第50章

'My wife,' said Colonel Innes, 'is looking extremely well.'

'She seems so, indeed,' Madeline replied.

'She is delighted with "Two Gables".Likes it better, she says, than any other house we could have got.'

'What a good thing!'

'It was a record trip for the Caledonia, thirteen days from Brindisi to Bombay.Was she telling you about the voyage?'

'No,' said Madeline impatiently, 'she didn't mention it.How shall I tell the men to put down the hood, please? A rickshaw is detestable with the hood up--stifling! Thanks.I beg your pardon.

The Caledonia made a good run?'

'Thirteen days.Wonderful weather, of course, which was luck for Violet.She is an atrocious sailor.'

Madeline fancied she heard repose and reassurance in his voice.Her thought cried, 'It is not so bad as he expected!' We can not be surprised that she failed to see in herself the alleviation of that first evening.

'She has brought quantities of things for the house with her,' Innes went on, 'as well as three dachshund puppies,' and he laughed.

'Wouldn't you like one? What can we do with three--and the terrier, and Brutus?'

'Oh, thank you, no.'

How could he laugh? How could he speak pleasantly of these intimate details of his bondage? How could he conceive that she would accept--'Already she has arranged four dinner-parties! It will be a relief not to have to think of that sort of thing--to be able to leave it to her.'

'Mrs.Innes must have great energy.To drive all the way up from Kalka by noon and appear at a dinner-party at night--wonderful!'

'Oh, great energy,' Horace said.

'She will take you everywhere--to all the functions.She will insist on your duty to society.'

Madeline felt that she must get him somehow back into his slough of despond.His freedom paralyzed her.And he returned with a pathetic change of tone.

'I suppose there is no alternative.Violet is very good about being willing to go alone, or with somebody else; but I never think it quite fair on one's wife to impose on her the necessity of going about with other men.'

'Mrs.Worsley introduced us after dinner,' said Madeline.

She kept disparagement out of her mind, but he could not help perceiving aloofness.

'Yes?'

The monosyllable told her sensitive ear that while he admitted her consideration in going on with the subject, he was willing to recognize that there was no more to say, and have done with it.She gathered up her scruples and repugnances in a firm grasp.She would not let him throw his own shadow, as an effectual obstacle, between himself and liberty.

'I am going to ask you something,' she said; it might come naturally enough from another man with whom your friendship was as candid as it is with me; but there is an awkwardness in it from a woman.You must believe I have a good reason.Will you tell me about your first meeting with Mrs.Innes, when--when you became engaged?'

She knew she was daring a good deal; but when a man's prison is to be brought down about his ears, one might as well begin, she thought, at the foundation.

For a moment Innes did not speak, and then his words came slowly.