CHAPTER XXVIII

When Arabella Clinker and her mother were settled together at Wendover,
a strange peace seemed to fall upon the place. John Derringham was
conscious of it upstairs as he lay in his Louis XV bed. By the time he
was allowed to be carried to a sofa in the sitting-room which had been
arranged for him, July had well set in.

He had parted from his Cecilia with suitable things said upon either
side. Even in his misery and abasement, John Derringham was too assured
a spirit and too much a man of the world to have any hesitation or
awkwardness. Mrs. Cricklander had been all that was sympathetic. She
looked superbly full of vigor and the joy of life as she came to say
farewell.

"John, darling," she purred, "you will do everything you are told to by
the doctors while I am away, won't you?" and she caressed his forehead
with her soft hand. "So that I may not have to worry as dreadfully as I
have been doing, when I come back. It has made me quite ill--that is why
I must go to Carlsbad. You will be good now; so that I may find you as
strong and handsome as ever on my return." Then she bent and kissed him.

He promised faithfully, and she never saw the whimsical gleam in his
eyes, because for the moment having gained her end her faculties had
resumed their normal condition, which was not one of superlative
sensitiveness. Like everything else in her utilitarian equipment, fine
perceptions were only assumed when the magnitude of the goal in view
demanded their presence. And even then they merely went as far as
sentinels to warn or encourage her in the progress of her aims, never
wasting themselves upon irrelevant objects.

When her scented presence had left the room, John Derringham clasped his
hands behind his head, and, before he was aware of it, his lips had
murmured "Thank God!"

And then Nemesis fell upon him--his schoolboy sensation of
recreation-time at hand left him, and a blank sense of failure and
hopeless bondage took its place.

Surely he had bartered his soul for a very inadequate mess of pottage.

And where would he sink to under this scorpion whip? Where would go all
his fine aspirations which, even in spite of all the juggling of
political life, still lived in his aims. Halcyone would have understood.

"Oh! my love!" he cried. "My tender love!"

Then that part of him which was strong reasserted itself. He would not
give way to this repining, the thing was done and he must make the best
of