Part 148

"I imagine he knows."

"If he does, he wouldn't give her away to me."

"I'm afraid, dear, she gave herself away."

"Don't you see that that makes it all the worse for her? It makes it horrible. Think how she must have suffered before she could. The only chance for her now is to have her back, to face the thing, and let it take its poor innocent place, and make it beautiful for her, so that she can endure it and get all the happiness she can out of it. It's so little she can get, and I owe it to her. I made her suffer."

Sophy became thoughtful.

"After all, Jinny," she said, "you are rather a dear. All the same, if Gertrude wasn't a good woman----"

"But she is a good woman. That's why she's happy now."

Sophy arranged her motor-veil, very thoughtfully, over and around a smile.

This conversation had thrown light on Jinny, a light that to Sophy's sense was beautiful but perilous, hardly of the earth.

XLIII

Down in the garden at Roehampton, Gertrude and Frances Heron were more tenderly and intimately discussing the same theme.

Frances was the only one of the Brodricks with whom tenderness and intimacy were possible for one in Gertrude's case. She was approachable through her sufferings, her profound affections, and the dependence of her position that subdued in her her racial pride.

Gertrude had confessed to a doubt as to whether she ought or ought not to have gone back.

"I don't know," said Frances, "that it was very wise."

"Perhaps not, from the world's point of view. If I had thought of that----" she stopped herself, aware that scandal had not been one of any possibilities contemplated by the Brodricks.

"I was not thinking of it, I assure you," said Frances. "I only wondered whether it were right." She elucidated her point. "For you, for your happiness, considering----"

"I'm not thinking of my own happiness, or I couldn't do it. No, I couldn't do it. I was thinking"--her voice sank and vibrated, and rose, exulting, to the stress--"of his."

Frances looked at her with gentle, questioning eyes. Hugh's happiness, no doubt, was the thing; but she wondered how Gertrude's presence was to secure it.

Slowly, bit by bit, with many meditative pauses, many sinkings of her thought into the depths, as if she sounded at each point her own sincerity, Gertrude made it out.

"Mrs. Brodrick is very sweet and very charming, and I know they are devoted. Still"--Gertrude's pause was poignant--"still--she is unusual."

"Well, yes," said Frances.

"And one sees that the situation is a little difficult."

Frances made no attempt to deny it.

"It always is," said Gertrude, "when the wife has an immense, absorbing interest apart. I can't help feeling that they've come, both of them, to a point--a turning point, where everything depends on saving her, as much as possible, all fret and worry. It's saving him. There are so many things she tries to do and can't do; and she puts them all on him."

"She certainly does," said Frances.

"If I'm there to do them, it will at least prevent this continual friction and strain."

"But you, my dear--you?"

"It doesn't matter about me." She was pensive over it. "If I solve his problem----"