# After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 15

LYDIA and Charles, breakfasting in bed, surveyed through the long windows a bright October morning. The woods across the lake, so black the night before, now showed themselves to be coloured with russet reds and browns and the dull green of pines. The sky was flawlessly blue, and a gentle and intermittent breeze stirred the surface of the lake. A maid had come into the room earlier and had made up a cracking fire with neat bundles of twigs and small logs of odorous birch.
"I think I would like to live in France," Charles said. "Near here. I'd like to be a charcoal-burner in these woods."
"You'd be one of those charcoal-burners one sometimes reads about in the French papers," retorted Lydia, "who brutally murder their wives, and turn them into charcoal."
"No," Charles told her, "I'd be very fond of my wife, and I'd have seventeen children, the youngest of whom," he added, "would go off to make his way in the world, and would return having ingeniously retrieved the family fortunes ​by the invention of an appliance for painlessly removing the pearls from the necks of opera-goers."
Grace presently knocked on the door and came in. Her dark face and black, curly hair were well set off by the red dressing-gown she wore. She was just out of her bath, and carried a towel over her arm. She was the most natural and unconventional of women.
She inquired how they had slept, looked to see that the fire was burning well, and told them they would have an early lunch, at eleven, and go to the meet. She herself wouldn't hunt to-day, but would take them in the car. Paul was hunting, and would leave the house about ten. It was now nine, so they would have plenty of time to see him before he went. He looked very handsome in his costume de chasse. It was the stag hounds to-day. It was a lovely day, and she thought it would amuse them to go. She kissed her hand to them and departed.
"A darling," said Charles. "Worthy of a better man than that handsome but underdeveloped sportsman."
They drove with exhilarating speed along the hard, level roads through endless miles of woods, the colours of which filled Lydia and Charles with intensest delight. They passed occasional small and straggling villages of black and white, ​or brick and half-timbered cottages. They saw no new thing anywhere. "Not even a new hen-coop," Lydia remarked. The countryside looked as it must have looked for the last two or three hundred years.
The meet was at a stiff and ugly château in the middle of a formal park, and here they found from twenty-five to thirty cars assembled. Lydia and Charles were introduced to Madame this and Monsieur that, to the Marquis of this and the Comtesse of that. Only a few of the riders were well mounted, the majority of them, Grace explained, not being at all well off. The sight was an enchanting one. The hunt costumes, full-skirted scarlet coats laced with gold, and black tricorne hats also laced with gold, were worn by men and women alike, although some of the women wore modern habits and looked as though they belonged to another epoch. None of them, however, rode astride. Over the shoulders of the huntsmen were great, round, old-fashioned hunting-horns, and a few of the women, Lydia noticed, carried them too. The sight must have differed very little, except for the women in modern habits, from a like gathering in the time of François Premier, whose enthusiasm for hunting had caused the building of Chambord and the cutting of those endless rides through the forests. Paul, thanks to a father-in-law who ​had been fortunate in his operations on the New York Stock Exchange, was the best mounted, and Charles saw Grace's eyes kindle with pride and love as he rode off after the hounds.
They followed, with all the other cars, as well as they were able, making many a wide detour by road, and often seeing and hearing nothing of the hunt. Once a stag, but not the hunted stag, Grace said, crossed the road in front of them.
"Barbarous," Charles protested, "to hunt to death a creature that's so much nicer and so much better-looking than we are."
They succeeded, after much stopping to listen and much questioning of the villagers, in picking up the hunt again an hour later. The hounds had lost the scent, there was much blowing of horns and cantering up and down, and various members of the hunt came and chatted, while they waited, with Grace, who seemed to be very popular. At last one of the hounds lifted up his voice and went off, nose to the ground, across a clearing, whereupon the horns played "La Vue," an old tune that sounded thin and elfin and enchanting coming out of the depths of the woods, and the rest of the pack and the hunt followed after and were lost to sight and hearing again.
