Chapter Fifteen

The Palstrey Manor carriage had just rolled away carrying Lady Walderhurst home.  The big, low-ceilinged, oak-beamed farm-house parlour was full of the deep golden sunlight of the late afternoon, the air was heavy with the scent of roses and sweet-peas and mignonette, the adorable fragrance of English country-house rooms.  Captain Osborn inhaled it at each breath as he stood and looked out of the diamond-paned window, watching the landau out of sight.  He felt the scent and the golden glow of the sunset light as intensely as he felt the dead silence which reigned between himself and Hester almost with the effect of a physical presence.  Hester was lying upon the sofa again, and he knew she was staring at his back with that sardonic widening of her long eyes, a thing he hated, and which always foreboded things not pleasant to face.

He did not turn to face them until the footman’s cockade had disappeared finally behind the tall hedge, and the tramp of the horses’ feet was deadening itself in the lane.  When he ceased watching and listening, he wheeled round suddenly.

“What does it all mean?” he demanded.  “Hang her foolish airs and graces._ Why_ won’t she ride, for she evidently does not intend to.”

Hester laughed, a hard, short, savage little un-mirthful sound it was.

“No, she doesn’t intend to,” she answered, “for many a long day, at least, for many a month.  She has Sir Samuel Brent’s orders to take the greatest care of herself.”

“Brent’s?  Brent’s?”

Hester struck her lean little hands together and laughed this time with a hint at hysteric shrillness.

“I told you so, I told you so!” she cried.  “I knew it would be so, I knew it!  By the time she reaches her thirty-sixth birthday there will be a new Marquis of Walderhurst, and he won’t be either you or yours.”  And as she finished, she rolled over on the sofa, and bit the cushions with her teeth as she lay face downwards on them.  “He won’t be you, or belong to you,” she reiterated, and then she struck the cushions with her clenched fist.

He rushed over to her, and seizing her by the shoulders shook her to and fro.

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” he said; “you don’t know what you are saying.”

“I do!  I do!  I do!” she screamed under her breath, and beat the cushions at every word.  “It’s true, it’s true.  She’s drivelling about it, drivelling!”

Alec Osborn threw back his head, drawing in a hard breath which was almost a snort of fury.

“By God!” he cried, “if she went out on Faustine now, she would not come back!”

His rage had made him so far beside himself that he had said more than he intended, far more than he would have felt safe.  But the girl was as far beside herself as he was, and she took him up.