Austin?"
"One or two round about, I fancy," said I.
"Nice little ones—to suit a single man?" she asked, her bright eyes now seeking, now eluding, a meeting with his.
"I suppose I can choose the size of my house for myself," Octon growled. "I don't want Austin's advice about it."
"Oh, it wasn't poor Mr. Austin who—who spoke about the size of the house." A sudden thought seemed to strike her. "You might stay on and be something in the Institute!"
"I'd burn the house over my head sooner."
"Burn my pretty house! Oh, Mr. Octon! I should be so hurt—and you'd be sent to prison! What a lot of police it would need to take you there!"
The last sentence mollified him—and it was clever of her to know that it would. He had his primitive side, too. He was primitive enough to love a compliment to his muscles.
"I'd be out of the country before they came—with you under my arm," he said, with a laugh.
"That would be very forgiving—but hardly proper, would it, Chat? Unless we were—Oh, but what nonsense! Why don't you like my poor Institute?"
He relapsed into ill-humor, and it developed into downright rudeness.
"It's nothing to me how people make fools of themselves," he said.
Jenny did not always resent his rudeness. But she never compromised her right to resent it. She exercised the right now, rising with instantaneous dignity. "It's time for us to go, Chat. Mr. Austin, will you kindly look after Mr. Octon's comfort for the rest of the evening?" She swept out, Chat pattering after her in a hen-like flutter. Octon drank off his glass of wine with a muttered oath. Excellent as the port was, it seemed to do him no good. He leaned over to me—perfectly sober, be it understood (I never saw him affected by liquor), but desperately savage. "I won't stand that," he said. "If she sticks to that, I'll never come back to this house when I've walked out of it to-night."
I was learning how to deal with his tempests. "I shall hope to have the pleasure of encountering you elsewhere," I observed politely. "Meanwhile I have my orders. Pray help yourself to port."
He did that, but at the same moment hurled at me the order—"Take her that message."
"There's pen and ink behind you, Octon."
Temper is a terrible master—and needs looking after even as a servant. He jumped up, wrote something—what I could only guess—and rang the bell violently. I could imagine Jenny's smile—I did not ring like that.
"Take that to your mistress," he commanded. "It's the address she wanted." But he had carefully closed the envelope, and probably Loft had his private opinion.
We sat in silence till the answer came. "Miss Driver says she is much obliged, sir, for the address," said Loft as, with a wave of his hand, he introduced a footman with coffee, "and she needn't trouble you any more in the matter—as you have another engagement to-night."
Under Loft's eyes he had pulled himself together; he received the message with an appearance of indifference which quite supported the idea that it related to some trifle and that he really had to go away early; I had not given him credit for such a power of suddenly regaining self-control. He nodded, and said lightly to me, "Well, since Miss Driver is so kind, I'll be off in another ten minutes." The presence of servants must, in the long run, create a great deal of good manners.
When Loft was out of the room Octon dropped his disguise. He brought his big hand down on the table with a slap, saying, "There's an end of it!"
"Why shouldn't she build an Institute? If you take a lease for only seven years, how are you aggrieved by getting notice to quit at the end of the term?"
"Don't argue round the fringe of things. Don't be a humbug," he admonished me, scornfully enough, yet for once, as I fancied, with a touch of gentleness and liking. "You've damned sharp eyes, and I've something else to do than take the trouble to blind them."
"No extraordinary acuteness of vision is necessary," I ventured to remark.
He rose from his chair with a heavy sigh, leaving his coffee and brandy untouched. I felt inclined to tell him that in all likelihood he was taking the matter too seriously: he was assuming finality—a difficult thing to assume when Jenny was in the case. He came to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. "They manage 'em better in Africa," he said with a sardonic grin. "Of course I'd no business to say that to her—but hadn't she been trying to draw me all the time? She does it—then she makes a shindy!"
"I'll see you a bit on your way," I said. He accepted my offer by slipping his hand under my arm. I opened the door for us to pass out. There stood Chat on the threshold. Octon regarded her with an ill-subdued impatience. Chat was fluttering still.
"Oh, Mr. Octon, she's—she's so angry! Might I—oh, might I take a message to her room? She's gone upstairs and forbidden me to follow."
"Thank you, but there's no message to take."
"If you would just say something——!"
"There's no message to take." Again his tone was not rough—it was moody, almost absent: but, as he left Chat behind in her useless agitation, he leaned on my arm very heavily. Though I counted his whole great body as for me less than her little finger, yet a subtle male freemasonry stirred in me. He had behaved very badly—for a man should bear a pretty woman's pin-pricks—yet he was hard hit; all against him as I was, I knew that he was hard hit. Moreover, he had summed up Jenny's procedure pretty accurately.
We put on our coats—it was now September—undid the big door, and went out, down the steps, into a clear frosty night. We had walked many yards along the drive before he spoke. At last he said, very quietly—
"You're a good chap, Austin, and I'm sorry I've made a row to-night. Yes, I'm sorry for that. But whether I'm sorry I've been kicked out or not—well, that's a difficult question. My temper—well, sometimes I'm a bit afraid of it."
"Oh, that's nothing. You've both got tempers. You'll make it up."
He spoke with a calm deliberation unusual with him. "I don't think I'd better," he said. "I don't quite trust myself: I might do something—queer."
In my opinion that possibility about him attracted Jenny; but it needed no artificial fostering, and I held my peace.
There were electric lights at intervals down the drive: at this moment I could see his face plainly. I thoroughly agreed with what he said and understood his judgment of himself. But it was hard to see him look like that about it. Suddenly—as I still looked—his expression changed. A look of apprehension came over him—but he smiled also, and gripped my arm tightly. A figure walked out of the darkness into the light of the lamp.
I recalled how I had found her sitting by my hearth one night—in time to make me recall my resignation. Was she here to make Octon unsay his determination?
She came up to us smiling—with no air of surprise, real or affected, and with no explanation of her own presence.
"Both of you! What luck! I didn't think you'd come away from the house yet."
"I've come away from the house, Miss Driver," said Octon—rather grimly.
"In fact you've—'walked out of the house'—?" asked Jenny, smiling. The dullest ears could not miss the fact that she was quoting.
"Yes," answered Octon briefly, leaving the next move with her. She had no hesitation over it.
"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath!" she cried gayly. "The sun is down, but the moon will be up soon, and if you won't quarrel any more I'll keep you company for a little bit of the way." She turned to me, "Do you mind waiting at the house a quarter of an hour? I've had a letter from Mr. Cartmell that I want to consult you about."
Octon had not replied to her invitation and did not now. As I said, "All right—I'll smoke a pipe outside and wait for