Lady Dashwood looked at her and looked again. She put out her hand and rested it on the mantelshelf, and still looked at May. May was taking off one of her gloves. When she had unfastened the b.u.t.tons she discovered that she was wearing a watch on her wrist, and she wound it up carefully.

Lady Dashwood was still looking, all her excitement was suppressed for the moment. What was May thinking of--what had happened to her?

"For how long?" asked May, and she suddenly perceived that there had been a rigid silence between them.

"For how long?" exclaimed Lady Dashwood.

"Yes," said May.

"The engagement is broken off!" said Lady Dashwood. "Broken off, dear!"

"Not permanently?" said May, as if she were speaking of an incident of no particular importance.

Lady Dashwood's eyes gleamed. "For ever," she said.

May looked at her watch again and began to wind it up again. It refused to be wound any more. May looked at it anxiously.

"Gwendolen goes to-morrow," said Lady Dashwood. "It is she who has broken off the engagement, and she is going away before Jim returns. It is all over, May, and I have been waiting for half an hour to tell you the news. I have scarcely known how to wait."

May went up and kissed her silently.

"You are the only person I can speak to," said Lady Dashwood. "May, I feel as if this couldn't be true. Will you read this?" And she put a letter into May's hands. As she did so she saw, for the first time, that May's hands were trembling. She drew the letter back and said quietly: "No, let me read Marian Potten's letter to you. I want to read it again for my own sake, though I have read it half a dozen times already."

"Mrs. Potten!" said May. "Aunt Lena, you'll think me stupid, but I haven't grasped things."

"Of course not," said Lady Dashwood. "And I am too much excited to explain properly. I suppose my nerves have been strained lately. I want to hear Marian's letter read aloud. Listen, May! Oh, my dear, do listen!"

Lady Dashwood turned the letter up to the light and began to read in a slow, emphatic, husky voice--

"Dear Lena,

"Certain things have happened of which I cannot speak, and which necessitated a private interview between Gwendolen and myself. But what I am going to tell you now concerns you, because it concerns the Warden. In our interview Gwendolen confided to me that she had serious misgivings about the wisdom of her engagement. They are more than misgivings. She feels that she ought not to have accepted the Warden's offer. She feels that she never considered the responsibilities she was undertaking, and she had n.o.body to talk the matter over with who could have given her sensible advice. She feels that neither her character nor her education fit her to be a Warden's wife, and she shrinks from the duties that it involves.

All this came out! I hope that you and the Warden will forgive the fact that all this came out before me, and that I found myself in the position of Gwen's adviser. She has come to the conclusion that she ought to break off this engagement--so hastily made--and I agree with her that there should not be an hour's delay in breaking it off. She is afraid of meeting the Warden and having to give him a personal explanation. It is a natural fear, for she is only a silly child and he is a man of years and experience. She does not feel strong enough to meet him and tell him to his face that she cannot be his wife. You will understand how unpleasant it would be for you all. So, with my entire approval and help, she has taken the opportunity of his absence to write him a decisive letter. She will hand you over this letter and ask you to give it to the Warden on his return home. This letter is to tell him that she releases him from his promise of marriage. And to avoid a very serious embarra.s.sment I have invited her to come to Potten End to-morrow morning and stay with me till I have heard from Lady Belinda. I am writing myself to Lady Belinda, giving her full details. I am sure she will be convinced of the wisdom of Gwendolen so suddenly breaking off her engagement. I will send the car for Gwendolen to-morrow at ten o'clock, and meanwhile will you spare her feelings and make no reference to what has taken place? The poor child is feeling very sore and very much ashamed of all the fuss, but feels that she is doing the right thing--at last.

"Yours ever,

"MARIAN POTTEN."

Lady Dashwood folded up the letter and put it back into its envelope.

She avoided looking at May just now.

"Marian must feel very strongly on the subject to offer to send her own car," she said. "I have never known her do such a thing before," and Lady Dashwood smiled and looked at the fire. "So the whole thing is over! But how did it all come about? What happened? I've been thinking over every possible accident that could have happened to make Gwen change her mind in this sudden way, and I am still in the dark," she went on. "Do you think that Gwendolen had any misgivings about her engagement when she left this house after lunch, May? I'm sure she hadn't." Here Lady Dashwood paused and looked towards May but not at her. "It all happened at Potten End! I'm certain of it," she added.

May, having at last completely drawn off both her gloves, was folding and unfolding them with unsteady hands.

"It's a mystery," said May.

"But I don't care what happened!" said Lady Dashwood, solemnly; "I don't really want to know. It is over! I can't rest, I can't read, I can't think coherently. I can only be thankful--thankful beyond words."

May walked slowly in the direction of the door. "Yes, all your troubles are over," she said.

"Do you remember, May," went on Lady Dashwood, "how you and I stood together just here, under the portrait, when you arrived on Monday?

Well, all that torment is over. All that happened between then and now has been wiped clean out, as if it had never been."

But all had not been wiped out. Some of what happened had been written down in May's mind and couldn't be wiped out.

