The Tysons | Page 6

shouldn't they talk about her, and why shouldn't she be
engaged to ten gentlemen at once? The more the merrier."
"And you haven't told us the lady's name, so we're none the wiser."
"I forgot it. But it would have been all the same if I hadn't. I never can
remember not to tell things. Oh--Countess--Poli--Polidori! There--you
see. My husband says I'm the soul of indiscretion."
There was a sudden silence. Mrs. Nevill Tyson's last sentence seemed
to detach itself and float about the room, and Miss Batchelor perceived
with a pang of pleasure that if Tyson's wife was not vulgar she was an
arrant fool.
"I suppose you visited all the great cathedrals?" said the Rector.
Perhaps he wished to change the subject; perhaps he felt that by talking
about cathedrals to Mrs. Nevill Tyson he was giving a serious, not to
say sacerdotal, character to a frivolous occupation.
"Well, only St. Peter's and the one at Milan."
"And which did you prefer! I am told that St. Peter's is very like our
own St. Paul's--or I should say St. Paul's--"
"Oh, please don't ask me! I know no more than the man in the moon--I
mean the man in the honeymoon" (that joke was Tyson's), "and a lot he
knows about it. There's the man in the honeymoon," she explained,
nodding merrily in her husband's direction.
Meanwhile Tyson was making himself agreeable to Miss Batchelor.
And this is how he did it.
"I hear, Miss Batchelor, that you are a lady of genius."
There was a rumor that Miss Batchelor was engaged on a work of
fiction, which indeed may have been true, though not exactly in the
sense intended.

"Indeed; who told you that?"
"Scandal. But I never listen to scandal, and I didn't believe it."
"I don't suppose you believe that a woman could be a genius."
"No? I have seen women who were geniuses, before now; but in every
instance it meant--I shall hurt your feelings if I tell you what it meant."
"Not at all. I have no feelings."
"It meant either devilry or disease." Tyson's eyes twinkled wickedly as
he stroked his blonde mustache. He felt a diabolical delight in teasing
Miss Batchelor. There was a time when Miss Batchelor had admired
Tyson. He was not handsome; but his face had character, and she liked
character. Now she hated him and his face and everything belonging to
him, his wife included. But there was no denying that he was clever,
cleverer than any man she had ever met in her life.
"Even a great intellect"--here Tyson looked hard at Miss Batchelor, and
her faded nervous face seemed to shrink under the look--"is a great
misfortune--to a woman. Look at my wife now. She has about as much
intellect as a guinea-pig, and the consequence is she is not only happy
herself, but a cause of happiness to others. There--see!"
Miss Batchelor saw. She saw Sir Peter Morley contending with the
rector for the honor of handing Mrs. Nevill Tyson her tea. They were
joined by Stanistreet. Yes, Stanistreet. The rector seemed to have drawn
the line nowhere that day. There was no mistaking the tall figure, alert
and vigorous, the lean dark face, a little eager, a little hard. And that
very clever woman Miss Batchelor sat hungry and thirsty--very hungry
and very thirsty--and Tyson stood behind her stroking his mustache. He
was not looking at her now, nor thinking of her. He was contemplating
that adorable piece of folly, his wife.
CHAPTER III
MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON AT HOME

Perhaps it was well that Mrs. Nevill Tyson took things so lightly,
otherwise she might have been somewhat oppressed by her
surroundings at Thorneytoft. That hideous old barrack stared with all
the uncompromising truculence of bare white stone on nature that
smiled agreeably round it in lawn and underwood. Old Tyson had
bought the house as it stood from an impecunious nobleman, supplying
its deficiencies according to his own very respectable fancy. The result
was a little startling. Worm-eaten oak was flanked by mahogany veneer,
brocade and tapestry were eked out with horse-hair and green rep, gules
and azure from the stained-glass lozenge lattices were reflected in a
hundred twinkling, dangling lusters; and you came upon lions rampant
in a wilderness of wax-flowers. What with antique heraldry and
utilitarian furniture, you would have said there was no place there for
anything so frivolously pretty as Mrs. Nevill Tyson; unless, indeed, her
figure served to give the finishing touch to the ridiculous medley.
The sight of Thorneytoft would have taken the heart out of Mrs.
Wilcox if anything could. Mrs. Wilcox herself looked remarkably crisp
and fresh and cheerful in her widow's dress. Tyson rather liked Mrs.
Wilcox than otherwise (perhaps because she was a