Lady Aspasia and M. Chatelard were seated one on each side of the fireplace, fairly monopolising the benefits of the situation. Although the thought of Sir Arthur, upstairs with his young wife—no doubt coaxing the insolent beauty into a better temper—was no very agreeable one to her, Lady Aspasia, with the good-humoured, material philosophy of her kind, made the best of what fate left her. She toasted her well-formed, well-shod foot at the blaze; found that the old-fashioned winged armchair (with the help of a cushion) was as comfortable as any modern copy if not more so, and that M. Chatelard was undoubtedly an entertaining companion. He had seen curious things on his travels, and he could tell of them with a French spice. By a series of jerks the two drew ever closer together; finally blocking the hearth. Their voices were lowered by imperceptible degrees; their heads inclined towards each other. Lady Aspasia's laugh rang loud and often; and presently, by a tacit agreement in which the conversation gained enormously, each relapsed into the native tongue.
"Upon my word," said Lady Aspasia to herself; "I'll send in his name for my royal party."
M. Chatelard, pouring forth a whispered flow of language, with a pause on the delicate point, and a quiet chuckle after the ready listener had had time to seize it and ring her hearty, unreserved tribute of appreciation, was privately making little notes for future publication, with all the traveller's joy of discovery. "Et il y en a encore qui croient que les Anglaises sont guindées! Un esprit tout Rabelaisien—cette dame! Allons, l'age Victorien est bien mort et enterré!"
Miss Aspasia, who some time back had been told, with a flap of Lady Aspasia's hand, "not to listen, little girl," sat, highly disapproving, at the further end of the room. Bethune, whose existence the great lady now elected to ignore, had taken a chair at a little distance from the girl. A monosyllabic conversation began between them and dropped. He asked her for some music, and she tartly refused with a reproachful look. She wondered at him. Did he not know her aunt's head was bad? He didn't know? Well, he might have seen that she was ill! To this he made no answer, and thereafter they spoke no more. The man had a talent for taciturnity, but the effort of Baby's silence seemed to bristle. She sat very erect. Her mouth pursed, her nostrils dilated, her eyes widely opened, her arched eyebrows more arched than ever. The tittering, the whispering, the laughter, the meaning wriggles of the two backs as they leant towards each other before the hearth, irritated her beyond endurance.
"M. Chatelard," she suddenly cried, in fluent French, with her enfant terrible directness, "do tell me—I don't want to be rude; but why do you cut your hair so close to your head? Isn't it very cold this weather?"
"Alas, Mademoiselle," said he, turning round; his alertness of courtesy was ingrain; "I do not dare to show to the world that my head is quite white."
"You think it looks better pink?" said Baby, innocently.
"Pink!" said M. Chatelard, a little disconcerted, passing his hand over his cropped pate. "Is it possible?" Then, sparkling: "Pink? I had no idea that Lady Melbury had so made me blush!"
"Oh, blush!" cried Lady Aspasia, her momentary displeasure with the pert schoolgirl lost in a yell of delight at M. Chatelard's readiness; "It's well that my blushing days are over!"
"Oh, Milady!" And they put their heads together again.
Young Aspasia pinched in her rosy lips so tight that they made the most absurd button of a mouth ever seen. Bethune, who had listened with immovable gravity to this sally, betraying indeed no sign of having heard it, save for the rolling of an icy eye towards M. Chatelard, now let his glance rest upon her. The hard muscles of his face began to soften.
