CHAPTER V.

LADY SARAH’S RECOGNITION

Rhoda was abashed and shocked by the expression on Lady Sarah’s face. She had, indeed, felt rather nervous about the meeting, but she had not expected that the sight of her would cause so much dismay to Sir Robert’s wife.

There was not the least doubt that she recognised the girl in a moment.

She forgot all about her child in her excitement at the meeting, and it was not until Caryl had plucked at her sleeve three or four times, that she bent over him again, and answered him.

“Yes, yes, dear. I know it is Rhoda,” she said.

She had recovered herself, and the next moment she had come round the little bed, seized Rhoda’s hand, and was shaking it with warmth as unexpected as her manifest horror had been.

“Miss Pembury! Why, of course, I might have remembered the name! But for the moment I didn’t. It’s the Miss Rhoda Pembury who fell off her bicycle and was brought in here by Sir Robert, years and years ago, before we were married, isn’t it?”

“Ye-es,” stammered Rhoda, quite bewildered by this rapid change in the lady.

“Why didn’t he tell me? I should have been so much interested. He never said a word in his letters to let me know the pleasure in store for me.”

This expression was rather a strong one, Rhoda thought, considering that on the solitary occasion of her seeing Lady Sarah at the Mill-house that lady had hardly condescended to address a single word to her.

She hastened to give the reason for Sir Robert’s strange behaviour.

“He hasn’t recognised me, Lady Sarah,” she said.

“What!”

Lady Sarah paused a moment, in apparent incredulity, mingled with evident embarrassment and misgiving. Then she asked, quickly:

“Why didn’t you remind him?”

“Well, I--I thought I’d wait till you came, to see whether you would remember me,” she stammered.

“Of course I do. Although you have altered a great deal,” said Lady Sarah, with a gracious smile. “You were rather a pretty girl then, but you didn’t promise to develop as you have done.”

Rhoda smiled and blushed. Nothing, certainly, could be more engaging than Lady Sarah’s manner, nothing more flattering than her words. But still Rhoda could not but feel all the while that there was some reason for this surprising and even uncalled for graciousness. From all she had heard, Sir Robert’s wife, though a very charming and beautiful woman, was far from being always sympathetic or amiable in her own house, and there seemed to be no particular reason why she should be so very nice.

Rhoda, while rather ashamed of her misgivings, felt them quite strongly.

“I suppose you scarcely recognised the old place?” went on Lady Sarah, still in the same tone of smiling good humour, quite forgetting the small boy in his bed, who was lying with his eyes fixed upon Rhoda, waiting for the ladies to come back to him.

“It is very much changed,” said the girl.

Lady Sarah laughed.

“Inside and out I’ve effected marvellous transformations, I flatter myself. You know my family has suffered horribly from want of money, as all decent families do now-a-days. If this horrid Budget with its Land clauses passes, why, Papa and Mama will simply have to pack a small handbag with necessaries, such as hair-dye and face powder, and trudge off to the nearest workhouse.”

Rhoda laughed. But Lady Sarah affected to be shocked at her levity.

“Oh, it’s quite true, indeed,” she said. “However, that will explain to you how I felt when I got married and found myself at last with an occasional eighteenpence of my own. I went mad, mad, I really did. I made up my mind to have a house I could live in comfortably, and I was generous enough to let my husband have something he liked too. Do you know, before he married me, fond as he was of his pictures and china and things, it had never occurred to him to build a place to put them in? But I changed all that. I practically rebuilt the house, as you see; let in a little light and air into the musty corners; let him have a gallery which has become the joy of his heart. And--well, I didn’t forget myself either, while I was about it.”

And she laughed the merry, careless laugh of a happy child. It was all put on, but so well that Rhoda was fascinated, sure as she could not but feel that there was some reason for this lavish expenditure of Lady Sarah’s fascinations upon a person so obscure as herself.

“Mama!” piped the small voice from the bed.

