'You'll be glad when it's over, won't you?'

'Very glad. The strain's telling on my health. But I've been better on the whole, I think, don't you?'

'Yes, indeed. You know you have to be,' Edith said.

'Of course--I know. Try not to make me late again tomorrow.'

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

The Solution

As Sir Charles was walking back from the Reeves' house, he met Anne Yeo in Piccadilly. She had just taken the telegram from Eugenia. He greeted her warmly and asked her to walk a little way with him, to which she agreed, silently giving him credit for so heroically concealing his consciousness of her odd appearance. She herself was well aware that in her mackintosh, driving-gloves, and eternal golf-cap she presented a sufficiently singular effect, and that there were not many people in London at three o'clock on a sunny afternoon who would care to be found dead with her.

'I've just seen Hyacinth,' he said.

'Then you know about the trouble?'

'What trouble?'

'As if she could help telling you! However, it's going to be all right.'

'Do you think so?'

'I'm certain.'

'I never thought him good enough for her,' Sir Charles said.

'Who is?' she asked.

'Has he really been--philandering?'

'Probably. Don't all men?'

'You're as great a cynic as ever, I see,' he laughingly said.

'And you're as n.o.ble as ever. But I won't tax your chivalry too far.

Good-bye,' and she abruptly left him.

She was on her way to Cook's. She had suddenly decided to emigrate.

Sir Charles wondered why Anne was so sure, but her words had comforted him. He believed her. He not only thought that she must be right, but he instinctively felt certain that she had taken some steps in the matter which would result in success. Some people liked Anne, many detested her, but she inspired in both friends and enemies a species of trust.

At half-past seven that evening Cecil turned the key in the door and went into the house. It was the first time he had ever come home with a feeling of uneasiness and dread; a sensation at once of fear and of boredom. Until now he had always known that he would receive a delighted welcome, all sweetness and affection. He had always had the delicious incense of worshipping admiration swung before him in the perfumed atmosphere of love and peace. Had he held all this too cheaply? Had he accepted the devotion a little pontifically and condescendingly? Had he been behaving like a pompous a.s.s? He had really enjoyed his wife's homage the more because he had liked to think that he still yearned for the impossible, that he had been deprived by Fate of his ideal, that absence and distance had only raised higher in his thoughts the one romantic pa.s.sion of his life. What a fool he had been! All he felt at this moment about Eugenia was impatient annoyance. There is a great deal of the schoolboy in an Englishman of thirty. Cecil just now regarded her simply as the person who had got him into a row. Why had she taken him for that imprudent drive?

As he went into the little boudoir it happened that Hyacinth was turning her back to him. It was usually a part of their ritual that she came to meet him. So this seemed to him an evil omen.

She stood looking out of the window, very tall, very slender, her brown hair piled in its dense ma.s.s on her small head. When she turned round he saw she held a telegram in her hand.

'What is the meaning of this?' she said, as she held it out to him.

He took it from her and sat down to read it, feeling as he did so unpleasantly heavy, stupid, and stolid in contrast to the flash of her blue eyes and the pale tragedy in her face. It was the first time he had ever felt her inferior. As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the betrayed one who is humiliated.

'What does it mean?' he said. 'Why it means that they have to put us off. They are evidently going away. What it means is fairly obvious.'

'Ah, _why_ have they put us off? You have been to see her! You must have arranged this. Yes, you have given me away to her, Cecil; you have let her know I was jealous! It is worse than anything else! I shall never forgive you for this.'

He gave her back the telegram with an air of dazed resignation.

'My dear girl, I give you my solemn word of honour that I know nothing whatever about it.'

'Really? Well, it is very strange. It is most extraordinary! She says she is writing. I suppose we shall hear.'

'Are we going to have dinner?'

'You agree to what I suggested this morning, Cecil?'

'No, I don't.'

'Very well, then; I shan't dine with you.'

'Oh, confound it! I don't want to go out again.'

'Pray don't. I shall dine in my room,' and she walked to the door. As she left the room she turned round and said--

'Oh, to think how that creature must be enjoying it!' and went upstairs.

'If she isn't enjoying it any more than I am, she isn't having much of a time,' said Cecil aloud to himself. He then dined in solemn silence, Hyacinth (with a headache) being served in her own room.

When dinner was over he was glancing through the paper, wondering how he should spend the evening, when a note arrived by a messenger. He saw it was for Hyacinth, and in Eugenia's handwriting.

A few minutes later she came down, holding it in her hand.

'Cecil, she has written to me. She says they're going for a long yachting cruise, that they won't be back in their house for a year.'

'Well, have you any objection?'

'Have you?' she asked, looking at him narrowly.

'No, I'm only too glad!'

'Did you ask her to do this?'

'Don't be idiotic. How could I ask her? I've neither seen nor communicated with her.'