There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should make
her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a
click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely
poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman:
dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pull
the wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively,
furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the fun
it promised. Taken off her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats she
sat up straight and stared; but with the eleventh her attitude relaxed.
She had regained her outward nonchalance, and resolved upon her system
of fence.
"Ah," she said, on a tone judiciously compounded of feminine artlessness
and of forthright British candour, and with a play of the eyebrows that
attributed her momentary suscitation to the workings of memory, "of
course--Blanchemain. The Sussex Blanchemains. I expect there's only one
family of the name?"
"I've never heard of another," assented the young man.
"The Ventmere Blanchemains," she pursued pensively. "Lord Blanchemain of
Ventmere is your titled head?"
"Exactly," said he.
"I knew the late Lord Blanchemain--I knew him fairly well," she
mentioned, always with a certain pensiveness.
"Oh--?" said he, politely interested.
"Yes," said she. "But I've never met his successor. The two were not, I
believe, on speaking terms. Of course,"--and her forthright British
candour carried her trippingly over the delicate ground,--"it's common
knowledge that the family is divided against itself--hostile branches--a
Protestant branch and a Catholic. The present lord, if I've got it
right, is a Catholic, and the late lord's distant cousin?"
"You've got it quite right," the young man assured her, with a nod, and
a little laugh. "They had the same great-great-grandfather. The last
few lords have been Protestants, but in our branch the family have never
forsaken the old religion."
"I know," said she. "And wasn't it--I've heard the story, but I'm a bit
hazy about it--wasn't it owing to your--is 'recusancy' the word?--that
you lost the title? Wasn't there some sort of sharp practice at your
expense in the last century?"
The young man had another little laugh.
"Oh, nothing," he answered, "that wasn't very much the fashion. The late
lord's great-grandfather denounced his elder brother as a Papist and a
Jacobite--nothing more than that. It was after the 'Forty-five. So the
cadet took the title and estates. But with the death of the late lord, a
dozen years or so ago, the younger line became extinct, and the title
reverted."
"I see," said my lady. She knitted her eyebrows, computing. After an
instant, "General Blanchemain," she resumed, "as the present lord was
called for the best part of his life, is a bachelor. You will be one of
his nephews?" She raised her eyes inquiringly.
"The son of his brother Philip," said the young man.
Lady Blanchemain sat up straight again.
"But then," she cried, forgetting to conceal her perturbation, "then
you're the heir. Philip Blanchemain had but one son, and was the
General's immediate junior. You're John Blanchemain--John Francis Joseph
Mary. You're the heir."
The young man smiled--at her eagerness, perhaps.
"The heir-presumptive--I suppose I am," he said.
Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently tittered.
"See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, "You're
heir to an uncommonly good old title," she informed him.
"I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," said he.
"Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out.
"Oh, not so very old," he submitted. "Only seventy, or thereabouts, and
younger in many respects than I am. I hope he'll live for ever."
"Hum!" said she, and appeared to fall a-musing. Absently, as it seemed,
and slowly, she was pulling off her gloves.
"Feuds in families," she said, in a minute, "are bad things. Why don't
you make it up?"
The young man waved his hand, a pantomimic _non-possumus_.
"There's no one left to make it up with--the others are all dead."
"Oh?" she wondered, her eyebrows elevated, whilst automatically her
fingers continued to operate upon her gloves. "I thought the last lord
left a widow. I seem to have heard of a _Lady_ Blanchemain somewhere."
The young man gave still another of his little laughs.
"Linda Lady Blanchemain?" he said. "Yes, one hears a lot of her. A
highly original character, by all accounts. One hears of her
everywhere."
Linda Lady Blanchemain's lip began to quiver; but she got it under
control.
"Well?" she questioned--eyes fixing his, and brimming with a kind of
humorous defiance, as if to say, "Think me an impertinent old meddler
if you will, and do your worst,"--"Why don't you make it up with _her_?"
But he didn't seem to mind the meddling in the least. He stood at ease,
and plausibly put his case.
"Why don't I? Or why doesn't my uncle? My uncle is a temperamental
conservative, a devotee to his traditions--the sort of man who will
never do anything that hasn't been the constant habit of his forebears.
He would no more dream of healing a well-established family feud than of
selling the family plate. And I--well, surely, it would never be for me
to make the advances."
"No, you're right," acknowledged Lady Blanchemain. "The advances should
come from her. But people have such a fatal way--even without being
temperamental conservatives--of leaving things as they find them.
Besides, never having seen you, she couldn't know how nice you are. All
the same, I'll confess, if you insist upon it, that she ought to be
ashamed of herself. Come--let's make it up."
She rose, a great soft glowing vision of benignancy, and held out her
hand, now gloveless, her pretty little smooth plump right hand, with
its twinkling rings.
"Oh!" cried the astonished young man, the astonished, amused, moved,
wondering, and entirely won young man, his sea-blue eyes wide open, and
a hundred lights of pleasure and surprise dancing in them.
The benignant vision floated towards him, and he took the little white
hand in his long lean brown one.