“Oh! Caryl! I’d forgotten him.”

Lady Sarah took Rhoda by the hand, and brought her to the bed, and they both kissed the boy before they left him. He was as much surprised, Rhoda could not but feel, as she herself was, at the warmth of his mother’s manner to the newcomer in the household.

Lady Sarah turned with a most graceful movement to the girl as they went out of the room.

“Nothing could have pleased me better,” said she quite earnestly, “than to find he has some one with him to whom he can take a fancy. It’s half the battle, with a poor child like Caryl, to have faces about him that he likes.”

“It’s very kind of you to say so.”

“I suppose they didn’t show you my rooms?” she went on. “Really you must see them. Come with me.”

“Oh, some other time, Lady Sarah. You must be dreadfully tired after your journey!”

“Tired! Not a bit. I’m never tired. Come. I insist.”

She carried Rhoda off to her own suite of apartments; and the girl was charmed, as indeed she was prepared to be, with the sumptuous elegance and refinement of taste, which were everywhere apparent in the furniture and fittings of the beautiful suite of rooms on the first floor which were specially consecrated to the use of the mistress of the house.

All was as different as possible from the richness and heaviness which were the prevailing notes downstairs. Lady Sarah explained this by saying that she had studied her husband’s taste in the fitting up of the library, study and dining-room, as those were the only rooms in which he took an interest.

“I didn’t like to part with all the old things. It would have broken his heart, for one thing; and for another, the old furniture, though of course it’s just not old enough, is not so bad after all, and its mature years give a sort of dignity even to mahogany. But up here I am queen, and I have everything just as I like it. Come and see these sweet little French water-colours. Aren’t they too divy for words?”

She turned on the electric light with her own hands, and let a flood of soft light upon the silk-panelled walls, pale blue and pink set in white enamel; upon the exquisite mantelpiece with its picture above in the manner of Fragonard; the dainty Sèvres clocks, all telling a different time; the cushions, couches, boudoir piano in a painted case, and all the other luxurious trifles that make up so much of the happiness of women of Lady Sarah’s type.

Suddenly the dainty mistress of the place threw herself upon a couch, and beckoned with pretty imperiousness to Rhoda to sit beside her.

“Come here,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”

She had not yet divested herself of her hat and scarf, though she had thrown off her travelling cloak and given it to her maid as soon as she entered the house, even before receiving the welcoming kiss of Sir Robert.

Now she began to pull off her gloves, and as Rhoda slowly obeyed the invitation and sat down beside her, Lady Sarah suddenly bent her head, and said with infantile prettiness:

“Do help me to find the hatpins. I’ve been wearing this terrible hat all day!”

The little task was performed without the least difficulty, as the hatpins in question were huge discs of tortoiseshell and gold impossible to overlook. Then Lady Sarah, thanking her profusely, put the hat beside her on the couch, and ruffling up her dark hair with a sigh of relief, put one little white hand sparkling with diamonds through Rhoda’s arm, and said coaxingly:

“And now do tell me what made you think of coming to us?”

“Oh-ho!” thought Rhoda. “This, then, is the reason of my amiable reception! You are curious.”

But all she said was:

“I was happy here, ten years ago, and Sir Robert saved my life. I thought I should like to see the old house again, and when I got here, and saw your dear little boy, I was delighted to stay.”

Lady Sarah was watching her with a piercing expression.

“Then when you came here you didn’t know whether you would stay or not?”

“No. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know whether the house was still inhabited by Sir Robert. There was no name given in the advertisement.”

It was quite clear to Rhoda that Lady Sarah did not believe her, but as her incredulity was not expressed in words, it was impossible to meet and combat it. They were both silent for a few moments while Lady Sarah smoothed out her gloves with a reflective air.

Suddenly Rhoda turned to her:

“Do you mind my coming? I wanted to know that.”

