Mr. Roden, the servant told her, was awaiting her return in the drawing-room. She walked slowly upstairs. Some victories are only to be won with arms that hurt the bearer. Mrs. Vansittart's mind was warped, or she must have known that she was going to pay too dearly for her revenge. She was sacrificing invaluable memories to a paltry hatred.
“Ah!” she said to Roden, whose manner betrayed the recollection of her invitation to him, “so I have kept you waiting--a minute, perhaps, for each day that you have stayed away from Park Straat.”
Roden laughed, with a shade of embarrassment, which she was quick to detect.
“Is it your sister,” she asked, “who has induced you to stay away?”
“Dorothy has nothing but good to say of you,” he answered.
“Then it is Herr von Holzen,” said Mrs. Vansittart, laying aside her gloves and turning towards the tea-table. She spoke quietly and rather indifferently, as one does of persons who are removed by a social grade. “I have never told you, I believe, that I happen to know something of your--what is he?--your foreman. He has probably warned you against me. My husband once employed this Von Holzen, and was, I believe, robbed by him. We never knew the man socially, and I have always suspected that he bore us some ill feeling on that account. You remember--in this room, when you brought him to call soon after your works were built--that he referred to having met my husband. Doubtless with a view to finding out how much I knew, or if I was in reality the wife of Charles Vansittart. But I did not choose to enlighten him.”
She had poured out tea while she spoke. Her hands were unsteady still, and she drew down the sleeve of her habit to hide the discoloration of her wrist. She turned rather suddenly, and saw on Roden's face the confession that it had been due to Von Holzen's influence that he had absented himself from her drawing-room.
“However,” she said, with a little laugh, and in a final voice, as if dismissing a subject of small importance--“however, I suppose Herr von Holzen is rising in the world, and has the sensitive vanity of persons in that trying condition.”
She sat down slowly, remembering her pretty figure in its smart habit. Roden's slow eyes noted the pretty figure also, which she observed, one may be sure.