The Tysons | Page 8

you'd done?"
"I really cannot say. Nothing to deserve you, I suppose."
"Rubbish! I know all that. But he said there was something, and he
wouldn't tell me what. Anyhow, you didn't do it, did you?"
"Probably not."

"Come, I think you might tell me when I've confessed all my little sins
to you." Mrs. Nevill Tyson was persistent, not because she in the least
wanted to know, but because nobody likes being beaten.
"I don't know what the dear old pater was driving at. I don't suppose he
knew himself. He was a scholar, not a man of the world. He could read
any Greek poet, I daresay, who was dead enough and dull enough; but
when a real live Englishman walked into his study, it seemed to put
him out somehow. He didn't like me, and he showed it. All the same, I
think I could have made him like me if he'd given me a chance. I don't
suppose he does me any injustice now."
"No. He knew an awful lot about those stupid old Greeks and Romans
and people, but I don't think he knew much about you. I expect he
made it up to frighten mother. That reminds me, what do you think
Miss Batchelor says about you? She told mother that it was a pity you
hadn't any profession--every man ought to have a profession--keep you
out of mischief. I wasn't going to have her talking like that about my
husband--the impudent thing!--so I just stopped her yesterday in
Moxon's shop and told her you had a profession. I led up to it so neatly,
you can't think. I said you were going to be a barrister or a judge or
something."
"A judge? That's rather a large order. But you know you mustn't tell
stories, you little minx. Miss Batchelor's too clever to take all that in."
"Well, but it's true. You are going to be a barrister, and everybody
knows that barristers grow into judges, if you feed them properly."
"But I haven't the remotest intention of being a barrister. How did you
get hold of that notion?"
"Oh, I knew it all along. Papa said so."
"You must have been mistaken."
"Not a bit. I'll tell you exactly what he said. I heard him talking about it
to mother in the library. I wasn't listening, you know. I--I heard your

name, and I couldn't help it. He said he expected to see you figuring in
the law courts some of these days--Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty
Division."
Tyson rose, putting her down from his knee as if she had been a baby.
"I hope you didn't tell Miss Batchelor that?"
"Yes, I did though--rather!"
He smiled in spite of himself. "What did she do?"
"Oh, she just stared--over her shoulder; you know her way."
"Look here, Molly, you must not go about saying that sort of thing.
People here don't understand it; they'll only think--"
"What?"
"Never mind what they'll think. The world is chock-full of wickedness,
my child. But if half the people we meet are sinners, the other half are
fools. I never knew any one yet who wasn't one or the other. So don't
think about what they think, but mind what you say. See?"
"I'm sorry." She had come softly up to the window where he stood; and
now she was rubbing his sleeve with one side of her face and smiling
with the other.
He stroked her hair.
"All right. Don't do it again, that's all."
"I won't--if you'll only tell me one thing. Were you ever engaged to
anybody but me?"
"No; I was never engaged to anybody but you."
"Then you were never in love with ten gentlemen at once like the
Countess Pol--"

His answer was cut short by the entrance of Sir Peter Morley, followed
by Captain Stanistreet.
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST STONE
Tyson was much flattered by the rumor that Sir Peter Morley had
pronounced his wife to be "the loveliest woman in Leicestershire"; for
Lady Morley herself was a sufficiently splendid type, with her austere
Puritan beauty. As for the rector, it was considered that his admiration
of Mrs. Nevill Tyson somewhat stultified his utterances in the pulpit.
It is not always well for a woman when the judgment of the other sex
reverses that of her own. It was not well for Mrs. Nevill Tyson to be
told that she had fascinated Sir Peter Morley and spoiled the rector's
sermons; it was not well for her to be worshipped (collectively) by the
riff-raff that swarmed about Thorneytoft at Tyson's invitation; but any
of these things were better than for her to be left, as she frequently was,
to the unmixed society of Captain Stanistreet. He had a reputation.
Tyson thought nothing of going