There was food for little else, in the days that followed. Mr. Vernon's heart, hungry for the first time, had to starve. He went often to Lady St. Craye's. She was so gentle, sweet, yet not too sympathetic--bright, amusing even, but not too vivacious. He approved deeply the delicacy with which she ignored that last wild interview. She was sister, she was friend--and she had the rare merit of seeming to forget that she had been confidante.
It was he who re-opened the subject, after ten days. She had told herself that it was only a question of time. And it was.
"Do you know she's disappeared?" he said abruptly.
"Disappeared?" No one was ever more astonished than Lady St. Craye. Quite natural, the astonishment. Not overdone by so much as a hair's breadth.
So he told her all about it, and she twisted her long topaz chain and listened with exactly the right shade of interest. He told her what Miss Voscoe had said--at least most of it.
"And I worry about Temple," he said; "like any school boy, I worry. If he does decide that he loves her better than you--You said you'd help me. Can't you make sure that he won't love her better?"
"I could, I suppose," she admitted. To herself she said: "Temple's at Grez. She's at Grez. They've been there ten days."
"If only you would," he said. "It's too much to ask, I know. But I can't ask anything that isn't too much! And you're so much more noble and generous than other people--"
"No butter, thanks," she said.
"It's the best butter," he earnestly urged. "I mean that I mean it. Won't you?"
"When I see him again--but it's not very fair to him, is it?"
"He's an awfully good chap, you know," said Vernon innocently. And once more Lady St. Craye bowed before the sublime apparition of the Egoism of Man.
"Good enough for me, you think? Well, perhaps you're right. He's a dear boy. One would feel very safe if one loved a man like that."
"Yes--wouldn't one?" said Vernon.
She wondered whether Betty was feeling safe. No: ten days are a long time, especially in the country--but it would take longer than that to cure even a little imbecile like Betty of the Vernon habit. It was worse than opium. Who ought to know if not she who sat, calm and sympathetic, promising to entangle Temple so as to leave Betty free to become a hopeless prey to the fell disease?