Quite an hour after Stafford had started to meet Ida, Miss Falconer
made her appearance, coming slowly down the stairs in the daintiest of
morning frocks, with her auburn hair shining like old gold in the
sunlight, and an expression of languor in her beautiful face which
would have done credit to a hot-house lily.
She had slept the sleep of the just--the maid who had gone to wake her
with her early cup of tea had been almost startled by the
statuesqueness of her beauty, as she lay with her head pillowed on her
snow-white arm and her wonderful hair streaming over the pillow--had
suffered herself to be dressed with imperial patience, and looked--as
Howard, who stood at the bottom of the stairs--said to himself, "like a
queen of the Incas descending to her throne-room."
"Good-morning, Miss Falconer," he greeted her. "It's a lovely morning;
you'll find it nicely aired." She smiled languidly.
"That means that I am late." she said, her eyes resting languidly on
his cynically smiling face.
"Good heavens, no!" he responded. "You can't be late or early in this
magic palace. Whenever you 'arrive' you will find things--'things' in
the most comprehensive sense--ready for you. Breakfast at Brae Wood is
the most moveable of feasts. I've proved that, for I'm a late bird
myself; and to my joy I have learned that this is the only house with
which I am acquainted that you can get red-hot bacon and kidneys at any
hour from eight to twelve; that lunch runs plenteously from one to
three, and that you can get tea and toast--my great and only weakness,
Miss Falconer--whenever you like to ring for it. You will find Lady
Clansford presiding at the breakfast-table: I believe she has been
sitting there--amiable martyr as she is--since the early dawn."
She smiled at him with languid approval, as if he were some paid
jester, and went into the breakfast-room. There were others there
beside Lady Clansford--most of them the young people--it is, alas! only
the young who can sleep through the bright hours of a summer's
morn--and a discussion on the programme of the day was being carried on
with a babel of voices and much laughter.
"You shall decide for us, Miss Falconer!" exclaimed one of the young
men, whose only name appeared to be Bertie, for he was always addressed
as and spoken of by it. "It's a toss-up between a drive and a turn on
the lake in the electric launch. _I_ proposed a sail, but there seemed
to be a confirmed and general scepticism as to my yachting capacities,
and Lady Plaistow says she doesn't want to be drowned before the end of
the season. What would you like to do?"
"Sit somewhere in the shade with a book," she replied, promptly but
slowly.
There was a shout of laughter.
"That is just what Mr. Howard replied," said Bertie, complainingly.
"Oh, Mr. Howard! Everyone knows that he is the laziest man in the whole
world," remarked Lady Clansford, plaintively. "What is Mr. Orme going
to do? Where is he? Does anyone know?"
There was a general shaking of heads and a chorus of "Noes."
"I had a swim with him this morning, but I've not seen him since," said
Bertie. "It's no use waiting for Orme; he mightn't turn up till
dinner-time. Miss Falconer, if I promise not to drown you, will make
one for the yacht? The man told me it would be all ready."
She shook her head as she helped herself to a couple of strawberries.
"No, thanks," she said, with her musical drawl. "I know what that
means. You drift into the middle of the lake or the river, the wind
drops, and you sit in a scorching sun and get a headache. Please leave
me out. I shall stick to my original proposal. Perhaps, if you don't
drown anyone this time, I may venture with you another day."
She leant back and smiled at them under her lids, as the discussion
flowed and ebbed round her, with an air of placid contempt and wonder
at their excitement; and presently, murmuring something to Lady
Clansford, who, as chaperone and deputy hostess was trying to coax them
into some decision, she rose and went out to the terrace.
There, lying back in a deck-chair, in a corner screened from any
possible draught by the glass verandah, was Mr. Howard with one of Sir
Stephen's priceless Havanas between his lips, a French novel in his
hand, and a morning paper across his knees. He rose as she approached,
and checking a sigh of resignation, offered her his chair.
"Oh, no," she said, with a smile which showed that she knew what the
effort of politeness cost him. "You'd hate me if I took your chair, I
know; and though, of course, I don't in the least care whether you hate
me or not, I shouldn't like putting you to the trouble of so exhaustive
an emotion."
Howard smiled at her with frank admiration.
"Let's compromise it," he said. "I'll drag that chair up here--it's out
of the sun, you know--so, and arrange these cushions so, and put up the
end for your feet so, and--how is that, Miss Falconer?"
"Thanks," she murmured, sinking into the soft nest he had made.
"Do you object to my cigar? Say so, if you do, and--"
"You'll go off to some other nook," she put in. "No, I like it."
His eye shone with keen appreciation: this girl was not only a
beauty--which is almost common nowadays--but witty, which is rare.
"Thanks! Would you like the paper? Don't hesitate if you would; I'm not
reading it; I never do. I keep it there so that I can put it over my
face if I feel like sleeping--which I generally do."
She declined the paper with a gesture of her white hand. "No, I'd
rather talk; which means that you are to talk and I'm to listen: will
it exhaust you too much to tell me where the rest of the people are? I
left a party in the breakfast-room squabbling over the problem how to
kill time; but where are the others? My father, for instance?"
"He is in the library with Baron Wirsch, Mr. Griffenberg, and the other
financiers. They are doubtless engaged in some mystic rites connected
with the worship of the Golden Calf, rites in which the words 'shares,'
'stocks,' 'diamonds,' 'concessions,' appear at frequent intervals. I
suppose your father, having joined them, is a member of the
all-powerful sect of money-worshippers."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose so. And Mr. Orme--is he one of them?" she asked, with
elaborate indifference.
Howard smiled cynically.
"Stafford! No; all that he knows about money is the art of spending it;
and what he doesn't know about that isn't worth knowing. It slips
through his fingers like water through a sieve; and one of those
mysteries which burden my existence is, how he always manages to have
some for a friend up a tree."
