"Then see that you use him adroitly to your work," said his mother. "Best not leave town at present, Charles."
"Why, no," said he. "I'll find me a lodging somewhere at hand, since my fond sire is determined I shall pollute no longer the sacrosanctity of his dwelling. Perhaps when I have pulled him out of this quicksand, he will deign to mitigate the bitterness of his feelings for me. Though, faith, I find life endurable without the affection he should have consecrated to me."
"Ay," she said, looking up at him. "You are his son; too much his son, I fear. 'Tis why he dislikes you so intensely. He sees in you the faults to which he is blind in himself."
"Sweet mother!" said his lordship, bowing.
She scowled at him. She could deal in irony herself—and loved to—but she detested to have it dealt to her.
He bowed again; gained the door, and would have passed out but that she detained him.
"'Tis a pity, on some scores, to dispose so utterly of this Caryll," she said. "The pestilent coxcomb has his uses, and his uses, like adversity's, are sweet."
He paused to question her with his eyes.
"He might have made a husband for Hortensia, and rid me of the company of that white-faced changeling."
"Might he so?" quoth the viscount, face and voice, expressionless.
"They were made for each other," her ladyship opined.
"Were they so?"
"Ay—were they. And faith they've discovered it. I would you had seen the turtles in the arbor an hour ago, when I surprised them."
His lordship attempted a smile, but achieved nothing more than a wry face and a change of color. His mother's eyes, observing these signs, grew on a sudden startled.
"Why, fool," quoth she, "do you hold there still? Art not yet cured of that folly?"
"What folly, ma'am?"
"This folly that already has cost you so much. 'Sdeath! As I'm a woman, if you'd so much feeling for the girl, I marvel ye did not marry her honestly and in earnest when the chance was yours."
The pallor of his face increased. He clenched his hands. "I marvel myself that I did not," he answered passionately—and went out, slamming the door after him, and leaving her ladyship agape and angry.
CHAPTER XV. LOVE AND RAGE
Lord Rotherby, descending from that interview with his mother, espied Hortensia crossing the hall below. Forgetting his dignity, he quickened his movements, and took the remainder of the stairs two at a stride. But, then, his lordship was excited and angry, and considerations of dignity did not obtain with him at the time. For that matter, they seldom did.
"Hortensia! Hortensia!" he called to her, and at his call she paused.
Not once during the month that was past—and during which he had, for the most part, kept his room, to all intents a prisoner—had she exchanged so much as a word with him. Thus, not seeing him, she had been able, to an extent, to exclude him from her thoughts, which, naturally enough, were reluctant to entertain him for their guest.
Her calm, as she paused now in acquiescence to his bidding, was such that it almost surprised herself. She had loved him once—or thought so, a little month ago—and at a single blow he had slain that love. Now love so slain has a trick of resurrecting in the guise of hate; and so, she had thought at first had been the case with her. But this moment proved to her now that her love was dead, indeed, since of her erstwhile affection not even a recoil to hate remained. Dislike she may have felt; but it was that cold dislike that breeds a deadly indifference, and seeks no active expression, asking no more than the avoidance of its object.
Her calm, reflected in her face of a beauty almost spiritual, in every steady line of her slight, graceful figure, gave him pause a moment, and his hot glance fell abashed before the chill indifference that met him from those brown eyes.
A man of deeper sensibilities, of keener perceptions, would have bowed and gone his way. But then a man of deeper sensibilities would never have sought this interview that the viscount was now seeking. Therefore, it was but natural that he should recover swiftly from his momentary halt, and step aside to throw open the door of a little room on the right of the hall. Bowing slightly, he invited her to enter.
"Grant me a moment ere I go, Hortensia," he said, between command and exhortation.
She stood cogitating him an instant, with no outward sign of what might be passing in her mind; then she slightly inclined her head, and went forward as he bade her.
It was a sunny room, gay with light color and dainty furnishings, having long window-doors that opened to the garden. An Aubusson carpet of palest green, with a festoon pattern of pink roses, covered two-thirds of the blocked, polished floor. The empanelled walls were white, with here a gilt mirror, flanked on either side by a girandole in ormolu. A spinet stood open in mid-chamber, and upon it were sheets of music, a few books and a bowl of emerald-green ware, charged now with roses, whose fragrance lay heavy on the air. There were two or three small tables of very dainty, fragile make, and the chairs were in delicately-tinted tapestry illustrating the fables of La Fontaine.
It was an apartment looked upon by Hortensia as her own withdrawing-room, set apart for her own use, and as that the household—her very ladyship included—had ever recognized it.
His lordship closed the door with care. Hortensia took her seat upon the long stool that stood at the spinet, her back to the instrument, and with hands idle in her lap—the same cold reserve upon her countenance-she awaited his communication.
He advanced until he was close beside her, and stood leaning an elbow on the corner of the spinet, a long and not ungraceful figure, with the black curls of his full-bottomed wig falling about his swarthy, big-featured face.
"I have but my farewells to make, Hortensia," said he. "I am leaving Stretton House, to-day, at last."
"I am glad," said she, in a formal, level voice, "that things should have fallen out so as to leave you free to go your ways."
"You are glad," he answered, frowning slightly, and leaning farther towards her. "Ay, and why are you glad? Why? You are glad for Mr. Caryll's sake. Do you deny it?"
She looked up at him quite calm and fearlessly. "I am glad for your own sake, too."
His dark brooding eyes looked deep into hers, which did not falter under his insistent gaze. "Am I to believe you?" he inquired.
"Why not? I do not wish your death."
"Not my death—but my absence?" he sneered. "You wish for that, do you not? You would prefer me gone? My room is better than my company just now? 'Tis what you think, eh?"
"I have not thought of it at all," she answered him with a pitiless frankness.
He laughed, soft and wickedly. "Is it so very hopeless, then? You have not thought of it at all by which you mean that you have not thought of me at all."
"Is't not best so? You have given me no cause to think of you to your advantage. I am therefore kind to exclude you from my thoughts."
"Kind?" he mocked her. "You think it kind to put me from your mind—I who love you, Hortensia!"
She rose upon the instant, her cheeks warming faintly. "My lord," said she, "I think there is no more to be said between us."
"Ah, but there is," he cried. "A deal more yet." And he left his place by the spinet to come and stand immediately before her, barring her passage to the door. "Not only to say farewell was it that I desired to speak with you alone here." His voice softened amazingly. "I want your pardon ere I go. I want you to say that you forgive me the vile thing I would have done, Hortensia." Contrition quivered in his lowered voice. He bent a knee to her, and held out his hand. "I will not rise until you speak my pardon, child."