The Rocks of Valpre by Ethel May Dell (best short books to read txt) 📖

that? But you should tell him that! Or was it perhaps only a joke _a deux_, and not _a trois_? I have heard that the English husband can be strict, and you have found it so to your cost, _hein_?"
Her eyes blazed at the insult. For the first time in her life Chris was so possessed by fury as to be actually sublime. She drew herself to her full height. She met his mockery fearlessly, and, with a royal disregard of consequences, she trod it underfoot.
"Captain Rodolphe, be good enough to let me pass!"
He stood aside instantly. He was even momentarily abashed. He had not expected his game to end thus. She had seemed such an easy prey, this English girl. Her discomfiture had been almost too obvious. He certainly had not deemed her capable of this display of spirit.
Yet in a moment, even as, erect and disdainful, she passed him by, he was smiling again, a secret, subtle smile which she felt rather than saw. Emerging into the hot sunshine that beat upon the crowded lawn, she knew herself to be cold from head to foot.


CHAPTER VIII
THE THIN END

"Good-bye!" said Mrs. Pouncefort. "So glad you came. I hope you haven't been bored."
"Bored to extinction," murmured Noel. "Hi, Trevor! Let me drive, like a good chap. Do!"
"Certainly not," said Mordaunt, with decision. "You are going to sit behind. We shall meet the wind now, and Chris must come in front; it is more sheltered."
Chris submitted to this arrangement in silence. She was looking very tired. Her husband regarded her keenly as he tucked her in, but he said nothing.
"What do you think of Mrs. Pouncefort's latest?" grinned Noel, as they spun along the high-road. "I never met such a facetious brute in my life. How did you like him, Bertrand?"
"Who?" said Bertrand somewhat curtly.
"What did they call him--Rodolphe, wasn't it? That French chap with the beastly little beard."
"I did not like him," said Bertrand, with precision.
"That's all right," said Noel approvingly. "But he's reigning favourite with Mrs. Pouncefort, anyone can see with half an eye. Rum, isn't it? And little Pouncefort puts up with it like a lamb. But they say he's just as bad. Daresay he is, though he's quite a decent little beggar to talk to. I can't stand Mrs. Pouncefort at any price, while as for that Frenchman"--he made a hideous grimace--"I'm glad you are not all alike, Bertrand!"
Bertrand responded to the compliment without elation. He seemed preoccupied, and Noel, finding him uninteresting, turned his cheerful attention elsewhere.
Letters awaited them upon their return. Chris took up hers with scarcely a glance, and went up to her room.
Her husband, following a little later, found her sitting on a couch by the window, perusing them. She glanced up at his entrance.
"I have a letter from Aunt Philippa. She thinks we must be quite settled by this time, and she wants to spend a day or two here next week, before she goes to Scotland."
"I suppose we can put up with her for a day or two," said Mordaunt.
Her smile was slightly strained as she returned to the letter. "I suppose we shall have to."
He came and stood beside her, looking down at her bent head. The burnished hair shone warmly golden in the evening sunlight. He laid a quiet hand upon it. She started at his touch, and then sat very still.
"I have heard from Hilda too," she said, after a moment. "They are staying at Graysdale. Percy fishes all day and she sketches, when they are not motoring. It was very sweet of her to write by return."
A tear fell suddenly upon the open page. She covered it hastily with her hand. Her husband's pressed her head very tenderly.
"Chris," he said gently, "I wonder if you would like to go away for a little?"
She glanced up quickly, eagerly, with wet lashes. "Oh, Trevor!" she breathed.
He sat down beside her on the couch. "We will go to-morrow if you like," he said.
She slipped her hand into his. "I should love it!"
"Would you?" he said. "I have been thinking of it for some days, but I wasn't sure you would care for the idea."
"But your work?" she said. "Those articles you wanted to finish? And that political book of yours? And the alterations in the north wing, will they be able to get on with those with you away?"
"The literary work must stand over for a week or two," he said. "I shall leave Bertrand in charge of the rest."
"Bertrand!" She opened her blue eyes wide. "But--but he would be away, wouldn't he?" Then quickly: "He would go with us, of course? You didn't mean to leave him behind?"
He raised his brows ever so slightly. "I meant just us two, dear," he said. "Wouldn't you care for that?"
"Oh!" said Chris blankly. "But, Trevor, we couldn't possibly leave him. He isn't well. I--I shouldn't be happy about him. Besides--besides--" Her words faltered under his straight look; she made a little appealing gesture towards him. "Please understand," she said.
He took both her hands into his. "My dear, I do understand," he said, with the utmost kindness. "But I think he can be trusted to take care of himself for a little while. If you have any doubts upon the subject, ask him."
She shook her head. "No, it wouldn't do. I--I'd really rather not go away if it means--that. Besides, there is Noel. And next week there will be Aunt Philippa. I think we had better give up the idea, Trevor; I do really, anyhow for the present." She leaned nearer to him; her eyes looked pleadingly into his. "Say you don't mind," she begged him, a little tremulously.
"I am only thinking of you, dear," he answered.
