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He was beginning to be a connoisseur in the fine flavours of the different brands of jealousy. Anyway there was food for thought. There was food for little else, in the days that followed. Mr. Vernon's heart, hungry for the first time, had to starve. He went often to Lady St. Craye's. She was so gentle, sweet, yet not too sympathetic bright, amusing even, but not too vivacious.
"I should like to burn all the newspapers!" "What good would that do?" said Catharine, trying to smile. "I have been reading Bishop Craye's letter to the Guardian. Poor Bishop! what a cruel, cruel position!" The words were spoken with a subdued but passionate energy, and when Mrs. Elsmere perceived that Mary made no reply, her hand slipped out of her daughter's.
It was not till he was back in his rooms and had lighted his candle and wound up his watch that Lady St. Craye's kisses began to haunt him in good earnest, as he had known they would. Lady St. Craye, left alone, dried her eyes and set to work, with heart still beating wildly to look about her at the ruins of her world. The room was quiet with the horrible quiet of a death chamber.
One of the ladies compared the time of her watch with De Craye's, and Clara looked at hers and gratefully noted that she was four minutes in arrear. She left the breakfast-room at a quarter to ten, after kissing her father. Willoughby was behind her.
"Now you give me courage," he said. "I do know a quiet little place quite near here. And, as you haven't any of your friends with you, won't you take pity on me and let me dine with you?" "You're sure you're not giving up some nice engagement just to to be kind to me?" she asked. And the forlornness of her tone made him almost forget that he had half promised to join a party of Lady St. Craye's.
He saw the golden brown shimmer of Lady St. Craye's hat, and knew that it matched her hair and that there would be violets somewhere under the brim of it violets that would make her eyes look violet too. She was coming up a man just behind her. She came round the last turn, and the man was Temple.
It was she she was always glad of that who at last found her courage, and drew back. "Good-bye," she said. "I shall be quite sane to-morrow. And then I'll help you." When he got out into the street he looked at his watch. It was not yet ten o'clock. He hailed a carriage. "Fifty-seven Boulevard Montparnasse," he said. He could still feel Lady St. Craye's wet cheek against his own.
Willoughby appeared to her scarce human, unreadable, save by the key that she could supply. She determined to put faith in Colonel De Craye's marvellous divination of circumstances in the dark. Marvels are solid weapons when we are attacked by real prodigies of nature. Her countenance cleared.
He bowed her off, and she cried: "Well, now, the gift can be shared, if you're either of you for a division." In the crash of the carriage-wheels he heard, "At any rate there was a rogue in that porcelain." These are the slaps we get from a heedless world. As for the vase, it was Horace De Craye's loss. Wedding-present he would have to produce, and decidedly not in chips.
Craye since the night of the kiss. It was after the fourth flat dinner with Betty that he said good-night to her early and abruptly, and drove to Lady St. Craye's. She was alone. She rose to greet him, and he saw that her eyes were dark-rimmed, and her lips rough. "This is very nice of you," she said. "It's nearly a month since I saw you." "Yes," he said. "I know it is.
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