clustered round their mothers’ knees. Before the villa lay a long, paved terrace, and by the balustrade of it, from which a stone could be dropped into the clear water, a woman stood looking out over the lake and conversing with a tall, grey-haired man.
‘Ten minutes is rather a short acquaintance,’ Trent replied. ‘Besides, I was attending rather more to her companion. Mynheer Scheffer is the first Dutchman I have met on social terms. One thing about Lady Bosworth is clear to me, though. She is the most beautiful thing in sight, which is saying a good deal. And as for that low, velvety voice of hers, if she asked me to murder my best friend I should have to do it on the spot.’
Mrs Lancey laughed.
‘But I want you to take a personal interest in her, Philip; it means nothing, I know, when you talk like that. I care a great deal about Isabel, she is far more to me than any other woman. That’s rather rare between sisters, I believe; but when it happens it is a great thing. And it makes me wretched to know that there’s something wrong with her.’
‘With her health, do you mean? One wouldn’t think so.’
‘Yes, but I fear it is that.’
‘Is it possible?’ said Trent. ‘Why, Edith, the woman has the complexion of a child and the step of a racehorse and eyes like jewels. She looks like Atalanta in blue linen.’
‘Did Atalanta marry an Egyptian mummy?’ inquired Mrs Lancey.
‘Not by any means—priests of Cybele bear witness!’
‘Well, Isabel did, unfortunately.’
‘It is true,’ said Trent, thoughtfully. ‘That Sir Peregrine looks rather as if he had been dug up somewhere. But I think he owes much of his professional success to that. People like a great doctor to look more or less unhealthy.’
‘Perhaps they do; but I don’t think the doctor’s wife enjoys it very much. Isabel is always happiest when away from him—if he were here now she would be quite different from what you see. You know, Philip, their marriage hasn’t been a success—I always knew it wouldn’t be. It’s lasted five years now, and there are no children. Peregrine never goes about with her; he is one of the busiest men in London—you see what I mean.’
Trent shrugged his shoulders.
‘Let us drop the subject, Edith. Tell me why you want me to know about Lady Bosworth having something the matter with her. I’m not a physician.’
‘No, but there’s something very puzzling about it, as you will see; and you are clever at getting at the truth about things other people don’t understand. Now, I’ll tell you no more. I only want you to observe Bella particularly at dinner this evening, and tell me afterwards what you think. You’ll be sitting opposite to her, between me and Agatha Stone. Now go and talk to her and the Dutchman.’
‘Scheffer’s appearance interests me,’ remarked Trent. ‘He has a face curiously like Frederick the Great’s, and yet there’s a difference—he doesn’t look quite as if his soul were lost for ever and ever.’
‘Well, go and ask him about it,’ suggested Mrs Lancey. ‘I have things to do in the house.’
When the party of seven sat down to dinner that evening, Lady Bosworth had just descended from her room. Trent perceived no change in her; she talked enthusiastically of the loveliness of the Italian evening, and joined in a conversation that was general and lively. It was only after some ten minutes that she fell silent, and that a new look came over her face.
Little by little all animation departed from it. Her eyes grew heavy and dull, her red lips were parted in a foolish smile, and to the high, fresh tint of her cheek there succeeded a disagreeable pallor. There was nothing about this altered appearance in itself that could be called odious. Had she been always so, one would have set her down merely as a beautiful and stupid woman of lymphatic type. But there was something inexpressibly repugnant about such a change in such a being; it was as though the vivid soul had been withdrawn.
All charm, all personal force had departed. It needed an effort to recall her quaint, vivacious talk of an hour ago, now that she sat looking vaguely at the table before her, and uttering occasionally a blank monosyllable in reply to the discourse that Mr Scheffer poured into her ear. She helped herself from the dishes handed to her; some she refused; she made a fairly good dinner in a lifeless way. It was not, Trent told himself, that anything abnormal was done. It was the staring fact that Lady Bosworth was not herself, but someone wholly of another kind, that opened a new and unknown spring of revulsion in the recesses of his heart.
Mrs Stone, with whom he had been talking uninterruptedly as he watched, caught his eye.
‘We don’t notice it,’ she murmured, quickly.
An hour later Mrs Lancey carried Trent off to a garden seat facing the lake.
‘Well?’ she said, quietly, glancing back into the drawing-room.
‘It’s very strange and rather ghastly,’ he answered, nursing his knee. ‘But if you hadn’t told me it puzzled you, I should have thought it was easy to find an explanation.’
‘Drugs, you mean?’ He nodded. ‘Of course everybody must think so. George does, I know. It’s horrible!’ declared Mrs Lancey, with a thump on the arm of the seat. ‘Agatha Stone began hinting at it after the first few days. I told her it was a sort of nervous attack Isabel had been subject to from a child, which was a lie, and of course she didn’t believe it. Gossiping cat! She loathes Isabel, and she’ll spread it round everywhere that my sister is a drug fiend. How I hate her!’
‘But you do believe it isn’t that?’
‘Philip, I don’t know what to believe. Listen, now! The morning after the second time it happened, I asked her what was the matter with her. She said she didn’t know; she began to feel stupid and strange soon after dinner began. It had never happened to her before until she came to us here. It wasn’t either a pleasant or an unpleasant feeling, she said; she just felt indifferent to everything, and completely lazy. Then I asked her point blank if she was taking anything that could account for it. She was much offended at that; told me I had known her long enough to know she never had done and never would do such a thing. And it is certain that it would be utterly against all I ever knew of her. Besides, she denied it; and, though Isabel has her faults, she’s absolutely truthful.’
Trent looked on the ground. ‘Yes, but you may have heard—’
‘Oh, I know! They say that kind of habit makes people lie and deceive who never did before. But you see, she is so completely herself, except just at this time. I simply couldn’t make up my mind to disbelieve her. And besides, why should she ever start such a practice? I don’t see how she would have been drawn into it. If Bella is peculiar about anything, it’s clean, wholesome, hygienic living. She was always that way as a girl, but she was studying to be a doctor, you know, when she met her husband, and that made her ever so much worse. She has every sort of carbolicky idea. She never uses scent or powder or any kind of before-and-after stuff, never puts anything on her hair; she is washing herself from morning till night, but she always uses ordinary yellow soap. She never touches anything alcoholic, or tea, or coffee. You wouldn’t think she had that kind of fad to look at her and her clothes, but she has; and I can’t think of anything in the world she would despise more than dosing herself with things.’
‘Not any kind of cosmetic whatever? That is surprising. Well, it seems to suit her,’ Trent remarked. ‘When she isn’t like this, she is one of the most radiant creatures I ever saw.’
‘I know, and that’s what makes it so irritating for women like myself, who look absolute hags if they don’t assist nature a little. She’s always been as strong as a horse and bursting with vitality, and her looks have never shown the slightest sign of going off. And now this thing has come to her, absolutely suddenly and without warning.’
‘How long has it been going on?’
‘This is the seventh evening. I entreated her to see a doctor, but