"It's delightful, isn't it?" Grace said. "I knew it would interest you. It's all so decorative and formal and charming. Paul is a splendid ​rider and never tires. He'll stick to it all day. Sometimes they don't kill until long after dark, when they kill by torchlight, but I won't keep you out as long as that, I promise you."
"Not long enough to see the kill, at any rate," Lydia said. "Charles would hate it, and so would I."
"It may be bearable," said Charles, "when your blood is up, and you've ridden all day, but to see it from a motor-car would be rather more than I could endure. I should be sick," he added.
Grace said they would go home in time for tea. She always had a big hunt tea, in case some of the riders dropped in. She was the soul of hospitality, and had the enthusiasm of a child. Tea was laid in the dining-room, and differed from other teas in that it included heaped-up plates of thin fried potatoes. Several of the more easily wearied members of the hunt arrived at about half-past five. It was already getting dark, and they had not yet killed, nor did there seem to be an immediate prospect of it. Paul, they reported, said he would stay till the end. Lydia presently stepped out upon a little iron-railed balcony overlooking the lake. The moon was rising, and so, too, was a thin mist from the surface of the lake. Miles away, coming from the direction of the woods across the water, she could hear the thin and delicate winding of the ​horns. As she stood listening, Charles came out and joined her.
"Medieval but exquisite," he said. "How far away we've got from the pushing crowds of Oxford Street!"
"Or from the subway rush hour in New York," she suggested.
"Anachronistic, all this," he said, with a gesture. "Is it a good thing or not? I don't know. We are of this age. I think we ought to live in it. I think it's probably good for us to live in it, unpleasant as it often is. How much should one forget the sweat and the struggle and the misery? I wish I knew."
They visited as sightseers all the more easily-reached of the Châteaux—Chambord, Blois, Amboise, Chaumont—beautifully named, perched high up, for the most part, overlooking the wide Loire, and separated by miles of cultivated and uncultivated country; by ploughed fields, and by woods where the wild boar still roamed, and in which hovered that perpetual odour of wood smoke; where too could be seen the brown and bent figures of the wood-cutters, making up their neat piles and bundles on the forest floor.
Paul remained to the end polite, superficial and aloof, showing enthusiasm only for the pursuit of boar or stag, and none whatever for the ac​tivities and interests of the twentieth century. He belonged, Charles said, to the sixteenth. He had a great admiration for Lydia, and no detail of her dress escaped his eye. Grace, who cared nothing for clothes, but usually succeeded in making an excellent effect, always consulted him on these matters, and waited for his praise or disapproval with an almost pathetic eagerness. To Charles, who admired Grace enormously, there was something painful in all this. It was like seeing an eagle, he thought, married to a peacock, and descending lamely to the parterre. If marriage was an affair of delicate adjustments, he thought it only fair that the adjusting should be on both sides, and in the case of the de Ferrières it was only too clearly on Grace's alone. Women, he supposed, performed this feat more easily than men, and he wondered if men, realising this, were not apt to leave the whole of it to them if they could. Take himself and Lydia, for instance. How much of the adjusting was being done by him? He gave a good deal of thought to this while they were with the de Ferrières. Contemplating the bedroom of Catherine de' Medici at Chaumont one day, while Lydia and Grace went on ahead into the room said to have been that of Ruggieri, her astrologer and alchemist, he fell into a sort of trance, or deep study, and stood there, leaning on his stick. For the ​moment he was completely unaware of his surroundings.
He had again embarked, in the most unexpected and unforeseen manner, on that perilous and difficult adventure. His wife was the most charming, the most winning and tactful of women. He had not, since his initial surrender, given up anything, yielded anything. He had changed in no way. Lydia, on the other hand, watchful, sensitive and electric, was quick to anticipate his likes and dislikes, and to adjust herself to his moods. She persuaded Grace to abandon the idea of giving dinner-parties while they were there. Charles was so happy when they were by themselves, she explained, and was apt to retire into himself and say little when strangers were on the scene.
