"If you can spare the time, Lady Ardingly," she said, "please take Maud down to Windsor. You will see--that woman, and tell her what you think fit. Please tell Maud from me to do exactly as you bid her. You can make up any story you please about her absence last night, in case Andrew knows. He probably will not, for he breakfasts early alone, and comes up to town always."

She paused a moment.

"And send Jack back to me," she said.

Later on the same day Jack was waiting for Mildred in her room in the Grosvenor Square house. Before long she came in radiant.

"Now sit down, Jack," she said, "and tell me all that happened. All I know is that Lady Ardingly brought Maud back before lunch to-day. You may imagine what a relief that was! Andrew had gone up to town early--earlier than you--and he knows nothing about anything. How clever Lady Ardingly is, and how well she has managed everything! Maud, of course, was quite impossible. She would not say a word to me, and stopped down there. But I pa.s.sed Anthony as I drove up. I said Maud would be charmed to see him. I think things are going all right there, and so Marie's little scheme was not successful."

"We will not speak of Marie's little scheme," said Jack.

She looked at him in surprise, too absorbed at present in her own thick relief of mind to be annoyed.

"How gloomy you are, Jack! I suppose Marie has put you in a bad temper.

Did she give it you hot? Poor old man! tell me what she said."

"She said--eventually that is--that she was going to do nothing; that she would continue to live with me, and that I might go my own way and do exactly what I liked."

Mildred was rapidly stripping off her long suede gloves.

"Now, that is nicer than I expected of her," she said. "Of course one could have objected to nothing, to no condition she chose to impose, for we were absolutely in her power, and she might have bound you never to see me again. Do you think perhaps she has something up her sleeve on her own account?"

Jack leaned back in his chair.

"What do you mean exactly?" he asked.

"Dear Jack, how dull you are! Why, Jim Spencer of course. Has she come round to this policy of mutual tolerance? It is quite the best policy.

Honesty is not in it!"

"No," said he. "I feel sure she has not."

Mildred laughed, and poured herself out some tea.

"You think not? You don't half appreciate Marie. Nor did I till to-day.

But I think she has got twice as much ordinary work-a-day common-sense as we supposed."

She bit a macaroon with her short sharp teeth and crunched it.

"It was sensible, very sensible, of her not to make a row of European dimensions," she continued. "No doubt when it came to, she saw how impossible it was. But to make no conditions--it was charming, simply charming of her! And how much more comfortable we shall be now, Jack!

Before there was always that one little reservation: 'What if Marie knew?' That is gone now. Why didn't we let her know, oh, ages ago? It would have saved so much trouble."

She laid her finger-tips lightly on Jack's neck as she pa.s.sed. He moved his head away. But she did not notice it, and pa.s.sed on to her table.

"This is the photograph of her which you smashed up after the Silly Billy scandal," she said. "Have they not mended the frame well? I told them to send the bill to you. Will you dine here to-night?"

"No, I am dining at home," said Jack.

Mildred paused.

"Ah, you have people, I suppose," she said.

"No, we are dining alone, Marie and I. I have got things I must say to her."

"Indeed! I cannot guess what."

"I must tell her what I have decided to do. I must tell you also. I shall not see you again, Mildred. Not, at least, in the way you mean, in the way we meant," he added.

She sat down heavily.

"You were saying?" she asked.

"I was saying--that."

"Then what has happened?" she asked, spilling her tea in the saucer as she spoke.

"It has happened that I do appreciate what you do not. I wonder if all things of this sort are so crude. That is by the way. But you are as intolerable to me as I am to Marie. I have fallen in love with her.

To-day I know it, fully, completely. But I came here to talk it out. Let me do so, though there is not much to say. Long ago we knew that one of us must get tired first. We settled then that it was impossible for either of us; but supposing the impossible, we should not be sentimental and reproachful. I am sorry it is me. I would sooner that it was you.

But it is me."

"And the reason?" asked she.

"I do not know for certain. What I do know is that there is only one woman in the world for me. She is my wife. And she--she does not know of my existence."

Mildred got up.

"Go, then," she said.

And she was left alone with the mended photograph of Marie and her spilt tea.