He had been slowly making up his mind during the whole of the evening, and now he had decided. He would leave the manor-house on the morrow, and cut himself once and for ever apart from its inmates. But, the devil was in it that, in the midst of the most intolerable mental trouble he had ever endured, he should have once and again this absurd unreasonable feeling that if he were to carry away with him this pretty Aspasia, this fluffy, pouting, pert, bird-like thing, it would be sweet! Something like the blessedness of a peep of blue in a sky of lurid clouds, a ray of sunshine across a barren moor, a snowdrop in bleak winter. The feeling had no sense in it. He was a prey to as strong a passion as ever possessed a man; and he not only despised himself, hated himself for his passion, but was conscious that by the object of it he was held a thing of scorn. More than this, she, who thus in spite of reason filled his thoughts, was suffering, and he could not lift a finger to help her. The whole source of her suffering was only vaguely understood by him; but he knew that her husband's presence had nearly driven her to desperation. It was acute torture to him now to think of Sir Arthur in his wife's room; and yet ... haunted by these unworthy degrading thoughts of one who should have been twice sacred to him, he found himself longing to take Aspasia to his breast—bright-eyed Aspasia, pecking, twittering, fluttering like an angry dove, withal so soft, so warm, so true! His inconsequent heart seemed to cry out for the comfort of her.
Sir Arthur opened the door and looked in.
"Pray, pray," said he, inserting an arm, after his head, to wave back the confidential couple who with a great scraping of chairs had risen to their feet, "do not let me disturb any one. I am only looking for Aspasia."
"Oh Lord!" said Aspasia, under her voice, alarm springing to her eyes. "I'm here, Runkle."
"Can you spare me a few minutes' private conversation, my dear Aspasia?"
His tone was very solemn. He was conscious of the hush that had fallen upon the room, conscious of the perturbed looks that were fixed upon him, conscious of his own countenance of trouble. But it was not without a gloomy self-approval that, given circumstances the most woeful that could perhaps be imagined, he realised there were few who could negotiate them like himself.
Aspasia went reluctantly to her uncle's summons. Her heart was heavy with anxiety concerning Rosamond. In her constitutional distrust of whatever course of action Sir Arthur might take it into his head to adopt, she had an oppressive sensation that most of the responsibility of affairs rested upon her own young shoulders.
"Lord," thought the girl to herself, as her lagging feet took her across the drawing-room; "if one could only just shut up Runkle in a box for six months, there might be some hope of things settling down."
Sir Arthur beckoned her towards the little study, where, through the half-opened door, a ruddy light showed that the room had now been made ready for the smokers. His air of portentous gloom so exasperated Baby that she had to relieve her feelings by childish kicks at the mats in the hall as she passed.
"I presume that we shall be undisturbed here for the present," said Sir Arthur. He pushed open the door and started back with an irritated exclamation: "Confound that fellow, he's like a night moth!"
Between the fire and the lamplight, Muhammed Saif-u-din stood facing them. It seemed as if he had been pacing the little space, and had wheeled round at the sound of their approach. Baby's heart gave a wild throb, and then stood still. The Indian had certainly been very restless all the evening. Sir Arthur Gerardine's arrival seemed to have excited him in a singular manner, and there could be no mistaking now the straight, vindictive look that the secretary fixed upon his master. She was minded of a splendid black panther she had seen at an Indian village fair, not so very long ago.—The beast had been padding the narrow limits of its cage backwards and forwards until she had drawn close to admire it, when it had stopped and fixed her with its eyes—just such a gaze (she told herself, shivering) as that which Muhammed fixed on Sir Arthur; a gaze as concentrated as unfathomably savage. "Him very bad beast," had said the showman, grinning at her.—"Him dreaming of drinking Missie Sahib's blood."
* * * * *
Sir Arthur's grating voice rang out angrily in a brief phrase of Hindustani. The Pathan unfolded his arms, made a gesture with one hand, and left the room without speaking. In that gesture Baby nervously read the meaning: I can bide my time.
"Runkle," she cried, catching her breath, "how could you bring that dreadful man over from India? I'm sure it's not safe. Even Major Bethune—and he's lived all his life among them, you know—thinks he's mysterious. Oh, do, do be careful!"
"Aspasia," said Sir Arthur, severely, "I am surprised at you. I have other matters, matters of far other moment on my mind, ............