And as Dr. France caught sight of her, she and Marion Andrews rose and walked to a window opening on the garden, apparently to look at the blaze of autumn flowers outside.

But it was the demeanour of the girl which again drew the doctor's attention. Marion Andrews, who never talked, was talking fast and earnestly to this complete stranger, her normally sallow face one glow.

It was borne in afresh upon Dr. France that the two were already acquainted; and he continued to watch them as closely as politeness allowed.

”Will you come and look at the house?” said Winnington to his ward.

”Not that we have anything to shew--except a few portraits and old engravings that might interest you. But it's rather a dear old place, and we're very fond of it.”

Delia went with him in silence. He opened the oval panelled dining-room, and shewed her the portraits of his father, the venerable head of an Oxford college, in the scarlet robes of a D.D., and others representing his forebears on both sides--quiet folk, painted by decent but not important painters. Delia looked at them and hardly spoke. Then they went into Mrs. Matheson's room, which was bright with pretty chintzes, books and water-colours, and had a bow-window looking on the garden. Still Delia said nothing, beyond an absent Yes or No, or a perfunctory word of praise. Winnington became very soon conscious of some strong tension in her, which was threatening to break down; a tension evidently of displeasure and resentment. He guessed what the subject of it might be, but as he was most unwilling to discuss it with her, if his guess were correct, he tried to soothe and evade her by such pleasant talk as the different rooms suggested. The house through which he led her was the home, evidently, of a man full of enthusiasms and affections, caring intensely for many things, for his old school, of which there were many drawings and photographs in the hall and pa.s.sages, for the two great games in which he himself excelled; for poetry and literature--the house overflowed everywhere with books; for his County Council work, and all the projects connected with it; for his family and his intimate friends.

”Who is that?” asked Delia, pointing to a charcoal drawing in Mrs.

Matheson's sitting-room, of a n.o.ble-faced woman of thirty, in a delicate evening dress of black and white.

”That is my mother. She died the year after it was taken.”