  1 Mr. Waddington was sitting up in his armchair before the bedroom fire. By turning his head a little to the right he could command a perfect view of himself in the long glass by the window. To get up and look at himself in that glass had been the first act of his convalescence. He had hardly dared to think what alterations his illness might have made in him. He remembered the horrible sight that Corbett had presented after his influenza last year. Looking earnestly at himself in the glass, he had found that his appearance was, if anything, improved. Outlines that he had missed for the last ten years were showing up again. The Postlethwaite nose was cleaner cut. He was almost slender, and not half so weak as Fanny said he ought to have been. Immobility in bed, his spiritual attitude of complacent acquiescence, and the release of his whole organism from the strain of a restless intellect had set him up more than his influenza had pulled him down; and it was a distinctly more refined and youthful Waddington that Barbara found sitting in the armchair, wearing a royal blue wadded silk dressing-gown and Fanny's motor-scarf, with a grey mohair shawl over his knees. Mr. Waddington's convalescence was altogether delightful to him, admitting, as it did, of sustained companionship with Barbara. As soon as it reached the armchair stage she sat with him for hours together. She had finished the Ramblings, and at his request she read them aloud to him all over again from beginning to end. Mr. Waddington was much gratified by the impression they made recited in Barbara's charming voice; the voice that trembled a little now and then with an emotion that did her credit. "'Come with me into the little sheltered valley of the Speed. Let us follow the brown trout stream that goes purling through the lush green grass of the meadows—'" "I'd no idea," said Mr. Waddington, "it was anything like so good as it is. We may congratulate ourselves on having got rid of Ralph Bevan." And in February, when the frost broke and the spring weather came, and the green and pink and purple fields showed up again through the mist on the hillsides, he went out driving with Barbara in his car. He wanted to look again at the places of his Ramblings, and he wanted Barbara to look at them with him. It was the reward he had promised her for what he called her dreary, mechanical job of copying and copying. Barbara noticed the curious, exalted expression of his face as he sat up beside her in the car, looking noble. She put it down partly to that everlasting self-satisfaction that made his inward happiness, and partly to sheer physical exhilaration induced by speed. She felt something like it herself as they tore switchbacking up and down the hills: an excitement whipped up on the top of the deep happiness that came from thinking about Ralph. And there was hardly a moment when she didn't think about him. It made her eyes shine and her mouth quiver with a peculiarly blissful smile. And Mr. Waddington looked at Barbara where she sat tucked up beside him. He noticed the shining and the quivering, and he thought—what he always had thought of Barbara. Only now he was certain. The child loved him. She had been fascinated and frightened, frightened and fascinated by him from the first hour that she had known him. But she was not afraid of him any more. She had left off struggling. She was giving herself up like a child to this feeling, the nature of which, in her child's innocence, she did not yet know. But he knew. He had always known it. So much one half of Mr. Waddington's mind admitted, while the other half denied that he had known it with any certainty. It went on saying to itself: "Blind. Blind. Yet I might have known it," as if he hadn't. He had, of course, kept it before him as a possibility (no part of him denied that). And he had used tact. He had handled a delicate situation with a consummate delicacy. He had done everything an honourable man could do. But there it was. There it had been from the day that he had come into the house and found her there. And the thing was too strong for Barbara. Poor child, he might have known it would be. And it was too strong for Mr. Waddington. It wasn't his fault. It was Fanny's fault, having the girl there and forcing them to that dangerous intimacy. Before his illness Mr. Waddington had resisted successfully any little inclination he might have had to take advantage of the situation. He conceived his inner life for the last nine months as consisting of a series of resistances. He conceived the episode of Elise as a safety valve, natural but unpleasant, for the emotions caused by Barbara: the substitution of a permissible for an impermissible lapse. It had been incredible to him that he should make love to Barbara. But one effect of his influenza was apparent. It had lowered his resistance, and, lowering it, had altered his whole moral perspective and his scale of values, till one morning in April, walking with Barbara in the garden that smelt of wallflowers and violets, he became aware that Barbara was as necessary to him as he was to Barbara. Her easel stood in a