"Why not?"

"Because the woodc.o.c.k season is a short one, and I want to make the best use of my time."

"What a barbarian, to prefer any sport to our society," exclaimed Mopsy coquettishly. "For my part, I hate the very name of woodc.o.c.k."

"Why?" asked Leonard, looking at her keenly, with his dark, bright eyes; eyes which had that hard, gla.s.sy brightness that has always a cruel look.

"Because it reminds me of that dreadful day last year when poor Mr.

Hamleigh was killed. If he had not gone out woodc.o.c.k shooting he would not have been killed."

"No; a man's death generally hinges upon something," answered Leonard, with a chilling sneer; "no effect without a cause. But I don't think you need waste your lamentations upon Mr. Hamleigh; he did not treat your sister particularly well."

Mopsy sighed, and was thoughtful for a moment or two. Captain Vandeleur and Mr. Montagu had strolled off to change their clothes. The master of the house and Miss Vandeleur were alone at their end of the old hall.

Ripples of silvery laughter, and the sound of mirthful voices came from the group about the other fireplace, where the blaze of piled-up logs went roaring up the wide windy chimney, making the most magical changeful light in which beauty or its opposite can be seen.

"No, he hardly acted fairly to poor Dopsy: he led her on, don't you know, and we both thought he meant to propose. It would have been such a splendid match for her--and I could have stayed with them sometimes."

"Of course you could. Sometimes in your case would have meant all the year round."

"And he was so fascinating, so handsome, ill as he looked, poor darling," sighed Mopsy. "I know Dop hadn't one mercenary feeling about him. It was a genuine case of spoons--she would have died for him."

"If he had wished it; but men have not yet gone in for collecting corpses," sneered Leonard. "However poor the specimen of your s.e.x may be, they prefer the living subject--even the surgeons are all coming round to that."

"Don't be nasty," protested Mopsy. "I only meant to say that Dopsy really adored Angus Hamleigh for his own sake. I know how kindly you felt upon the subject--and that you wanted it to be a match."

"Yes, I did my best," answered Leonard. "I brought him here, and gave you both your chance."

"And Jack said that you spoke very sharply to Mr. Hamleigh that last night."

"Yes, I gave him a piece of my mind. I told him that he had no right to come into my house and play fast and loose with my friend's sister."

"How did he take it?"

"Pretty quietly."

"You did not quarrel with him?"

"No, it could hardly be called a quarrel. We were both too reasonable--understood each other too thoroughly," answered Leonard, as he got up and went off to his dressing-room, leaving Mopsy sorely perplexed by an indescribable something in his tone and manner. Surely there must be some fatal meaning in that dark evil smile, which changed to so black a frown, and that deep sigh which seemed wrung from the very heart of the man: a man whom Mopsy had hitherto believed to be somewhat poorly furnished with that organ, taken in its poetical significance as a thing that throbs with love and pity.

Alone in his dressing-room the lord of the Manor sat down in front of the fire with his boots on the hob, to muse upon the incongruity of his present position in his own house. A year ago he had ruled supreme, sovereign master of the domestic circle, obeyed and ministered to in all humility by a lovely and pure-minded wife. Now he was a cipher in his own house, the husband of a woman who was almost as strange to him as if he had seen her face for the first time on his return from South America. This beautiful brilliant creature, who held him at arm's length, defied him openly with looks and tones in which his guilty soul recognized a terrible meaning--looks and tones which he dare not challenge--this woman who lived only for pleasure, fine dress, frivolity, who had given his house the free-and-easy air of a mess-room, or a club--could this be indeed the woman he had loved in her girlhood, the fair and simple-minded wife whom his mother had trained for him, teaching her all good things, withholding all knowledge of evil.

"I'm not going to stand it much longer," he said to himself, with an oath, as he kicked the logs about upon his fire, and then got up to dress for the feast at which he always felt himself just the one guest who was not wanted.

He had been at home three weeks--it seemed an age--an age of disillusion and discontent--and he had not yet sought any explanation with Christabel. Not yet had he dared to claim his right to be obeyed as a husband, to be treated as a friend and adviser. With a strange reluctance he put off the explanation from day to day, and in the meanwhile the aspect of life at Mount Royal was growing daily less agreeable to him. Could it be that this wife of his, whose purity and faith he had tried by the hardest test--the test of daily companionship with her first and only lover--was inclined to waver now--to play him false for so shallow a c.o.xcomb, so tawdry a fine gentleman as Oliver de Cazalet. Not once, but many times within the past week he had asked himself that question. Could it be? He had heard strange stories--had known of queer cases of the falling away of good women from the path of virtue. He had heard of sober matrons--mothers of fair children, wives of many years--the Cornelias of their circle, staking home, husband, children, honour, good name, and troops of friends against the wild delirium of some new-born fancy, sudden, demoniac as the dance of death.

The women who go wrong are not always the most likely women. It is not the trampled slave, the neglected and forlorn wife of a bad husband--but the pearl and treasure of a happy circle who takes the fatal plunge into the mire. The forlorn slave-wife stays in the dreary home and nurses her children, battles with her husband's creditors, consoles herself with church going and many prayers, fondly hoping for a future day in which Tom will find out that she is fairer and dearer than any of his false G.o.ddesses, and come home repentant to the domestic hearth: while the good husband's idol, sated with legitimate worship, gives herself up all at once to the intoxication of unholy incense, and topples off her shrine. Leonard Tregonell knew that the world was full of such psychological mysteries; and yet he could hardly bring himself to believe that Christabel was of the stuff that makes false wives, or that she could be won by such a third-rate Don Juan as the Baron de Cazalet.

