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That's funny," said Vyse, with a damp forehead. "Yes, it's funny; it's funny," said Betton. He leaned back, his hands in his pockets, staring up at the ceiling, and noticing a crack in the cornice. Vyse, at the corner of the writing-table, waited. "Shall I get to work?" he began, after a silence measurable by minutes. Betton's gaze descended from the cornice.
DURING the ensuing weeks the letters grew fewer and fewer, and Betton foresaw the approach of the fatal day when his secretary, in common decency, would have to say: "I can't draw my pay for doing nothing." What a triumph for Vyse! The thought was intolerable, and Betton cursed his weakness in not having dismissed the fellow before such a possibility arose.
When I left Fleetwood's rooms I left with a half dozen men. I remember crossing Fifth Avenue with them; and the next thing I remember distinctly was loud talking in the club lobby, and a number of men there, and a slim young fellow in Inverness and top hat in the centre of a crowd, whose face was the face of that girl, Lydia Vyse. And that is absolutely all.
Somebody said she was an actress when she did anything at all one Lydia Vyse, somewhat celebrated for an audacity not too delicate. But Plank was no more interested than any man who can't afford to endanger his prospects by a closer acquaintance with that sort of pretty woman.
To withhold unfavourable comments from Vyse was, therefore, to make it appear that correspondence about the book had died out; and its author, mindful of his unguarded predictions, found this even more embarrassing. The simplest solution would be to get rid of Vyse; and to this end Betton began to address his energies.
"There are very few to-day," said Vyse, with his irritating evasiveness; and Betton rejoined squarely: "Oh, they'll stop soon. The book's a failure." A few mornings later he felt a rush of shame at his own tergiversations, and stalked into the library with Vyse's sentence on his tongue. Vyse started back with one of his anaemic blushes. "I was hoping you'd be in. I wanted to speak to you.
For the letters had ceased again, almost abruptly, since Vyse had hazarded the conjecture that they were the product of Strett's devoted pen.
Won't she see it?" he exulted, between fear and rapture. "It's wonderful how little people see," said Vyse reassuringly. The letters continued to pour in for several weeks after the appearance of "Abundance."
"And where did you meet Mr. Vyse, who is going to marry Miss Honeychurch?" "National Gallery." "Looking at Italian art. There you are, and yet you talk of coincidence and Fate. You naturally seek out things Italian, and so do we and our friends. This narrows the field immeasurably we meet again in it." "It is Fate that I am here," persisted George.
"It's not sympathy?" broke in Betton, the moisture drying out of his voice. He withdrew his hand from Vyse's shoulder. "What is it, then? The joy of uncovering my nakedness? An eye for an eye? Is it that?" Vyse rose from his seat, and with a mechanical gesture swept into a heap all the letters he had sorted. "I'm stone broke, and wanted to keep my job that's what it is," he said wearily ...
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