Thus reminded of her duties Mrs. Spencer bustled away to find some "preserve," which was only brought out for specially honoured guests; and Toni took the seat Herrick placed for her at the table.

"You'll pour out for us? That's right. I'm afraid our good landlady will want to stay and chatter! Do you mind?"

"Oh, no--do let her stay and talk about my people!" pleaded Toni, and this Mrs. Spencer was very ready to do.

Standing by the table, resting her empty tray on her ample hip, she poured forth a stream of disjointed memories to which Toni listened eagerly. Mrs. Spencer, it seemed, had had an aunt living in the village with the Gibbs; and as a child she had often stayed there; so that she had known Toni's father well.

"Of course, t' Gibbs were always a cut above us," she owned frankly. "My feyther was a foundry hand till he died, and wasn't too steady neither; and when 'e died my mother took in washing. There was a trick young Roger once played 'er about a washing-basket ... what was it now?" She paused to meditate. "Nay, I can't think on this minute ... but she allus said as 'e wur nowt but a bowdekite!" She laughed, jollily, at the recollection, and pressed a cheesecake on Toni with a heartiness there was no resisting.

Thanks to her chatter time flew; and Herrick was just beginning to think of the waiting chauffeur, when there was a sudden spatter of rain against the window panes; and looking out he saw that while they had been talking a storm had been brewing.

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little, Mrs. Rose!" He pointed to the rain, now streaming down in a steady torrent. "It won't be more than a shower, I daresay."

"Oh, and Fletcher's outside in it." Toni put down her cup. "Mr. Herrick, could I tell him to come inside and have some tea, do you think? We've been out for hours, you know."

"Certainly. I'll see about it."

He went out and brought in the chauffeur, delivering him over to Mrs.

Spencer's good offices; and then returned to find Toni sitting rather disconsolately by the window, looking out at the rain as it splashed into the quickly-forming puddles in the village street.

The sudden storm, the silence which fell after Mrs. Spencer's departure, or the early-falling dusk, had brought back all her misery to Toni's mind, banishing in a flash all her recent joyful animation; and when, after observing her for a moment, Herrick came forward, he saw that a blight had fallen over her late gaiety.

She did not hear his step--thought, perhaps, that he had stayed to speak to the chauffeur or chat with the landlady; and all at once such a sense of bitter desolation swept over Toni that she began to cry softly to herself in the dusk.

Instantly Herrick began to back noiselessly towards the door; but Fate, or perhaps a malignant Boo-Boo, pushed a footstool in his path, over which he stumbled with an involuntary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

Startled, Toni turned round and saw him; and cursing his own clumsiness, Herrick judged it best to come forward openly.

"Your man is having some tea, under Mrs. Spencer's kindly auspices." He smiled. "It seems she 'don't reckon nowt' to our combined appet.i.tes, so I hope Fletcher will make up for our shortcomings."

He sat down in the low window seat, not far from Toni, and with a smile asked permission to smoke.

"Of course--please do." She spoke indifferently.

"Your husband isn't an inveterate smoker--like me?" He lighted a cigarette gratefully. "I thought most literary men were slaves to tobacco."

"I think Owen smokes a good deal," she said. "And especially now that he is working so hard. Miss Loder is quite shocked at his cigarettes."

"Miss Loder?" The question slipped out before he had time to reflect.

"My husband's secretary." She broke off abruptly, as though unwilling to say more. Then a great flood of bitterness rolled over her spirit, at the memory of her own failure; and mingled with it came a sore envy and distrust of the clear-eyed, capable woman who had supplanted her.

Together, the two proved irresistible; and with an almost child-like instinct to confide in the man whom she felt to be trustworthy, Toni turned to Herrick and poured forth her sad little story of disappointment and bitter disillusionment.

Out it all came, her desire to help her husband, and the dread awakening to the fact of her own incompetency. Herrick, listening, realized, as perhaps Owen could not have done, what a blow to Toni's hopes the failure of the experiment had been; and remembering her earlier confidences, when she had appealed to him to reverse the judgment pa.s.sed upon her by two cruel women, he began to wonder whether Toni would ever find any happiness in the life which had once looked so glorious to her youthful eyes.