corner of the lawn with an unfinished water-colour drawing of the house on it. He paused before it, smiling his tender, sentimental smile. "There's one thing I regret, Barbara—that I didn't have your drawings for my Cotswold book." The Ramblings, thanks to unproclaimed activities of Ralph Bevan, were at that moment in the press. "Why should you," she said, "if you didn't care about them?" "It's inconceivable that I shouldn't have cared. … I was blind. Blind. … Well, some day, if we ever have an Édition de luxe, they shall appear in that." "Some day!" She hadn't the heart to tell him that the drawings had another destination, for as yet the existence of Ralph's took was a secret. They had agreed that nothing should disturb Mr. Waddington's pleasure in the publication of his Ramblings—his poor Ramblings. "One has to pay for blindness in this world," he said. "A lot of people'll be let in at that rate. I don't suppose five will care a rap about my drawings." "I wasn't thinking only of your drawings, my dear." He pondered. … 2 It was Barbara's twenty-fourth birthday, and the day of her adoption. It had begun, unpropitiously, with something very like a dispute between Horatio and Fanny. Mr. Waddington had gone up to London the day before, and had returned with a pearl pendant for Fanny, and a green jade necklace for Barbara (not yet presented) and a canary yellow waistcoat for himself. And not only the waistcoat— On the birthday morning Fanny had called out to Barbara as she passed her bedroom door: "Barbara, come here." Fanny was staring, fascinated, at four pairs of silk pyjamas spread out before her on the bed. Remarkable pyjamas, of a fierce magenta with forked lightning in orange running about all over them. "Good God, Fanny!" "You may well say 'Good God.' What would you say if you'd got to…? "It's a mercy he didn't get them eighteen years ago," said Barbara, "or "Yellow waistcoats are all very well," said Fanny. "But what can he have been thinking of?" "I don't know," said Barbara. Somehow the pattern called up, irresistibly, the image of Mrs. Levitt. "Perhaps," she said, "he thinks he's Jupiter." "Well, I'm not What's-her-name, and I don't want to be blasted. So I'll put them somewhere where he can't find them." At that moment they had heard Mr. Waddington coming through his dressing-room and Barbara had run away by the door into the corridor. "Who took those things out of my wardrobe?" he said. He was gazing, dreamily, affectionately almost, at the pyjamas. "I did." "And what for?" "To look at them. Can you wonder? Horatio, if you wear them I'll apply for a separation." "You needn't worry." There was a queer look in his face, significant and furtive. And Fanny's mind, with one of its rapid flights, darted off from the pyjamas. "What are you going to do about Barbara?" she said. "Do about her?" "Yes. You know we were going to adopt her if we liked her enough. And we do like her enough, don't we?" "I have no paternal feeling for Barbara," said Mr. Waddington. "The parental relation does not appeal to me as desirable or suitable." "I should have thought, considering her age and your age, it was very suitable indeed." "Not if it entails obligations that I might regret." "You're going to provide for her, aren't you? That isn't an obligation, surely, you'll regret?" "I can provide for her without adopting her." "How? It's no good just leaving her something in your will." "I shall continue half her salary," said Mr. Waddington, "as an allowance." "Yes. But will you give her a marriage portion if she marries?" He was silent. His mind reeled with the blow. "If she marries," he said, "with my consent and my approval—yes." "If that isn't a parental attitude! And supposing she doesn't?" "She isn't thinking of marrying." "You don't know what she's thinking of." "Neither, I venture to say, do you." "Well—I don't see how I can adopt her, if you don't." "I didn't say I wouldn't adopt her." "Then you will?" He snapped back at her with an incredible ferocity. "I suppose I shall have to. Don't worry me!" He then lifted up the pyjamas from the bed and carried them into his dressing-room. Through the open door she saw him, mounted on a chair, laying them out, tenderly, on the top shelf of the wardrobe: as if he were storing them for some mysterious and romantic purpose in which Fanny was not included. "Perhaps, after all," she thought, "he only bought them because they make him feel young." All the morning, that morning of Barbara's birthday and adoption Mr. Waddington's thoughtful gloom continued. And in the afternoon he shut himself up in his library and gave orders that he was not to be disturbed. 