“Mind! I’m quite delighted to have you here. The great anxiety I had about my boy was to get some one to be with him whom he could love, and I could trust. Well, who could fill the post better than you? I am delighted. And to find that you have been helping Sir Robert. He tells me you copy his notes for him. It’s really too good of you, when he writes such a shocking hand too! I shall have to take you away with me when I go to town, on purpose to decipher his letters to me. I never get much farther myself than the bottom of the first page.”

This was all she would say, and when Rhoda left her to dress for dinner, which had been put off till her return, the girl felt perplexed and uneasy.

For, while nothing could be more charming than her words and her manner, Rhoda felt it was not possible that so much enthusiasm could be quite genuine.

She would have felt still more puzzled if she could have overheard the conversation which took place immediately afterwards between Sir Robert and his wife. Lady Sarah went into her dressing-room, and, being able to dress in the most surprisingly rapid fashion when she chose, emerged thence a quarter of an hour later radiant and refreshed, in a clinging gown of golden-brown satin, veiled in net of gold thread, and trimmed with a huge bunch of red velvet flowers on the left hand side of her bodice. With a butterfly of gold thread in her dark hair, and a single row of big diamonds round her throat, Lady Sarah looked as beautiful as a Princess in a fairy tale.

She glided quickly down the stairs before the dinner-gong sounded, and presented herself in the study in a sort of whirlwind.

“Robert,” she said, “I have seen this lady whom you’ve engaged as companion to Caryl. Do you know who she is?”

The baronet was taken aback. His wife’s manner was much more earnest than usual; and he, accustomed to her little flippant ways and to her manner of making light of everything, could not understand the change in her.

“Who she is!” he repeated in a dazed way. “She’s a Miss Rhoda Pembury, and a most amiable and obliging young lady.”

Lady Sarah stamped her pretty foot impatiently.

“Yes, yes, of course I know that. It’s her _métier_ to be obliging. But do you know who she is, and that she has introduced herself into the household on false pretences?”

Sir Robert looked amazed and incredulous.

“What false pretences?” stammered he at last.

She laid her hand impressively on his arm.

“Have you forgotten the girl who fell off her bicycle, the girl you saved from being run over?”

An exclamation, which was one almost of relief, broke from the baronet’s lips.

“Of course,” cried he. “Pembury, Miss Pembury! I knew I’d heard the name, I was almost sure I’d seen the face. But till this moment I confess I didn’t recognise her, though from time to time I felt sure I’d seen her before. I wonder----”

He broke off, with a frown of annoyance and perplexity on his face. His wife knew what he meant.

“You wonder what she wants here?” she said significantly. “Well, so do I. I can’t help thinking it is a very strange thing to do to sneak back into the house without making herself known, and I shall be very much surprised if we are not made to regret her reappearance!”

Sir Robert, who was not at all quick of perception, being an absent-minded, mild-natured man, wholly without suspicion or mistrust, looked more perplexed than ever.

“Why should we regret it?” he said. “She has grown into a most charming woman, gentle, sympathetic, and very clever and kind. I cannot even now realise that such a woman has grown out of the shy, lanky, white-faced girl who fell off the bicycle. I can’t see anything wrong about her coming; and since I didn’t recognise her I don’t see why she should have felt it necessary to remind me who she was. She made no attempt at disguise, you know. I feel ashamed of my own stupidity in having forgotten her name.”

The fact was that Rhoda Pembury’s first appearance at the Mill-house was made at a time when the baronet, very much in love with Lady Sarah, was not in a condition to receive vivid impressions of any other person.

Lady Sarah brought him back to her point.

“Doesn’t it seem to you strange that she should have said nothing to you about--about what happened here on the night she went away?”

Sir Robert’s brow clouded.

“She has too much tact,” he said, “to refer to anything so disagreeable.”

