The moment that Rosemary came into the room she guessed that Elza somehow or other had heard the news. She had tears in her big, kind eyes, but they were tears of emotion, not of sorrow or anxiety.
"Philip is coming home with Anna!" she cried as soon as she caught sight of Rosemary.
"Who told you?" Rosemary asked.
"General Naniescu sent his captain to tell me. I only knew it five minutes ago. But oh, my dear, they have been such five minutes!"
Rosemary kissed her with tender affection. She did not feel somehow as if she could say much.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Elza went on while she put a few finishing touches to her toilet. "And has not Naniescu been kind? Of course I knew that they could not do anything to Philip because he has done nothing, and I don't believe that Anna did anything either. But you know, my dear, these days some awful mistakes do occur. But," she added lightly, "I have so often experienced it in life that men are not nearly so cruel as they are credited to be. One is so apt to pass judgment on insufficient evidence. Give a man the chance of doing a kind act, that is my motto, and he will nearly always do it."
Fortunately that Elza was rather fussy for the moment, fidgeting about the room and obviously trying to calm her nerves, so she did not notice Rosemary's silent, unresponsive way.
"When do you expect Philip and Anna?" Rosemary said at last.
"This afternoon," Elza exclaimed, and her words rang out like a little cry of joy. "And you know Maurus is so happy that he has actually gone down in order to say something civil to Naniescu, who, of course, is staying for lunch. Well," she added after a moment or two, when she had gathered up her keys, her rings, her handkerchief, and given a final tap to her hair, "shall we go down too?"
Without a word Rosemary followed her. She felt as if she must choke. Elza's happiness was going to be the most severe trial of all during this terrible month that lay ahead of her.
"Oh, and I was almost forgetting," Elza resumed, while she tripped lightly along the gallery towards the stairs, "the smaller joy beside the greater—the greatest one! I have heard from Peter Blakeney."
"From Peter?"
"Yes. He is at Cluj, at the New York. He is over here about some arrangement he wants to make for a cricket match or something silly of that sort—you know what Peter is: quite mad about that silly cricket. I had a letter from him this morning, but when it came I had no thought for anything except Philip. I must let you read it presently. I don't really know what he says, but if he is at Cluj we are sure to see him very soon."
She prattled on as merry as a bird. She seemed twenty years younger all of a sudden—her step was light and springy, her eyes were bright, her voice was fresh and clear. Rosemary kept on repeating to herself:
"She need not know for at least three weeks. She need not know, and I must pretend—pretend—at any cost. She will know soon enough, poor darling."
And Rosemary did manage to pretend; for the next three hours she was just an automaton, wound up to play a certain part. To everyone she had to pretend—to Elza, to Maurus, to that odious Naniescu, and even to Jasper. The worst of all was pretending to Jasper, for from this she got no reprieve. Jasper's kind, anxious eyes were on her all the time, and she would not let him see that she was anxious about Peter. Somehow the episode about Peter had made everything so much worse. Not that she harboured the thought for a moment that Peter was intriguing with Naniescu. That, of course, was out of the question. He had come to arrange something about a cricket match, and, of course, he had to see Naniescu about it, get his permission, and so on. There were ten chances to one that Peter had written to her and told her all about it, and that his letter had gone astray. No, no, no! There could be no thought of an intrigue between Peter and these Roumanians; but Rosemary felt that Jasper thought there was, and was vaguely pitying her because of some unknown treachery on Peter's part. It was odious!
And with it all Elza's obvious happiness was almost intolerable to witness, and even Maurus departed from his habitual ill-temper to exchange facetious remarks with Naniescu. Time seemed leaden-footed. The interminable luncheon dragged on wearily, as did the hour of coffee and liqueurs, of endless small talk and constant pretence. But even the worst moments in life must become things of the past sooner or later, and when Rosemary began to feel that she could not stand the whole thing any longer, she found that Naniescu and his officers were actually taking their leave.
After luncheon Jasper was quite charming. He had thought the whole matter over, he said, and decided that it was in his power to make a personal appeal to the King in favour of Philip and Anna. He had certainly rendered more than one signal service to Roumania during and after the war, and he thought that in these countries personal influence counted a great deal. At any rate, there would be no harm in trying, and he would start for Bucharest immediately. He had spoken about the proposed journey to Elza and Maurus, alleging official business, and Elza had already arranged that he should be driven into Cluj in time for the afternoon express. Rosemary's heart was at once filled with gratitude; she felt angry with herself for having mistrusted him. She threw herself whole-heartedly into the preparations for his journey, lulling her troubled soul with the belief that it would prove to be the happy issue out of this terrible situation. When it was time for him to go she wished him God-speed with more fervour and affection than she had shown him for days.