3 Barbara was in the morning-room. They had given her the morning-room for a study, and she was alone in it, amusing herself with her pocket sketch-book. The sketch-book was Barbara's and Ralph's secret. Sometimes it lived for days with Ralph at the White Hart. Sometimes it lived with Barbara, in her coat pocket, or in her bureau under lock and key. She was obsessed with the fear that some day she would leave it about and Fanny would find it, or Mr. Waddington. Or any minute Mr. Waddington might come on her and catch her with it. It would be awful if she were caught. For that remarkable collection contained several pen-and-ink drawings of Mr. Waddington, and Barbara added to their number daily. But at the moment, the long interval between an unusually early birthday tea and an unusually late birthday dinner, she was safe. Fanny had gone over to Medlicott in the car. Mr. Waddington was tucked away in his library, reading in perfect innocence and simplicity and peace. It wasn't even likely that Ralph would turn up, for he had gone over to Oxford, and it was on his account that the birthday dinner was put off till half-past eight. There would be hours and hours. She had just finished the last of three drawings of Mr. Waddington: Mr. Waddington standing up before the long looking-glass in his new pyjamas; Mr. Waddington appearing in the doorway of Fanny's bedroom as Jupiter, with forked lightning zig-zagging out of him into every corner; Mr. Waddington stooping to climb into his bed, a broad back view with lightnings blazing out of it. And it was that moment that Mr. Waddington chose to come in to present the green jade necklace. He was wearing his canary yellow waistcoat. Barbara closed her sketch-book hurriedly and laid it on the table. She kept one arm over it while she received and opened the leather case where the green necklace lay on its white cushion. "For me? Oh, it's too heavenly. How awfully sweet of you." "Do you like it, Barbara?" "I love it." Compunction stung her when she thought of her drawings, especially the one where he was getting into bed. She said to herself: "I'll never do it again. Never again…. And I won't show it to Ralph." "Put it on," he commanded, "and let me see you in it." She lifted it from the case. She raised her arms and clasped it round her neck; she went to the looking-glass. And, after the first rapt moment of admiration, Mr. Waddington possessed himself of the uncovered sketch-book. Barbara saw him in the looking-glass. She turned, with a cry: "You mustn't! You mustn't look at it." "Why not?" "Because I don't let anybody see my sketches." "You'll let me." "I won't!" She dashed at him, clutching his arm and hanging her weight on it. He shook himself free and raised the sketch-book high above her head. She jumped up, tearing at it, but his grip held. He delighted in his power. He laughed. "Give it me this instant," she said. "Aha! She's got her little secrets, has she?" "Yes. Yes. They're all there. You've no business to look at them." He caracoled heavily, dodging her attack, enjoying the youthful violence of the struggle. "Come," he said, "ask me nicely." "Please, then. Please give it me." He gave it, bowing profoundly over her hand as she took it. "I wouldn't look into your dear little secrets for the world," he said. They sat down amicably. "You'll let me stay with you a little while?" "Please do. Won't you have one of my cigarettes?" He took one, turning it in his fingers and smiling at it—a lingering, sentimental smile. "I think I know your secret," he said presently. "Do you?" Her mind rushed to Ralph. "I think so. And I think you know mine." "Yours?" "Yes. Mine. We can't go on living like this, so close to each other, without knowing. We may try to keep things from each other, but we can't. I feel as if you'd seen everything." She said to herself: "He's thinking of Mrs. Levitt." "I don't suppose I've seen anything that matters," she said. "You've seen what my life is here. You can't have helped seeing that "Fanny's an angel." "You dear little loyal thing…. Yes, she's an angel. Too much of an angel for a mere man. I made my grand mistake, Barbara, when I married her." "She doesn't think so, anyhow." "I'm not so sure. Fanny knows she's got hold of something that's too—too big for her. What's wrong with Fanny is that she can't grasp things. She's afraid of them. And she can't take serious things seriously. It's no use expecting her to. I've left off expecting." "You don't understand Fanny one bit." "My dear child, I've been married to her more than seventeen years, and I'm not a fool. You've seen for yourself how she takes things. How she belittles everything with her everlasting laugh, laugh, laugh. In time it gets on your nerves." "It would," said Barbara, "if you don't see the fun of it." "You can't expect me to see the fun of my own funeral." "Funeral? Is it as bad as all that?" "It has been as bad as all that—Barbara." He brooded. "And then you came, with your sweetness. And your little serious face—" "Is my face serious?" "Very. To me. Other people may think you frivolous and amusing. I daresay you are amusing—to them." "I hope so." "You hope so because you want to hide your real self from them. But you can't hide it from me. I've seen it all the time, Barbara." "Are you sure?" "Quite, quite sure." "I wish I knew what it looked like." "That's the beauty and charm of you, my dear, that you don't know." "What a nice waistcoat you've got on," said Barbara. He looked gratified. "I'm glad you like it I put it on for your birthday." "You mean," she said, "my adoption day." He winced. "It is good," she