“Oh yes, she has tact enough,” retorted his wife with vivacity. “I hate to have to refer to this horrid subject, dear, but I warn you that I mistrust this girl. I think it most mysterious that it should have been impossible to get at her when she was wanted at the inquest, but that she should turn up here in this mysterious fashion ten years later, and worm herself into your confidence in the absence of your wife.”

Sir Robert was still too much under the influence of his wife, on those rare occasions when she took the trouble to fascinate him again, not to be impressed by what she said. Nevertheless his gratitude to Rhoda, modified though it was by shame at his own forgetfulness, was strong enough to make him feel bound to stand up for her.

“I can’t think there is any harm in her,” he said gently. “What is it you mean to suggest?”

Lady Sarah gave a little enigmatic shrug.

“Oh, I don’t suggest anything. Only don’t, like the unsuspicious, kind-hearted old goose you are, trust her with too many of your secrets. That’s all.”

“Secrets! Why, I haven’t any.”

Lady Sarah laughed.

“Well then, don’t encourage her to confide to you too many of _hers_!” she said, as, at the sound of the dinner gong, she tucked her little hand affectionately within her husband’s arm and led him away to the dining-room.

Rhoda was waiting in the hall, having been apprised that she was expected to join them at dinner. During Lady Sarah’s absence Sir Robert had dined alone, and she had, by Caryl’s earnest request, dined in the room adjoining his bedroom, with the door open so that he might see her from his little bed.

In the first glance she exchanged with Sir Robert, Rhoda was shrewd enough to see that the ingratiating Lady Sarah had made mischief for her. Sir Robert was, indeed, more ashamed of his own obtuseness in not having recognised in the accomplished woman the half-fledged girl of ten years before, than imbued with his wife’s suspicions of her. But what she had told him was enough to cause some alteration in his manner, and poor Rhoda felt the difference keenly.

Sir Robert had a horror of anything that recalled the murder of Langton, or the disagreeable rumours which had ensued. And the consequence was that during dinner he was taciturn and appeared almost morose, so that the conversation was left almost entirely to Lady Sarah and Rhoda.

When the ladies left the room he remained in the dining-room, but Lady Sarah, who was just as sweet as ever to Rhoda, excused herself from another _tête-à-tête_ with the girl by saying that she knew her husband was sulking about something, and that she must go and have it out with him.

When Sir Robert, therefore, left the dining-room to join the ladies in the drawing-room, he found himself intercepted by Lady Sarah, who, sliding her hand along his sleeve in her most caressing manner, told him she wanted a talk with him, and led him off to his study.

Sir Robert had been married long enough to the capricious beauty to know that a raid of this kind always had its object. As soon, therefore, as they had reached the large and lofty apartment known as the study, he gently withdrew his arm, and placing an easy chair for her, threw himself into another, and said, not unkindly, but with an air of resignation:

“Well, and what is it you want now, my dear?”

Lady Sarah laughed with a very pretty appearance of confusion.

“Now, that’s unkind,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t want anything but the pleasure of seeing how well and happy you look. I think, Bertie, it suits you for me to be away!”

He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“I have to get used to it, don’t I? Well, and now what is it that has brought you here to-night?”

“Won’t you believe, then, that I’m anxious to have one of our nice little talks, after being all this time away?”

She crossed her feet, threw herself back in her chair, and putting one pretty little white jewelled hand on each arm of her chair, smiled at him bewitchingly.

It was impossible to resist her, and Sir Robert put one of his own hands upon one of hers.

“My dear, it’s always a pleasure for me to talk to you,” he said.

Lady Sarah gave a pretty little sigh.

“That’s better,” she said. “And you know, Bertie, if I do have to ask you for things, and of course I have to very often, it’s only because you’re rich, and I’m poor, and because I’ve nobody to go to but you, when I want money.”

Sir Robert had withdrawn his hand, but he could not help a little amusement at the neatness with which she had come back to the important point.

“Of course it’s perfectly natural and right that you should come to me for money, and as long as I have it I always give it you, don’t I?”

