"Don't alarm me by dropping your voice, Nigel.I am easily frightened--and Lady Alanby will think we are conspirators."For an instant he was taken by surprise.He had been pleased to believe that there was no way in which she could defend herself, unless she would condescend to something stupidly like a scene.He flushed and drew himself up.
"I beg your pardon, my dear Betty," he said, and walked away with the manner of an offended adorer, leaving her to realise an odiously unpleasant truth--which is that there are incidents only made more inexplicable by an effort to explain.
She saw also that he was quite aware of this, and that his offended departure was a brilliant inspiration, and had left her, as it were, in the lurch.To have said to Lady Alanby: "My brother-in-law, in whose house I am merely staying for my sister's sake, is trying to lead you to believe that I allow him to make love to me," would have suggested either folly or insanity on her own part.As it was--after a glance at Sir Nigel's stiffly retreating back--Lady Alanby merely looked away with a wholly uninviting expression.
When Betty spoke to him afterwards, haughtily and with determination, he laughed.
"My dearest girl," he said, "if I watch you with interest and drop my voice when I get a chance to speak to you, I only do what every other man does, and I do it because you are an alluring young woman--which no one is more perfectly aware of than yourself.Your pretence that you do not know you are alluring is the most captivating thing about you.And what do you think of doing if I continue to offend you? Do you propose to desert us--to leave poor Rosalie to sink back again into the bundle of old clothes she was when you came? For Heaven's sake, don't do that!"All that his words suggested took form before her vividly.
How well he understood what he was saying.But she answered him bravely.
"No.I do not mean to do that."
He watched her for a few seconds.There was curiosity in his eyes.
"Don't make the mistake of imagining that I will let my wife go with you to America," he said next."She is as far off from that as she was when I brought her to Stornham.Ihave told her so.A man cannot tie his wife to the bedpost in these days, but he can make her efforts to leave him so decidedly unpleasant that decent women prefer to stay at home and take what is coming.I have seen that often enough `to bank on it,'
if I may quote your American friends."
"Do you remember my once saying," Betty remarked, "that when a woman has been PROPERLY ill-treated the time comes when nothing matters--nothing but release from the life she loathes?""Yes," he answered."And to you nothing would matter but--excuse my saying it--your own damnable, headstrong pride.But Rosalie is different.Everything matters to her.
And you will find it so, my dear girl."
And that this was at least half true was brought home to her by the fact that late the same night Rosy came to her white with crying.
"It is not your fault, Betty," she said."Don't think that Ithink it is your fault, but he has been in my room in one of those humours when he seems like a devil.He thinks you will go back to America and try to take me with you.But, Betty, you must not think about me.It will be better for you to go.
I have seen you again.I have had you for--for a time.You will be safer at home with father and mother."Betty laid a hand on her shoulder and looked at her fixedly.
"What is it, Rosy?" she said."What is it he does to you --that makes you like this?""I don't know--but that he makes me feel that there is nothing but evil and lies in the world and nothing can help one against them.Those things he says about everyone--men and women--things one can't repeat--make me sick.And when I try to deny them, he laughs.""Does he say things about me?" Betty inquired, very quietly, and suddenly Rosalie threw her arms round her.
