Part 148

He did not explain that the perfume of her hair, of her breath, of her dress, had lingered when she had gone, to tempt and taunt and torture him. He said nothing of the little knot of violets that had dropped from her breast upon the floor, and he had found there. His heart beat against it even then. He answered:

"You told me yourself. And, as for the linen, let it be. The housekeeper knows that she is expected to attend to it."

"She isn't your wife!"

Her golden eyes flashed at him rebelliously. He was provoking her, in his innocence of all intention, as a subtle wooer might have planned to do.

"I am extremely glad that she is not." His mouth relaxed in a smile, and his thunderous brows smoothed themselves. "And now, don't you think you ought to go and dress? You are dining with Lady Hannah and Major Wrynche at The Carlton at seven, and going on to a theatre." He held his watch out. "Six-thirty now," he said, and restored the chronometer to his waistcoat pocket.

"Very well." She moved a step or two in the direction of the door, and turned her head as gracefully as a young deer, and looked back at him. "But you are coming, too?" she said, and her eyes were very soft.

He shook his head.

"It is impossible. I have several urgent cases to visit, and there is an article for the Scientific Review." He moved his hand slightly in the direction of some sheets of manuscript that lay upon the blotting-paper. "I have a heavy night's work before me with that alone. My excuses have already been telephoned to Lady Hannah."

"Owen!"----

She spoke his name in a whisper.

--"Owen!"

"Yes?"

"Couldn't I?--would you care to have me?--may I stay and dine at home with you?"

"And disappoint your friends!... Most certainly not. Unless, indeed"--his tone warmed to interest--"unless you are not feeling well?"

"I am perfectly well, thanks!" she said coldly.

"Then go to your dinner and your play, child," said Saxham, with the smile that changed and softened his harsh features almost into beauty. "I will drive with you to The Carlton, and fetch you from the play. Which of the theatres have you decided to patronise?"

"Lady Hannah and the Major left the choice to me," she said, with a little touch of girlish importance, "so I telephoned to Nickalls in Bond Street for a box at The Leicester. He had not got one; he sent me three stalls for 'The Chiffon Girl' at The Variety instead. It is a revival. I don't quite know what that means," she added, rather puzzled by Saxham's silence and the grimness of his face. "You do not mind at all? You do not think it is the kind of play the Mother would not have liked me to see?"

"No!" said Saxham curtly, and with averted eyes.

She bent her head to him as he opened the door, and went away to her own rooms on the floor above, the drawing-room that was upholstered and hung with delicate, green-and-white, rose-garlanded Pompadour brocade, and graceful water-colours from famous hands, and furnished with every luxury and elegance that the heart of woman could desire; the charming boudoir, pink as a sea-shell, and full of new books and old china; the bedroom, with the blue-and-white decorations, where an ivory Crucifix that had always stood upon the Mother's writing-table hung above the dainty bed....

"I think he is a little hard on me at times," she said, as she passed through the warm, firelit, perfumed rooms that were fragrant with the narcissi and violets and lilies that were sent in by his orders, and strewn with the costly, pretty trifles that she, who had been used to the barrack-like bareness of the Convent, delighted in like a child, and the gleaming mirrors gave her back her loveliness. "He treats me as if I were a stranger. And, after all, I am his wife...."

Saxham's patients found him even curter and more brusque in manner than usual that evening, and the article for the Scientific Review made little way. He threw down his pen at last, and leaned his head upon his hands and wondered, staring at the unfinished page of manuscript with eyes that saw no meaning in the sentences, whether any man born of woman had ever been so great a fool as the man who had written them?

To have made that promise of secrecy to the dead traitor was an act of sheer, quixotic folly. To have kept it was madness, nothing less. And yet Saxham knew that he would keep it always. That if she ever learned the truth, it would be hinted by the chance remark of some stranger, gathered from a paragraph in some newspaper. There was a small-print line at the bottom of the quarter-column devoted by the compilers of Whittinger's "Peerage" to the Marquisate of Foltlebarre, which might have enlightened her. He turned to it now, and read:

"Viscountess Beauvayse, Esther, dau: of Samuel Levah, Esq., of Finsbury, E.C., mar: June, 1899, the late John Basil Edward Tobart, Lieut. Grey Hussars, 11th Viscount Beauvayse. Killed in action during the defence of Gueldersdorp, Feb., 1900, while atta: as Junior aide to the Staff of Colonel Commanding H.M. Forces, leaving issue one dau: The Hon. Alyse Rosabel Tobart, now aged eighteen months."

At the Clubs, Service and Civil, Saxham had heard the impromptu marriage of the late John Basil Edward Tobart freely discussed. The story of his subsequent entanglement "with some girl or other at Gueldersdorp" had been mooted in his presence a dozen times by Society chatterers, whose enjoyment of the scandal would have been pleasantly stimulated by the knowledge that "Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., late Attached Medical Staff," was married to the girl. But they did not know, and she ...

What use--what use in her knowing? Of what avail could be the melting of the ice about her heart, the loosening of the fetters of her tongue, the quickening of her nature, the miracle vouchsafed? Of none, now, for a reason! Saxham told himself, in those hours when he propped his burning forehead on his hands and looked into the starless night of his desolate soul, that he had ceased even to desire that she should come to love him. Far better that she should never know!

It was growing late, and he had promised to fetch her from the theatre. The silver clock upon the mantelshelf chimed ten. He had stretched his hand to the telephone to ring up his motor-brougham from the garage, when he heard the click of her latchkey in the outer door and the silken whisper of her garments passing quickly through the hallway. Then came a knock at the consulting-room door--sharp, quick, imperious, oddly unlike Lynette's soft tap.... At the summons Saxham made two strides across the carpet and opened to her, a question on his lips.

"Why have you come back so early? Has anything happened?"

Even as he asked, her look told why. She knew....