he tried
to wait and master himself a little; it was peculiar torture to have
left them there now. He felt he would like to go back to the gallery and
at least spoil their morning. But that, his sound sense told him, would
be a mistake. He would wait there till Nigel came in.

CHAPTER XII

A LOVE SCENE

Percy waited on and on, minute after minute, half-hour after half-hour,
reading the morning papers, staring with apparent deep interest at the
pictures in the weekly journals--rather depressing foreshortened
snapshots of society at racecourses. These people, caught unawares,
seemed to be all feet and parasols, or smiles and muffs. Then, feeling
rather exhausted, he ordered a drink, and forgot it, and smoked a
cigarette. When he saw anyone he knew, he put on an absent-minded air,
and avoided the friend's eye. He looked at his watch as if in sudden
anxiety, and found that it was half-past one. This was the time he was
to meet his little brother at Prince's. He made inquiries and found that
Nigel was expected to lunch at the club. It was horrible! He could not
leave the boy at the restaurant waiting for him, and he was not up to
the mark either, at the moment, for seeing Nigel Hillier; he felt as if
the top of his head had been smashed in. Yet his common-sense and
reasoning power gradually prevailed over his emotion. And as he sat
there, Percy changed his mind.

* * * * *

At first he had thought it would be cowardly to her to attack his wife
on the subject; it was the man with whom he should quarrel. And now it
seemed to him different. His point of view altered. It seemed only fair
now to give Bertha herself a chance of explaining matters. Thinking of
her fresh, frank expression that morning, and looking back, he began to
have, by some sort of second sight, a vision of his own stupid
injustice. No! he must have been wrong! Nigel may have been a scoundrel,
or--anything--but it couldn't be Bertha's fault. She may have been
imprudent, out of pure innocence; that was all.

He got up, and now he decided to take his brother out to lunch, and then
go back and talk to Bertha.

* * * * *

During the noisy, crowded lunch at Prince's, which entertained the boy
so much that there was no necessity for the elder brother to talk, Percy
came to a firm decision.

He would never tell Bertha anything at all about the anonymous letters.

He would tell her that