"Don't go this moment; sit down for a little, before you go and dress,"

said Lady Dashwood, "and I'll try and sit, for I must talk, I must talk, and, May dear, you must listen. Come back, dear!"

Lady Dashwood sat down on one side of the fireplace and looked at May, as she came back and seated herself on the opposite side. There was the fireplace between them.

"Aren't you glad?" asked Lady Dashwood. "Aren't you glad, May?"

"I am very glad," said May. "I rejoice--in your joy."

Lady Dashwood leaned back in her chair, and let her eyes rest on May's face.

"I can't describe to you what I felt when Gwendolen came in half an hour ago. She came in quietly, her face pale and her eyes swollen, and said quite abruptly: 'I have broken on my engagement with Dr. Middleton.

Please don't scold me, please don't talk about it; please let me go. I'm miserable enough as it is,' and she put two letters into my hand and went. May, I took the letter addressed to Jim and locked it up, for a horrible fear came on me that some one might destroy that letter.

Besides, I had also the fear that because the thing was so sudden it might somehow not be true. Well, then I came down here again and waited for you. I waited in the dark, trying to rest. You came in very late. I scarcely knew how to wait. I suppose I am horribly excited. I am feeling now as Louise feels constantly, but I can't get any relief in the way she does. A Frenchwoman never bottles up anything; her method is to wear other people out and save her own strength by doing so. From our cradles we are smacked if we express our emotions; but foreigners have been encouraged to express their emotions. They believe it necessary and proper to do so. They gesticulate and scream. It is a confirmed habit with them to do so, and it doesn't mean much. I dare say when you or I just say 'Oh!' it means more than if Louise uttered persistent shrieks for half an hour. But she is a good soul----" And Lady Dashwood ran on in this half-consequent, half-inconsequent way, while May sat in her chair, busy trying to hide the trembling of her knees. They would tremble. She tried holding them with her hands, but they refused to stop shaking. Once they trembled too obviously, and Lady Dashwood said, in a changed tone, as if she had suddenly observed May: "You have caught cold! You have caught a chill!"

"Perhaps I have," said May, and her knees knocked against each other.

"You have, my dear," said Lady Dashwood; and as she p.r.o.nounced this verdict, she rose from her chair with great suddenness. There was on her face no anxiety, not a trace of it, but a certain great content. But as she rose she became aware that her head ached and she felt a little dizzy. What matter!

"I may have got just the slightest chill," said May, rising too, "but if so, it's nothing!"

"Most people like having chills, and that's why they never take any precautions, and refuse all remedies," said Lady Dashwood, making her way to the door with care, and speaking more slowly and deliberately; "but I know you're not like that, and I'm going to give you an infallible cure and preventive. It'll put you right, I promise. Come along, dear child. I ought to have known you had a chill. I ought to have seen it written on your brow 'Chill' when you came in; but I've been too much excited by events to see anything. I've been chattering like a silly goose. Come upstairs, I'm going to dose you."

And May submitted, and the two women went out of the drawing-room together up the two or three steps and into the corridor. They walked together, both making a harmless, pathetic pretence: the one to think the other had a chill, the other to own that a chill it was, indeed, though not a bad chill!

What was Gwendolen doing now? Was she crying? "Poor thing, poor little neglected thing!" thought Lady Dashwood.

"Marian can be very high-handed," she whispered to May. "I have known her do many arbitrary things. She would be quite capable of---- But what's the good! Poor Gwen! I couldn't pity her before, I felt too hard.

But now Jim is safe I can think reasonably. I'm sorry for her. But," she added, "I'm not sorry for Belinda."

Now that they had reached May's room, May declared that she was not as sure as she had been that she had got a chill.

But the chill could not be dropped like that. Lady Dashwood felt the impropriety of suddenly giving up the chill, and she left the room and went to search for the infallible cure and preventive. As she did so she began to wonder why she could not will to have no headache. She was so happy that a headache was ridiculous.

When she returned, May was in her dressing-gown and was moving about with decision, and her limbs no longer trembled.

"I don't pity Belinda," said Lady Dashwood, pretending not to see the change. "I don't pity her, though I suppose that she, too, is merely a symptom of the times we live in." Here she began to pour out a dose from the bottle in her hand. "It can't be a good thing, May, for the community that there should be women who live to organise amus.e.m.e.nt for themselves; who merely live to meet each other and their men folk, and play about. It can't be good for the community? We ought all to work, May, every one of us. Writing invitations to each other to come and play, buying things for ourselves, seeing dressmakers isn't work. There, May!" She held out the gla.s.s to May. Each kept up the pretence--pretending with solemnity that May had been trembling because she had possibly got a chill. It was a pretence that was necessary. It was a pretence that covered and protected both of them. It was a brave pretence. "No," said Lady Dashwood again, and firmly, as she released the gla.s.s. "It isn't good for the community to have a cla.s.s of busy idlers at the top of the ladder."

May had taken the gla.s.s, and now she tipped it up and drank the contents. They were hot and stinging!