said, "of you and Fanny to adopt me. But it won't be for very long. And I want to earn my own living all the same." "I can't think of letting you do that." "I must. It won't make any difference to my adoption." He scowled. So repugnant to him was this subject that he judged it would be equally distasteful to Barbara. "It was Fanny's idea," he said. "I thought it would be." "You didn't expect me to have paternal feelings for you, Barbara?" "I didn't expect you to have any feelings at all." The wound made him start. "My poor child, what a terrible thing for you to say." "Why terrible?" "Because it shows—it shows—And it isn't true. Do you suppose I don't know what's been going on inside you? I was blind to myself, my dear, but I saw through you." "Saw through me?" She thought again of Ralph. "Through and through." "I didn't know I was so transparent. But I don't see that it matters much if you did." He smiled at her delicious naivete. "No. Nothing matters. Nothing matters, Barbara, except our caring. At least we're wise enough to know that." "I shouldn't have thought," she said, "it would take much wisdom." "More than you think, my child; more than you think. You've only got to be wise for yourself. I've got to be wise for both of us." She thought: "Heavy parent. That comes of being adopted." "When it comes to the point," she said, "one can only be wise for oneself." "I'm glad you see that. It makes it much easier for me." "It does. You mustn't think you're responsible for me just because you've adopted me." "Don't talk to me about adoption! When you know perfectly well what I did it for." "Why—what did you do it for?" "To make things safe for us. To keep Fanny from knowing. To keep myself from knowing, Barbara. To keep you…. But it's too late to camouflage it. We know where we stand now." "I don't think I do." "You do. You do." Mr. Waddington tossed his cigarette into the fire with a passionate gesture of abandonment. He came to her. She saw his coming. She saw it chiefly as the approach of a canary yellow waistcoat. She fixed her attention on the waistcoat as if it were the centre of her own mental equilibrium. There was a bend in the waistcoat. Mr. Waddington was stooping over her with his face peering into hers. She sat motionless, held under his face by curiosity and fear. The whole phenomenon seemed to her incredible. Too incredible as yet to call for protest. It was as if it were not happening; as if she were merely waiting to see it happen before she cried out. Yet she was frightened. This state lasted for one instant. The next she was in his arms. His mouth, thrust out under the big, rough moustache, was running over her face, like—like—while she pressed her hands hard against the canary yellow waistcoat, pushing him off, her mind disengaged itself from the struggle and reported—like a vacuum cleaner. That was it. Vacuum cleaner. He gave back. There was no evil violence in him, and she got on her feet. "How could you?" she cried. "How could you be such a perfect pig?" "Don't say that to me, Barbara. Even in fun…. You know you love me." "I don't. I don't." "You do. You know you do. You know you want me to take you in my arms. "To myself? I'd kill myself before I let you…. Why, I'd kill you." "No. No. No. You only think you would, you little spitfire." He had given back altogether and now leaned against the chimneypiece, not beaten, not abashed, but smiling at her in a triumphant certitude. For so long the glamour of his illusion held him. "Nothing you can say, Barbara, will persuade me that you don't care for me." "Then you must be mad. Mad as a hatter." "All men go mad at times. You must make allowances. Listen—" "I won't listen. I don't want to hear another word." She was going. He saw her intention; but he was nearer to the door than she was, and by a quick though ponderous movement he got there first. He stood before her with his back to the door. (He had the wild thought of locking it, but chivalry forbade him.) "You can go in a minute," he said. "But you've got to listen to me first. You've got to be fair to me. I may be mad; but if I didn't care for you—madly—I wouldn't have supposed for an instant that you cared for me. I wouldn't have thought of such a thing." "But I don't, I tell you." "And I tell you, you do. Do you suppose after all you've done for me—" "I haven't done anything." "Done? Look at the way you've worked for me. I've never known anything like your devotion, Barbara." "Oh, that! It was only my job." "Was it your job to save me from that horrible woman?" "Oh, yes; it was all in the day's work." "My dear Barbara, no woman ever does a day's work like that for a man unless she cares for him. And unless she wants him to care for her." "As it happens, it was Fanny I cared for. I was thinking of Fanny all the time…. If you'd think about Fanny more and about Mrs. Levitt and people less, it would be a good thing." "It's too late to think about Fanny now. That's only your sweetness and goodness." "Please don't lie. If you really thought me sweet and good you wouldn't expect me to be a substitute for Mrs. Levitt." "Don't talk about Mrs. Levitt. Do