CHAPTER VI.

JACK ROTHERFIELD

Nobody would have supposed, to judge by Lady Sarah’s attitude to Rhoda, that any suspicion or mistrust of her had ever entered her pretty head.

On the contrary, she went out of her way to be charming to her boy’s companion, openly congratulating herself on having provided him with such an amiable friend, and told Rhoda, with merry laughter, that she considered herself a most magnanimous person not to be jealous of such a formidable rival.

“Who would ever have thought that the thin, pale girl with the colourless hair would be transformed into--you?” she cried, “with your stately walk and dignified figure! You make me look so small, and so frivolous and empty-headed, that I shall end by being jealous of you with my own husband as well as my boy!”

Rhoda frowned painfully.

“I don’t like to hear you say those things even in fun. Caryl looks upon me just as he would upon a nurse who was kind to him. He speaks of you with bated breath, as if you were a goddess. And it’s the same with Sir Robert. All I can do is to make myself useful, and I have to work hard to keep my hold upon both of them; I have to keep a smile always ready for little Caryl and to indulge his whims; to keep my place in his heart I have to be always working, working hard. As for Sir Robert, I’m afraid his appreciation of me is confined to my capacity for making out his handwriting, and his admiration is given only to my beautiful capitals, and not to me. If I thought that you meant that I presumed upon my position----”

“But I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!” cried Lady Sarah briskly. “I’m unfeignedly thankful for what you have done for both of them, and there never was in this world a person less capable of jealousy than I. But you are too modest. For I see Sir Robert lets you have the key of his gallery. I’m sure he’d rather die than trust it to me.”

Rhoda’s fair face became suffused with a hot blush.

“I won’t let him give it me again,” she said quickly.

Lady Sarah put a peremptory little hand upon her arm.

“Yes, yes, you will,” she said. “You are much more to be trusted than either Sir Robert or I. For he is so absent-minded that he might leave it in a shop in payment for a postage stamp, while I am so dreadfully careless that I should certainly leave it sticking in the door. Now come, don’t be cross, but put on your hat and I’ll take you to the Priory with me and introduce you to my old mother. She’s rather a dear when you come to know her well, though you may find her uninteresting at first.”

Rhoda would have made excuses, but Lady Sarah was accustomed to have her own way, and upon the whole Rhoda was not displeased to have an opportunity of seeing Vale Priory and its occupants.

And so, before mid-day, she and Lady Sarah got into the motor-car, and after climbing the long hill out of Dourville, and down the other side of it into the vale, they reached the pretty, old-fashioned mansion which had been in the family of the Marquis of Eridge for a couple of centuries.

The house was in almost every respect a great contrast to Sir Robert’s residence, as altered by the taste of Lady Sarah. It was old, it was shabby, it was not in the best of repair. But there was some charm about it, as there always is about a house which has been lived in by refined people for two or three generations. It bore the stamp of its owners, and although these were not remarkable in any way, Lady Sarah with her brilliant beauty having indeed been regarded as a “sport” and a surprise to those who knew the stock from which she came, there was something pleasing in the atmosphere of the old place, something of dignity in the occupants of the house, something of beauty in the dwelling itself.

The river flowed within a hundred yards of the garden front of the house, and on the other side the ground sloped gently upwards, a smooth expanse of grass, dotted by well-grown trees.

In a low armchair near the large window of the largest drawing-room sat the Marchioness of Eridge, a tall, massive woman with grey hair and that look of vacuous and vague displeasure with things in general which results from lofty pretensions and the possession of means inadequate to maintain them.

Her two unmarried daughters, both older than Lady Sarah, and altogether lacking in their sister’s brilliant good looks, were working, the one with her knitting, the other with some sort of fancy work, at another window.

Lady Sarah, followed more sedately by Rhoda, came in like a whirlwind, and stirred the quiet ladies into something like life as if by magic.

“What, Philippa! Aileen! Both indoors! On a morning like this! How can you?”

Her mother smiled, the two other ladies looked up with a little flush of pleasure in their pale faces, as Rhoda was introduced to them, in a highly complimentary fashion, by Lady Sarah, who expatiated upon her goodness to Caryl, and incidentally mentioned that she was the heroine of the bicycle accident of ten years before.

There was great interest at this, and Rhoda saw curiosity in the three faces. But Lady Sarah skimmed lightly away from that subject and told of her own travels and of her future plans.