She smiled with lips that quivered. "Well, don't think of me--at least, not too much. I only want you just to be kind to me, that's all. I--I shall be myself presently. You're very good to be so patient."
Her lips were lifted to his. He bent and kissed her. But as he went gravely away she had a feeling that she had disappointed him, and her heart grew a little heavier in consequence.
The sound of the piano in the drawing-room brought her down earlier than usual for dinner, and she found Bertrand playing softly to himself in the twilight. He had a delicate touch, and she always loved to hear him.
She had with difficulty trained him not to spring up at her entrance, but to-day he turned sharply round.
"Christine, what did that _scelerat_ say to you?"
The abruptness of his speech did not disconcert her. She was never ill at ease with Bertrand, however sudden his mood. She came to the piano, and stood facing him in the dusk.
"He recognized me," she said.
"Ah!" Bertrand's exclamation was deep in his throat, like the growl of an angry dog. "And he said--?"
Chris hesitated.
Instantly his manner changed. He stretched out a quick hand. "Pardon my impatience! You will tell me what he said?"
Yet still she hesitated. His impetuosity had warned her to go warily if she would not have him embroiling himself in another quarrel for her sake.
"It doesn't matter much, does it?" she said, rather wearily. "I wasn't with him very long--no longer than I could help. He was objectionable, of course, but that sort of man couldn't be anything else, could he?"
"Tell me what he said," insisted Bertrand inexorably.
But still she hedged, trying to temper his wrath. "He didn't tell me anything new. I have known--for some time now--why you fought that duel."
"Ah! You know that? But how?"
She smiled wanly. "You forget I'm growing up, Bertie."
He winced at that suddenly and sharply, but he made no verbal protest. Only in the silence that followed there was something passionate, something which she never remembered to have encountered before in her dealings with him.
At the end of a long pause he spoke, with obvious constraint. "And you will not tell me what he said?"
"Is it worth while?" said Chris. "I daresay we shall never see him again."
"He insulted you, no?" said Bertrand.
She yielded, half-involuntarily, to his persistence. "He made some--rather horrid--insinuations. He spoke of the duel and of what happened at Valpre. And he asked--he asked if--Trevor knew."
A fierce oath burst headlong from Bertrand, the first she had ever heard him utter. He apologized for it instantly, almost in the same breath, but she was startled by the violence of it none the less, so startled that she decided then and there that, if she would keep the peace between him and his enemy, she must confide in him no further.
"But that was really all," she hastened to assure him. "I left him then, and--and I think we had better forget it, Bertie. Promise me you will."
He took the persuasive hand she laid upon his arm, but for several seconds he did not speak. It seemed as if he could not trust himself to do so.
At last, "Christine," he said, "I think that your husband ought to know."
She started at the words, almost snatching her hand from him. "Bertie! What do you mean? Know of what?"
He answered her with great steadiness; his eyes met hers unwaveringly. "Of that which happened at Valpre," he said.
She gazed at him in growing consternation. "Bertie, how--are you mad?--how could I tell him that?"
"With your permission, I will tell him," he said resolutely.
But she cried out at that, almost as if he had hurt her: "Oh no, no, never! Why should he know now? Don't you see how impossible it is? If I had ever meant to tell him, it ought to have been long ago."
"Yes," said Bertrand.
The quietness of his tone only agitated her still further. His evident determination terrified her. In that moment all her fear of her husband rose to towering proportions, a monster she dared not even contemplate. She clasped Bertrand's arm between her hands in wild, unreasoning supplication.
"Oh, you must not--you shall not! Bertie, you won't, will you? Promise me you won't--promise me! He wouldn't understand. He would want to know why I had never told him before. He would--he would--"
"Ah! but I would explain," Bertrand protested gently.
"But you couldn't! He would ask questions--questions I couldn't possibly answer. If he didn't say them he would look them. And his eyes are so terribly keen. They frighten me. They see--everything."
"But, _cherie_," he reasoned, "they could not see what is not there. You have nothing to hide from him. You have no shame. Why, then, have you fear?"
"I don't know," gasped Chris. "Only I know that he would never understand. He would think--he would think--"
"He would think that we have been--pals--for as long as we have known each other," said Bertrand soothingly. "He knows it already. It is true, is it not?"
But Chris's eyes had been opened too suddenly and tragically. Her sense of proportion was still undeveloped. "Yes, but he would never see it. You could never explain to him so that he would understand. He would think I had been deceiving him. He would think--Bertie, he would think"--her eyes dilated, and she drew in her breath sharply--"that--that you and I ought not to be friends any longer. Oh, don't tell him--please don't tell him. Indeed I am right. He trusts you, and--and he trusts me. But he wouldn't trust either of us any longer if he knew."
"Christine! Christine!"
"It is true," she asserted feverishly. "You don't know him as I do. Oh no, he has never been hard to me. But he could be hard. And he wouldn't forgive me--if he