"Well, something rather like it; but I think better of him than you do, Tom."
"They generally get caught at last." General Kemp gave a quick, short sigh: "and then comes--unless the chap's as clever as Boringdon doubtless means to be--pretty heavy punishment, eh, Mary?"
And he went off back into his dressing-room, and Mrs. Kemp, turning on her side, wet her pillow with sudden bitter tears.
Some days later Lucy and her mother called at the Priory, only to be informed that Mrs. Rebell was at Fletchings, staying there as the guest of Lord Bosworth and Miss Berwick till the following Saturday. This then,--so thought Mrs. Kemp with a quick revulsion of feeling,--was why Boringdon now found time hang so heavy on his hands, and why he had been, of late, so often at the Grange. Life, even at Chancton, was full of inexplicable cross currents,--of deep pools and eddies more likely to bring shipwreck than safe haven to the creature whom she loved so dearly, and for whom she felt that responsibility which only mothers know.
"But as we walked we turned aside Into a narrow tortuous lane Where baffling paths the roads divide And jealous brambles prick to pain: Then first I saw, with quick surprise, The strange new look in friendship's eyes.
"And now, in one stupendous dream, We wander through the purple glades, Which love has tinted with the gleam Of wonderful, enchanting shades: But I--would give it all away For those dear hours of friendship's day."
Mrs. Rebell had now been at Fletchings five days. It was Saturday night--in three days more she would be back at Chancton.
Standing before her dressing-table, she found herself counting the last hours of a holiday which had proved more enchanting than she had thought possible. How sorry she would be to leave the curious pretty room in which she found herself! This room, and that next door now turned into a dressing-room, had been fitted up when the wonders of China were first becoming known to the Western world. It was instinct with the strange charm so often found in those old English country houses where Christendom and Goblindom fight for mastery.
The greatest poet of his time had spent at Fletchings the honeymoon which formed a beginning to the most disastrous of marriage tragedies; and Septimus Daman, now Barbara's fellow guest, had managed to convey to her his belief that the rooms which she now occupied had been those set aside for the hapless pair. Was it here, so Barbara wondered--here, or perhaps sitting at the lacquer table in the dressing-room--that the bride had written the formal, yet wholly contented, letter to her parents, with its concluding sentence: "I cannot tell you any more for Lord Byron is looking over my shoulder!"--playful, intimate words, written by the proud, headstrong girl who was to lead a later life of such harsh bitterness.