He said very little till she had finished, though now and again, a quiet question made clear some point involved by her own incoherency; and from the bottom of his heart he pitied the girl who was beginning to realize that though she might be the wife of the man she loved, she would never be his real companion and helpmate until she could attain something nearer to the high standard of perfection for which he looked.

"This Miss Loder--you like her?"

"I believe--sometimes--I almost hate her," said Toni drearily. "She is everything I am not, you see. She is clever, well-educated, amusing. I think I hate women who tell amusing stories," she added vindictively, biting her lip with her strong little teeth.

"But she is not personally objectionable to you?" Herrick wished to hear, if possible, how she treated her employer's wife.

"No--at least she doesn't mean to be," said Toni, striving to speak fairly. "But I know she thinks I am a fool, and pities Owen for having married me. I believe she thinks I ought never to speak to Owen, never ask him any questions about the book. She was quite--short--with me yesterday because I went in to speak to Owen during the afternoon!"

"Oh, but that's absurd!" Herrick felt a quite unreasonable dislike for the superior Miss Loder. "After all you are his wife--she is only his secretary--and husbands and wives have a claim on each other which no sane person would deny."

"Yes." She did not look convinced, and he tried again.

"Don't forget, will you, that a wife holds an absolutely unique position. She is the one person in the world to whom the man is answerable for his actions, just as she is answerable to him for her own; and if she is--hurt--or annoyed by any proceeding on the part of her husband, she has a perfect right to express her wishes on the subject."

"You mean I have a right to ask Owen to send away Miss Loder?" Toni was always direct in her statements. "I suppose I have--if I wanted to--but I don't. It isn't Miss Loder who makes me miserable. It's the whole hopeless situation."

Her words startled him.

"Not hopeless, Mrs. Rose!"

"Why not?" In her eyes he read again that hint of a tortured woman soul which he had glimpsed before. "It isn't very hopeful, is it? My husband wants help and sympathy, which I cannot give him; and yet because he married me he can't ask anyone else for it except in a business way."

"But--you don't mean:----" Herrick paused, aghast at the horrible idea her words had conjured up; and Toni, with the new quickness which suffering was teaching her, hastened to rea.s.sure him.

"Oh, I don't mean he wants to marry any other woman," she said proudly.

"I am his wife--unfortunately for him, perhaps, but he will always be true to me. Besides, Miss Loder isn't that sort," she added, rather vaguely.

"Then what----"

"Oh, you don't understand!" Her sad voice robbed the words of all petulance. "Though you are most awfully kind--and clever--you see you aren't married, Mr. Herrick, and that makes a difference."

"Who told you I was not married?" His tone was studiously quiet, yet the girl looked at him quickly, wonderingly.

"I don't think anyone told me--but I thought you weren't." She hesitated, then went on hurriedly. "I used to think that was why you were so--so sad. I mean--oh, I know you laugh and talk and are kind, but somehow I felt all the time there was a sadness underneath...."

She broke off, roused from thoughts of her own trouble by the fear that she had given him pain; and for a moment neither spoke.

Then, with a glance at the window, down whose panes the rain was still streaming, Herrick took a sudden resolution.

Perhaps if he told this girl the story of his own marriage, opened before her eyes the book on whose pages was inscribed so tragic a history, she might take courage anew, realizing that her own pitiful little story held no hint, at least, of shame or disgrace, no hint of a mutual disillusionment which only death could adjust.

He rose abruptly.

"I'll just speak to your man," he said. "I don't think it would be wise to start yet, but I'll see what he says, shall I?"

She let him go, wondering whether her last speech had vexed him; and in a moment he returned.

"Fletcher agrees with me that it will be wise to wait a quarter of an hour," he said; "the rain is not nearly so heavy, and the sky is growing lighter."

"Very well." She spoke listlessly, and his resolve was strengthened.

Sitting down on the window seat again, he asked her a question.