"It's for Jennie's sake. It's her happiness I'm thinking about. You've
nothing to do with it."
"Except to provide his credentials," I thought, but said nothing.
I begin to like it less and less. Not one single thing about it did I
like. Julia was supposed not to know this Arnaud, but that had not
prevented her from thrusting herself into his affairs and lying
unblushingly about an appointment at the Golf Club seven miles away at
nine o'clock in the morning. And if Madge thought that Julia and Jennie
were "behaving with ordinary decency" at that moment, so did not I. As
for Derry, honestly I was afraid of him. He had had a whole night in
which to think over the almost certain consequences of that surprise
among the sarrasin stooks, and if he was caught without a plan he was
not the man I took him for. Julia might think she had scored during that
hour and a half when he had shown her his pictures, but the change was
just as likely to be in his pocket. Probably he had expected that that
bicycle would be sent for before the day was many hours old. The only
thing he could not have expected was that Julia Oliphant would come in
person for it.
Then the dance ended, and Julia, as barefaced as she was barearmed, came
straight up to me, wide-smiling, daring.
"Well, George! Good morning! Enjoying yourself?"
"Hadn't Derry a nerve!" she had said to me when I had told her about the
tea-party at Ker Annic. I don't think his nerve surpassed her own. I
looked straight at her.
"Since it's good morning, come for a turn," I said.
Still smiling all over her face, she placed a resplendent arm on mine,
and we passed out on to the terrace.
She wore an immense white hat, so cavalierly dragged down on one side
and so arrogantly jutting up on the other that from certain points you
had to walk half way round her before you saw her face at all. One eye
lurked permanently within the recess of that outrageous brim. She had
also done something to her lips.
There were little round tables on the terrace, and at one of these we
sat down, vis-à-vis. She placed the backs of her clasped hands under her
chin and sat there, magnetising me.
"Well, how goes it?" she said.
"I hear," I said, "that you're learning to ride a bicycle."
"No, George."
"What's that?"
"Not a bicycle. Only a free-wheel. I rode a bicycle years ago. It's only
the free-wheel that's a bit tricky."
"You saw him?"
"Of course. Didn't Madge tell you?"
"And he knew you?"
"My dear George, do pull yourself together! He was expecting me!"
"What! By appointment?"
"No, no, no, I don't mean that. I didn't write or send him a telegram or
anything of that kind. But, of course, he knew I was here. He knew days
ago--before I came probably. What would be the first thing Jennie'd tell
him? That they were expecting a visitor, but it needn't make any
difference to their meetings. So of course he was expecting me. Perhaps
not quite so early in the morning, but oh, quite soon!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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