If Eustace had been a normal young man his father would
have shrugged his shoulder's, and thought: "Oh, well! There it is!" As
it was, he had literally not known what to think.
And now, crossing the saloon which intervened between the dining-room
and the study, he said to his wife uneasily:
"Is it this woman again, Gertrude--or what?"
Lady Valleys answered with a shrug:
"Goodness knows, my dear."
Miltoun was standing in the embrasure of a window above the terrace. He
looked well, and his greeting was the same as usual.
"Well, my dear fellow," said Lord Valleys, "you're all right again
evidently--what's the news?"
"Only that I've decided to resign my seat."
Lord Valleys stared.
"What on earth for?"
But Lady Valleys, with the greater quickness of women, divining already
something of the reason, had flushed a deep pink.
"Nonsense, my dear," she said; "it can't possibly be necessary, even
if----" Recovering herself, she added dryly:
"Give us some reason."
"The reason is simply that I've joined my life to Mrs. Noel's, and I
can't go on as I am, living a lie. If it were known I should obviously
have to resign at once."
"Good God!" exclaimed Lord Valleys.
Lady Valleys made a rapid movement. In the face of what she felt to be
a really serious crisis between these two utterly different creatures
of the other sex, her husband and her son, she had dropped her mask and
become a genuine woman.
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