Grace in her straightforward way at once spoke to Charles about this.
"Really," she said, "are you always going to fight shy of every sort of social gathering? What about Lydia?"
"Lydia," Charles had answered, "studies my prejudices too much. I must put a stop to it. It was very naughty of her to say I didn't like meeting people. It's perfectly true, I don't, but I'm always quite willing to go through with it if the rest of you enjoy it, and I promise you, I shan't be bored. I never am bored. Only, if ​you want to know what I like, I admit I like dining by ourselves best."
"Well, as dinner-parties are intended to give pleasure," she said, "I see no point in having them if they fail to do so." She added: "I must say I think Lydia and I are most exceptional wives. Most American women demand that their husbands adopt their ways. Instead of that we set to work to adopt our husbands'. I admit I did, from the first."
"You haven't got American husbands," Charles said.
"You mean we know you wouldn't adopt our ways?"
"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," he demurred. "But I think Europeans are more individualistic. We conform less to pattern. Our habits and tastes are more diverse and more sharply defined. And when we take a woman into our lives, we expect to go on living those lives much as before; men over thirty do, at any rate. Women take that into consideration when they marry us, or should."
"I hope Lydia did," said Grace. "Remember, she hasn't lived in Europe as much as I have."
As he stood in the room of the misunderstood queen, he said to himself that men who gave way in small things found that their wives gave way in big ones. Excluding, of course, Brenda, ​who had given way to him in nothing. He ought to have insisted on dinner-parties. He suspected that Lydia liked gaieties far more than she admitted. Social functions were devised by women in order that they should be seen by as many people as possible at the moment when they are looking, or think that they are looking, their best. It flitted through his mind that, logically, women should take the most trouble for a single spectator, a husband, or lover; the least trouble for large numbers of people, the eyes of people in a crowd being constantly diverted. But such never had been and never would be the case. Women preferred being seen by a hundred pair of casual eyes rather than by one pair of adoring ones. It was a well-established fact.
There was a bit of wood lying on the stone floor at his feet and he addressed it with his stick and then made a short mashie shot with it. Still, it was all wrong, he decided, that anybody's plans should have been changed on his account. He regretted it. When they got back to London he meant to make an effort. He had married a pretty and charming woman who had a right to be seen. He would join a Night-Club. He would subscribe to one of those theatrical societies that give plays on Sunday nights—the Phœnix, or the Stage Society. He and Lydia would often go to Mrs. Mallison's parties. She knew a vast num​ber of agreeable people. To be a bachelor, as he had been, and live a secluded life, was well enough. To be married and live a secluded life was, oddly enough, to be dull. It was also to court disaster. Single dullness was agreeable, married dullness awful. Lydia, bless her, must never be permitted to be bored. He meant to give up a lot of his old, bad habits. He would try, anyhow.
He came to himself and started off in haste to find the other two. Hurrying through the door, he nearly collided with a woman who was entering. He stood aside to let her pass.
She was a big woman, dressed, after the manner of French women who are in mourning, in heavy black, with a long veil. That she was French, Charles had no doubt at all. So barely did he escape collision with her that he said, "Pardon, Madame," and took off his hat. She inclined her head slightly in recognition of his courtesy, and their eyes met. A shock, hardly distinguishable from the shock of an electric battery, made itself felt along Charles's spine. His heart leapt, the blood rushed to his face. The woman's face, already highly-coloured, deepened in shade and her eyes dilated.
Charles, without even asking himself, "What shall I do? Shall I stop and talk to her?" bowed instantly and passed on, but she turned too, and a hand fell, not lightly, on his arm. He had no ​choice then but to pause. The meeting seemed to him disastrous and horrible. He had wanted never to see Brenda again, and he was shocked and afflicted by this encounter. The very sight of her was painful to him. It wasn't that he hated her, for he didn't hate her, but it was a situation that he had long dreaded as a possible and even a probable one, people who have once lived together in matrimony or out of it being, as a rule, drawn together again somewhere, somehow, sometime.
