It came over him with a sort of shock that this woman was Tyson's wife,
irrevocably, until one or other of them died. And Tyson was not the sort
of man to die for anybody's convenience but his own.
At last they swayed into the courtyard at Thorneytoft. "Thank heaven
we're alive!" he said, as he followed her into the house.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned on the threshold. "Do you mean to say you didn't
enjoy it!"
"Oh, of course it was delightful; but I don't know that it was
exactly--safe."
"I see--you were afraid. We were safe enough so long as I was driving."
He smiled drearily. He felt that he had been whirled along in a delirious
dream--a madman driven by a fool. As if in answer to his thoughts, she
called back over the banisters-"I'm not such a fool as I look, you know."
No, for the life of him Stanistreet did not know. His doubt was absurd,
for it implied that Mrs. Nevill Tyson practiced the art of symbolism, and
he could hardly suppose her to be so well acquainted with the resources
of language. On the other hand, he could not conceive how, after living
more than half a year with Tyson, she had preserved her formidable
naïveté.
At dinner that evening she still further obscured the question by
boasting that she had saved Captain Stanistreet's life. Stanistreet
protested.
"Nonsense," said she; "you know perfectly well that you'd have upset the
whole show if you'd been left to yourself."
Tyson stared at his wife. "Do you mean to say that he let you drive?"
"Let me? Not he! He couldn't help it." Her white throat shook with
derisive laughter. "I took the reins; or, if you like, I kicked over
the traces. I always told you I'd do it some day."
Tyson pushed his chair back from the table and scowled meditatively. Mrs.
Nevill Tyson was smiling softly to herself as she played with the water
in her finger-glass. Presently she rose and shook the drops from her
fingertips, like one washing her hands of a light matter. Stanistreet got
up and opened the door for her, standing very straight and militant and
grim; and as she passed through she looked back at him and laughed again.
"I can see," said Tyson, as Stanistreet took his seat again, "you've been
letting that wife of mine make more or less of a fool of herself. If you
had no consideration for her neck or your own, you might have thought of
my son and heir."
"Oh," said Stanistreet, a little vaguely, for he was startled, "I kept a
good lookout."
"Not much use in that," said Tyson.
Stanistreet battled with his doubt. Tyson had furnished him with a key to
his wife's moods. Moreover, a simpler explanation had occurred to him.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson was fond of driving; she had been forbidden to drive,
therefore she drove; she had never driven any animal in her life before,
and, notwithstanding her inexperience, she had accomplished the dangerous
feat without injury to anybody. Hence no doubt her laughter and her
triumph.