As he was leaving one afternoon Andrews heard voices in the vestibule.

The housemaid was sending away an insistent caller.

"Mrs. Darling doesn't see any one," he heard her say.

"But I'm sure she'll see me," the persistent male voice continued. "You just take her my card."

"She forbids me to fetch cards," rejoined the housemaid. "I'm sorry, sir."

He heard the jingle of silver coin. The caller was about to resort to bribery. As a privileged one, out of compa.s.sion for Nina, he would lend his aid. He might pretend he was the attending surgeon or physician, and that it was by his orders that the patient was denied visitors.

He drew the door, which was slightly ajar, wider. He made a third in the vestibule. And then he recognized the caller. It was Lord Kneedrock.

Nibbetts recognized him, too. He shrugged his hulking shoulders and thrust his handful of coins back into his pocket. Then he turned to the housemaid again.

"I understand," he said in his penetrating undertone. "I quite understand. Mrs. Darling sees no one."

Then he reopened the outer door and stalked lumberingly away.

CHAPTER XXIV

The Disinterested Married Man

There was a house-party at Puddlewood, and all the kinsfolk and friends who haunted Bellingdown were there.

"Who's seen Nina?" asked the d.u.c.h.ess.

"No one," answered Waltheof laconically.

"Too bad, when she's so entertaining," said the duke. "I always say there's no one like Nina. I say, Doody, don't I say there's n.o.body like Nina?"

"Everybody knows what you think of Mrs. Darling," affirmed the d.u.c.h.ess calmly. "But I do wonder what she looks like!"

Charlotte Grey had been to Bath, but had not succeeded in seeing the recluse. She got as far as Delphine, and that was all.

"_Madame ne recoit personne_," said the French maid.

"Nibbetts has been, too," said Kitty Bellingdown. "And he was equally unsuccessful."

"I thought she'd have seen you," ventured the d.u.c.h.ess.

"I thought so, too; but it appears not," returned Kneedrock gloomily.

Meanwhile the Carleigh split-up had occurred, but the fact had not yet reached this bureau of family and friendly counsel.

Strolling ruminantly on the promenade at Nice, Caryll's heart turned thirstily toward the giver of oblivion.

"I don't care what she looks like, I must see her," he said, and he left by that night's Paris _rapide_.

On the journey to Bath he did a great deal of thinking. He hadn't been happy for weeks--not since the night Mrs. Veynol came so suddenly into his paradise in Madeira.

It is idle for a man to hope to keep his perfect balance in a desperate flirtation with his own mother-in-law. One might as well contemplate tight-rope feats on a newly thrown and, consequently, not firm rope.

Carleigh realized that he hadn't made any manner of success of the task.

And the worst of it was that his wife didn't in the least care.

When Sibylla had killed her daughter's betrothal, the daughter had rebelled slightly. She had been pale--but she appeared happy.

Now, however, when the marriage had gone under, she exhibited neither reluctance nor grief. She did not resent losing her husband in the least. She only yawned and said: "Why don't you bolt with mama?" and then read further.

It was all very distressing--exceedingly distressing. But now he was nearing Bath and Nina. And that meant consolation.

Nina, receiving his card, experienced a rush of vivid antic.i.p.ation. Is there any situation so piquant as that of meeting the man one did not marry after he has "hashed it" with another woman?

Her embargo had been lifted that morning, and the precious new skin--partly Gerald's, partly her own--which the specialist had worked so hard to foster into beauty was at last firm enough to stand the gaze of the most critical of all judges--the man that one might have married.

Carleigh, waiting in the drawing-room, was far more nervous than she was. He had been told that she was horribly disfigured, and he expected to find her so.

Now he could hear her step in the pa.s.sage. She was outside there in the chill hall. Then the latch clicked, the portiere swung, and--he was rising to touch Nina Darling's hand again.

After all these months! The bedroom and the bandages rushed back upon his memory, and he was prepared to need self-control when he should look up. But when he did look up he saw, with a curious jump in his heart, that she was not scarred.

Then in the same instant that he realized she was unchanged he knew himself to be greatly changed--branded on brow as well as in soul. And he felt that through and through.

He took her hand--both hands--in his and gazed thirstily into her eyes--a serene violet-blue.

"I've blundered, too," he said as a greeting. "I've made an unhappy marriage, too, now. I have more sympathy for you than I had. But _she_ never plays with guns, unfortunately."

He laughed, really quite gaily, for he was awfully glad to feel her hand in his again. And she laughed as well.

"It's funny how people talk, isn't it?" she said. "Of course I never had anything to do with it; but people like to talk--after all these years, too. It was just an accident."

And it was just the other day that she had insisted the reverse. But that was to another man--a different type of man.

He laughed and put his arm about her. "Kiss me, dear," he said. "I'm so very unhappy."

If she had averted her head he would have been her slave afresh; but she didn't avert her head. Instead she kissed him placidly--so placidly that he almost started.

"You see you're married now," she told him and drew her hand out of his and went and sat down.

He felt stunned and sick. It was as if there was no bottom anywhere for a little. But then he remembered.

"Nina," he said, calling her again that which in all the fervor of his nomenclature during the pa.s.sionate, pa.s.sed-by period he had so often voiced. "Nina, I've come to ask a great kindness at your hands--two, in fact."

She sat quiet, staring at him with those lash-veiled eyes that had driven him and so many, many others not quite mad; and, had the lesson he had spent months conning in such a h.e.l.l as may exist amid our earthly surroundings been a bit less bitter and thorough, he must have felt that near-madness course in his veins again. But he was seared so that no near-madness was for him any more.