"Well, Charles," she said, in her deep and rather loud voice, "I always thought this would happen one of these days. What are you doing here?"
"Seeing Chaumont," Charles said stiffly.
"I guessed as much, it may surprise you to hear." She was still handsome, he thought, though coarse. He was shocked and yet fascinated to discover, in her face, traces of both his daughters. The eyes were not unlike Venetia's; the mouth and chin, stubborn and decided, were not unlike Caroline's. Her eyes were fuller than Venetia's, more prominent, and infinitely harder, but he sought for the resemblance, even though it pained him, because seeing it, he saw Venetia. "What I mean is, what are you doing in France? Not living here, I don't suppose, a good Briton like you?"
​"I'm staying with friends, not far away." She dared to taunt him, even now, with that!
"Oh. I'm living, since you ask me, in rooms, in a house down below here, near the river. It's cheap and nasty. I'm poorer than a blind beggar's cat in these days. I don't suppose you want to hear my troubles, though."
"Not very much," Charles admitted. "Where is your husband?"
"Len died eight months ago, in Paris. I felt pulled down after all the nursing I did, and came here for a rest. My word, Charles, but we had a good time while his health was good and the money lasted. He got a bad lung, you know, and had to stop work. I was a good wife to him. I lived wherever it was good for him to live. I didn't know I had it in me."
"Nor I," Charles said.
"Len and I were happy together. You were too cautious and conventional for me. I couldn't stick it. The Bohemian life's what I like. You know, you can't pay the rent, so you get credit by asking twenty people in to dinner. It's been great fun, but neither poor old Len nor I could save a bob."
"It would have been like that if we'd gone on living together," Charles thought, with disgust. He asked:
​"Then you'll stay here for some time, I suppose?"
"Not if I can manage to get away. Look here, Charles. I've often thought of writing to you, through your blessed lawyers, and finding out if you'd be willing to give me a bit of help. I was pretty regular with the funds for the twins as long as the money held out, wasn't I?"
"I always disliked taking it," Charles said, more and more distressed by this interview, "but it couldn't be helped at first. Yes, you were conscientious, I suppose, in your fashion. You know, I think, that both my daughters are happily married?"
"Venetia too? She was the darker one. I knew Caroline had got off. I saw the notice in The Times. Fancy me thinking of bringing up a family. I'd never have stayed the course. Well, they're off your hands, now. I suppose you'll be thinking of marrying again yourself."
"I'm quite content as I am," Charles said warily. "What is it you want me to do for you?"
"I want backing. I want to get into some sort of business. A hat shop, I thought of, either in London or New York. London would suit me best. New York's too far away, and the competition's too keen in Paris."
"It seems a pity," Charles said, "that you didn't think of it earlier, while your husband was alive, ​and before you'd spent all you had. But I'll see what can be done about it. What is your address?"
She wrote it down for him on the back of a soiled envelope.
"Do give me a boost, Charles, there's a good chap. You can't have many expenses now that both the girls are married. And you always had quiet tastes. Len said if the worst came to the worst you'd give me a hand. He always stood up for you. He always said you were a damned good fellow."
"If I do this for you," Charles said, wincing, "and if you come to England, you must promise never to try to see me or either of my daughters. I make that an absolute condition. I must have your written agreement."
Her full brown eyes regarded him with some amusement.
"I'm not so crazy about you that I can't do without you, Charles. I've done without you for some time now. And I haven't altogether lost my looks, either. Once I get on my feet it's quite likely that I'll marry again. So don't you worry about that. As for the girls, I haven't got the mother instinct, as you ought to know. Are they pretty?"
"Very," said Charles, off his guard.
​"Well, they get that much from me, anyhow," she said.