The dinner was a little noisier and gayer than usual to-night. Every one talked, laughed, told anecdotes, let off puns, more or less atrocious--except the host, who sat in his place an image of gloom.

Happily Mrs. St. Aubyn was one of those stout, healthy, contented people who enjoy their dinner, and only talk about as much as is required for the a.s.sistance of digestion. She told prosy stories about her pigs and poultry--which were altogether superior, intellectually and physically, to other people's pigs and poultry--and only paused once or twice to exclaim, "You are looking awfully tired, Mr. Tregonell. You must have overdone it to-day. Don't you take curacoa? I always do after ice pudding. It's so comforting. Do you know at the last dinner I was at before I came here the curacoa was ginger brandy. Wasn't that horrid?

People ought not to do such things."

Leonard suggested in a bored voice that this might have been the butler's mistake.

"I don't think so. I believe it was actual meanness--but I shall never take liqueur at _that_ house again," said Mrs. St. Aubyn, in an injured tone.

"Are you going to this picnic to-morrow?"

"I think not. I'm afraid the walk would be too much for me--and I am not fond enough of Mrs. Torrington to enjoy two hours' _tete-a-tete_ in a pony-carriage. My girls will go, of course. And I suppose you will be there," added Mrs. St. Aubyn, with intention.

"No, Vandeleur, Monty, and I are going shooting."

"Well, if I were in your shoes and had such a pretty wife I should not leave her to go picnicking about the world with such an attractive man as the Baron."

Leonard gave an uneasy little laugh, meant to convey the idea of supreme security.

"I'm not jealous of de Cazalet," he said. "Surely you don't call him an attractive man."

"Dangerously attractive," replied Mrs. St. Aubyn, gazing at the distant Baron, whose florid good looks were a.s.serting themselves at the further end of the table, on Christabel's left hand--she had Mr. St. Aubyn's grey, contented face, glistening with dinner, on her right. "He is just the kind of man I should have fallen in love with when I was your wife's age."

"Really," exclaimed Leonard, incredulously. "But I suppose after you married St. Aubyn, you left off falling in love."

"Of course. I did not put myself in the way of temptation. I should never have encouraged such a man--handsome, accomplished, unscrupulous--as Baron de Cazalet."

"I don't think his good looks or his unscrupulousness will make any difference to my wife," said Leonard. "She knows how to take care of herself."

"No doubt. But that does not release you from the duty of taking care.

You had better go to the picnic."

"My dear Mrs. St. Aubyn, if I were to go now, after what you have just said to me, you might suppose I was jealous of de Cazalet; and that is just the one supposition I could not stand," answered Leonard. "It would take a dozen such fascinating men to shake my confidence in my wife: she is not an acquaintance of yesterday, remember: I have known her all my life."

Mrs. St. Aubyn sighed and shook her head. She was one of those stupid well-meaning women whose mission in life is to make other people uncomfortable--with the best intentions. She kept a steady look-out for the approaching misfortunes of her friends. She was the first to tell an anxious mother that her youngest boy was sickening for scarlet fever, or that her eldest girl looked consumptive. She prophesied rheumatics and bronchitis to incautious people who went out in wet weather--she held it as a fixed belief that all her friends' houses were damp. It was in vain that vexed householders protested against such a suspicion, and held forth upon the superiority of their drainage, the felt under their tiles, their air bricks, and ventilators. "My dear, your house is damp,"

she would reply conclusively. "What it would be if you had _not_ taken those precautions I shudder to imagine--but I only know that I get the shivers every time I sit in your drawing-room."

To-night she was somewhat offended with Mr. Tregonell that he refused to take alarm at her friendly warning. She had made up her mind that it was her duty to speak. She had told the girls so in the course of their afternoon const.i.tutional, a private family walk.

"If things get any worse I shall take you away," she said, as they trudged along the lane in their waterproofs, caring very little for a soft drizzling rain, which was supposed to be good for their complexions.

"Don't, mother," said Emily. "Clara and I are having such a jolly time.

Mrs. Tregonell is straight enough, I'm sure. She does flirt outrageously with the Baron, I admit; but an open flirtation of that kind seldom means mischief; and Mr. Tregonell is such a heavy clod-hopping fellow: his wife may be forgiven for flirting a little."

"Mrs. Tregonell flirts more than a little," replied Mrs. St. Aubyn. "All I can say is, I don't like it, and I don't think it's a proper spectacle for girls."

"Then you'd better send us back to the nursery, mother, or shut us up in a convent," retorted the younger of the damsels. "If you don't want us to see young married women flirt, you must keep us very close indeed."

"If you feel uneasy about your Cochin Chinas, mother, you can go home, and leave us to follow with the pater," said Emily. "I've set my heart upon stopping till after Mr. Tregonell's birthday, the 14th of November, for the theatricals will be fine fun. They talk of "High Life below Stairs" for us girls, after "Delicate Ground;" and I think we shall be able to persuade Mrs. Tregonell to wind up with a dance. What is the use of people having fine rooms if they don't know how to use them?"

"Mrs. Tregonell seems ready for anything," sighed the matron. "I never saw such a change in any one. Do you remember how quiet she was the summer before last, when we were here for a few days?"