“I’m going over to the chrysanthemum show at Canterbury to-morrow,” she said. “And I want to know whether one of you would like to come too. Jack is coming to-night, and he will take us.”

Lady Eridge drew herself up.

“Jack Rotherfield!” exclaimed she. “Do you really mean that he’s coming again? Why, he’s always at your house. Does Sir Robert approve?”

There was a little spot of red colour in Lady Sarah’s cheeks as she said quickly:

“Why shouldn’t he approve? He was Jack’s guardian once. And now, though it’s nine years ago, naturally they feel the same towards each other still.”

“He doesn’t come to see Robert, for he only comes when you are at home,” said Lady Eridge, in some displeasure. “People must notice it, and I am surprised that Robert doesn’t notice it himself.”

“I hope you won’t put any ridiculous notions into Robert’s head, mama,” said Lady Sarah. “Jack and I have always been the best of friends, and it would distress me very much if anything were said which would make it difficult for him to feel at home in Robert’s house.”

“Did you see him at all while you were away?” asked Lady Eridge.

But Lady Sarah found it convenient not to hear the question. She was by this time talking to her sisters, who were full of inquiries as to what she had been doing with herself during her stay abroad, and what she had done with Minnie.

Minnie was in town with some cousins, Lady Sarah said. She was evidently displeased at her mother’s rebuke, and she did not stay very long.

Lady Eridge, who was very gracious to Rhoda, invited her to come to tea on the following day.

“It was I,” she explained to the girl, “who suggested to my daughter that she should try to find some nice lady to be a companion to poor little Caryl, and I should have called to see you before now, Miss Pembury, but that my daughters and I have been staying in Yorkshire ever since you came.”

Rhoda, who was much pleased at her reception, but vaguely disturbed by something she had heard, thanked the marchioness, and left the house with Lady Sarah, who proceeded to explain to her that the quiet life led by the ladies of her family made them rather narrow and old-fashioned in their views.

“They think it shocking of me to be away from home so much,” said she, “and they can’t see that it is better that I should be home now and then in a good temper, than always here in a bad one.”

Rhoda laughed, but said nothing. She perceived already that Sir Robert’s dream of happiness with the woman he loved for his wife had failed of realisation.

It was in some perturbation of spirit that she awaited the arrival of that Jack Rotherfield who, as she suddenly remembered, had been certainly better loved by Lady Sarah before her marriage than was her own _fiancé_.

She scarcely knew what she feared, or if she did, she did not like to put her fears into shape. But the warning of the marchioness, coming so soon after her discovery that Lady Sarah’s heart was not in her own home, was distressing to the loyal and straightforward girl.

Rhoda was on the terrace that afternoon with Caryl, when the sound of a male voice as well as that of Lady Sarah in the drawing-room attracted her attention.

“That’s Jack!” said Caryl. “I thought he’d be here soon. He’s always here when mama comes back.”

Rhoda said nothing. But these words did not tend to make her more at ease. There came a hush in the voices when Caryl called out, and then Lady Sarah appeared at the drawing-room window.

A moment later the handsome face of Jack Rotherfield appeared over her shoulder.

He was looking as merry as ever, and, after turning to say a few words to him, Lady Sarah came out and re-introduced him to Rhoda, whom he greeted with as much apparent pleasure as if she had been an old friend.

It was quite impossible not to like him, for he had as much personal fascination as Lady Sarah herself; and it was impossible not to be struck by the fact, when brought thus face to face with them together, that they would have made a much better-matched pair, with their common interest and their liveliness of temperament, than did frivolous, pleasure-loving Lady Sarah and her absent-minded and grave lord.

Caryl was sent upstairs with his nurse, against the wish of Rhoda, who was forced to stay to have tea with Lady Sarah and Jack.

They all entered the drawing-room together, and Lady Sarah asked Rhoda to pour out the tea. Then Jack Rotherfield came up to take a cup to Lady Sarah.

Rhoda turned to him with a smile as he held out his hand. Then Lady Sarah spoke to him and he turned for a moment, answering her. Rhoda, still holding the cup, glanced down at his hand, and perceived that across the back of it, extending from the one side to the other, was a distinct scar.

In an instant there flashed back into her mind the remembrance of the night when she left the Mill-house, of the struggle she had heard in the drawing-room, and of the hand she had seen in the moonlight, with the red mark of a cut across it.

Unable to restrain her feelings, she uttered a sharp cry.

“What’s that?” she gasped, as she pointed to the scar.