Lady Hale was a person who could talk from dawn to dewy eve. To report her verbatim would have been a trial to any one but a practised stenographer with a gold fountain pen, an iron constitution, and a record to make. She was certainly amusing, for her ignorance of life was something beyond mere ignorance; it appeared as if there were no serious side to anything, even when she spoke of serious things. It was not so much that she could not feel, for she was really affectionate, as that she had a radical incapacity for expressing anything so as to affect others.
As a result, even her mourning for Sir George appeared rather like a scene in a light comedy when for a moment it verges on seriousness. She had constructed the man as he seemed to her in the first year of her marriage, and had never altered him, never removed him from his pedestal. Indeed, every accretion of public credit lifted him farther above her. Where other women, not necessarily acuter, would have had suspicions of his faithfulness, any evidence that led, or might have led, to such conclusions, was for her only another proof of the esteem in which he was held, and what she truly enough called, without the remotest , his affectionate and boyish disposition. There are, it would seem, some women of an ineradicably innocent turn of mind even in these times.
Nevertheless, considering that Hector was himself much in the dark about Sir George, and only received a little light upon him from a curious fact that came before him as one of the executors, she could hardly be blamed for esteeming her husband at least a Bayard, if not a Parsifal.
With the curious exception of every one whom she entertained that afternoon, and some others who could be relied upon not to speak, there was no soul in London who would not have declared Hale to be beyond reproach in all the relations of life. There was an openness, an entire frankness, about him which made all outsiders certain they knew him well. Again, there was no one but Hector who had any suspicion that the late Governor of Barbados had entertained them on his mental door-step, and even yet Hector was uncertain what lay beyond the frankly opened door that disclosed nothing.
But this afternoon Hector was made curiously uneasy. He could not have explained why. He was a very quiet and reserved man, and, perhaps, no one but so acute an observer as Courtney would have seen at once that he was devoted to Lady Anne. Her unexpected presence disturbed him for many reasons. He knew that Felicia hated her, and suspected why, and he felt that the girl watched both of them. This might have been enough to worry him, but more than that, there was some instinct at work in him which showed him that Lady Anne was terribly disturbed.
He began to watch in his turn, and was soon aware that she was listening to Lady Hale's chatter with a divided mind. When she got a chance to speak of the proposed biography she did so.
“Will it take you long to write it, Mr. Durant??” she asked, when Lady Hale paused to take breath. She rarely did; a metallurgist might have imagined she could use a blow-pipe.
“I can't say yet,” replied Hector, “but it will be some months.”
“I hope you will not make it like one I read the other day. It was a hopeless mass of letters and newspaper-cuttings,” said Lady Anne, smiling. “But I know you won't.”
“It's the worst sort of book written in English,” said Hector. “No wonder we admire Boswell.”
“Boswell, Boswell, who was Boswell?” asked Lady Hale.
“He wrote Doctor Johnson's biography,” replied Hector gravely enough.
“Dear me, I seem to have heard of it, now you mention it,” said Lady Hale. “But you must put his letters in. Every one said his letters from Barbados were equal to—I forget what, but some other letters. Have you any of his letters, Anne?”
“I have a few, I think,” said Lady Anne.
“You must lend them to Hector, dear. He will copy and return them,” said Lady Hale.
“I will see if I can find them, I may have lost or mislaid them,” said Anne. “But, indeed, one ought to destroy all letters. They are very painful to read afterward.”
Lady Hale nodded.
“I can't read them afterward. My husband always said it was wise to destroy them.”
“Did he?” asked Anne.
“Did he destroy them?”
“Yes.”
“I believe so, dear; but, then, naturally the letters written to him would not be so interesting as those he wrote. I think the second volume might be all letters, Hector.”
“We must see,” said Hector gloomily, and all this time Felicia said not a word.
“You've—you've gone through his papers, I suppose?” said Anne faintly.