She seated herself, and after an imperceptible pause Justine sank into the seat beside her. “I am very glad, just now, to give my energies a holiday,” she said, leaning back with a little sigh of retrospective weariness.
“You are tired too? Bessy wrote me you had been quite used up by a trying case after we saw you at Hanaford.”
Miss Brent smiled. “When a nurse is fit for work she calls a trying case a ‘beautiful’ one.”
“But meanwhile—?” Mrs. Ansell shone on her with elder-sisterly solicitude. “Meanwhile, why not stay on with Cicely—above all, with Bessy? Surely she’s a ‘beautiful’ case too.”
“Isn’t she?” Justine laughingly agreed.
“And if you want to be tried—” Mrs. Ansell swept the scene with a slight lift of her philosophic shoulders—“you’ll find there are trials enough everywhere.”
Her companion started up with a glance at the small watch on her breast. “One of them is that it’s already after four, and that I must see that tea is sent down to the tennis-ground, and the new arrivals looked after.”
“I saw the omnibus on its way to the station. Are many more people coming?”
“Five or six, I believe. The house is usually full for Sunday.”
Mrs. Ansell made a slight motion to detain her. “And when is Mr. Amherst expected?”
Miss Brent’s pale cheek seemed to take on a darker tone of ivory, and her glance dropped from her companion’s face to the vivid stretch of gardens at their feet. “Bessy has not told me,” she said.
“Ah—” the older woman rejoined, looking also toward the gardens, as if to intercept Miss Brent’s glance in its flight. The latter stood still a moment, with the appearance of not wishing to evade whatever else her companion might have to say; then she moved away, entering the house by one window just as Mr. Langhope emerged from it by another.
The sound of his stick tapping across the bricks roused Mrs. Ansell from her musings, but she showed her sense of his presence simply by returning to the bench she had just left; and accepting this mute invitation, Mr. Langhope crossed the terrace and seated himself at her side.
When he had done so they continued to look at each other without speaking, after the manner of old friends possessed of occult means of communication; and as the result of this inward colloquy Mr. Langhope at length said: “Well, what do you make of it?”
“What do you?” she rejoined, turning full upon him a face so released from its usual defences and disguises that it looked at once older and more simple than the countenance she presented to the world.
Mr. Langhope waved a deprecating hand. “I want your fresher impressions.”
“That’s what I just now said to Miss Brent.”
“You’ve been talking to Miss Brent?”
“Only a flying word—she had to go and look after the new arrivals.”
Mr. Langhope’s attention deepened. “Well, what did you say to her?”
“Wouldn’t you rather hear what she said to me?”
He smiled. “A good cross-examiner always gets the answers he wants. Let me hear your side, and I shall know hers.”
“I should say that applied only to stupid cross-examiners; or to those who have stupid subjects to deal with. And Miss Brent is not stupid, you know.”
“Far from it! What else do you make out?”
“I make out that she’s in possession.”
“Here?”
“Don’t look startled. Do you dislike her?”
“Heaven forbid—with those eyes! She has a wit of her own, too—and she certainly makes things easier for Bessy.”
“She guards her carefully, at any rate. I could find out nothing.”
“About Bessy?”
“About the general situation.”
“Including Miss Brent?”
Mrs. Ansell smiled faintly. “I made one little discovery about her.”
“Well?”
“She’s intimate with the new doctor.”
“Wyant?” Mr. Langhope’s interest dropped. “What of that? I believe she knew him before.”
“I daresay. It’s of no special importance, except as giving us a possible clue to her character. She strikes me as interesting and mysterious.”
Mr. Langhope smiled. “The things your imagination does for you!”
“It helps me to see that we may find Miss Brent useful as a friend.”
“A friend?”
“An ally.” She paused, as if searching for a word. “She may restore the equilibrium.”
Mr. Langhope’s handsome face darkened. “Open Bessy’s eyes to Amherst? Damn him!” he said quietly.
Mrs. Ansell let the imprecation pass. “When was he last here?” she asked.
“Five or six weeks ago—for one night. His only visit since she came back from the Adirondacks.”
“What do you think his motive is? He must know what he risks in losing his hold on Bessy.”
“His motive? With your eye for them, can you ask? A devouring ambition, that’s all! Haven’t you noticed that, in all except the biggest minds, ambition takes the form of wanting to command where one has had to obey? Amherst has been made to toe the line at Westmore, and now he wants Truscomb—yes, and Halford Gaines, too!—to do the same. That’s the secret of his servant-of-the-people pose—gad, I believe it’s the whole secret of his marriage! He’s devouring my daughter’s substance to pay off an old score against the mills. He’ll never rest till he has Truscomb out, and some creature of his own in command—and then, vogue la galère! If it were women, now,” Mr. Langhope summed up impatiently, “one could understand it, at his age, and with that damned romantic head—but to be put aside for a lot of low mongrelly socialist mill-hands—ah, my poor girl—my poor girl!”
Mrs. Ansell mused. “You didn’t write me that things were so bad. There’s been no actual quarrel?” she asked.
“How can there be, when the poor child does all he wants? He’s simply too busy to come and thank her!”
“Too busy at Hanaford?”
“So he says. Introducing the golden age at Westmore—it’s likely to be the age of copper at Lynbrook.”
Mrs. Ansell drew a meditative breath. “I was thinking of that. I understood that Bessy would have to retrench while the changes at Westmore were going on.”
“Well—didn’t she give up Europe, and cable over to countermand her new motor?”
“But the life here! This mob of people! Miss Brent tells me the house is full for every week-end.”
“Would you have my daughter cut off from all her friends?”
Mrs. Ansell met this promptly. “From some of the new ones, at any rate! Have you heard who has just arrived?”
Mr. Langhope’s hesitation showed a tinge of embarrassment. “I’m not sure—some one has always just arrived.”
“Well, the Fenton Carburys, then!” Mrs. Ansell left it to her tone to annotate the announcement.
Mr. Langhope raised his eyebrows slightly. “Are they likely to be an exceptionally costly pleasure?”
“If you’re trying to prove that I haven’t kept to the point—I can assure you that I’m well within it!”
“But since the good Blanche has got her divorce and married Carbury, wherein do they differ from other week-end automata?”
“Because most divorced women marry again to be respectable.”
Mr. Langhope smiled faintly. “Yes—that’s their punishment. But it would be too dull for Blanche.”
“Precisely. She married again to see Ned Bowfort!”
“Ah—that may yet be hers!”
Mrs. Ansell sighed at his perversity. “Meanwhile, she’s brought him here, and it is unnatural to see Bessy lending herself to such combinations.”
“You’re corrupted by a glimpse of the old societies. Here Bowfort and Carbury are simply hands at bridge.”
“Old hands at it—yes! And the bridge is another point: Bessy never used to play for money.”