you suppose I think of you in the same sentence? That was a different thing altogether." "Was it? Was it so very different?" He saw that she remembered. "It was. A man may lose his head ten times over without losing his heart once. If it's Mrs. Levitt you're thinking about, you can put that out of your mind for ever." "It isn't only Mrs. Levitt. There's Ralph Bevan. You've forgotten Ralph "What has Ralph Bevan got to do with it?" "Simply this, that I'm engaged to be married to him." "To be married? To be married to Ralph Bevan? Oh, Barbara, why didn't you tell me?" "Ralph didn't want me to, till nearer the time." "The time…. Did it come to that?" "It did," said Barbara. He moved from the doorway and began walking up and down the room. She might now have gone out, but she didn't go. She had to see what he would make of it. At his last turn he faced her and stood still. "Poor child," he said, "so that's what I've driven you to?" Amazement kept her silent. "Sit down," he said, "we must go through this together." Amazement made her sit down. Certainly they must go through it, to see what he would look like at the end. He was unsurpassable. She mustn't miss him. "Look here, Barbara." He spoke in a tone of forced, unnatural calm. "I don't think you quite understand the situation. I'm sure you don't realize for one moment how serious it is." "I don't. You mustn't expect me to take it seriously." "That's because you don't take yourself seriously enough, dear. In some ways you're singularly humble. I don't believe you really know how deep this thing has gone with me, or you wouldn't have talked about Mrs. Levitt…. "… It's life and death, Barbara. Life and death…. I'll make a confession. It wasn't serious at first. It wasn't love at first sight. But it's gone all the deeper for that. I didn't know how deep it was till the other day. And I had so much to think of. So many claims. Fanny—" "Yes. Don't forget Fanny." "I am not forgetting her. Fanny isn't going to mind as you think she minds. As you would mind yourself if you were in her place. Things don't go so deep with Fanny as all that…. And she isn't going to hold me against my will. She's not that sort…. Listen, now. Please listen." Barbara sat still, listening. She would let him go to the end of his tether. "I'll confess. In the beginning I hadn't thought of a divorce. I couldn't bear the idea of going through all that unpleasantness. But I'd go through it ten times over rather than that you should marry Ralph Bevan…. Wait now…. Before I spoke to you to-day I'd made up my mind to ask Fanny to divorce me. I know she'll do it. Your name shan't be allowed to appear. The moment I get her consent we'll go off together somewhere. Italy or the Riviera. I've got everything planned, everything ready. I saw to that when I was in London. I've bought everything—" She saw forked lightnings on a magenta Waddington. "What are you laughing at, Barbara?" He stood over her, distressed. Was Barbara going to treat him to a fit of hysterics? "Don't laugh. Don't be silly, child." But Barbara went on laughing, with her face in the cushions, abandoned to her vision. From far up the park they heard the sound of Kimber's hooter, then the grinding of the car, with Fanny in it, on the gravel outside. Barbara sat up suddenly and dried her eyes. They stared at each other, the stare of accomplices. "Come, child," he said, "pull yourself together." Barbara got up and looked in the glass and saw the green jade necklace hanging on her still. She took it off and laid it on the table beside the forgotten sketch-book. "I think," she said, "you must have meant this for Mrs. Levitt. But you may thank your stars it's only me, this time." He pretended not to hear her, not to see the necklace, not to know that she was going from him. She stood a moment with her back to the door, facing him. It was her turn to stand there and be listened to. "Mr. Waddington," she said, "some people might think you wicked. I only think you funny." He drew himself up and looked noble. "Funny? If that's your idea of me, you had better marry Ralph Bevan." "I almost think I had." And she laughed again. Not Mrs. Levitt's laughter, gross with experience. He had borne that without much pain. Girl's laughter it was, young and innocent and pure, and ten times more cruel. "You don't know," she said, "you don't know how funny you are," and left him. Mr. Waddington took up the necklace and kissed it. He rubbed it against his cheek and kissed it. A slip of paper had fallen from the table to the floor. He knew what was written on it: "From Horatio Bysshe Waddington to his Little April Girl." He took it up and put it in his pocket. He took up the sketch-book. "The little thing," he thought. "Now, if it hadn't been for her ridiculous jealousy of Elise—if it hadn't been for Fanny—if it hadn't been for the little thing's sweetness and goodness—" Her goodness. She was a saint. A saint. It was Barbara's virtue, not Barbara, that had repulsed him. This was the only credible explanation of her behaviour, the only one he could bear to live with. He opened the sketch-book. It was Fanny, coming in