Mrs. Delafield allowed herself the irony. Rhoda, indeed, must expect that special flavour from her.

"Something has certainly affected it," said Rhoda, drawing a chair to the fire and spreading her beautiful hands before it. "I'm quite tired, I confess,--horrid as I'm perfectly aware it sounds to say it,--of hearing about the hard life. Life's hard enough for all of us just now, heaven knows; and I think they haven't had half a bad time over there, numbers of them--men like Niel, I mean, who've travelled comfortably about the world and never had the least little wound, nor been, ever, in any real danger, as far as I can make out; at least, not since he's had the staff work. It's very different from my poor Christopher, who rotted in the cold and mud until it nearly killed him. There would be some point in his talking of a hard life."

This was all very illuminating, and the bold advance of Christopher won Mrs. Delafield's admiration for its manner; but she pa.s.sed it over to inquire again, "In what way has Niel been making himself impossible?"

The more impossible Rhoda depicted him, the easier to leave her there, shut out by his impossibility.

"Why, his meanness," said Rhoda, her cold, dark eyes, as she turned them upon her aunt, expressing, indeed, quite a righteous depth of reprobation. "For months and months it's been the same wearisome cry.

He's written about nothing but economy, fussing, fuming, and preaching.

It's so ugly, at his time of life."

"Have you been a little extravagant, perhaps? Everything is so much more costly, isn't it? He may well have been anxious about your future, and the child's."

It was perfectly mild, and the irony Rhoda would expect from her.

"Oh, no he wasn't," said Rhoda, now with her gloomy laugh. "He was anxious about his hunting. I don't happen to care for that primitive form of amus.e.m.e.nt, and Niel doesn't happen to care about anything else; certainly he doesn't care about beauty, and that's all I do care about.

So in his view, since, precisely, life has become so costly, beauty had to go to the wall and I mustn't dress decently or have a decently ordered house. I haven't been in the least extravagant," said Rhoda.

"I've known what it is to be cold; I've known what it is to be hungry; it's been, at times, literally impossible to get food and coal in London. Oh, you don't know anything about it, Aunt Isabel, tucked away comfortably down here with logs and milk. And if Niel had had any appreciation of the position and had realized at all that I prefer being hungry to being ill-dressed, he would have turned his mind to cutting down his own extravagances and offered to allow me"--and now, for an instant, if velvet can show sharpness, Mrs. Delafield caught in the sliding velvet eye an evident edge of cogitation, even, of calculation--"at least two thousand a year for myself. Money buys absolutely nothing nowadays."

So there it was, and it amounted to an offer. Or, rather, it amounted to saying that it was the sum for which she would be willing to consider any offer of Niel's. Mrs. Delafield, measuring still Rhoda's pride against Rhoda's urgency, mused on her velvet garments, the fur that broadly bordered her skirts, slipped from her shoulders, and framed her hands. Poor Tim had been able to give his daughter only a few hundred a year, and Niel's hunting must indeed have been in danger. Rhoda's pride, she knew, stood, as yet, between herself and any pressure from the urgency; she could safely leave the offer to lie and go on presently to question, "And you'll be better off now?"

Inevitably unsuspecting as she was, Rhoda, all the same, must feel an unexpectedness in her att.i.tude, and at this it was with a full, frank sombreness that she turned her gaze upon her. Anything but a fool she had always been, and she answered, after the moment of gloomy scrutiny, "Don't imagine, please, Aunt Isabel, that because I speak openly of practical matters I left Niel to get a better establishment. I left him because I didn't love him. I was willing to sacrifice anything rather than stay. Because it is a sacrifice. I took the step I've taken under no illusion. We are too uncivilized yet for things to be anything but difficult for a woman who takes the step, and the brave people have to pay for the cowards and hypocrites."

This, somehow, was not at all Rhoda's own note. Mrs. Delafield felt sure she caught an echo of Mr. Darley's ministrations. She was glad that Rhoda should receive them: they would sustain her; and since she was determined--or almost--that Rhoda should stay with Mr. Darley, it was well that she should receive all the sustainment possible.

"It certainly must require great love and great courage," she a.s.sented.

Rhoda's eyes still sombrely scrutinized her. "I didn't expect you to see it, I confess, Aunt, Isabel."

"Oh, but I do," said Mrs. Delafield.

The milk was now brought and Rhoda began to sip it.

