Miss Batchelor raised her eyebrows.

"She must be very much stronger than she was at Thorneytoft."

"She's never been so well in her life. Thorneytoft didn't agree with her at all. She's been a different woman since they left it." (This to guard against any suspicion of an attraction in the neighborhood.) "Nevill was never well there either."

"I never thought it would suit Mr. Tyson."

"No; it wasn't the life for him at all. He's got too much go in him to settle down anywhere in the country. Look how he's roamed about the world." (Now was her opportunity.) "You know, Miss Batchelor, there's a great deal of nonsense talked about this separation."

"There's a great deal of nonsense talked about most things in this place."

"Well--but really, if you think of it, what is there to talk about? He's just gone away in a huff, and--and he'll come back in another. You'll see. He has a very peculiar temper, has Nevill; and Molly's too--too suscept--too emotional. People can't always. .h.i.t it off together."

"No--"

"No. And I think it's a very good plan to separate for a time. For a time, of course. It's her own wish."

(Oh, Mrs. Wilc.o.x! But strict accuracy is an abject virtue when pride and the honor of a family are at stake.)

"That's all very well, my dear Mrs. Wilc.o.x, but in the meanwhile people will talk."

"_That_ won't break Molly's heart. She'd snap her fingers at them. And the more they talk, the more she'll go her own way. That's Molly all over. You can't turn her by talking, but she'd go through fire and water for any one she loves."

Poor vulgar, silly Mrs. Wilc.o.x! But try her on the subject of her daughter, and she rang true.

Miss Batchelor smiled. She didn't know about going through fire; but Mrs.

Nevill had certainly been playing with the element, and got her fingers badly scorched too.

"Well," said she, "of course, so long as Mrs. Nevill Tyson doesn't break her heart over it."

"Does it look as if she were breaking her heart? Five theatres in one week."

"No; I can't say I think it does."

"Shockingly dissipated, isn't she?"

"Well--rather more dissipated than we are in Drayton Parva. You must miss her dreadfully, Mrs. Wilc.o.x?"

"I don't mind that so long as she's happy. You see, it's not as if she hadn't friends. I know she's well looked after."

Mrs. Wilc.o.x felt that she was making a remarkably good case of it. And she had not once mentioned Sir Peter.

All was well so long as you did not mention Sir Peter.

"I'm very glad to hear it."

"Of course _I_ want her to get away out of it all. I know that people are making very strange remarks about her staying--"

"They might make stranger remarks if she came, that's one consolation.

Still--"

"Well, Miss Batchelor, the child is perfectly willing to come if I want her. But--er--er--a friend"--(Mrs. Wilc.o.x was determined to be discreet, and leave no loophole for scandal)--"a friend has strongly advised her to stay."

"Oh, no doubt she is perfectly right. Sir Peter is in town again, I believe?"

Miss Batchelor said it abruptly, as if she were trying to change the subject. And at the mention of Sir Peter Mrs. Wilc.o.x lost her head and fluttered into the trap. There are fallacies in the logic of facts.

"No, no," she said, getting up to go. "It was Captain Stanistreet I meant."

Again Miss Batchelor smiled.

This was proof positive--the last stone.

CHAPTER XIV

THE "CRITERION"

Mrs. Nevill's account of herself, though somewhat highly colored, was substantially true. When Stanistreet suggested defeat, it was his first allusion to her husband's desertion of her; and like most of Louis's utterances, it was full of tact.

Defeat? She had brooded over the idea, and then apparently she had an inspiration.

From that day, wherever there was a sufficiently important crowd to see her, Mrs. Nevill Tyson was to be seen. She was generally with Louis Stanistreet, who was not a figure to be overlooked; she was always exquisitely dressed; and sometimes, not often, she was delicately painted and powdered. Mrs. Nevill Tyson hated what was commonplace and loud; and she had to make herself conspicuous in a season when women dressed _fortissimo_, and a fashionable crowd was like a bed of flowers in June.