"You'll hear from me in ten days or a fortnight," he told her. "I'll have to see Dowden and Ingalls. Are you hard up at this moment? I mean, can you pay your board here, for the present?"
She nodded.
"I don't want a loan. I want backing. I can bring it off, I'm certain I can. I know a lot about hats. I ought to, I've bought enough these last twenty years. Len always said I had the taste and looks of a Viennese, and you can't say more than that. Don't look at me now. I'm a sight."
Charles had nothing to say for the moment. He was fascinated by the fleeting resemblance he saw, while she talked, to Venetia. It amazed him that she could be so like her and so utterly unlike. Suddenly he saw her eyes fill with tears.
"Len and I loved each other," she said, and her mouth trembled. "You may not believe me, but it's the truth. I miss him—God, how I miss him!"
Charles was instantly moved and touched. This was sincerity. His eyes softened and he put a hand on her arm.
"I'm sorry. Very sorry. I'll do anything I can for you. I couldn't bear to see you unhappy or in difficulties, Brenda. I promise you I'll do ​what I can. I'm not a rich man, you know, so don't expect too much. It's fortunate that we met. I must go now."
He took off his hat and held out his hand. She took it, smiling through her tears. He saw how brown and dusty was the black crêpe that draped her hat, and how worn were her black kid-gloves.
"Good-bye, Charles. It's all my own fault, I know, and it's decent of you not to say so. I'll make good. You'll hear of Brenda Sweet one of these days as you hear of Reboux, or Suzanne Talbot."
"I don't know much about these things," were Charles's last words. He hurried away from her, in the direction of Ruggieri's room, his feelings lacerated. She had been his wife, and he only felt sorry for her, as he would have felt sorry for any lonely and penniless woman. She was the mother of Venetia and Caroline, he had loved her, his whole existence had been bound up in her, and now, as he widened the distance between them, he hoped, earnestly, that he might never have to see her again.
He wanted to tell Lydia of the encounter at the first possible moment. He was one of those men who dislike reticences or secrets in marriage, and fear them. He wanted to tell Lydia everything, he wanted her to tell him everything. Mar​riage, he thought, meant complete confidence and complete understanding, or it meant nothing at all.
He found Lydia admiring, with Grace, the small satin-brocaded bed that had once been the possession of the lovely Diane de Poictiers. Large bedrooms were not popular with the ladies of those days; they found it too difficult to keep them warm, Charles supposed. This one was small and crowded with furniture.
"I'm fascinated by this," Lydia said, taking his arm. "Nothing, of all a woman's possessions, makes her seem so real to me as her bed. Just think, her lovely head lay there."
Charles said he was thinking of all the other heads that had probably lain there, and then suggested that they go and look at the view from the terrace and admire the wide Loire. He wished he had asked Brenda how long she would remain in the château, as he felt it would be extremely inconvenient to meet her, but they didn't meet her. She must have gone home, he supposed, to one of those steep-roofed houses below, by the river. It interested him to find that neither Lydia nor Grace suspected that he had had anything in the nature of a shock or adventure. Queer, insensitive beings we are, he thought, entrenched behind our walls of flesh, able to communicate with each other only by ​words, noises. It was a clumsy business. He and Lydia loved one another; they ought to have been conscious of one another's feelings and thoughts. Wasn't it possible? Some day, he supposed, it might be. We were heavy, ponderous, unspiritual creatures at present. We went through life explaining ourselves painfully and elaborately by means of ingenious but inaccurate words, and when, at odd moments, we felt ourselves to be understood, it was like a glimpse of paradise.
By eleven o'clock that night he was in a fever of impatience to talk to Lydia about the meeting. The instant they were in their room with the door closed, he kissed the back of her neck and said:
"I saw another of my wives to-day."
"What on earth do you mean, Charles?"
"I saw Brenda."
"Brenda? Where?"
He told her.
