He told Marie about his visit to Arthur. She was rather surprised at a sudden fancy like that (for so he represented it) taking hold of him, but her suspicions were not roused. When he went on to describe the arrival of the other visitor she listened with natural and eager interest. But the old fellow, full of his perplexities, made a false step.
"She was in the house nearly ten minutes, and then what do you think, Marie? they drove away together!"
"In the house ten minutes? Where were you all that time?"
"I was er strolling along."
"You must have strolled pretty slowly. Where did they overtake you, Pops?"
He grew rather red. "I can't remember exactly " he began lamely.
She knew him so well; his confused manner, telling that he had something to conceal, could not escape her notice.
"I believe you waited round the corner to see what happened! Why did you spy on him like that?"
"I don't see any particular harm in being a little curious about "
But she interrupted him. His spying after the carriage threw suspicion on his motives for his visit too. "Didn't you really go and see Mr. Lisle about anything in particular?"
"Anything in particular, my dear? What do you mean? I asked him to drop in to-morrow "
"Did you talk about me?"
"Oh, well, you were mentioned, of course."
She leant her arm on the mantelpiece and looked down at him gravely. He read a reproachful question in her glance, and fidgeted under it. "Have you been meddling?" was what her gravely enquiring eyes asked. "Meddling as well as spying, Pops?"
He was roused to defend himself. "You've got no mother, Marie, and "
"Ah!" she murmured, as a quick flash of enlightenment came. That was Aunt Louisa's phrase! She saw where it came from in a minute; it had always supplied Mrs. Veltheim with a much desired excuse for interfering. She went on in a hard voice she was very angry "Did you ask Mr. Lisle his intentions?"
"Of course not. I I only took the opportunity of finding out something about his people, and and so on. Really, I think you're very unreasonable, Marie, to object " and he wandered or maundered on about his paternal rights and duties.
She let him go on. She had no more to say about it no more that she could say, without revealing her delicate diplomacy. She would do that to nobody alive; she had never stated it explicitly even to herself. There she left the affair, left the last word and a barren show of victory to her father. How much mischief he had done she would find out later perhaps to-morrow, if Arthur Lisle came. But would he now? It was the effect of her father's meddling she feared, not that matter of the lady's visit. She knew that he had other friends than themselves. Why shouldn't one of them come and take him for a drive? It was Mrs. Norton Ward, very likely. Her quarrel with her father about his meddling even prevented her from asking what the visitor was like; whatever he might do, she at least would show no vulgar
curiosity.
Yet it was the coincidence of the visit with the meddling that did the mischief. Without the first, the second would have resulted in nothing worse than a temporary annoyance, a transitory shock to Arthur's feelings, which a few days' time and Marie's own tact would have smoothed over. As it was, his distaste for old Sarradet's inquisition, an angry humiliation at having the pistol held to his head, a romantic abhorrence of such a way of dealing with the tenderest and most delicate matters, a hideous yet obstinate suspicion that Marie might be privy to the proceeding all these set his feelings just in time for the unexpected visit.
The visit had been delightful, and delight is an unsettling thing. As Mrs. Godfrey Lisle or Bernadette, as she bade him call her purred about his room (so he put it to himself), still more when she declared for sunshine and carried him off to drive with her in Regent's Park too! he had felt a sudden lift of the spirit, an exaltation and expansion of feeling. The world seemed wider, its possibilities more various; it was as though walls had been torn down from around him walls of his own choice and making, no doubt, but walls all the same. This sensation was very vague; it was little more than that the whole atmosphere of his existence seemed fresher, more spacious and more pungent. He owned ruefully that the barouche, the Cee-springs, the bay horses and the liveries, might have had something to do with his pleasure; he knew his susceptibility to the handsome things of material life the gauds and luxuries and ever feared to catch himself in snobbishness. But the essential matter did not lie there; his company was responsible for that Bernadette, and the way she had suddenly appeared, and whisked him off as it were on a magic carpet for a brief journey through the heavens; it seemed all too brief.
"I came as soon as ever I could," she told him. "I got Esther Norton Ward's letter about you after we'd gone to Hilsey for Easter, and we got back only yesterday. But I had terrible work to get leave to come. I had to go down on my knees almost! Cousin Arthur, you're in disgrace, and when you come to see us, you must abase yourself before Godfrey. The Head of the House is hurt because you didn't call!"