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Cartaret that his third wife's movements could by any possibility refer to anybody but himself. Robina, according to Mr. Cartaret, was perpetually thinking of him and of how she could annoy him. She had shown a fiendish cleverness in placing Gwenda with Lady Frances. She couldn't have done anything that could have annoyed him more.
Now, as his rule would have it, that evening of the fifth of December brought him to the Eighth chapter of St. John, in the one concerning the woman taken in adultery, which was the very last chapter which Mr. Cartaret that evening could have desired to read. He had always considered that to some minds it might be open to misinterpretation as a defense of laxity.
Northwards from Cartaret, a road follows the coast-line two or three miles from the cliffs to Les Pieux. Then one can go on to Flamanville by the cape which takes its name from the village, and there see the seventeenth century moated manor house.
To Gwenda it was as if her heart kept her hands off Rowcliffe's children, as if her flesh shrank from their flesh while her lips brushed theirs in tenderness and repulsion. But seeing them was always worse in anticipation than reality. For there was no trace of Rowcliffe in his children. The little red-haired, white-faced things were all Cartaret.
Alice was capable of some things; but Gwenda was capable of anything. Suddenly, to Gwenda's surprise, her father sighed; a dislocating sigh. It came between the Benediction and the Lord's Prayer. For, even as he invoked the blessing Mr. Cartaret suddenly felt sorry for himself again. His children were no good to him. By which he meant that his third wife, Robina, was no good.
The Vicar and Miss Cartaret were out when Rowcliffe called at the Vicarage, but Miss Gwendolen was in if he would like to see her. He waited in the crowded shabby gray and amber drawing-room with the Erard in the corner, and it was there that she came to him. He said he had only called to ask after her sister, as he had heard in the village that she was not so well. "I'm afraid she isn't."
By his decisive action in removing her from that southern seaside town he had saved her from continuing her work. In order to do it he had ruined his prospects. And, having done it, he was profoundly sorry for himself. So far as Mr. Cartaret could see there had been nothing else to do. If it had all to be done over again, he told himself that he would do it. But there Mr. Cartaret was wrong.
Here, if you tire of shrimping on the wide stretch of sands, it is possible to desert Normandy by the little steamer that during the summer plies between this point and Gorey in Jersey. Modern influences have given Cartaret a more civilised flavour than it had a few years ago, and it now has something of the aspect of a watering-place.
It was odd, but in the moment of his recoil from that imminent contact Rowcliffe remembered the little red-haired nurse. Not that there was much resemblance; for, though the little nurse was sweet, she was not altogether innocent, neither was she what good people like Mary Cartaret would call good.
"But I thought I thought They told me you were having no end of a time." "Tunbridge Wells isn't very amusing. No more is Lady Frances." Again he stopped dead and stared at her. "But they told me I mean I thought you were in London with Mrs. Cartaret, all the time." She laughed. "Did Papa tell you that?" "No. I don't know who told me. I I got the impression." He almost stammered.
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