"Why not? Do you mean you would rather she did not come?"

"Much rather." For once Toni's inward feelings burst their bounds, driving her to open revolt. "I don't like Miss Loder about all day--I never feel free--there's an oppression in the air so long as she is in the house."

Owen was surprised and annoyed by this speech; and showed his annoyance plainly.

"Don't you think you are rather prejudiced, Toni? You have never liked the girl, and I can't imagine why. She does her work well, and doesn't interfere with you in the least."

"Interfere with me--no, perhaps not," said Toni, her breast heaving stormily, her cheeks very red. "She laughs at me, though, which is worse--sneers--oh, I know she thinks I'm a little fool, and so I am; but I am at least your wife--the mistress of Greenriver, and she might remember that and treat me with a little more respect."

"Respect? My dear Toni, you are talking nonsense. How should the girl treat you? She is always polite," said Owen, "and you know after all she is ten years older than you----"

"Only ten?" Toni's a.s.sumption of surprise was excellently done. "I thought she was much more--she always seems to me so staid--so--so middle-aged."

Owen's brow cleared suddenly and he burst out laughing.

"You silly little thing! Compared with you, Miss Loder _is_ middle-aged, but she's a rattling secretary and I don't like to hear her abused.

Still, if you dislike the idea of her coming, I'll go to town, or do without her. After all, I must not get too dependent on the girl--I'm afraid I'm growing lazy. But if my arm still bothers me----"

Instantly Toni's anger melted away and a rush of affection and sympathy took its place.

"I'm sorry, Owen--I didn't mean to be cross. I was talking nonsense--of course you must have Miss Loder, I suppose I am jealous of her--because she is so clever, and I'm such a little idiot."

"I don't want a clever wife, thank you," laughed Owen, little dreaming how his careless words cut into the quivering soul of the girl beside him. "I want a pretty, lively, jolly little girl--half Italian for choice--who is a cross between a wood-nymph and--sometimes--a tiger-cat--or kitten! And it seems to me I have got just exactly what I want."

With an effort Toni smiled, in response to his good-natured jesting; and Owen never knew that his well-meant words caused Toni to shed tears before she slept that night.

CHAPTER XIX

Mr. Anson's reader reported favourably on Owen's book, and in a very short time satisfactory terms were agreed upon between author and publisher, and the work of proof-reading and revision began.

Unfortunately at the same time Owen felt his arm to be more than usually painful; and a visit to town proved the necessity for further treatment, of which perfect rest was a feature: with the result that once again Owen was forced to accept the help of a secretary in his work.

Miss Loder, naturally, filled the post; and once more she came to Greenriver, and took her place in the stately old library, where she and Owen pa.s.sed strenuous hours daily.

To Toni Miss Loder's presence was growing ever more and more distasteful. Although Toni was not an intellectual woman, she had sharp wits; and possibly she understood Millicent Loder's personality a good deal better than Owen was able to do. And what Toni saw--and Toni's intuition was rarely at fault--led her to distrust the other girl with all her heart and soul.

Miss Loder belonged to a rather uncommon variant of the type of emanc.i.p.ated womanhood. Although intensely modern in many ways she had never been able to lose her inborn sense of the superiority of man in mental as well as in physical matters.

She had none of the loudly-expressed scorn of the other s.e.x by which many women seek to hide their disappointment at the indifference of members of that s.e.x towards them.

Although she was by force of circ.u.mstance a Suffragist, she did not for one moment imagine that with the coming of votes for women the whole industrial and social problem of the country would be solved. Unlike many women, she was quite content to work under a man, and although she was well able to think for herself on all vital questions, she liked to hear and a.s.similate the opinions of the men with whom she came in contact.

She preferred men, indeed, to women; and her att.i.tude towards them, though never in the least familiar, held a good comradeship, a kind of large tolerance which annoyed and irritated those of her girl acquaintances who looked upon men as their natural enemies and the enemies of all feminine progress.

Shrewd, competent, fully a.s.sured of her own ability to face the world alone, Miss Loder had never thought seriously of marriage. She delighted in her independence, was proud of the fact that she was able to command a good salary, and her habit of mind was too genuinely practical to allow of any weak leanings towards romance. She did not wish to marry.

She had none of the fabled longing for domesticity, as exemplified in a well-kept house and a well-filled nursery, with which the average man endows the normal woman. She looked on children, indeed, mainly as the materials on whom this or that system of education might be tested; and she was really of too cold, too self-sufficing a nature to feel the need of any love other than that of relation or friend.

But since she had worked for Owen Rose, Millicent had begun to change her views. At first she had merely been attracted by his brilliance, as any clever girl might have been, had found it stimulating to work with him, and had been pleased and proud when he selected her to be his coadjutor in the task of writing his first book. She had been, in truth, so keenly interested in the author that she had overlooked the man; and it is a fact that until she came down, at his request, to his house to work there, away from the busy office, his personality had been so vague to her that she could not even have described his appearance with any accuracy.

