They did not say that Tony would not be going. Instead, Gerald produced a map from his pocket, and spread it on a corner of the table.

"I have more or less thought out a route," said he. "I wonder if you will approve. There were two places which you told me that you would particularly like to see--one was Bodiam Castle. The other was the Roman Pavement at Bignor. I have been talking to Baines (his chauffeur), and he says it would be quite possible to do both. It is a fifty-mile run to Bodiam--less than two hours. We could lunch on the way back--say at Lewes--and go on to Bignor, where we could have tea, and get back any time we like."

"How simply perfect!" laughed Virgie as she helped herself to marmalade with an appet.i.te which was so recent an acquirement that she herself could not understand it. n.o.body present noticed it. Mrs. Mynors would never have known had her daughter starved herself to death under her eyes. Across the girl's mind stole the thought of some one who had watched every mouthful, had hectored and bullied her into eating.

She leant across to Gerald, and perused the map with attention. "What a way it seems! Bodiam is in the very eastest corner of Suss.e.x. And Bignor is more than the whole way back--positively on the other side of Worthing! Are you sure it won't be too far? I am so afraid Pansy will miss me."

"You forget," put in her mother, "Pansy is going to have the first of her electric baths to-day, and nurse says she will have to be very quiet for some hours after it. Besides, it will accustom her to the idea of being without you."

"Yes. That is true," was the reply, while a shadow crept over the gladness of the face.

"I expect Osbert is beginning to be restive, isn't he?" asked her mother, in order to gauge the effect of a sudden reference to Gaunt.

The effect, as always, was a momentary confusion, slight but evident.

She soon rallied. "He is very patient," she replied, while her thoughts went obstinately back to the dream garden, veiled in mist, to the man who approached her, groping blindly, to his words, "Are you coming back? No!"

"It seems wonderful that he _can_ be patient under the circ.u.mstances," observed Gerald drily. He did not pursue the subject.

He was folding up his map. "I told the chauffeur to be round in exactly twenty minutes from now. I must bolt, and do a change. Can you be ready in twenty minutes?"

She eagerly a.s.sented, and he caught up his hat and ran out of the room, with a smile to her of glowing, eager antic.i.p.ation which set her heart dancing in response. What a dear fellow he was! How good he had been to them all! He had saved quite a lot of Gaunt's money by taking them down to Worthing in the car. She did not ask herself why it was terrible to take her husband's money, but easy to take Gerald's.

She ran away upstairs, calling to Tony. He appeared from his room, got up in a striped flannel suit, a soft linen collar, a most _recherche_ tie, and a Panama hat--a real one.

"Why, Tony, you have made yourself a swell!" cried the girl.

"Pretty decent, isn't it?" was the gratified reply. "Left me any brekker?"

"Plenty, but be quick, we have to start in twenty minutes."

"Not me, sis. I'm going with Mullins Major to Arundel."

"To Arundel! Oh, no, Tony, you are going with Gerald and me in the car!"

"Not much. This is heaps better. Good old Gerald bought us the ticket--front places, and he has given me half a sov. for our grub.

Isn't he great?"

"Oh, Tony!" She stood back as the boy ran down the stairs whistling gaily. "Did Gerald give you that suit, too, and that overwhelmingly elegant hat?"

"He did. Took me into the town the first day we got here and rigged me out."

Virgie burst out laughing. She was so glad that Tony should be young--should put on a bit of "sw.a.n.k." How dear of Gerald to be so good to him!

Money makes life very easy. The thought turned her grave once more. Am I mercenary? she asked herself. Does love of money mean the desire to obtain good doctors and nursing, to educate a boy well, to live cleanly and keep out of debt? With a sigh she admitted that her marriage had been mercenary. Yet how small a share of life's good things would have prevented her from making so hideous a mistake--a mistake which as yet she had hardly begun to pay for. Oh, why, why, had Gerald stepped aside and failed her at the critical moment?

"If I had only had patience, if only I had waited," she told herself, "it would have come right! He as good as told me so that first night we dined together. I ought to have refused to do what I knew to be wrong, and left the consequences to G.o.d."

She made herself ready for the drive, slipped into Pansy's room, and to her relief found the child quite prepared for her going. "Gerald told me yesterday that he should take you," she said sedately.

Gerald was then heard calling for Virgie, and with a hasty kiss she ran off. Both the plotters heaved a sigh of relief when they found she took Tony's defection in good part. The boy came down from his half-eaten breakfast to see them off, and the car spun away, up to Broadwater and Sompting, and on along the northern slopes of those magical South Downs, the love of which can never fade from a Suss.e.x heart.

