feeling a little foolish.
“What do you wish?”
“I wish I could do more to please you than wear white—or black—when you like.”
He gazed at her, always through the single eyeglass. Even the vaguest approach to emotion or sentiment invariably made him feel stiff and shy. Realising this, he did not quite understand why he rather liked it in the case of Emily Fox-Seton, though he only liked it remotely and felt his own inaptness a shade absurd.
“Wear yellow or pink occasionally,” he said with a brief, awkward laugh.
What large, honest eyes the creature had, like a fine retriever’s or those of some nice animal one saw in the Zoo!
“I will wear anything you like,” she said, the nice eyes meeting his, not the least stupidly, he reflected, though women who were affectionate often looked stupid. “I will do anything you like; you don’t know what you have done for me, Lord Walderhurst.”
They moved a trifle nearer to each other, this inarticulate pair. He dropped his eyeglass and patted her shoulder.
“Say ‘Walderhurst’ or ‘James’—or—or ‘my dear,’” he said. “We are going to be married, you know.” And he found himself going to the length of kissing her cheek with some warmth.
“I sometimes wish,” she said feelingly, “that it was the fashion to say ‘my lord’ as Lady Castlewood used to do in ‘Esmond.’ I always thought it nice.”
“Women are not so respectful to their husbands in these days,” he answered, with his short laugh. “And men are not so dignified.”
“Lord Castlewood was not very dignified, was he?”
He chuckled a little.
“No. But his rank was, in the reign of Queen Anne. These are democratic days. I’ll call you ‘my lady’ if you like.”
“Oh! No—no!” with fervour, “I wasn’t thinking of anything like that.”
“I know you were not,” he reassured her. “You are not that kind of woman.”
“Oh! how could I be?”
“You couldn’t,” goodnaturedly. “That’s why I like you.”
Then he began to tell her his reason for calling at this particular hour. He came to prepare her for a visit from the Osborns, who had actually just returned from India. Captain Osborn had chosen, or chance had chosen for him, this particular time for a long leave. As soon as she heard the name of Osborn, Emily’s heart beat a little quickly. She had naturally learned a good deal of detail from Lady Maria since her engagement. Alec Osborn was the man who, since Lord Walderhurst’s becoming a widower, had lived in the gradually strengthening belief that the chances were that it would be his enormous luck to inherit the title and estates of the present Marquis of Walderhurst. He was not a very near relation, but he was the next of kin. He was a young man and a strong one, and Walderhurst was fifty-four and could not be called robust. His medical man did not consider him a particularly good life, though he was not often ill.
“He’s not the kind of chap who lives to be a hundred and fifty. I’ll say that for him,” Alec Osborn had said at mess after dinner had made him careless of speech, and he had grinned not too pleasantly when he uttered the words. “The only thing that would completely wipe my eye isn’t as likely to happen to him as to most men. He’s unsentimental and level headed, and doesn’t like marriage. You can imagine how he’s chivied by women. A fellow in his position couldn’t be let alone. But he doesn’t like marriage, and he’s a man who knows jolly well what he likes and what he doesn’t. The only child died, and if he doesn’t marry again, I’m in a safe place. Good Lord! the difference it would make!” and his grin extended itself.
It was three months after this that the Marquis of Walderhurst followed Emily Fox-Seton out upon the heath, and finding her sitting footsore and depressed in spirit beside the basket of Lady Maria’s fish, asked her to marry him.
When the news reached him, Alec Osborn went and shut himself up in his quarters and blasphemed until his face was purple and big drops of sweat ran down it. It was black bad luck—it was black bad luck, and it called for black curses. What the articles of furniture in the room in the bungalow heard was rather awful, but Captain Osborn did not feel that it did justice to the occasion.
When her husband strode by her to his apartment, Mrs. Osborn did not attempt to follow him. She had only been married two years, but she knew his face too well; and she also knew too well all the meaning of the fury contained in the words he flung at her as he hurled himself past her.
“Walderhurst is going to be married!” Mrs. Osborn ran into her own room and sat down clutching at her hair as she dropped her face in her little dark hands. She was an Anglo-Indian girl who had never been home, and had not had much luck in life at any time, and her worst luck had been in being handed over by her people to this particular man, chiefly because he was the next of kin to Lord Walderhurst. She was a curious, passionate creature, and had been in love with him in her way. Her family had been poor and barely decently disreputable. She had lived on the outskirts of things, full of intense girlish vanity and yearnings for social recognition, poorly dressed, passed over and snubbed by people she aspired to know socially, seeing other girls with less beauty and temperament enjoying flirtations with smart young officers, biting her tongue out with envy and bitterness of thwarted spirit. So when Captain Osborn cast an eye on her and actually began a sentimental episode, her relief and excitement at finding herself counting as other girls did wrought itself up into a passion. Her people were prompt and sharp enough to manage the rest, and Osborn was married before he knew exactly whither he was tending. He was not pleased with himself when he wakened to face facts. He could only console himself for having been cleverly led and driven into doing the thing he did not want to do, by the facts that the girl was interesting and clever and had a good deal of odd un-English beauty.
It was a beauty so un-English that it would perhaps appear to its greatest advantage in the contrasts afforded by life in England. She was so dark, of heavy hair and drooping-lidded eyes and fine grained skin, and so sinuous of lithe, slim body, that among native beauties she seemed not to be sufficiently separated by marks of race. She had tumbled up from childhood among native servants, who were almost her sole companions, and who had taught her curious things. She knew their stories and songs, and believed in more of their occult beliefs than any but herself knew.
She knew things which made her interesting to Alec Osborn, who had a bullet head and a cruel lower jaw, despite a degree of the ordinary good looks. The fact that his chances were good for becoming Marquis of Walderhurst and taking her home to a life of English luxury and splendour was a thing she never forgot. It haunted her in her sleep. She had often dreamed of Oswyth Castle and of standing amidst great people on the broad lawns her husband had described feelingly during tropical days when they had sat together panting for breath. When there had been mention made of the remote, awful possibility that Walderhurst might surrender to the siege laid to him, she had turned sick at the thought. It made her clench her hands until the nails almost pressed into the skin of her palms. She could not bear it. She had made Osborn burst into a big, harsh laugh one day when she had hinted to him that there were occult things to be done which might prevent ill luck. He had laughed first and scowled afterwards, cynically saying that she might as well be working them up.
He had not come out to India followed by regrets and affection. He had been a black sheep at home, and had rather been hustled away than otherwise. If
