"Do you really mean that if you only knew ME as I am, it would come to you in the same way to hunt for my confederate? I mean if he weren't made obvious, you know, by his being my husband."I turned this over."If you were only in flirtation--as you reminded me just now that you're not? Surely!" I declared."I should arrive at him, perfectly, after all eliminations, on the principle of looking for the greatest happiness--""Of the smallest number? Well, he may be a small number," she indulgently sighed, "but he's wholly content! Look at him now there," she added the next moment, "and judge." We had resumed our walk and turned the corner of the house, a movement that brought us into view of a couple just round the angle of the terrace, a couple who, like ourselves, must have paused in a sociable stroll.The lady, with her back to us, leaned a little on the balustrade and looked at the gardens; the gentleman close to her, with the same support, offered us the face of Guy Brissenden, as recognisable at a distance as the numbered card of a "turn"--the black figure upon white--at a music-hall.On seeing us he said a word to his companion, who quickly jerked round.Then his wife exclaimed to me--only with more sharpness--as she had exclaimed at Mme.de Dreuil: "By all that's lovely--May Server!"I took it, on the spot, for a kind of "Eureka!" but without catching my friend's idea.I was only aware at first that this idea left me as unconvinced as when the other possibilities had passed before us.Wasn't it simply the result of this lady's being the only one we had happened not to eliminate?
She had not even occurred to us.She was pretty enough perhaps for any magic, but she hadn't the other signs.I didn't believe, somehow--certainly not on such short notice--either in her happiness or in her flatness.There was a vague suggestion, of a sort, in our having found her there with Brissenden:
there would have been a pertinence, to our curiosity, or at least to mine, in this juxtaposition of the two persons who paid, as I had amused myself with calling it, so heroically; yet I had only to have it marked for me (to see them, that is, side by side,) in order to feel how little--at any rate superficially--the graceful, natural, charming woman ranged herself with the superannuated youth.
She had said a word to him at sight of us, in answer to his own, and in a minute or two they had met us.This had given me time for more than one reflection.It had also given Mrs.Brissenden time to insist to me on her identification, which I could see she would be much less quick to drop than in the former cases."We have her," she murmured; "we have her;it's SHE!" It was by her insistance in fact that my thought was quickened.
It even felt a kind of chill--an odd revulsion--at the touch of her eagerness.
Singular perhaps that only then--yet quite certainly then--the curiosity to which I had so freely surrendered myself began to strike me as wanting in taste.It was reflected in Mrs.Brissenden quite by my fault, and Ican't say just what cause for shame, after so much talk of our search and our scent, I found in our awakened and confirmed keenness.Why in the world hadn't I found it before? My scruple, in short, was a thing of the instant;it was in a positive flash that the amusing question was stamped for me as none of my business.One of the reflections I have just mentioned was that I had not had a happy hand in making it so completely Mrs.Brissenden's.
Another was, however, that nothing, fortunately, that had happened between us really signified.For what had so suddenly overtaken me was the consciousness of this anomaly: that I was at the same time as disgusted as if I had exposed Mrs.Server and absolutely convinced that I had yet NOT exposed her.
While, after the others had greeted us and we stood in vague talk, Icaught afresh the effect of their juxtaposition, I grasped, with a private joy that was quite extravagant--as so beyond the needed mark--at the reassurance it offered.This reassurance sprang straight from a special source.Brissenden's secret was so aware of itself as to be always on the defensive.Shy and suspicious, it was as much on the defensive at present as I had felt it to be--so far as I was concerned--the night before.What was there accordingly in Mrs.Server--frank and fragrant in the morning air--to correspond to any such consciousness? Nothing whatever--not a symptom.Whatever secrets she might have had, she had not THAT one; she was not in the same box;the sacred fount, in her, was not threatened with exhaustion.We all soon re-entered the house together, but Mrs.Brissenden, during the few minutes that followed, managed to possess herself of the subject of her denunciation.
She put me off with Guy, and I couldn't help feeling it as a sign of her concentration.She warmed to the question just as I had thrown it over;and I asked myself rather ruefully what on earth I had been thinking of.
I hadn't in the least had it in mind to "compromise" an individual; but an individual would be compromised if I didn't now take care.
