“Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?” he asked.
“That — oh! Irene Heron. Her father, Professor Heron, died this year. She lives with her stepmother. She’s a nice girl, a pretty girl, but no money!”
“Introduce me, please,” said Soames.
It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her responsive to that little. But he went away with the resolution to see her again. He effected his object by chance, meeting her on the pier with her stepmother, who had the habit of walking there from twelve to one of a forenoon. Soames made this lady’s acquaintance with alacrity, nor was it long before he perceived in her the ally he was looking for. His keen scent for the commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene cost her stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her; it also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life, desired to be married again. The strange ripening beauty of her stepdaughter stood in the way of this desirable consummation. And Soames, in his stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.
He left Bournemouth without having given himself away, but in a month’s time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl, but to her stepmother. He had made up his mind, he said; he would wait any time. And he had long to wait, watching Irene bloom, the lines of her young figure softening, the stronger blood deepening the gleam of her eyes, and warming her face to a creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to her, and when that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him, back to London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave. He tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once had he a gleam of light. It was at one of those assembly dances, which afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of seaside watering-places. He was sitting with her in an embrasure, his senses tingling with the contact of the waltz. She had looked at him over her, slowly waving fan; and he had lost his head. Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his lips to the flesh of her arm. And she had shuddered — to this day he had not forgotten that shudder — nor the look so passionately averse she had given him.
A year after that she had yielded. What had made her yield he could never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent, he learnt nothing. Once after they were married he asked her, “What made you refuse me so often?” She had answered by a strange silence. An enigma to him from the day that he first saw her, she was an enigma to him still...
Bosinney was waiting for him at the door; and on his rugged, good-looking, face was a queer, yearning, yet happy look, as though he too saw a promise of bliss in the spring sky, sniffed a coming happiness in the spring air. Soames looked at him waiting there. What was the matter with the fellow that he looked so happy? What was he waiting for with that smile on his lips and in his eyes? Soames could not see that for which Bosinney was waiting as he stood there drinking in the flower-scented wind. And once more he felt baffled in the presence of this man whom by habit he despised. He hastened on to the house.
“The only colour for those tiles,” he heard Bosinney say, — “is ruby with a grey tint in the stuff, to give a transparent effect. I should like Irene’s opinion. I’m ordering the purple leather curtains for the doorway of this court; and if you distemper the drawing-room ivory cream over paper, you’ll get an illusive look. You want to aim all through the decorations at what I call charm.”
Soames said: “You mean that my wife has charm!”
Bosinney evaded the question.
“You should have a clump of iris plants in the centre of that court.”
Soames smiled superciliously.
“I’ll look into Beech’s some time,” he said, “and see what’s appropriate!”
They found little else to say to each other, but on the way to the Station Soames asked:
“I suppose you find Irene very artistic.”
“Yes.” The abrupt answer was as distinct a snub as saying: “If you want to discuss her you can do it with someone else!”
And the slow, sulky anger Soames had felt all the afternoon burned the brighter within him.
Neither spoke again till they were close to the Station, then Soames asked:
“When do you expect to have finished?”
“By the end of June, if you really wish me to decorate as well.”
Soames nodded. “But you quite understand,” he said, “that the house is costing me a lot beyond what I contemplated. I may as well tell you that I should have thrown it up, only I’m not in the habit of giving up what I’ve set my mind on.”
Bosinney made no reply. And Soames gave him askance a look of dogged dislike — for in spite of his fastidious air and that supercilious, dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips and squared chin, was not unlike a bulldog...
When, at seven o’clock that evening, June arrived at 62, Montpellier Square, the maid Bilson told her that Mr. Bosinney was in the drawing-room; the mistress — she said — was dressing, and would be down in a minute. She would tell her that Miss June was here.
June stopped her at once.
“All right, Bilson,” she said, “I’ll just go in. You, needn’t hurry Mrs. Soames.”
She took off her cloak, and Bilson, with an understanding look, did not even open the drawing-room door for her, but ran downstairs.
June paused for a moment to look at herself in the little old-fashioned silver mirror above the oaken rug chest — a slim, imperious young figure, with a small resolute face, in a white frock, cut moon-shaped at the base of a neck too slender for her crown of twisted red-gold hair.
She opened the drawing-room door softly, meaning to take him by surprise. The room was filled with a sweet hot scent of flowering azaleas.
She took a long breath of the perfume, and heard Bosinney’s voice, not in the room, but quite close, saying.
“Ah! there were such heaps of things I wanted to talk about, and now we shan’t have time!”
Irene’s voice answered: “Why not at dinner?”
“How can one talk...”
June’s first thought was to go away, but instead she crossed to the long window opening on the little court. It was from there that the scent of the azaleas came, and, standing with their backs to her, their faces buried in the golden-pink blossoms, stood her lover and Irene.
Silent but unashamed, with flaming cheeks and angry eyes, the girl watched.
“Come on Sunday by yourself — We can go over the house together.”
June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms. It was not the look of a coquette, but — far worse to the watching girl — of a woman fearful lest that look should say too much.
“I’ve promised to go for a drive with Uncle...”
“The big one! Make him bring you; it’s only ten miles — the very thing for his horses.”
“Poor old Uncle Swithin!”
A