Somehow she managed to strike some resonant minor chord of color that went throbbing through that confused orchestra. Everywhere she went people turned and stared at her as she flashed by; and apparently her one object was to be stared at. She became as much of a celebrity as any woman with a character and without a position "in society" can become.

If she were counterfeiting a type, enough of the original Mrs. Nevill Tyson remained to give her own supernatural _naivete_ to the character.

Stanistreet was completely puzzled by this new freak; it looked like recklessness, it looked like vanity, it looked--it looked like an innocent parody of guilt. He had given in to her whim, as he had given In to every wish of hers, but he was not quite sure that he liked the frankness, the publicity of the thing. He wondered how so small a woman contrived to attract so large a share of attention in a city where pretty women were as common as paving-stones. Perhaps it was partly owing to the persistence and punctuality of her movements: she patronized certain theatres, haunted certain thoroughfares at certain times. She had an affection for Piccadilly, a sentiment for Oxford Circus, and a pa.s.sion for the Strand. Louis could sympathize with these preferences; he, too, liked to walk up and down the Embankment in the summer twilight--though why such abrupt stoppages? Why such impetuous speed? He could understand a human being finding a remote interest in the Houses of Parliament, but he could not understand why Mrs. Nevill Tyson should love to linger outside the doors of the War Office.

Her ways were indeed inscrutable; but he had learnt to know them all, not a gesture escaped him. How well he knew the turn of her head and the sudden flash of her face as they entered a theatre, and her eyes swept the house, eager, expectant, dubious; how well he knew the excited touch on his sleeve, the breath half-drawn, the look that was a confidence and an enigma; knew, too, the despondent droop of her eyes when the play was done and it was all over; the tightening of her hand upon his arm, and the shrinking of the whole tiny figure as they made their way out through the crowd. She had spirit enough for anything; but her nerves were all on edge--she was so easily tired, so easily startled.

Day after day, and night after night; it was evident that at this rate she and Tyson were bound to see each other some time, somewhere.

Stanistreet wondered whether that thought had ever occurred to her. And if they met--well, he could not tell whether he desired or feared to see that meeting. In all probability it would put an end to doubt. Was it possible that he had begun to love doubt for its own sake?

At last they met, as was to be expected, and Stanistreet was there to see. He had taken her to the "Criterion" one night, and at the close of the first act Tyson came into the box opposite theirs. He was alone. The lights went up in the house, and he looked round before he sat down; evidently he had recognized his wife, and evidently she knew it.

Stanistreet, watching her with painful interest, saw her body slacken and her face turn white under its paint and powder.

"Either she cares for the beggar still, or else--she's afraid for her life of him."

A horrible thought flashed across him. What if all the time she had simply been making use of him as--as a d.a.m.ned stalking-horse for Tyson?

It might account for the enigmatic smiles, the swift transitions, the whole maddening mystery of her ways. If he had been nothing to her but the man who knew more about Tyson than anybody else? She had always had a way of making him talk about Tyson, while he seemed to himself to be most engagingly egotistic.

And he had once thought that Mrs. Nevill Tyson adored her husband for his (Stanistreet's) benefit. There was this summer, and that moment in the library at Thorneytoft--Mrs. Nevill Tyson was beyond him. And he had been three years trying to understand her. He was a man of the world, and he ought to have understood.

Ah--perhaps that was the reason of his failure!

He looked at her again. She had shifted her position, turned her back on the stage; her eyes were lowered, fixed on the programme in her lap, but they were motionless; she was not reading. One ungloved arm hung by her side, and under the white skin he could see the pulses leaping and throbbing in the arteries, the delicate tissues of her bodice trembled and shook. Was it possible that in that frivolous little body, under that corsage of lace and satin and whalebone, there beat one of those rare and tragic pa.s.sions, all-consuming, all-absorbing, blind and deaf to everything but itself? In that case--well, he felt something very like awe before what he called her miraculous stupidity. But no, it was impossible; to believe it was to believe in miracles, and he had long ago lost his faith in the supernatural. Women did not love like that nowadays.