"It seems to me that I have married the wrong woman," he said, letting it fall again. "It was your mother who ought to have been made to suffer."

"Mother has suffered a great deal," murmured Virginia.

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, walked away, across the room, came back slowly, paused, staring at her.

"Tell me, for G.o.d's sake, what made you consent to such a marriage as this?"

She made a backward movement away from him, her eyes blazing, her temper high. "I did _not_ consent--I never consented to such a marriage as this!"

She was in act to go out of the room. He put himself in the way. "What then? What did you expect?"

"I will not speak of it to you!"

"You will speak of what I please!" As she made to pa.s.s him, he took her by both arms, holding her before him. "You are to tell me what induced you to agree to marry me."

"Why should I tell you when you do not believe what I say?"

"You tell me--I'll believe or not, as I see fit. Out with it!"

She once more checked the hysterical sobs that threatened her.

"You--you had once loved mother," she said slowly. "You knew that she preferred another man. I am like her. You saw me; it brought back to you that bygone love. I supposed that you were attracted."

She paused.

"But what of yourself? Your own feeling in the matter? I want to get at that."

"It was only a question of me," she muttered, "and it was giving myself up for them. I--you see, I could do nothing." In spite of her control sobs began to shake her voice. "It was hopeless; we were at the end----" She broke off to summon fresh nerve. He stood immovable, holding her, compelling her, as it were, to continue.

"The end of your resources?"

She nodded. "And nearly the end of my strength too. I was afraid that, if I took a place anywhere, my health would give way. I was afraid--a coward!" Suddenly her own emotion gave her words and steadied her voice. "I ought to have gone on--just died, and trusted G.o.d to care for them! But, oh, you have never known--never thought of what it means--to have the ones you love, your own, your darlings--dest.i.tute, and to know that you--can't go on much longer.... As for you"--she looked him squarely in the eyes, her own full of scorn--"how could I have guessed that a man like you could be? A man who could find pleasure in bullying, browbeating the helpless girl he had sworn to love?"

"Ha!" he said, "so you break out at last, do you? How dare you speak to me like that? I shall punish you for it. You haven't read that letter yet. Give it me."

She held Pansy's as yet unread epistle crushed in her left hand.

Without reflecting, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it to her breast, covering it with her other hand. In a whirlwind of some blind fury which he could not a.n.a.lyse he took it from her, using force to unclasp her fingers.

There was a tussle--momentary only--then she stood free of him in the middle of the room, a wild look on her face, glancing this way and that as if for escape. He stood before the one door, the other was locked.

Like a flame blown out by a puff of wind her pa.s.sion died as the knowledge of her own desperate case overflooded her. Turning away with a long-drawn moan she crouched down in a big chair, hiding her face, giving way to her despair unrestrained.

In a minute or two she heard his voice, harsh and broken, speaking close to her. "Why did you provoke me? You shouldn't; it's dangerous,"

he growled hurriedly. "Here, take your letter; here it is"--pushing it into her hands. "Stop crying, can you? or conceal your face. Here comes Hemming with the tea."

At the admonition she sprang to her feet, and he saw the pathos of her pale, tear-washed cheeks. With a swift movement she ran to the writing-table, seated herself thereat, and bent down her face as if busily occupied. Gaunt placed himself beside her, leaning partly over, as if watching what she wrote; and upon the domestic tableau the servant entered with his tray.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TREATMENT BREAKS DOWN

"_Oh, do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone, That thee I shall not celebrate, When I remember thou wast one._"--Donne.

The otter hounds were out, and Mr. Ferris was driving his wife in the car to the meet. The gentleman was in capital humour, for he knew how acceptable a companion he would prove to everybody this morning; being, so far as he knew, the only person who had yet actually beheld the romantic creature who had conquered that hard and woman-hating bachelor, Gaunt of Omberleigh.

"I wonder if she'll hunt?" remarked Joey. "Gaunt's a good horseman in spite of his lameness. Just fancy seeing him about this winter with a pretty wife in tow! It's simply too rippin'--best news I've heard for a long time."

"Hallo! Who's this riding the wrong way?" said her husband suddenly.

"If it isn't the doctor. Hallo, Dymock, where are you off to on such a grand morning?" he cried, stopping the engine.

"Give you three guesses," said Dymock, drawing rein with a grin on his clever, keen face. "But you won't guess in fifty."

"Got it in one," shouted Joey. "You're going to Omberleigh, I can see it in your eye."

"You're a wizard, Mrs. Ferris. Have you seen her, then?"

"What, the bride? You don't say you're going to see her?"

"I saw her yesterday," burst in Percy, "and she looked as well as--well, as health itself."

"Old Gaunt is not satisfied, however," replied Dymock. "It's probably nothing much, but he says she seems a bit run down. I suppose I must expect to be sent for if her little finger aches."

"Sure," laughed Ferris. "He looks as if he wishes he could cause her to become invisible when any one of the male s.e.x is pa.s.sing by. Just the age to make a fool of himself, isn't he? Well, if you're pa.s.sing our way later, look in, won't you?"

"You'll be wasting your whisky, Ferris. I don't give away my patients."

Ferris grinned. "Welcome, anyway," he said, as he and his wife drove on.

Dr. Dymock pursued his road, his mind as he rode up through the pinewoods being filled with as lively a curiosity as even the couple from Perley Hatch confessed to feeling. What like was the girl--for Ferris said she was a girl, and beautiful at that--who could have married Gaunt?

Hemming showed him into the study. It surprised him vaguely to find the house as untidy and dingy as usual--the abode of a woman-hating bachelor, untouched by the coming of a fair young mistress. Certainly the affair had been very sudden.

Gaunt joined him almost at once, his own appearance just as normal and unchanged as that of his house.

"I must begin with hearty congratulations," observed the doctor, shaking hands cordially. "Ferris, it appears, caught a glimpse of Mrs.

Gaunt yesterday, and he says she is perfectly lovely."

"Thanks. Yes, my wife is certainly pretty, but I fear she is not very strong. As I think I hinted to you in my note, she was bitten with the idea which infects many girls nowadays--this notion of taking up Work, with a capital W. She has been scrubbing floors and cooking meals--laying tables and lighting fires. It has been quite too much for her. She told me nothing of it, and I was inconsiderate enough to take her a long ramble over the estate yesterday. She was so done up afterwards that I persuaded her to stay in bed to-day until you had seen her."

It was frankly and quite pleasantly said. The doctor applauded the new-made husband's care, and was taken upstairs, under Grover's escort, to the room where his patient lay.

He was not a man observant of details, but it struck even him that these were curious surroundings for a modern bride.

Since his inheritance of the property from his great aunt, the survivor of four aged sisters, Gaunt had not thought of touching or altering anything.