As to what it was she resolved not to remember, and did remember, it was just one sentence—his only comment on the news of her engagement, his only hint of any opinion or feeling about it. It was short, sharp, decisive, and, as his judgments were, even in the days when he, alone of all the world, held them of any moment, absolutely confident; it was also, she had felt on hearing it, utterly untrue, unjust, and ungenerous. It had rung out like a pistol-shot, "Maggie, you're marrying a fool," and then a snap of tight-fitting lips, a glance of scornful eyes, and a quick, unhesitating stride away that hardly waited for a contemptuous smile at her angry cry, "I'll never speak to you again." She had been in a fury of wrath—she had a power of wrath—that a plain, awkward, penniless, and obscure youth—one whom she sometimes disliked for his arrogance, and sometimes derided for his self-confidence—should dare to say such a thing about her Harry, whom she was so proud to love, and so proud to have won. It was indeed an insolent memory that flung the thing again and again in her teeth.
The party began to melt away. The first good-bye roused Mrs. Dennison from her enveloping reverie. Lady Valentine, from whom it came, lingered for a gush of voluble confidences about the charm of the house, and the people, and the smart little band that played softly in an alcove, and what not; her daughter stood by, learning, it is to be hoped, how it is meet to behave in society, and scanning Evan Haselden's trim figure with wary, critical glances, alert to turn aside if he should glance her way. Mrs. Dennison returned the ball of civility, and, released by several more departures, joined Adela Ferrars. Adela stood facing Haselden and Tom Loring, who were arm-in-arm. At the other end of the room Harry Dennison and Ruston were still in conversation.
"These men, Maggie," began Adela—and it seemed a mere caprice of pronunciation, that the word did not shape itself into "monkeys"—"are the absurdest creatures. They say I'm not fit to take part in politics! And why?"
Mrs. Dennison shook her head, and smiled.
"Because, if you please, I'm too emotional. Emotional, indeed! And I can't generalise! Oh, couldn't I generalise about men!"
"Women can never say 'No,'" observed Evan Haselden, not in the least as if he were repeating a commonplace.
"You'll find you're wrong when you grow up," retorted Adela.
"I doubt that," said Mrs. Dennison, with the kindest of smiles.
"Maggie, you spoil the boy. Isn't it enough that he should have gone straight from the fourth form—where, I suppose, he learnt to generalise——"
"At any rate, not to be emotional," murmured Loring.
"Into Parliament, without having his head turned by——"
"You'd better go, Evan," suggested Loring in a warning tone.
"I shall go too," announced Adela.
"I'm walking your way," said Evan, who seemed to bear no malice.
"How delightful!"
"You don't object?"
"Not the least. I'm driving."
"A mere schoolboy score!"
"How stupid of me! You haven't had time to forget them."
"Oh, take her away," said Mrs. Dennison, and they disappeared in a fire of retorts, happy, or happy enough for happy people, and probably Evan drove with the lady after all.
Mrs. Dennison walked towards where her husband and Ruston sat on a sofa in talk.
"What are you two conspiring about?" she asked.
"Ruston had something to say to me about business."
"What, already?"
"Oh, we've met in the city, Mrs. Dennison," explained Ruston, with a confidential nod to Harry.
"And that was the object of your appearance here to-day? I was flattering my party, it seems."
"No. I didn't expect to find your husband. I thought he would be at the House."
"Ah, Harry, how did the speech go?"
"Oh, really pretty well, I think," answered Harry Dennison, with a contented air. "I got nearly half through before we were counted out."
A very faint smile showed on his wife's face.
"So you were counted out?" she asked.
"Yes, or I shouldn't be here."
"You see, I am acquitted, Mrs. Dennison. Only an accident brought him here."
"An accident impossible to foresee," she acquiesced, with the slightest trace of bitterness—so slight that her husband did not notice it.
Ruston rose.
"Well, you'd better talk to Semingham about it," he remarked to Harry Dennison; "he's one of us, you know."
"Yes, I will. And I'll just get you that pamphlet of mine; you can put it in your pocket."
He ran out of the room to fetch what he promised. Mrs. Dennison, still faintly smiling, held out her hand to Ruston.
"It's been very pleasant to see you again," she said graciously. "I hope it won't be eight years before our next meeting."
"Oh, no; you see I'm floating now."
"Floating?" she repeated, with a smile of enquiry.
"Yes; on the surface. I've been in the depths till very lately, and there one meets no good society."
"Ah! You've had a struggle?"
"Yes," he answered, laughing; "you may call it a bit of a struggle."
She looked at him with grave curious eyes.
"And you are not married?" she asked abruptly.
"No, I'm glad to say."
"Why glad, Mr. Ruston? Some people like being married."
"Oh, I don't claim to be above it, Mrs. Dennison," he answered with a laugh, "but a wife would have been a great hindrance to me all these years."
There was a simple and bona fide air about his statement; it was not raillery; and Mrs. Dennison laughed in her turn.
"Oh, how like you!" she murmured.
Mr. Ruston, with a passing gleam of surprise at her merriment, bade her a very unemotional farewell, and left her. She sat down and waited idly for her husband's return. Presently he came in. He had caught Ruston in the hall, delivered his pamphlet, and was whistling cheerfully. He took a chair near his wife.
"Rum chap that!" he said. "But he's got a good deal of stuff in him;" and he resumed his lively tune.
The tune annoyed Mrs. Dennison. To suffer whistling without visible offence was one of her daily trials. Harry's emotions and reflections were prone to express themselves through that medium.
"I didn't do half-badly, to-day," said Harry, breaking off again. "Old Tom had got it all splendidly in shape for me—by Jove, I don't know what I should do without Tom—and I think I put it pretty well. But, of course, it's a subject that doesn't catch on with everybody."
It was the dullest subject in the world; it was also, in all likelihood, one of the most unimportant; and dull subjects are so seldom unimportant that the perversity of the combination moved Maggie Dennison to a wondering pity. She rose and came behind the chair where her husband sat. Leaning over the back, she rested her elbows on his shoulders, and lightly clasped her hands round his neck. He stopped his whistle, which had grown soft and contented, laughed, and kissed one of the encircling hands, and she, bending lower, kissed him on the forehead as he turned his face up to look at her.
"You poor dear old thing!" she said with a smile and a sigh.