She was perpetually thinking now; she lay there weaving long chains of
reasoning from the flowers of her innocent fancy, chains so brittle and
insubstantial, they would have offered no support to any creature less
light than she. If Tyson was more than usually sulky, that was the
serious side of him coming out; if he was silent, well, everybody knows
that the deepest feelings are seldom expressed in words; if he was
atrociously irritable, it was no wonder, considering the strain he had
undergone, poor fellow. She reminded herself how he had cried over her
like a child; she rehearsed that other scene of confession and
forgiveness--the tender, sacred words, the promises and vows. Already
the New Life was passing into the life of memory, while she told herself
that it could not pass. It takes so much to make a strong man cry, you
know. When doubts came, she always fell back on the argument from tears.
He was reading to her one evening after she had gone tired to bed
(reading was so much easier than talking), when Mrs. Nevill Tyson, whose
attention wandered dreadfully, interrupted him.
"Nevill--you remember that night when the accident happened? I mean--just
before the fire?"
He moaned out an incoherent assent.
"And you remember what you thought?"
His only answer was a nervous movement of his feet.
"Well, I've often wanted to tell you about that. I know you didn't really
think there was anything between me and Louis, but--"
"Of course I didn't."
"I know--really. Still it might have made a difference. I would have told
you all about it that night, if it hadn't been for that beastly fire. You
know mother said I was awfully silly--I laid myself open to all sorts of
dreadful things. She said I ought to have left London--that time. I
couldn't. I knew when you came back you would come right here--I might
have missed you. Besides, it would have been horrible to go back to
Thorneytoft, where everybody was talking and thinking things. They
would talk, Nevill."
"The fiends! You shouldn't have minded them, darling. They didn't
understand you. How could they? The brutes."
"Me? Oh, I wouldn't have minded that."
Tyson was frankly astonished. Apparently she had not a notion that she
had been the subject of any scurrilous reports at Drayton Parva or
elsewhere. From the first she had resented their social ostracism (when
she became aware of it) as an insult to him; and now, evidently she had
found the clue to the mysterious scandal in her knowledge of his conduct.
Before she could do that, in her own mind she must have accused him
gravely. And yet, but for this characteristic little inadvertence, he
would never have known it. How much did she know?
She went on a little incoherently; so many ideas cropped up to be
gathered instantly, and wreathed into the sequence of her thought.
"Mother said people would talk if I didn't take care. She thought Sir
Peter--poor old Sir Peter--do you remember his funny red face, and his
throat--all turkey's wattles?--because he said I was the prettiest woman
in Leicestershire. I don't see much harm in that, you know. Anyhow, he
can't very well do it again--now. Perhaps--she thought I oughtn't to
have gone about quite so much with Louis."