that instant, who saved him from the worst. When she had restored the sketch-book to its refuge in the bureau and locked it in, she turned to him. "Horatio," she said, "as Ralph's coming to dinner to-night I'd better tell you that he and Barbara are engaged to be married." "She has told me herself…. That child, Fanny, is a saint. A little saint." "How did you find that out? Do you think it takes a saint to marry "I think it takes a saint to—to marry Ralph, since you put it that way." 4 "Dearest Fanny: "I'm sorry, but Mr. Waddington and I have had a scrap. It's made things impossible, and I'm going to Ralph. He'll turn out for me, so there won't be any scandal. "You know how awfully I love you, that's why you'll forgive me if I don't come back. "Always your loving "Barbara." "P.S.—I'm frightfully sorry about my birthday dinner. But I don't feel birthdayish or dinnerish, either. I want Ralph. Nothing but Ralph." That would make Fanny think it was Ralph they had quarrelled about. "Hallo, old thing, what are you doing here?" "Ralph—do you awfully mind if we don't dine at the Manor?" "If we don't—why?" "Because I've left them. And I don't want to go back. Do you think I could get a room here?" "What's up?" "I've had a simply awful scrap with Waddy, and I can't stick it there. "What's he been up to?" "Oh, never mind." "He's been making love to you." "If you call it making love." "The old swine!" As he said it, he felt the words and his own fury fall short of the fantastic quality of Waddington. "No. He isn't." (Barbara felt it.) "He was simply more funny than you can imagine…. He had on a canary yellow waistcoat." In spite of his fury he smiled. "I think he'd bought it for that." "Oh, Barbara, what he must have looked like!" "Yes. If only you could have seen him. But that's the worst of all his best things. They only happen when you're alone with him." "You remember—we wondered whether he'd do it again, whether he'd go one better?" "Yes, Ralph. We little thought it would be me." "How he does surpass himself!" "The funniest thing was he thought I was in love with him." "He didn't!" "He did. Because of the way I'd worked for him. He thought that proved it." "Yes. Yes. I suppose he would think it…. Look here—he didn't do anything, did he?" "He kissed me. That wasn't funny." "The putrid old sinner. If he wasn't so old I'd wring his neck for him." "No, no. That's all wrong. It's not the way we agreed to take him. We'd think it funny enough if he'd done it to somebody else. It's pure accident that it's me." "No doubt that's the proper philosophic view. I wonder whether Mrs. "Ralph—it wasn't a bit like his Mrs. Levitt stunt. The awful thing was he really meant it. He'd planned it all out. We were to go off together to the Riviera, and he was to wear his canary waistcoat." "Did he say that?" "No. But you could see he thought it. And he was going to get Fanny to divorce him." "Good God! He went as far as that?" "As far as that. He was so cocksure, you see. I'm afraid it's been a bit of a shock to him." "Well, it's a thundering good thing I've got a job at last." "Have you?" "Yes. We can get married the day after tomorrow if we like. "No? Oh, Ralph, how topping." "That's what I ran up to Oxford for, to see him and settle everything. It's a fairly decent screw. The thing's got no end of hacking, and it's up to me to make it last." "I say—Fanny'll he pleased." As they were talking about it, the landlady of the White Hart came in to tell them that Mrs. Waddington was downstairs and wanted to speak to Miss Madden. "All right," Ralph said. "Show Mrs. Waddington up. I'll clear out." "Oh, Ralph, what am I to say to her?" "Tell her the truth, if she wants it. She won't mind." "She will—frightfully." "Not so frightfully as you think." "That's what he said." "Well, he's right there, the old beast." 5 "Barbara dear," said Fanny when they were alone together, "what on earth has happened?" "Oh, nothing. We just had a bit of a tiff, that's all." "About Ralph? He told me it was Ralph." "You might say it was Ralph. He came into it." "Into what?" "Oh, the general situation." "Nonsense. Horatio was making love to you. I could see by his face…. "Since when?" "I don't know. It must have begun long before I saw it." "How long do you think?" "Oh, before Mrs. Levitt." "Mrs. Levitt?" "She may have been only a safety valve. That's why I made him adopt you. I thought it would stop it. In common decency. But it seems it only brought it to a head." "No. It was his canary waistcoat did that, Fanny." The ghost of dead mirth rose up in Fanny's eyes. "You're muddling cause and effect, my dear. He wasn't in love because he bought the waistcoat. He bought the waistcoat because he was in love. And those other things—the romantic pyjamas—because he thought they'd make him look younger." "Well then," said Barbara, "it was a vicious circle. The waistcoat put it into his head that afternoon." "It doesn't much matter how it happened." "I'm awfully sorry, Fanny. I wouldn't have let it happen for the world, if I'd known it was going to. But who could have known?" |
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