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"Six weeks from door to door: or how I made an ass of myself in India," said Thresk. "No thank you!" Ballantyne laughed, took a gulp of his whisky-and-soda and put the glass down again with a wry face. "This is too strong for me," he said, and he rose from his chair and crossed over to the tantalus upon the sideboard.
"Of course the question sounds stupid if you drag it out and worry it." Ballantyne snorted contemptuously. "How's London? Try again, Stella!" Thresk had come to the limit of his patience. In spite of Stella's appeal he interrupted and interrupted sharply. "It doesn't seem to me an unnatural question for any woman to ask who has not seen London for eight years.
You wanted to fan up into a mild harmless flame the ashes of an old romance, warm your hands at it for half an hour, recapture a savour of dim and pleasant memories and then go back to your own place and your own work, untouched and unhurt." Thresk laughed aloud with bitterness at the mistake she had made. Yet he could not blame her.
"Did she tell you anything else?" "Yes. She told me that you were a great man." Ballantyne grinned suddenly. "Isn't she a fool?" Then the grin left his face. "But how did you come to discuss me with her at all?" That was a question which Thresk had not the slightest intention to answer. He evaded it altogether.
The plea of self-defence was here foreshadowed and it was just the certainty that the defence was going to rely upon it for a verdict which had brought Henry Thresk himself into the witness-box at Bombay.
You could find a thousand excuses for breaking off the marriage." "You put the case very harshly, Mr. Thresk," said Hazlewood. "But you have not considered my position," and he went indignantly back to the library. Thresk shrugged his shoulders. After all if Dick Hazlewood turned his back upon Stella she would not hear the abuse or suffer the shame.
Repton turned her eyes to her plate and said demurely: "There might be more than one reason for that." Thresk abandoned all attempt to fence with her. Mrs. Repton was not of those women who would lightly give their women-friends away. Her phrase "my Stella" had, besides, revealed a world of love and championship. Thresk warmed to her because of it. He threw reticence to the winds.
And underneath, in a contrast which seemed to him startling, there was her name signed in the firm running hand in which she had written the few notes which passed between them during that month in Sussex. Thresk looked back again at the photograph and then resumed his seat. "Tell me about her, Mrs. Carruthers," he said. "You hear from her often?" "Oh no!
She was looking upon herself as one who had plotted harm for Stella. She would never forgive Thresk for his share in the plot. Thresk went out of the room without a word more to either Repton or his wife. Whatever he did now he must do by himself. He would not be admitted into that house again.
They were riding along the top of the South Downs between Singleton and Arundel, and when they came to where the old Roman road from Chichester climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her hand and halted. She was then nineteen and accounted lovely by others besides Henry Thresk, who on this morning rode at her side.
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