"And what do you know about Mrs. Levitt?"

"Nothing. I only gather from what you say yourself that she is--fertile in resource."

"Resource?"

"Well, in creating opportunities."

"Opportunities, now, for what?"

"For you to exercise your Christian charity, my dear. When are you going to let me call on her?"

"I am not going to let you call on her at all."

"Is that Christian charity?"

"It's anything you please." He was absorbed in his letter. Mrs. Levitt had been obliged to move from Mrs. Trinder's in the Square to inferior rooms in Sheep Street, and she was sorry for herself.

"But surely, when you're always calling on her yourself--"

"I am not always calling on her. And if I were, there are some things which are perfectly proper for me to do which would not be proper for you."

"It sounds as if Mrs. Levitt wasn't."

He looked up as sharply as his facial curves permitted. "Nothing of the sort. She's simply not the sort of person you _do_ call on; and I don't mean you to begin."

"Why not?"

"Because you're my wife and you have a certain position in the county.

That's why."

"Rather a sn.o.bby reason, isn't it? You said I might call on anybody I liked."

"So you may, in reason, provided you don't begin with Mrs. Levitt."

"I may have to end with her," said f.a.n.n.y.

Mr. Waddington had many reasons for not wishing f.a.n.n.y to call on Mrs.

Levitt. He wanted to keep his wife, because she was his wife, in a place apart from Mrs. Levitt and above her, to mark the distance and distinction that there was between them. He wanted to keep himself, as f.a.n.n.y's husband, apart and distant, by way of enhancing his male attraction. And he wanted to keep Mrs. Levitt apart, to keep her to himself, as the hidden woman of pa.s.sionate adventure. Hitherto their intercourse had had the charm, the unique, irreplaceable charm of things unacknowledged and clandestine. Mrs. Levitt was unique; irreplaceable.

He couldn't think of any other woman who would be a suitable subst.i.tute.

There was little Barbara Madden; she had been afraid of him; but his pa.s.sions were still too young to be stirred by the crudity of a girl's fright; if it came to that, he preferred the rea.s.suring ease of Mrs.

Levitt.

And he didn't mean it to come to that.

But though Mr. Waddington did not actually look forward to a time when he would be Mrs. Levitt's lover, he had visions of the pure fancy in which he saw himself standing on Mrs. Levitt's doorstep after dark; say, once a fortnight, on her servant's night out; he would sound a m.u.f.fled signal on the knocker and the door would he half-opened by Elise. Elise!

He would slip through in a slender and mysterious manner; he would go on tip-toe up and down her stairs, recapturing a youthful thrill out of the very risks they ran, yet managing the affair with a consummate delicacy and discretion.

At this point Mr. Waddington's fancy heard another door open down the street; somebody came out and saw him in the light of the pa.s.sage; somebody went by with a lantern; somebody timed his comings and goings.

He felt the palpitation, the cold nausea of detection. No. You couldn't do these things in a little place like Wyck-on-the-Hill, where everybody knew everybody else's business. And there was Toby, too.

Sometimes, perhaps, on a Sunday afternoon, when Toby and the servant would be out. Yes. Sunday afternoon between tea-time and church-time.

Or he could meet her in Oxford or Cheltenham or in London. Wiser.

Week-ends. More satisfactory. Risk of being seen there too, but you must take some risks. Surprising how these things _were_ kept secret.

Birmingham now. Birmingham would be safer because more unlikely. He didn't know anybody in Birmingham. But the very thought of Mrs. Levitt calling at the Manor on the same commonplace footing, say, as Mrs.

Grainger, was destruction to all this romantic secrecy.

Also he was afraid that if Mrs. Levitt were really that sort of woman, f.a.n.n.y's admirable instinct would find her out and scent the imminent affair. Or if f.a.n.n.y remained unsuspicious and showed plainly her sense of security, Elise might become possessive and from sheer jealousy give herself away. Mr. Waddington said to himself that he knew women, and that if he were a wise man, and he _was_ a wise man, he would arrange matters so that the two should never meet. f.a.n.n.y was docile, and if he said flatly that she was not to call on Mrs. Levitt, she wouldn't.

2

There was another thing that Mr. Waddington dreaded even more than that dangerous encounter: f.a.n.n.y's knowing that he had turned the Ballingers out. As he would have been very unwilling to admit that Mrs. Levitt had forced his hand there, he took the whole of the responsibility for that action. But, inevitable and justifiable as it was, he couldn't hope to carry it off triumphantly with f.a.n.n.y. It was just, but it was not magnanimous. Therefore, without making any positively untruthful statement, he had let her think that Ballinger had given notice of his own accord. The chances, he thought, were all against f.a.n.n.y ever hearing the truth of the matter.

If only the rascal hadn't had a wife and children, and if only his wife--but, unfortunately for Mr. Waddington, his wife was Susan Trinder, Mrs. Trinder's husband's niece, and Susan Trinder had been Horace's nurse; and though they all considered that she had done for herself when she married that pig-headed Ballinger, f.a.n.n.y and Horace still called her Susan-Nanna. And Susan-Nanna's niece, Annie Trinder, was parlourmaid at the Manor. So Mr. Waddington had a nasty qualm when Annie, clearing away breakfast, asked if she might have a day off to look after her aunt, Mrs. Ballinger, who was in bed with the rheumatics.

To his horror he heard f.a.n.n.y saying: "She wouldn't have had the rheumatics if they'd stayed in Sheep Street."

"No, ma'am."

Annie's eyes were clear and mendacious.

"He never ought to have left it," said f.a.n.n.y.

"No, ma'am. No more he oughtn't."

"Isn't she very sorry about it?"

(Why couldn't f.a.n.n.y leave it alone?)

"Yes, m'm. She's frettin' something awful. You see, 'tesn't so much the house, though 'tes a better one than the one they're in, 'tes the garden. All that fruit and vegetable what uncle he put in himself, and them lavender bushes. Aunt, she's so fond of a bit of lavender. I dunnow I'm sure how she'll get along."

Annie knew. He could tell by her eyes that she knew. There was nothing but Annie's loyalty between him and that exposure that he dreaded. He heard f.a.n.n.y say that she would go and see Susan to-morrow. There would be nothing but Susan's loyalty and Ballinger's magnanimity. It would amount to that if they spared him for f.a.n.n.y's sake. He had been absolutely right, and Ballinger had brought the whole trouble on himself; but you could never make f.a.n.n.y see that. And Ballinger contrived to put him still further in the wrong. The next day when f.a.n.n.y called at the cottage she found it empty. Ballinger had removed himself and his wife and family to Susan's father's farm at Medlicott, a good two and a half miles from his work on Colonel Grainger's land, thus providing himself with a genuine grievance.

And f.a.n.n.y would keep on talking about it at dinner.

"Those poor Ballingers! It's an awful pity he gave up the Sheep Street cottage. Didn't you tell him he was a fool, Horatio?"

Mercifully Annie Trinder had left the room. But there was Partridge by the sideboard, listening.

"I'm not responsible for Ballinger's folly. If he finds himself inconvenienced by it, that's no concern of mine."

"Well, Ballinger's folly has been very convenient for Mrs. Levitt."

Mr. Waddington tried to look as if Mrs. Levitt's convenience were no concern of his either.