After the episode in the wayside cottage on that showery morning of May Anstice made no further attempt to avoid Iris Wayne.
The way in which she had received his story had lifted a weight off his mind. She had not shrunk from him, as in his morbid distrust he had fancied possible. Rather she had shown him only the sweetest, kindest pity; and it seemed to him that on the occasion of their next meeting she had greeted him with a new warmth in her manner which was surely intended to convey to him the fact that she had appreciated the confidence he had bestowed upon her.
Besides--like the rest of us Anstice was a sophist at heart--the kindness with which Sir Richard Wayne had consistently treated him was surely deserving of gratitude at least.
It would be discourteous, if nothing more, to refuse his invitations save when the press of work precluded their acceptance; and so it came about that Anstice once more entered the hospitable doors which guarded Greengates, incidentally making the acquaintance of Lady Laura Wells, Sir Richard's widowed sister, who kept house for him with admirable skill, if at times with rather overbearing imperiousness.
Sir Richard, for all his years, was hale and hearty and loved a game of tennis; so that when once Iris' wrist was healed there were many keenly contested games during the long, light evenings--games in which Iris, partnered either by Cheniston or Anstice, darted about the court like a young Diana in her short white skirt and blouse open at the neck to display the firm, round throat which was one of her greatest charms.
The antagonism between Anstice and Bruce Cheniston deepened steadily during these golden summer days. Had they met in different circumstances, had there been no question, however vague and undefined, of rivalry between them, it is possible there would have been no positive hostility in their mutual attitude. Any genuine friendship was naturally debarred, seeing the nature of the memory they shared in common; but it would have been conceivably possible for them to have met and recognized one another's existence with a neutrality which would have covered a real but harmless distaste for each other's society.
Having been forced, by an unkind Fate, into a position in which each saw in the other a possible rival, any neutrality was out of the question. It had not taken Anstice long to discover that Cheniston had so far recovered from the loss of Hilda Ryder as to consider the possibility of making another woman his wife; nor had Cheniston's eyes been less keen.
He had very quickly discovered that Anstice was in love with pretty Iris; and instantly a fire of opposition sprang into fierce flame in his heart; and to himself he said that this man, having once deprived him of his chosen woman, should not again be permitted to come between him and his desire.