"As for my being better off, since you are kind enough to take an interest in that aspect of my situation," she went back, "Christopher hasn't, it's true, as much money as Niel. But our tastes are the same, so that I shall certainly be very much better off. We shall live in London--after Niel sets me free." And here again she just glanced at her aunt, who bowed a.s.sent, murmuring, "Yes; yes; he is quite willing to set you free; at once."--"And until then," Rhoda went on, as if she hadn't needed the a.s.surance,--second-rate a.s.surance as, Mrs. Delafield felt sure, she found it,--"and until then I shall stay in the country.

Christopher has his post still at the Censor's office, and won't, I'm afraid, get his demobilization for some time. He translates things, you know. So we are going to find a little old house, for me,--we are looking for one now,--and I shall see a few friends there, quite quietly, and Christopher can come up and down, until everything is settled. I think that's the best plan."

Rhoda spoke with a dignity that had even a savour of conscious sweetness, and, as Mrs. Delafield reflected, was running herself very completely into her corner.

There was silence now for a little while. Rhoda finished her milk, and Jane Amoret, gently and un.o.btrusively moving among her blocks, succeeded, at length, in balancing the last one on her edifice and looked up at her great-aunt for approbation.

"Very good, darling. A beautiful house," said Mrs. Delafield, leaning over her, but with a guarded tenderness. What a serpent she had become!

There was Rhoda's jealousy to look out for. She might imagine herself fond of Jane Amoret, if she saw that some one else adored her.

"She's quite used to you already, isn't she?" said Rhoda, watching them.

"I wonder what you'll make of her. She strikes me as rather a dull little thing, though she's certainly very pretty. She's rather like Niel, isn't she? Though she certainly isn't as dull as Niel!" She laughed slightly. "All the same,"--and Mrs. Delafield now, in Rhoda's voice, scented the close approach of danger, and was aware, though she did not look up to meet it, that Rhoda's eyes took on a new watchfulness,--"All the same I must consider the poor little thing's future. That is, of course, my one real difficulty."

"Was it? In going away? In having left her, you mean?" Mrs Delafield prayed that her mildness might gloss, to Rhoda's ear, the transition to conscious combat that her instinctive change of tense revealed to her own. "Oh, but you need not do that. Don't let that trouble you for a moment, Rhoda. I will take charge of her--complete charge. I can do it easily. My house is empty, and the child will be a companion to me. I don't find her dull. She is a dear little thing, so good and gentle. You need really have no anxiety."

"Oh, I see." Rhoda was gazing at her earnestly. "Thanks. That's certainly a relief. Though all the same I don't suppose you'd claim that you could replace the child's mother."

"Yes. I think so, Rhoda. A mother who had left her for a lover."

Mrs. Delafield kept her eyes fixed on the fire. Rhoda stood up and leaned her back against the mantelpiece. She could no longer control the manifestations of her impatience and her perplexity.

"That would be your view, of course; and father's; and Niel's. It's not mine. I consider the responsibility to be Niel's."

"Well, whosesoever the responsibility, the deed is done, isn't it?"

Mrs. Delafield observed. "I'm not arraigning you, you know. I'm merely stating the fact. You have left her."

Rhoda's impatience now visibly brushed past these definitions. "You say that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course.

It's only common decency. But that's hardly what father could have meant in imploring me to come to--you. He told me nothing--only implored, and lamented. And, since I am here, I'd like some information, I confess."

It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs.

Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust.

And here no less--for so it seemed to her--she might, in betraying them, take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she kept her eyes on the fire.

"Your father wants you to go back," she said at last. "Niel is willing to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child's. But I don't know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I think, better than your father does. I've always seen your point of view as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that would be a very different matter--if, by chance, you feel you've made a mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley."

She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost evenly--it was as if she saw them--between Rhoda's pride and Rhoda's urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, "That's hardly likely, is it?"

"I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear," said Mrs. Delafield.

"No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of two infidelities in the s.p.a.ce of a fortnight."

And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among her blocks.

Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick.

It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at all events, did not, in the new life, find compensations enough. She had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a reentry, dignified, if not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her head fairly fixed to the wall.

Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory.

It had been the truth she had given Rhoda--the real truth, her own, if not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preeminently not the truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that Rhoda's ear could not fail to catch:--

"Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn't suspect it of you, Rhoda, but--I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr.

Darley--from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do anything of this sort,--and I don't need to tell you how deeply I deplore it nor how wrong I think you,--but if you were going to do it, you couldn't have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is good. I saw it all at once."

There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it was with her genuine grim mirth.

"Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!" she commented. "You are astonishing."

"Am I? Why?" asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well.

"Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations--all the strains of poor old father's harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I don't remember that you talked at all."

"We didn't. I only saw him once."

"And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!--Come, out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I've always got on so well with you. You _are_ wicked."

"To make me understand. I won't say condone."