There could be no possible doubt about the boredom. Mrs. Nevill Tyson
turned from reading to talking with obvious relief. Their conversation
had taken a wider range lately; it was more intimate, and at the same
time less embarrassing. He wondered how often she thought of that scene
in the library at Thorneytoft; she had behaved ever since as if it had
never happened. For one thing Stanistreet was thankful--she had left off
discussing Nevill with him. If she had ever been in ignorance, she now
knew all that it concerned her to know. Not that she avoided the subject;
on the contrary, it seemed to have floated into the vague region of
general interest, where any chance current of thought might drift them to
it. Stanistreet dreaded it; but she was continually brushing up against
it, with a feathery lightness which made him marvel at the volatile
character of her mind. Was it the clumsiness of a butterfly or the
dexterity of a woman? Once or twice he thought he detected a certain
reluctant shyness in approaching the subject directly. It was as if she
regarded her affection for her husband as a youthful folly, and her
marriage as a discreditable episode of which she was now ashamed.
On the other hand, she was always ready to talk about Stanistreet and
his doings. She would listen for hours to his mess-room stories, his
descriptions of the people and the places he had seen, the engagements
he had taken part in. For a whole evening one Sunday they had talked
about nothing but fortification. Now it was impossible that Mrs. Nevill
Tyson could be interested in fortification. As for Vedic philosophy, she
cared for Brahma about as much as Stanistreet did for Brahms.
He was walking with her in Hyde Park; they had turned off into the
path by the flower-beds on the Park Lane side. It was April, between
six and seven in the evening, and, except for a few stragglers, they
had the walk to themselves. Louis had been giving her the history of
his first campaign in the Soudan, and she was listening with a dreamy,
half-suppressed interest, which rose gradually to excitement. He sat down
and drew on the gravel with the point of his walking-stick a rude map of
the country, showing the course of the Nile and the line of march, with
pebbles for stations, and bare patches for battlefields. He then began to
trace out an extremely complicated plan of the campaign. She followed the
movements of the walking-stick with an intelligence which he would
hardly have credited her with. And, indeed, it was no inconsiderable
feat, seeing that for want of a finer instrument Louis's plan was
hopelessly mixed up with his line of march and other matters.
"Was Nevill there?" she asked, casually, at the close of a spirited
account of his last engagement.