"Bar accidents," he assured her, "I shall be back in a fortnight. If I have definite good news to report I will wire. But even if you don't hear from me, I shall be back, as I say, in fifteen days."
"I shall count the hours until your return," she said.
"And in the meanwhile," he urged with deep earnestness, "you will do nothing without consulting me."
She smiled at this want of logic, so unlike her methodical husband.
"I could not consult you, dear," she said. "You won't be here."
"No, no, I know," he insisted; "but I want you to promise that you will leave things as they are until my return. I don't want you to give anything away to Elza, or to Philip or Anna. Promise me."
"Of course I'll promise," she replied readily. "God knows I don't want to be the one to break the awful news to them."
"Or to Peter," he added gravely.
"Peter?"
"I want you to promise me—to promise, Rosemary, that you will not speak of this miserable affair to Peter Blakeney."
Then, as she seemed to hesitate, vaguely puzzled at his desperate earnestness, he again insisted:
"Promise me, Rosemary, whatever you may hear, whatever you may see, whatever may be planned by Elza or anybody else, promise me that you will not speak of it to Peter."
"But, Jasper," she exclaimed, "why? Of course I will promise, if you wish it, but frankly I don't understand why you insist, so solemnly too," she added, trying to assume a lightness of heart which she was far from feeling. Then she went on more gravely: "I could trust Peter as I would myself."
"You can put it down to nerves," Jasper said, with the ghost of a smile, "to intuition or foreboding, or merely to jealousy and my wretched character, to anything you please, my dear one. But promise me! Promise me that everything in connexion with this miserable affair will remain just between you and me. Let the others talk, guess, plan. Promise me that you will never speak of it with Peter. Promise me, or I will throw up the sponge, remain here to look after you, and let Naniescu do his worst with the lot of them."
Thus, alternately demanding, entreating, threatening, he extracted the promise from her, even though her heart cried out against what she felt was treachery to Peter. Jasper's insistence filled her with a vague sense of foreboding not unmixed with fear; and yet, the very next moment, as soon as he had her promise, he became tender, soft, loving, as if trying to make her forget his solemn earnestness of a while ago. He took her in his arms and gazed into her eyes with an intensity of longing which made her own heart ache with self-reproach.
"If God there be," he whispered softly, as if to himself, "it was cruel of Him to make you so beautiful—and so desirable."
Again his mood had changed. Tenderness had turned into passion, fierce, almost primeval, and he held her now more like a man defending the greatest treasure he possessed on God's earth than like a husband taking affectionate leave of his wife.
"If I should lose you, Rosemary," he murmured, "because of this."
She tried to laugh and to speak flippantly. "Lose me?" she said. "You have little chance of doing that, my dear, for this or any other cause. Naniescu has not the power of life and death over me," she added more seriously.
There was something about Jasper at this moment that she could not entirely fathom. Twice before she had seen him in these moods of violent passion akin almost to savagery, when she felt utterly helpless and absolutely in his power. She had the feeling that when he was in one of these moods he was capable of any violence against her if she dared to disobey or resist. Not that Rosemary was afraid; she had never in her life been afraid of anyone; but she had always been mistress of herself, and at this moment, held tightly by the man to whom she had sworn love and fealty, she felt like a slave of olden times in the grip of her lord.
"You—you will care for me some day, Rosemary?" he asked with passionate earnestness. "Say that you will some day, when all this—all this is forgotten, and we are back again in England, free to live our own lives, free to love. You will care for me then, Rosemary, will you not? For I could not live beside you for long, feeling all the time that you did not belong to me with your whole soul. You have such haunting eyes—eyes such as pixies and fairies have—maddening eyes. I should go crazy presently if I failed to kindle the love-light in those eyes."
He kissed her eyes, her mouth, her throat. Rosemary would have struggled, would have screamed if she dared. Fortunately a knock at the door and the entrance of one of the menservants, who came to fetch milord's luggage, put an end to a situation which Rosemary found very difficult to endure. After the man had gone the spell appeared to be broken. Jasper became once more the courteous, grave man of the world he had always been. The episode of a moment ago did not seem to have occurred at all, as far as he was concerned, and while Rosemary felt her teeth chattering and the palms of her hands were covered with a cold sweat, Jasper moved about the room and spoke to her about his proposed journey, his certain return in a fortnight, as if nothing had happened.