'He must have proved that he needs quite a different wife from Trix, and where could he find one more different?' she mused.
'It's beautiful here in summer, isn't it?' he asked Audrey.
'I wish public life allowed me to enjoy more of it.' It is what public men generally say.
He stretched out his legs and took off his hat.
'But you must rest sometimes,' she urged, with an imploring glance.
'So my mother's always telling me. Well, anyhow, since you like Barslett, I hope you'll stay a long time, Miss Pollington.'
It was not much, but Audrey carried it to Lady Blixworth--or, to put the matter with more propriety, she repeated his remark quite casually. It was not poor Audrey's fault if, in self-defence, she had to make the most of such remarks. Lady Blixworth kissed her niece thoughtfully.
'Another year of my life,' she remarked to the looking-glass that evening, in the course of a study of time's ravages--'another year or thereabouts will probably see a successful termination to the affair.'
She smiled a little bitterly. Her life, as she understood the term, had few more years to run, and to give up one was a sacrifice. It was, however, no use trying to alter the Barmouth pace. She had done what she could--a good turn to Trix Trevalla, another little lift for Audrey.
'I'm becoming a regular Sarah Bonfill,' she concluded, as she went down to dinner.
The next Saturday Mrs. Bonfill herself came.
'How is Mortimer?' she whispered at the first opportunity.
'My dear Sarah, I doubt if you could have interfered with more tactfulness yourself.'
'I hope and believe that she's sticking pins into a map to show where the Trans-Euphratic is to run. Kindly pat me on the back, Sarah.'
Mrs. Bonfill's smile was friendly pat enough, but it was all for Audrey; she asked nothing about Trix Trevalla.
Wide apart as the two were, Trix read the letter with something of the feeling under which Mervyn had written it. He was a good man, but not good for her--that seemed to sum up the matter. Perhaps her first smile of genuine mirth since her fall and flight was summoned to her lips by the familiar stiffness, the old careful balance of his sentences, the pain by which he held himself back from lecturing. A smile of another kind recognised his straightforwardness and his chivalry; he wrote like a gentleman, as Viola Blixworth knew he would. She was more in sympathy with him when he deplored the gulf between them than when he had told her it was but a ford which duty called on her to pass. 'How much have I escaped, and how much have I lost?' she asked; but the question came in sadness, not in doubt. It was not hers to taste the good; it would have been hers to drink the evil to the dregs. Reading his letter, she praised him and reviled herself; but she rejoiced that she had left him while yet there was time; she rejoiced honestly to see that she would remain in his memory as a thing that was unaccountable, that should not have been, that had come and gone, had given some pain but had done no permanent harm.
