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"The two men you refer to whom you asked me to see yesterday were a couple of the feeblest liars I ever had to do with. Tatham's counsel would have turned them inside out in five minutes. You seem to forget the other side are employing counsel." "I forgot nothing!" said Melrose hotly. "But I expect you to follow your instructions."
"Aye, aye, my lord." The old man quickly led the way through the front hall, more quickly than Tatham's curiosity liked.
She was being carried carried firmly and speedily in some one's arms. She tried to open her eyes. "Where am I?" A voice said: "That's better! Don't be afraid. You'd fainted I think. I can carry you quite safely." Infinite bliss rushed in upon the girl's fluttering sense. She was too feeble, too weak, to struggle. Instead she let her head sink on Tatham's shoulder. Her right hand clung to his coat.
She and Victoria Tatham had made friends on the warm soil of Italy, and through a third person, a rare and charming woman, whose death had first made them really known to each other. "I never saw anything so attractive!" Mrs. Manisty was murmuring in Tatham's ear. He followed the direction of her eyes, and his fair skin reddened. "She is very pretty, isn't she?"
But his blue eyes looked very straight at Faversham. Faversham changed colour a little, and thanked him. But his aspect was that of a man worn out, incapable for the time of the normal responses of feeling. He showed no sense of strangeness, with regard to Tatham's visit, though for weeks they had not been on speaking terms.
So far she had her desire. And in her correspondence with the two men, she had amply "played up." She had given herself her thoughts, feelings, imaginations to both; in different ways, and different degrees. And what was happening? Simply a natural, irresistible discrimination, which was like the slow inflooding of the tide through the river mouth it forces. Tatham's letters were all pleasure.
But Muster Faversham says noo he won't mind it." "Is Mr. Faversham staying on some time?" "I canno' say, my lord, I'm sure," was the cautious reply. "But they do say 'at he's not to tak' a journey for a while yet." Tatham's curiosity was hot within him, but his very dislike of Melrose restrained him from indulging it. He followed Dixon through the gallery in silence.
Tatham's letter of that morning, the longest perhaps ever written by a man who detested letter-writing, had touched her profoundly, caused her an agonized searching of conscience. Did Lady Tatham blame and detest her? Her manner was certainly cool. The girl's heart swelled as she walked along beside her guest. "Everything depends on Mr. Faversham," said Victoria. "You are a friend of his?"
The speaker raised her eyes to Lady Tatham, and Victoria read in them something beautiful and appealing, that at once moved and angered her. The girl seemed to offer her heart to Tatham's mother. "I can't marry your son! but let me love you be your friend! the friend of both." Was that what it meant? What could Victoria do? There was Harry hovering in the background, with that eager, pale look.
He had no features to speak of round cheeks, a mouth generally slightly open, and given to smiling, a clear brow, a red and white complexion, a babyish chin, thick fair hair, and a countenance neither reserved nor foolishly indiscreet. Tatham's physical eminence and it was undisputed lay not in his plain, good-tempered face, but in the young perfection of his athlete's form.
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