Chapter 22 - Page 2

disguised her newly wedded state by a series of
ingenious prevarications. She wrote a letter that Saturday evening to
her mother--Lewisham had helped her to write it--making a sort of
proclamation of her heroic departure and promising a speedy
visit. They posted the letter so that it might not be delivered until
Monday.

She was quite sure with Lewisham that only the possible dishonour of
mediumship could have brought their marriage about--she sank the
mutual attraction beyond even her own vision. There was more than a
touch of magnificence, you perceive, about this affair.

It was Lewisham had persuaded her to delay that reassuring visit until
Monday night. "One whole day of honeymoon," he insisted, was to be
theirs. In his prenuptial meditations he had not clearly focussed the
fact that even after marriage some sort of relations with Mr. and
Mrs. Chaffery would still go on. Even now he was exceedingly
disinclined to face that obvious necessity. He foresaw, in spite of a
resolute attempt to ignore it, that there would be explanatory scenes
of some little difficulty. But the prevailing magnificence carried him
over this trouble.

"Let us at least have this little time for ourselves," he said, and
that seemed to settle their position.

Save for its brevity and these intimations of future trouble it was a
very fine time indeed. Their midday dinner together, for example--it
was a little cold when at last they came to it on Saturday--was
immense fun. There was no marked subsidence of appetite; they ate
extremely well in spite of the meeting of their souls, and in spite of
certain shiftings of chairs and hand claspings and similar delays. He
really made the acquaintance of her hands then for the first time,
plump white hands with short white fingers, and the engagement ring
had come out of its tender hiding-place and acted as keeper to the
wedding ring. Their eyes were perpetually flitting about the room and
coming back to mutual smiles. All their movements were faintly
tremulous.

She professed to be vastly interested and amused by the room and its
furniture and her position, and he was delighted by her delight. She
was particularly entertained by the chest of drawers in the living
room, and by Lewisham's witticisms at the toilet tidies and the
oleographs.

And after the chops and the most of the tinned salmon and the very new
loaf were gone they fell to with fine effect upon a tapioca
pudding. Their talk was fragmentary. "Did you hear her call me
_Madame? Mádáme_--so!" "And presently I must go out and do some
shopping. There are all the things for Sunday and Monday morning to
get. I must make a list. It will never do to let her