“Not at all, my dear madam,” remarked Odell-Carney, carefully adjusting his eyeglass.  “It’s quite immaterial, I assure you.”

CHAPTER VI

OTHER RELATIONS

It is but natural to presume, after the foregoing, that the affairs of the Medcrofts were under close and careful scrutiny from that confidential hour.  The Odell-Carneys were conspicuously nice and agreeable to the Medcrofts and Miss Fowler.  It may be said, indeed, that Mr. Odell-Carney went considerably out of his way to be agreeable to Mrs. Medcroft; so much so, in fact, that she made it a point to have someone else with her whenever she seemed likely to be left alone with him.  The Rodneys struggled bravely and no doubt conscientiously to emulate the example set by the Odell-Carneys, but it was hardly to be expected that they could see new things through old-world eyes.  They grew very stiff and ceremonious,—­that is, the Rodney ladies did.  It was their prerogative, of course:  were they not cousins of the diseased?

Four or five days of uneasy pretence passed with a swiftness that irritated certain members of the party and a slowness that distressed the others.  Days never were so short as those which the now recklessly infatuated Brock was spending.  He was valiantly earning his way into the heart of Constance,—­a process that tried his patience exceedingly, for she was blithely unimpressionable, if one were to judge by the calmness with which she fended off the inevitable though tardy assault.  She kept him at arm’s length; appearances demanded a discreetness, no matter how she may secretly have felt toward the good-looking husband of her sister.  To say that she was enjoying herself would be putting it much too tamely; she was revelling in the fun of the thing.  It mattered little to her that people—­her own cousins in particular—­were looking upon her with cold and critical eyes; she knew, down in her heart, that she could throw a bomb among them at any time by the mere utterance of a single word.  It mattered as little that Edith was beginning to chafe miserably under the strain of waiting and deception; the novelty had worn off for the wife of Roxbury; she was despairingly in love, and she was pining for the day to come when she could laugh again with real instead of simulated joyousness.

“Connie, dear,” she would lament a dozen times a day, “it’s growing unbearable.  Oh, how I wish the three weeks were ended.  Then I could have my Roxbury, and you could have my other Roxbury, and everybody wouldn’t be pitying me and cavilling at you because I’m unhappily married.”

“Why do you say I could have your other Roxbury?” demanded her sister on one occasion.  “You forget that father expects me to marry the viscount.  I—­”

“You are so tiresome, Connie.  Don’t worry me with your love affairs—­I don’t want to hear them.  There’s Mr. Brock waiting for you in the garden.”