CHAPTER XVII

It was a warm bright day of early November, so serene and sunny even in London that it seemed as if the promise of spring rather than any threat of winter was in the air. Leaves still lingered thickly on the plane-trees in the Park, and a sun divinely clear flooded the streets and roadways with unusual light. Shop-boys whistled as they went on their errands, the hoops of children were bowled with alacrity, while their nursemaids smiled on the benignant police who piloted them and their charges over perilous crossings. London, moreover, was rather full; that is to say, a few hundreds who would not otherwise have been there had joined the patient millions who were never anywhere else, for Parliament had met, and a three-lined whip had been flogging the laggards back to their places from partridge-drive and pheasant-shoot.

For this reason, the columns of "Diana" had been particularly sprightly, and all the world might read with rapture that Lady Ardingly had returned with her husband to Pall Mall; that Lord Alston with his wife, "who looked quite charming in a guipure hat trimmed with sa.s.safras"--or the effect of such words--were in Park Lane; that Lord Brereton with his wife, "whom I saw driving two spirited colts in the Park yesterday," had returned to Grosvenor Square. "Cupid's Bow," also, had reported the marriage of the daughter to Mr. Anthony Maxwell only three days before, and "Diana" had been graciously pleased to express satisfaction at the presents, knew, of course, how delighted everybody was, and what the bride's travelling dress was like; in fact, there was no doubt whatever about it.

The spirited colt business was also authentic, and the morning after this announcement had appeared it so happened that Mildred was driving them again. The carriage was of a light-phaeton type, with a seat for the groom behind, and the two cobs--"Diana" had miscalled them--took it like a feather. On the whole, Mildred had had a pleasanter autumn that she had thought possible. She had stayed at several entertaining houses, had picked up several new friends and dropped several old ones.

Her method of dropping old friends was always admirable. She never hurled them violently away; she merely opened her fingers and let them fall gently to the ground, never quarrelling with them, but just becoming unconscious of their existence. Then she had been at Aix for a fortnight, and had explained matters quite satisfactorily to a person who mattered very much, and altogether had rather a success. Afterwards followed Maud's marriage, which left her freer than before (and she had already persuaded herself that the last two seasons had been bondage); and she had invented and learned by heart a little story of how that very odd woman, Marie Alston, had tried to stop it. In its finished form it was quite a pathetic narrative. "But every one must choose for himself what he means to do," it ended, "and if Marie chooses to be malicious, it is her look-out. Dear Marie! I used to be very fond of her. Yes, she has gone off terribly--quite _pa.s.see_, and so young, too.

She cannot be more than thirty." This latter was quite true; she was only twenty-six, and Mildred knew it.

Yes, on the whole Mildred congratulated herself. Her appet.i.te for pleasure had not been diminished by the events of this summer, and there was still plenty to feed it. In her superficial way she missed Jack a good deal, but she had got over it in her hard, practical manner, and all that remained to her now of regret had been transformed into implacable anger against him for his desertion. However, she had some charming new friends, and certainly one crowd was very like another crowd. To have your house full, that was the great thing, and to get plenty of invitations to houses that would also be full. She liked eating, and screaming, and laughing, and intriguing; they were still at her command. Externally, to conclude, she was a shade more p.r.o.nounced; her hair was slightly more t.i.tianesque, her cheeks a little more highly coloured, her mouth a little redder, her eyebrows a little thicker. Most people thought she looked very well, but Lady Ardingly said to herself, "Poor Mildred is beginning to fight for it."

The day was rather windy, and as she drove up Park Lane she had her work cut out for her in the matter of management. The cobs had been newly clipped, and all their nerves appeared to be outside their skins. This Mildred thoroughly enjoyed; she was conscious of the mastery over brute strength which makes the fascination of dealing with horses, and she loved to know that Box longed to bolt and could not manage it, and that c.o.x wanted to shy at every carriage that pa.s.sed but did not dare, for that his nerves were outside his skin, and he was aware who sat behind him with whip alert. "The heavenly devils!" thought Mildred to herself as they avoided a curbstone on the one hand by a hair-breadth and a bicycle on the other by half that distance.

Like all fine whips, she infinitely preferred to drive in the streets than in the Park, but to-day they were horribly crowded, and she turned in through Stanhope Gate with the idea of letting the cobs have a good trot through the Park and come out at the Albert Gate. The day was so divine that she thought she would perhaps go out of town, and lunch at Richmond or somewhere, returning in the afternoon. She was dining out that night at Blanche Devereux's, who had a Mexican band coming, which, according to her account, was so thrilling that you didn't know whether you were standing on your head or your heels. This sounded quite promising; she liked a _decollete_ evening.