But the sight of his home, the stately old house set in its s.p.a.cious gardens and surrounded by magnificent trees, had shaken Millicent out of her intellectual reverie into a very shrewd and wide-awake realization of the man himself.

In his own home he shook off the conventions of the office, became more human, more approachable; and no woman, least of all one as mentally alert, as open-eyed as Miss Loder, could have pa.s.sed with him through those strenuous hours in which his book was born without gaining a pretty complete insight into his character.

And with knowledge came a new and less comprehensible emotion. At first Miss Loder had accepted the fact of her employer's marriage as one accepts any fixed tradition; and the subject rarely entered her thoughts during working hours.

Gradually she began to feel a faint curiosity as to what manner of woman Owen Rose's wife might be; and she welcomed her summons to Greenriver on the ground that now she would be able to solve the problem for herself.

When she finally saw Toni, her first emotion was one of surprise that this dark-eyed girl should be the mistress of Greenriver; and very slowly that surprise died and was succeeded by a feeling of envy which grew day by day. At first Miss Loder grudged the unconscious Toni her established position as _chatelaine_ of this eminently desirable home; and Toni's very simplicity, the youthful _insouciance_ with which she filled that position, was an added annoyance. Later, Miss Loder began to grudge Toni more than that. As she spent more and more time in Owen's company, as she grew more and more intimate with the workings of his mind, of his rich and poetic imagination, Miss Loder began to fall under the spell of the man himself.

Quite unconsciously she was becoming ever more attracted by his manner, his voice, his ways; and once or twice she found herself wondering, with a kind of sick envy, in what light he appeared to the woman who was his wife.

Through it all, however, Miss Loder's paramount emotion was one of envy for the mistress of Greenriver. She used to think, as she came into the house each morning, that it would have suited her much better, as a background, than it would ever suit the quaint, childish-looking Toni; and it grew almost unendurable to her to have to sit at the luncheon table as a guest--not even that--and watch Toni's ridiculous a.s.sumption of dignity as she sat in her high-backed chair opposite her husband.

There was no doubt about it that Greenriver would have suited Miss Loder very well as a home; and she grew to dislike Toni more and more as the full realization of the girl's good fortune penetrated her mind.

Toni had been quite right in detecting the malice beneath Millicent's pretended friendliness. It seemed to Miss Loder that the only way to pierce this upstart girl's armour of complacency was to launch shafts of cleverly-veiled contempt; and although to Owen these darts were either imperceptible or merely accidental, Toni knew very well that they were intended to wound.

Owen, wrapped up in his book, and only anxious to further the work as rapidly as possible, had no time to spare for these feminine amenities.

He realized, of course, that Toni did not care for Miss Loder; but he thought he understood that her dislike came, rather pathetically, from her consciousness of her own shortcomings: and had no idea that Miss Loder herself was largely responsible for the lack of harmony between them.

On what might be called the literary side of him, he thought Millicent Loder an excellent secretary, the one woman with whom he found it possible to work; but on what might be called the personal side, his interest was _nil_. True, he liked her trim appearance, though he would never have dreamed of comparing it with Toni's more unconventional attraction. He admired her quiet independence, and recognized her at once as belonging to his own world; but he never thought of her in any relation save that of secretary and general a.s.sistant; and even Toni was sufficiently wise to recognize the fact.

All the same Toni mistrusted the other woman; and it was with a feeling of intensest apprehension that she received Owen's announcement that Barry had arranged for a subst.i.tute at the office--thus setting Miss Loder free to resume her work at Greenriver.

It chanced on a beautiful October day that Owen found it necessary to go to town on business connected with the _Bridge_; and for once he went up by train, bidding Toni use the car if she felt so inclined.

She did feel inclined; and after a very early lunch, jumped into the waiting motor, and directed Fletcher to drive over to Cherry Orchard, in the hope of inducing the doctor's daughters to share her excursion.

Disappointment awaited her, however. Both the Tobies were away from home on a short visit, and Toni was obliged to proceed alone.

She had enjoyed a couple of hours' spin in the frosty air, when she found herself being carried swiftly past the railway station, and a thought struck her which she communicated to Fletcher without delay.

Yes, Fletcher opined, it was just time the London train was due, and since it was quite possible Mr. Rose had travelled by it, he obligingly brought the car to a standstill outside the station entrance.

Toni jumped lightly out, an alluring little figure in her beautiful sable coat and cap, and made her way swiftly on to the platform, glancing at the big station clock as she did so.

The train was not due for five minutes; and to pa.s.s the interval of waiting, Toni strolled over to the bookstall in search of a paper. As she stood turning over a few magazines, a familiar voice accosted her, and she moved quickly to face the speaker.

"Mrs. Rose--I hope you have not quite forgotten me?"

"Mr. Dowson! Of course I've not forgotten you." She put out a friendly little hand, which the young man seized in a fervent grasp. "My cousin f.a.n.n.y told me you were coming down to Sutton."

"Yes. I had to change here. It's an awkward little journey." He was gazing at her fixedly, but withal so respectfully that Toni could not take offence. "You are, I believe, a resident of this little riverside colony of Willowhurst?"