Out of her half shut eyes she threw at him a reproachful glance. “You have plenty,” she said plaintively.

“And I think I may truly say, dear,” replied he, in the gentlest of voices, “that as long as I have plenty you have plenty too.”

Lady Sarah sat up quickly.

“I haven’t any now,” she said. “I’ve come back without a cent! Look here. That’s my very last sovereign!”

And opening her great brown eyes with a charming plaintiveness, she turned inside out a gold chain bag studded with pearls, which she wore suspended round her neck at the end of a very long chain, and displayed in triumph the solitary coin.

She was shrewd enough not to like the expression she saw on her husband’s face. Yet it was in the kindest of voices that he said:

“Well, dear, give me your bills, and I will settle them for you.”

But this did not happen to be what Lady Sarah wanted. She frowned petulantly.

“No, I’d rather have the money to settle them myself,” she said.

He shook his head.

“I gave you plenty of money to go away with. But I must see the bills now.”

“Why?”

He hesitated.

“Well, my dear, you are just a little extravagant, aren’t you?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Am I?” she asked flippantly. “What _is_ being extravagant? Is it buying new clothes when the old ones are worn out? Or is it,” and she cast a glance, which was full of sly, mischievous humour, at her husband’s grave face, “is it making an enormous collection of pictures at fabulous prices, and of antiques which may or may not be genuine, without being able to say whether, twenty years hence, they will have gone up in value, or down?”

Sir Robert winced.

“At any rate my pictures are a better investment than your frocks,” he said: “but we won’t quarrel about that. Ladies love pretty things, and the prettier the lady the more she loves them. I recognise that and I submit. So let me have the bills, and I’ll pay them.”

A furtive look of fear came into her face and died out again, and then she said:

“It’s very good of you, Bertie, but I really do want some money for myself too, money to spend as I like, to waste, perhaps. Won’t you let me have a couple of hundred to do as I like with?”

Sir Robert shook his head with decision.

“It’s more than I can do just now, dear,” he said. “Twenty pounds is the very utmost I can manage apart from the milliner’s bills, which, I suppose, will not be light.”

An angry light flashed out of her beautiful dark eyes. Sir Robert was the last man to be mistrustful or suspicious, but even he found a vague fear intruding into his mind when he noted the seriousness of her displeasure.

“Do you lose much money at bridge?” he asked quite suddenly.

She lost colour a little, but answered contemptuously:

“At bridge! No, of course not. I hate it, for one thing, and when I have to play I always take care not to lose much.”

But Sir Robert’s suspicions once roused were not easily laid.

“Do you gamble on the Stock Exchange?” he asked abruptly.

A look of genuine horror appeared in her eyes.

“I think I would as soon play pitch-and-toss!” she answered lightly.

His tone became more imperative:

“Do you bet on horses, or what? The money must go somewhere.”

Again there was that same furtive look, but again she treated the question with hilarious contempt.

“Of course I don’t do any of those things. However, if you won’t trust me with a little money, I suppose I must submit. Never mind me and my poor little wants now. Let us have a chat about you and your pleasures. What have you been buying while I’ve been away? Some nice pictures? Some queer old china figures? Some real bargains in Chippendale chairs at twenty-five guineas a-piece? Come, let’s take a walk through the gallery, and you shall show me the very latest arrivals.”

Whether he believed in her interest or not, or whether he was glad that her importunities had ceased, Sir Robert was quite ready to show off his latest acquisition.

“I’ve got some lovely old French tapestries,” he said, “that even you will admire, little Vandal that you are.” He felt in his pockets and then exclaimed: “Oh, I haven’t got the key of the gallery. Miss Pembury has charge of it now, for she’s begun to make me a catalogue, and she is in there every morning before anybody else is up.”

“Ah!” said Lady Sarah sharply.

Sir Robert looked at her quickly, but she would give no explanation of what was in her mind, and the expedition to the gallery was given up for that evening.