"I came straight from her," he said, "to you, where you and Grace were, in Diane's room, still quivering, as you might say, with the shock, and you didn't notice anything."
"Well, my darling," Lydia said, "I don't pretend to be clairvoyant."
"Never mind," Charles replied. "It merely indicates to me that I shall be able to deceive you with the greatest ease and impunity."
​"Charles!" There were some subjects she hated to hear him joke about. "I believe you really feel hurt that I didn't know." She added: "I think I saw her. She was in the room a moment before. She looked like a Frenchwoman, and at the first glance one thought she was well dressed, but she was really rather shabby. She was in mourning."
"That was Brenda," he said.
"If she hadn't gone off with Leonard Sweet," Lydia remarked, "I shouldn't have been here now. I'm very grateful to her. Did you tell her you were married?"
"No," he answered.
"Why?"
"It was none of her business. And she would have asked a lot of questions. I wanted to say as little to her as possible. It was all too painful."
"My poor darling. But for some reason, I think I'd like her to have known you had married again. Still, if she comes to London, she's sure to find it out."
"How feminine you are, you nice creature," Charles said. "What do you advise me to do about setting her up in business?"
"You must do it, of course. But you must let me find half the money. I'd like to. I feel it's ​the least I can do for her. It will only mean a few hundred pounds, I suppose."
They discussed Brenda for an hour or more. Lydia said, finally:
"I thought I'd mind hearing of her, or knowing that you'd seen her, but I don't at all. I'm rather glad to know where she is and what she's doing. I'd often wondered."
"Mind you," he said, "she hasn't one particle of love or affection for me. She only wants to make use of me. Make no mistake about that."
"So much the better," replied Lydia.
"She deserves nothing from me," he said. "Nothing. But she is Venetia's and Caroline's mother, and she did send them money for a number of years. I can't forget those things."
"I should be disappointed in you if you did."
"Darling," said Charles, "I feel perfectly secure with you. You're so reasonable. I don't have to watch my step. I adore you. Not even marriage can mar the extreme pleasantness of our relationship."
She had taken off her dress, pulling it over her head in the way the women of this age do take off their dresses, and her hair came down in a pale shower as she emerged. She hung the dress up, and, slipping on her blue dressing-gown, began to brush her hair. Charles, examining her face, was aware that something was wrong.
​"Why are you looking like that? Have I said something you don't like? Yes, I see I have."
"You know you have," she said.
"You mean what I said about marriage? Lydia, darling . . ."
"Will you do me a favour?" she interrupted him, rather crisply.
"Only ask it, my beautiful one."
"Will you try to refrain from abusing and belittling marriage? Charles, I admit it's stupid of me, but when you do it, it hurts. I say to myself, 'I know he doesn't mean our marriage, now, but presently he will. It's only a question of time.' And it makes me feel unhappy, miserable. As though I'd trapped you."
"Lydia!" He flung his arms about her, and the brush fell from her hand. "What a fool I am! For God's sake, don't mind. I'm apt to go on doing it, however hard I try not to. These things say themselves. Please don't mind, my darling. It has nothing to do with us."
She kissed him.
"So you say, and I believe you, but I can't help being hurt. Your words are just like knives, and they stab me, here." She put her hand on her heart.
He was full of remorse.
"I'll try—I promise you I'll try. It's chiefly ​when I think of Brenda that I do it. That was a marriage, too. And what does it matter what I say about marriage, or what I feel about it, if I'm happy with you, as you know I am, my sweetest?"
"It only matters," she said, "because it hurts me, and I can't help its hurting. I feel the same stab of pain each time."
"If you could see what is in my mind!" he cried.
"But I can't. I can only hear the words you say."
"I'll fine myself ten pounds whenever I make a remark like that, and give the money to you," he suggested.
"That's no good. You'd enjoy giving me ten pounds."
