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Updated: May 26, 2025
There was really a link of sympathy between them. And he had been angry because she had gone abroad without telling him. She thought of his anger and loved it. That day, after tea, while the music was still going on in Dindie Ackroyde's drawing-room, they drove back to London together, leaving their reputations quite comfortably behind them in the hand of the "old guard."
And when the motor came up he said very definitely that he had an engagement and must find a cab. Then he bade them good-bye and left them in the motor with Braybrooke. As he was turning away to get out of the crowd a clear, firm voice said to him: "I am so glad you have performed the miracle, Mr. Craven." He looked round and saw Mrs. Ackroyde's investigating eyes fixed upon him.
But her reason for remaining in London was not to be found in Arabian's presence there. And she knew that. If she went to Paris she would be separated from Alick Craven. She did not want to be separated from him. And now Dindie Ackroyde's news intensified her reluctance to yield to old Fanny's persuasions and to return to her bronzes.
Oh, for a moment of the conquering sensation she had sometimes known in the years long ago when men had made her aware of her power! Since their meeting in Dindie Ackroyde's drawing-room her friendship with Craven, renewed, had grown into something like intimacy. But there was an uneasiness in it which she felt acutely. There were humbug and fear in this friendship.
But these visits, and especially Dindie Ackroyde's, had deepened the nervous pre-occupation which was beginning seriously to alarm old Fanny. If she took old Fanny's advice and left London? If she returned to Paris? She believed, indeed she felt certain, that to do that would not be to separate from Arabian. He would follow her there.
Ackroyde was an excellent musician as well as an ardent card-player. Lady Sellingworth had occasionally been to Coombe Hall, but for several years now she had ceased from going there. She did not care to show her white hair and lined face in Mrs. Ackroyde's rooms, which were always thronged with women she knew too well and with men who had ceased from admiring her.
Should she go? She read Dindie Ackroyde's note once more carefully, and a strange feeling stung her. She had been angry with Beryl for being fond of Craven. It was evident to her that Beryl was behaving badly to Craven. As she looked at the note in her hand she remembered a conversation in a box at the theatre. Arabian! That was the name of the man Dick Garstin was painting, or had been painting.
And now, even at sixty Presently she saw by the look of the landscape that she was nearing Coombe, and she drew a little mirror out of her muff and gazed into it anxiously. "What will they say? What will he think? What will happen to me to-day?" The car turned into a big gravel sweep between tall, red-brick walls, and drew up before Mrs. Ackroyde's door.
Shall we take a little walk in the garden? I am so unaccustomed to crowds that I am longing for air." She paused, then added: "And a little quiet." "Certainly," he said stiffly. "Does he hate me?" she thought, with a sinking of despair. He went to fetch her wrap. They met in the hall. "Where are you two going?" Dindie Ackroyde's all-seeing eyes had perceived them.
Ackroyde's garden, but there were some fine trees, and in summer the roses were wonderful. Now there were not many flowers, but at least there were calm and silence, and the breath of the winter woods came to Lady Sellingworth and Craven. Craven said nothing, and walked stiffly beside his companion looking straight ahead.
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