The Tigress

"He seemed to be quite at home."

"Doubtless he is. Nina can make one feel that way. He was very much at home in the Darling bungalow at Umballa. Just before he fired at me he and Nina seemed to be sharing a single chair. You see, I was there on a spying expedition."

"You mean – " queried Carleigh. He couldn't just reconcile Kneedrock and the word.

"I'd heard that Darling was cruel to her and I traveled all the way from Tuamota to the Punjab to find out."

Sir Caryll held his peace, and Kneedrock added: "Of course I found it was the most unwarranted slander. Darling was a saint."

He got up and closed the three windows. Then he poked the coals, and took a place on the hearth-rug with his back to the grate. The dogs still slept.

"So she's amusing herself with Andrews again, eh!" he chuckled. "Recalling those halcyon days of bloodshed, I suppose."

"Perhaps," said Carleigh thoughtfully, "now, after all these years, she'll marry him."

"Oh, no, she won't," flashed from Kneedrock, who was smiling. "She can't, you know."

"I don't see why not," the other rejoined. "She's her own mistress. She's of age, and a widow, and of sound mind."

The viscount maintained a rather disconcerting silence for the space of several seconds, puffing at his pipe and following the smoke with his eyes. Then he patted the head of the nearest dog with the toe of his boot.

When, finally, he spoke, it was to ask: "Did you ever hear me spoken of as her lover?"

"Yes," answered Carleigh, surprised beyond words.

Kneedrock raised his head and his eyes as they rested for a moment upon Sir Caryll's were curiously devoid of expression.

"I was," he said with a sort of dry grimness. "I'm more than that – I'm her husband."

CHAPTER XXVI

Three Persons Go Three Ways

As he realized the full meaning of Lord Kneedrock's amazing statement, the young and unhappy baronet started. His eyes opened very wide and his jaw dropped, leaving his mouth open, too, though not so wide.

"Yes, we're married," Kneedrock continued. "We've been married a long time."

The only thing that could have drowned the sound of the proverbial dropping pin was the low snoring of one of the sleeping dogs.

"It was one of those useful businesses that are managed sometimes," the speaker amplified without any feeling apparently. "Nobody knew. Nobody knows. I went to South Africa, was supposed to have been killed in battle, and Darling came along.

"She married him at the end of a year, and went to India with him. It was about then that I got my memory back. My head was pretty badly knocked about, you see, and for months I didn't know my own name. Of course I heard about it, but I kept my mouth shut and hid myself away in the South Pacific."

Carleigh just stared. It was altogether too much for him to grasp fully. So he had no questions. But Kneedrock kept on:

"So she wasn't exactly the débutante that Darling thought. Naturally, it's all a mess. Everything's a mess. You take my advice and go off with your mother-in-law."

Carleigh was shaking now as if with the ague.

"They call the whole business love," Nibbetts said. "Well, I thank Heaven I had it young! I'm the one man that Nina can't fool. She knows it. I know it. And you know it, too, now.

"Of course she hasn't any claim on me, and I haven't on her. But we shall neither of us ever marry. That's understood. We can't very well. Don't talk about this. Going? Well, then, good-by, old chap! Better go off with Mrs. Veynol. Good-by!"

Carleigh got out somehow. He was faint and giddy. He went to one of his many clubs, and sat there for a long while. Life looked to him a very low, sordid business.

Outside there was fog and mud, slime and filth. And in his heart there was little that was cleaner.

Nina went down to Puddlewood the next week and surprised everybody.

They weren't expecting her in the least. They hadn't heard a word from her or of her, and they didn't know a thing about the skin-grafting and the wonderful success that Pottow, aided by the Andrews cuticle, had made of it.

They were all gathered in the great hall for tea when she arrived, and her entrance was rather dramatic. She insisted that she should not be announced, but permitted to find her way in alone.

The black staghound, Tara, was with her, and at her command he preceded her, bounding into the group with Nina's umbrella gripped in his lean jaws.

Every woman screamed, and every man who was not already standing sprang to his feet.

"God bless my soul!" cried the duke. "How did that beast get here? It's Nina Darling's. There isn't another such in all England."

Lord Waltheof reached for the umbrella, which Tara gave up without protest, and turned with expectant gaze toward the door.

"It's Mrs. Darling's umbrella," said Wally, examining the initials on the silver-gilt handle. "She must be here."

The duchess rose at that, and her gaze joined that of the hound. She and every one else had the same question in mind: "How will she look?" But there was a very trying delay before it was answered.

Nina came running in an instant later; but, to the dismay of the curious, she was thickly and closely veiled.

From this, of course, they drew their own conclusions, just as she wished them to. Every last one of them believed that her face was not fit to be seen.

Every man, without exception, was sorry – deeply sorry; and every woman, without exception, wasn't. Nina's beauty had always been a hard thing to combat.

For the duchess's kiss she lifted her veil the least bit and presented the extreme point of her chin. The duchess, observing closely, noted that it was unmarred, and concluded that it was the only portion of her great-niece's face that was.

"I have been perfectly brutal to all of you," Nina admitted gaily, "but when you hear my story I'm sure you'll all forgive me."

It is hard for most women to forgive a pretty woman, but to forgive a pretty woman who has suddenly become ugly is not so difficult.

They – the women, that is – were disposed to overlook the poor creature's rudeness. The men were always her slaves, so they didn't count. It was the women she had appealed to, anyhow.

"Nina never is brutal," declared the duke. "I say, Doody, haven't I always said – "

But no one was listening, not even the duchess, who rarely failed to confirm him.

"I've had the most awful time with my burns," Nina was hurrying on; "and I hadn't the heart to write letters, talk, or even see any one. I denied myself to everybody."

"Until you were quite all right again, I suppose?" ventured Lady Bellingdown in an effort to draw her.

"Until I got so desperately lonely – so hungry for the faces and voices of my own people – that I should have come to you even without any face at all."