"True. Lydia, darling, if I hear a man at lunch or dinner make a jest about marriage, it doesn't suggest to me that that man is unhappily married; it only suggests to me that he is the sort of man who likes to make a joke now and again. I judge the joke purely on its merits—and the man too."
Lydia considered this.
"I think any woman would feel as I feel," she said.
Charles had pulled her down beside him into the armchair. He kissed the palm of one of her ​hands, and then her wrist, gently and thoughtfully.
"If I were you," he said, "I would look at it this way. I would say to myself, 'This man I've married has a prejudice, rightly or wrongly, against marriage, and yet he is married to me and extremely happy. That is a personal triumph for me. If he had been the sort of man who inevitably marries someone because he likes the state of matrimony and wants to be married, I might have felt that he would have been equally happy with any one of a thousand women.' Do you see what I mean, fairest and loveliest?"
"Yes. But, Charles, the trouble is I've very little conceit. I don't say to myself, 'I know he's perfectly happy, so I don't mind his saying these things. They don't touch me.' I say instead, 'He can't be perfectly happy, or he wouldn't say them. There's something wrong somewhere. It must be my fault.'"
"Then you look upon my most casual remarks," suggested Charles, "as you'd look at the mercury in a thermometer; as though they registered the temperature of my love for you."
"That's it exactly," she admitted.
"How long will it take you to get over that? Because you've got to get over it, my cherished one."
"I'll have gotten over it," she said, half laugh​ing, "when you've gotten over saying them, and not before."
"You stubborn devil," Charles said, kissing her. "Well," he said, "I'll try. I promise you I'll try, but you must arm yourself against occasional failures. And I shan't be nearly so amusing."
"I'm prepared to put up with that," she answered.
While Lydia slept he lay awake, thinking. His encounter with Brenda had stimulated his mind and brought back a thousand memories, not all of them painful, but made to seem so by the pain he had suffered later. His brain had gone drifting, like a ship that had slipped its cable in a storm. He remembered a hundred scraps of conversation more than twenty years old. He remembered, as though it had just occurred, the day Brenda had told him she was going to have a baby, and how suddenly frightened and distraught she had become. She accused him of cruelty; she said she would die, she knew it. She had cried and stormed hysterically. He didn't blame her for that. Not many women took it as, for instance, Caroline had taken it. But he had been given a glimpse that day of the vulgar and selfish woman she really was. He remembered introducing her to Leonard Sweet, and her saying, "Charles, I think you're too ready to speak to ​strangers. You don't know anything about this man." She, a Bohemian! Not, at any rate, while she was with him. And she had dared to say to him to-day, "Len always stood up for you. He always said you were a damned good fellow." And, "Not living here, are you, a good Briton like you?" He wondered that he hadn't been angrier. He was too utterly indifferent to her, he supposed, even to feel anger or disgust.
He thought what a darling Lydia was to have offered to find half the money. He had no intention of letting her, of course, but it was like her to have thought of it. So many women would have said, "Why should you help her? She's nothing to you now. Why should you spend money on her?" Lydia understood at once. In most ways he found her understanding infallible. If she had a fault it was her over-sensitiveness; but that was the inevitable defect, he told himself, of her qualities. In two days they were leaving St. Cyr and going back to London. Their married life would begin then, this enchanting honeymoon would be over. He vowed that he would keep her as happy as she was now; that never again would he say anything to make her imagine for an instant that he was regretting their marriage. Absurd and adorable woman. He told her twenty times a day how exquisite it was to have her near him. He decided that he ​liked her sensitiveness. It showed how aware she was of him, and how alert she was to notice slight variations of mood. She would soon, he thought, know him so well that to interpret them wrongly would be impossible, but until that time he must be careful. This alertness, he thanked heaven, wasn't all on one side. He, too, was watchful; he meant always to be watchful. He thought he knew what she was feeling almost before she knew it herself.
But it occurred to him that this mutual watchfulness, if carried too far, might prove something of a strain.