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Page 43
"They might make stranger remarks if she came, that's one consolation.
Still--"
"Well, Miss Batchelor, the child is perfectly willing to come if I want
her. But--er--er--a friend"--(Mrs. Wilcox was determined to be discreet,
and leave no loophole for scandal)--"a friend has strongly advised
her to stay."
"Oh, no doubt she is perfectly right. Sir Peter is in town again, I
believe?"
Miss Batchelor said it abruptly, as if she were trying to change the
subject. And at the mention of Sir Peter Mrs. Wilcox lost her head and
fluttered into the trap. There are fallacies in the logic of facts.
"No, no," she said, getting up to go. "It was Captain Stanistreet I
meant."
Again Miss Batchelor smiled.
This was proof positive--the last stone.
CHAPTER XIV
THE "CRITERION"
Mrs. Nevill's account of herself, though somewhat highly colored, was
substantially true. When Stanistreet suggested defeat, it was his first
allusion to her husband's desertion of her; and like most of Louis's
utterances, it was full of tact.
Defeat? She had brooded over the idea, and then apparently she had an
inspiration.
From that day, wherever there was a sufficiently important crowd to see
her, Mrs. Nevill Tyson was to be seen. She was generally with Louis
Stanistreet, who was not a figure to be overlooked; she was always
exquisitely dressed; and sometimes, not often, she was delicately painted
and powdered. Mrs. Nevill Tyson hated what was commonplace and loud; and
she had to make herself conspicuous in a season when women dressed
_fortissimo_, and a fashionable crowd was like a bed of flowers in June.
Somehow she managed to strike some resonant minor chord of color that
went throbbing through that confused orchestra. Everywhere she went
people turned and stared at her as she flashed by; and apparently her one
object was to be stared at. She became as much of a celebrity as any
woman with a character and without a position "in society" can become.
If she were counterfeiting a type, enough of the original Mrs. Nevill
Tyson remained to give her own supernatural _n�ivet�_ to the character.
Stanistreet was completely puzzled by this new freak; it looked like
recklessness, it looked like vanity, it looked--it looked like an
innocent parody of guilt. He had given in to her whim, as he had given
In to every wish of hers, but he was not quite sure that he liked the
frankness, the publicity of the thing. He wondered how so small a woman
contrived to attract so large a share of attention in a city where pretty
women were as common as paving-stones. Perhaps it was partly owing to the
persistence and punctuality of her movements: she patronized certain
theatres, haunted certain thoroughfares at certain times. She had an
affection for Piccadilly, a sentiment for Oxford Circus, and a passion
for the Strand. Louis could sympathize with these preferences; he, too,
liked to walk up and down the Embankment in the summer twilight--though
why such abrupt stoppages? Why such impetuous speed? He could understand
a human being finding a remote interest in the Houses of Parliament, but
he could not understand why Mrs. Nevill Tyson should love to linger
outside the doors of the War Office.
Her ways were indeed inscrutable; but he had learnt to know them all, not
a gesture escaped him. How well he knew the turn of her head and the
sudden flash of her face as they entered a theatre, and her eyes swept
the house, eager, expectant, dubious; how well he knew the excited touch
on his sleeve, the breath half-drawn, the look that was a confidence and
an enigma; knew, too, the despondent droop of her eyes when the play was
done and it was all over; the tightening of her hand upon his arm, and
the shrinking of the whole tiny figure as they made their way out through
the crowd. She had spirit enough for anything; but her nerves were all on
edge--she was so easily tired, so easily startled.
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