might be expected slowly to regain health.
“How does Basil take it?” asked Miss Ley.
“He says very little; he’s grown silent of late, but I’m afraid he’s quite heart-broken. You know how enormously he looked forward to the baby.”
“D’you think he’s fond of his wife?”
“He’s very kind to her. No one could have been gentler than he after the catastrophe. I think she was the more cut up of the two. You see, she looked upon it as the reason of their marriage—and he’s been doing his best to comfort her.”
“I must go down and see them. And now tell me about Mrs. Castillyon.”
“I haven’t set eyes on her for ages.”
Miss Ley observed Frank with deliberation. She wondered if he knew of the affair with Reggie Bassett, but, though eager to discuss it, would not risk to divulge a secret. In point of fact, he was familiar with all the circumstances, but it amused him to counterfeit ignorance that he might see how Miss Ley guided the conversation to the point she wanted. She spoke of the Dean of Tercanbury, of Bella and her husband, then, as though by chance, mentioned Reggie; but the twinkling of Frank’s eyes told her that he was laughing at her stratagem.
“You brute!” she cried, “why didn’t you tell me all about it, instead of letting me discover the thing by accident?”
“My sex suggests to me certain elementary notions of honour, Miss Ley.”
“You needn’t add priggishness to your other detestable vices. How did you know they were carrying on in this way?”
“The amiable youth told me. There are very few men who can refrain from boasting of their conquests, and certainly Reggie isn’t one of them.”
“You don’t know Hugh Kearon, do you? He’s had affairs all over Europe, and the most notorious was with a royal princess who shall be nameless; I think she would have bored him to death if he hadn’t been able to flourish ostentatiously a handkerchief with a royal crown in the corner and a large initial.”
Miss Ley then gave her account of the visit to Rochester, and certainly made of it a very neat and entertaining story.
“And did you think for a moment that this would be the end of the business?” asked Frank, ironically.
“Don’t be spiteful because I hoped for the best.”
“Dear Miss Ley, the bigger blackguard a man is, the more devoted are his lady-loves. It’s only when a man is decent and treats women as if they were human beings that he has a rough time of it.”
“You know nothing about these things, Frank,” retorted Miss Ley. “Pray give me the facts, and the philosophical conclusions I can draw for myself.”
“Well, Reggie has a natural aptitude for dealing with the sex. I heard all about your excursion to Rochester, and went so far as to assure him that you wouldn’t tell his mamma. He perceived that he hadn’t cut a very heroic figure, so he mounted the high horse, and, full of virtuous indignation, for a month took no notice whatever of Mrs. Castillyon. Then she wrote most humbly, begging him to forgive her; and this, I understand, he graciously did. He came to see me, flung the letter on the table, and said: ‘There, my boy, if any one asks you, say that what I don’t know about women ain’t worth knowing.’ Two days later he appeared with a gold cigarette-case!”
“What did you say to him?”
“One of these days you’ll come the very devil of a cropper.”
“You showed wisdom and emphasis. I hope with all my heart, he will.”
“I don’t imagine things are going very smoothly,” proceeded Frank. “Reggie tells me she leads him a deuce of a life, and he’s growing restive; it appears to be no joke to have a woman desperately in love with you. And then he’s never been on such familiar terms with a person of quality, and he’s shocked by her vulgarity; her behaviour seems often to outrage his sense of decorum.”
“Isn’t that like an Englishman! He cultivates propriety even in the immoral.”
Then Miss Ley asked Frank about himself, but they had corresponded with diligence, and he had little to tell; the work at Saint Luke’s went on monotonously, lectures to students three times a week and out-patients on Wednesday and Saturday; people were beginning to come to his consulting-room in Harley Street, and he looked forward, without great enthusiasm, to the future of a fashionable physician.
“And are you in love?”
“You know I shall never permit my affections to wander so long as you remain single,” he answered, laughing.
“Beware I don’t take you at your word and drag you by the hair of your head to the altar. Have I no rival?”
“Well, if you press me, I will confess.”
“Monster! what is her name?”
“Bilharzia Holmatobi.”
“Good heavens!”
“It’s a parasite I’m studying. I think authorities are all wrong about it; they’ve not got its life-history right, and the stuff they believe about the way people catch it is sheer footle.”
“It doesn’t sound frightfully thrilling to me, and I’m under the impression you’re only trumping it up to conceal some scandalous amour with a ballet-girl.”
Miss Ley’s visit to Barnes seemed welcome neither to Jenny nor to Basil, who looked harassed and unhappy, and only with a visible effort assumed a cheerful manner when he addressed his wife. Jenny was still in bed, very weak and ill, but Miss Ley, who had never before seen her, was surprised at her great beauty; her face, whiter than the pillows against which it rested, had a very touching pathos, and, notwithstanding all that had gone before, that winsome, innocent sweetness which has occasioned the comparison of English maidens to the English rose. The observant woman noticed also the painful, questioning anxiety with which Jenny continually glanced at her husband, as though pitifully dreading some unmerited reproach.
“I hope you like my wife,” said Basil, when he accompanied Miss Ley downstairs.
“Poor thing! She seems to me like a lovely bird imprisoned by fate within the four walls of practical life, who should by rights sing careless songs under the open skies. I’m afraid you’ll be very unkind to her.”
“Why?” he asked, not without resentment.
“My dear, you’ll make her live up to your blue china teapot. The world might be so much happier if people wouldn’t insist on acting up to their principles.”
Mrs. Bush had been hurriedly sent for when Jenny’s condition seemed dangerous, but, in her distress and excitement, she had sought solace in Basil’s whiskey-bottle to such an extent that he was obliged to beg her to return to her own home. The scene was not edifying. Surmising an alcoholic tendency, Kent, two or three days after her arrival, locked the side-board and removed the key. But in a little while the servant came to him.
“If you please, sir, Mrs. Bush says,
