He had not got very stout, though undeniably he had got stouter. "How well you are looking!" would have been a very ladylike way of saying it, but his girth was best not referred to at all. Those who liked him had learned this long ago, and Grizel always shifted the buttons without comment.
Her malicious Ladyship had found his one weak spot at once. He had a reply ready for every other opening in the English tongue, but now he could writhe only.
Who would have expected to meet her here? he said at last feebly. She explained, and he had guessed it already, that she was again staying with the Rintouls; the castle, indeed, was not half a mile from where they stood.
"But I think I really came to see you," she informed him, with engaging frankness.
It was very good of her, he intimated stiffly; but the stiffness was chiefly because she was still looking in an irritating way at his waist.
Suddenly she looked up. To Tommy it was as if she had raised the siege. "Why aren't you nice to me?" she asked prettily.
"I want to be," he replied.
She showed him a way. "When I saw you steaming towards the castle so swiftly," she said, dropping badinage, "the hope entered my head that you had heard of my arrival."
She had come a step nearer, and it was like an invitation to return to the arbour. "This is the test of us!" all that was good in Tommy cried once more to him.
"No, I had not heard," he replied, bravely if baldly. "I was taking a smart walk only."
"Why so smart as that?"
He hesitated, and her eyes left his face and travelled downward.
"Were you trying to walk it off?" she asked sympathetically.
He was stung, and replied in words that were regretted as soon as spoken: "I was trying to walk you off."
A smile of satisfaction crossed her impudent face.
"I succeeded," he added sharply.
"How cruel of you to say so, when you had made me so very happy! Do you often take smart walks, Mr. Sandys?"
"Often."
"And always with me?"
"I leave you behind."
"With Mrs. Sandys?"
Had she seemed to be in the least affected by their meeting it would have been easy to him to be a contrite man at once; any sign of shame on her part would have filled him with desire to take all the blame upon himself. Had she cut him dead, he would have begun to respect her. But she smiled disdainfully only, and stood waking. She was still, as ever, a cold passion, inviting his warm ones to leap at it. He shuddered a little, but controlled himself and did not answer her.
"I suppose she is the lady of the arbour?" Lady Pippinworth inquired, with mild interest.
"She is the lady of my heart," Tommy replied valiantly.
"Alas!" said Lady Pippinworth, putting her hand over her own.
But he felt himself more secure now, and could even smile at the woman for thinking she was able to provoke him.
"Look upon me," she requested, "as a deputation sent north to discover why you have gone into hiding."
"I suppose a country life does seem exile to you," he replied calmly, and suddenly his bosom rose with pride in what was coming. Tommy always heard his finest things coming a moment before they came. "If I have retired," he went on windily, "from the insincerities and glitter of life in town,"--but it was not his face she was looking at, it was his waist,--"the reason is obvious," he rapped out.
She nodded assent without raising her eyes.
Yet he still controlled himself. His waist, like some fair tortured lady of romance, was calling to his knighthood for defence, but with the truer courage he affected not to hear. "I am in hiding, as you call it," he said doggedly, "because my life here is such a round of happiness as I never hoped to find on earth, and I owe it all to my wife. If you don't believe me, ask Lord or Lady Rintoul, or any other person in this countryside who knows her."
But her Ladyship had already asked, and been annoyed by the answer.
She assured Tommy that she believed he was happy. "I have often heard," she said musingly, "that the stout people are the happiest."
"I am not so stout," he barked.