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Page 9
"Oh, I knew it all along. Papa said so."
"You must have been mistaken."
"Not a bit. I'll tell you exactly what he said. I heard him talking about
it to mother in the library. I wasn't listening, you know. I--I heard
your name, and I couldn't help it. He said he expected to see you
figuring in the law courts some of these days--Probate, Divorce, and
Admiralty Division."
Tyson rose, putting her down from his knee as if she had been a baby.
"I hope you didn't tell Miss Batchelor that?"
"Yes, I did though--rather!"
He smiled in spite of himself. "What did she do?"
"Oh, she just stared--over her shoulder; you know her way."
"Look here, Molly, you must _not_ go about saying that sort of thing.
People here don't understand it; they'll only think--"
"What?"
"Never mind what they'll think. The world is chock-full of wickedness, my
child. But if half the people we meet are sinners, the other half are
fools. I never knew any one yet who wasn't one or the other. So don't
think about what they think, but mind what you say. See?"
"I'm sorry." She had come softly up to the window where he stood; and now
she was rubbing his sleeve with one side of her face and smiling with the
other.
He stroked her hair.
"All right. Don't do it again, that's all."
"I won't--if you'll only tell me one thing. Were you ever engaged to
anybody but me?"
"No; I was never engaged to anybody but you."
"Then you were never in love with ten gentlemen at once like the Countess
Pol--"
His answer was cut short by the entrance of Sir Peter Morley, followed by
Captain Stanistreet.
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST STONE
Tyson was much flattered by the rumor that Sir Peter Morley had
pronounced his wife to be "the loveliest woman in Leicestershire";
for Lady Morley herself was a sufficiently splendid type, with her
austere Puritan beauty. As for the rector, it was considered that his
admiration of Mrs. Nevill Tyson somewhat stultified his utterances in
the pulpit.
It is not always well for a woman when the judgment of the other sex
reverses that of her own. It was not well for Mrs. Nevill Tyson to be
told that she had fascinated Sir Peter Morley and spoiled the rector's
sermons; it was not well for her to be worshipped (collectively) by the
riff-raff that swarmed about Thorneytoft at Tyson's invitation; but any
of these things were better than for her to be left, as she frequently
was, to the unmixed society of Captain Stanistreet. He had a reputation.
Tyson thought nothing of going up to town for the week-end and leaving
Louis to entertain his wife in his absence. To do him justice, this
neglect was at first merely a device by which he heightened the luxury
of possession. In his own choice phrase, he "liked to give a mare a loose
rein when he knew her paces." It was all right. He knew Molly, and if he
did not, Stanistreet knew him. But these things were subtleties which
Drayton Parva did not understand, and naturally enough it began to avoid
the Tysons because of them.
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