Part 21 (1/2)

Guardian!”

Winnington began a rather eager a.s.sent. Watch her with the servants, the gardeners, the animals! Then you perceived what should be the girl's natural charm and sweetness--

”'Hm. Does she show any of it to you?”

Winnington laughed.

”You forget--I am always there as the obstacle in the path. But if it weren't for the sinister influence--in the background.”

And again he went off at score--describing various small incidents that had touched or pleased him, as throwing light upon what he vowed was the real Delia.

Madeleine listened, watching him attentively the while. When he took his leave and she was alone, she sat thinking for some time, and then going to a cupboard in her writing-table, which held her diaries of past years, she rummaged till she found one bearing a date fifteen years old. She turned up the entry for the sixteenth of May:

”She died last night. This morning, at early service, Mark was there.

We walked home together. I doubt whether he will ever marry--now. He is not one of those men who are hurried by the mere emotion and unbearableness of grief, into a fresh emotion of love. But what a lover--what a husband lost!”

She closed the book, and stood with it in her hand--pondering.

As he left her house, and turned towards the station Winnington pa.s.sed a lady to whom he bowed, recognising her as Miss Andrews.

”Hope you've got an umbrella!” he said to her cheerily, as he pa.s.sed.

”The rain's coming!”

She smiled, pleased like all the world to be addressed with that Winningtonian manner which somehow implied that the person addressed was, for the moment at any rate, his chiefest concern. Immediately after meeting him she turned from the village street, and began to mount a lane leading to the slope on which Monk Lawrence stood. Her expression as she walked along, sometimes with moving lips, had grown animated and sarcastic. Here were two men, a dead father and a live guardian, trying to coerce one simple girl--and apparently not making much of a job of it. She gloried in what she had been told or perceived of Delia Blanchflower's wilfulness, which seemed to her mother and her brother the Captain so monstrous. Only--could one entirely trust anybody like Delia Blanchflower--so prosperous--and so good-looking?

Miss Andrews mounted the hill, pa.s.sed through a wood that ran along its crest, and took a footpath, leading past the edge of a railway cutting, from which the wonderful old house could be plainly seen. She paused several times to look at it, wrapped in a kind of day-dream, which gave a growing sombreness to her harsh and melancholy features. Beyond the footpath a swing gate opened into a private path leading to the house.

She opened the gate, and walked a little way up the path, in the fast gathering darkness. But she was suddenly arrested by the appearance of a figure in the far distance, black against the pale greys of the house. It was a policeman on his beat--she caught one of the gleams of a lantern.

Instantly she turned back, groped her way again through the wood, and into a side road leading to her brother's house.

She found her mother lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, the remains of a rather luxurious tea beside her--her outdoor clothes lying untidily about the room.

”Where have you been?” said Mrs. Andrews, fretfully--”there were several letters I wanted written before post.”

”I wanted a little air. That linen business took me all the morning.”

For it was the rule in the Andrews' household that the house linen should be gone through every six months with a view to repairs and renewals. It was a tedious business. Mrs. Andrews' nerves did not allow her to undertake it. It fell therefore, and had always fallen to the only daughter, who was not made for housewifery tasks, and detested the half-yearly linen day accordingly.

Her tone displeased her mother.

”There you are--grumbling again, Marion! What else have you to do, I should like to know, than your home duties?”

Marion made no reply. What was the use of replying? But her black eyes, as she helped herself wearily to some very cold tea, took note of her mother's att.i.tude. It was only the week before that Dr. France had expressed himself rather pointedly to the effect that more exercise and some fresh interests in life ”would be good for Mrs. Andrews.”

Mrs. Andrews returned to the ladies' paper she was reading. The fas.h.i.+on plates for the week were unusually attractive. Marion observed her unseen.

Suddenly the daughter said:--