Virgie's heart sang as the sunny miles whizzed past. She and Gerald were together, and who knew what might come after? She caught herself wishing that an accident might terminate the day, that she might be fatally injured, and gasp out her life in Gerald's arms. Gaunt would be legally compelled to continue the allowances to her family. The idea fascinated her, so that at length, after a long silence, she said to her companion: "Isn't there a piece of poetry about two people riding together for the last time? The man said he wished the world would end at the end of the ride--do you know it?"

"Can't say I do. I'm not much at poetry," he answered apologetically, "but he was a wise chap if he wanted to end off at the best bit. So you think we are in like case?" he stooped to look into her eyes.

She was shaken into remembrance, and stood on guard in a moment. "Oh, no, of course not! What nonsense! I was only thinking to myself in the silly way I sometimes do."

"Just so. For you the world is but just beginning. You are returning to-morrow to the arms of the man who loved you so devotedly that for the sake of calling you his own he was ready to come to the rescue of your family. For me the case is very, very different. I don't know who could blame me if I wished that this day should end my life."

She laughed. "But that is really nonsense. You are a man--you can go where you like and do as you like. I must do as some one else wills all my life long."

"You think that I can do as I like, Virgie?"

"Of course you can."

"If I did, you would be distinctly surprised. I should tell the chauffeur to change his course--or, rather, to continue on, past Lewes, to Newhaven; and I should carry you on board the first steamer that sailed, and we should vanish across the sea and start life together in some glorious new land, and you would be mine--all mine!"

He spoke half banteringly, but very tenderly, and she hardly knew how to take him.

"As I am I, and as you are you, that is out of the question, you know,"

he went on, almost in a whisper. "You are not the girl to break your oath and I am not the man to tempt you, even if I thought I could do it with success. So all will go on as before. We shall be together to-day and we shall part to-morrow; and for the rest of my life I shall be fully occupied in resisting the temptation to cut Gaunt's throat."

Virgie decided that she was expected to laugh, and did so, but very softly.

"Don't talk like that," she begged him wistfully. "Let us be quite happy, and think about Pansy, and how wonderful it is that she should be getting well."

CHAPTER XXII

THE ROMAN VILLA

"_When you and I behind the Veil are past, Oh! but the long, long while the world shall last, Which of our Coming and Departure heeds As much as Ocean of a pebble cast.

One moment in Annihilation's Waste, One moment of the Well of Life to taste-- The Stars are setting, and the Caravan Draws to the dawn of nothing!--Oh, make haste!_"

--Omar Khayyam.

The docility with which Gerald accepted the change of subject was completely rea.s.suring to Virginia. His words led her to suppose that he imagined all to be well between herself and her husband. She gave herself up to fullest enjoyment of the fine weather, the swift motion, the beautiful country.

Bodiam Castle she found entrancing, and her fresh, almost childlike interest in exploring it gave Gerald a kind of pleasure hard to explain. Her unconsciousness put him upon his honour; yet it was subtly alluring, too. It urged him to find out what would happen if she could be brought face to face with the truth about herself and him.

He found himself lost in contemplation of the curious subtlety of her nature, as contrasted with its simplicity. He knew, as it happened, that her marriage was most unhappy. He doubted whether he could have discovered as much without the information given him by her mother. Her reserve was impenetrable. If she betrayed herself, it was quite involuntarily, in some phrase which, to him who knew, bore a tragic significance. "You are a man--you can do as you like. I must do as some one else wills, all my life long."

This was as near as she had come, in words, to lifting the veil so carefully dropped. He ranged her qualities one against the other--her incapacity for flirtation, her power of preserving a dignified secrecy.

Artlessness combined with prudence! It was another such apparent contradiction which had mystified Gaunt--her hard toil and ceaseless sacrifice, taken in conjunction with her regard for appearances, her love of dainty raiment. As a matter of fact, there was no contradiction. Innate pride and refinement accounted for attributes which seemed to clash.

The day's programme was carried through with much success. They lunched at Lewes, and thence, hugging the northern edge of the Downs, they pa.s.sed to Steyning and on through Storrington to Pulborough. Here they had an early tea, being warned that no tea was obtainable at Bignor; and went on, through the exquisite late afternoon, along roads which grew to be what Virgie described as "lanier and more laney."