"Is he so generous, then?" she asked, with a delicate yawn behind her
hand.
Howard nodded, and was silent for a moment, then he said musingly:
"You've got on my favorite subject--Stafford--Miss Falconer. And I warn
you that if I go on I shall bore you."
"Well, I can get up and go away," she said, languidly. "He is a friend
of yours, I suppose? By the way, did you know that he stopped those
ridiculous horses last night and probably saved my life?"
"For goodness sake don't let him hear you say that, or even guess that
you think it," he said, with an affectation of alarm. "Stafford would
be inexpressibly annoyed. He hates a fuss even more than most
Englishmen, and would take it very unkindly if you didn't let a little
thing like that pass unnoticed. Oh, yes, I am his greatest friend. I
don't think"--slowly and contemplatively--"that there is anything he
wouldn't do for me or anything I wouldn't do for him--excepting get up
early--go out in the rain--Oh, it isn't true! I'm only bragging," he
broke off, with a groan. "I've done both and shall do them whenever he
wants me to. I'm a poor creature, Miss Falconer." "A martyr on the
altar of friendship," she said. "Mr. Orme must be very irresistible."
"He is," he assented, with an air of profound melancholy. "Stafford has
the extremely unpleasant knack of getting everybody to do what he
wants. It's very disgusting, but it's true. That is why he is so
general a favourite. Why, if you walk into any drawing-room and asked
who was the most popular man in London, the immediate and unanimous
reply would be 'Stafford Orme.'"
She settled the cushions a little more comfortably.
"You mean amongst men?" she said.
Howard smiled and eyed her questioningly.
"Well--I didn't," he replied, drily.
She laughed a little scornfully.
"Oh, I know the sort of man he is," she said. "I've read and heard
about them. The sort of man who falls in love with every woman he meet.
'A servant of dames'!"
Howard leant back and laughed with cynical enjoyment.
"You never were further out," he said. "He flirts--oh, my aunt, how he
flirts!--but as to falling in love--Did you ever see an iceberg, Miss
Falconer?"
She shook her head.
"Well, it's one of the biggest, the most beautiful frauds in the world.
When you meet one sailing along in the Atlantic, you think it one of
the nicest, sweetest things you ever saw: it's so dazzlingly bright,
with its thousand and one colours glittering in the sunlight. You quite
fall in love with it, and it looks so harmless, so enticing, that
you're tempted to get quite close to it; which no doubt is amusing to
the iceberg, but is slightly embarrassing for you; for the iceberg is
on you before you know it, and--and there isn't enough left of you for
a decent funeral. That's Stafford all the way. He's so pleasant, so
frank, so lovable, that you think him quite harmless; but while you're
admiring his confounded ingratiating ways, while you're growing
enthusiastic about his engaging tricks--he's the best rider, the best
dancer, the best shot--oh, but you must have heard of him!--he is
bearing down upon you; your heart goes under, and he--ah, well, he just
sails over you smiling, quite unconscious of having brought you to
everlasting smash."
"You are indeed a friend," she said with languid irony.
"Oh, you think I'm giving him away?" he said. "My dear Miss Falconer,
everybody knows him. Every ball-room every tennis-court, is strewed
with his wrecks. And all the time he doesn't know it; but goes his way
crowned with a modesty which is the marvel and the wonder of this most
marvellous of ages."
"It sounds like a hero out of one of 'Ouida's' novels," she remarked,
as listlessly as before.
But behind her lowered lids her eyes were shining with a singular
brightness.
Howard turned to her delightedly.
"My dear Miss Falconer, if you were a man I should ask to shake hands
with you. It so exactly describes him. That's just what he is. As
handsome as the dew--I beg your pardon!--as frank as a boy, as gentle
as a woman, as staunch as a bull-dog, as brave--he would have stopped
a drayman's team just as readily as yours last night--and as
invulnerable as that marble statue."
He pointed to a statue of Adonis which stood whitely on the edge of the
lawn, and she raised her eyes and looked at it dreamily.
"I could break that thing if I had a big hammer," she said.
"I daresay," he said. "But can't break Stafford. Honestly "--he looked
at her--"I wish you could!"
"Why?" she asked, turning her eyes on him for the first time.
Howard was silent for a moment, then he looked at her with a curious
gravity.
"Because it would be good for him: because I am afraid for him."
"Afraid?" she echoed.
"Yes," he said, with a nod. "Some day he will run against something
that will bring him to smash. Some woman--But I beg your pardon. Do you
know, Miss Falconer, that you have a dangerous way of leading one to
speak the truth--which one should never--or very rarely--do. Why, on
earth am I telling you all this about Stafford Orme?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"You were saying 'some woman,'" she said.
He gave a sigh of resignation.
"You are irresistible! Some woman who will be quite unworthy of him.
It's always the case. The block of ice you can not smash with your
biggest hammer is broken into smithereens by a needle. That's the peril
before Stafford--but let us hope he will prove the exception to the
rule and escape. He's safe at present, at any rate."
She thought of the scene she had witnessed, the girl sitting sideways on
Stafford Orme's horse, and her face flushed for an instant.
"Are you sure?" she said.
"Quite!" he responded, confidently. "I know all Stafford's flirtations,
great and small: if there was anything serious he would tell me; and as
he hasn't--there isn't."
She laughed; the slow, soft laugh which made Howard think suddenly,
strangely, of a sleepy tigress he had once watched in a rajah's zoo, as
she lay basking in the sun: a thing of softness and beauty and--death.
"We've had a most amusing conversation, Mr. Howard," she said. "I don't
know when I've been so interested--or so tempted."
"Tempted?" He looked at her with a slow, expectant smile.
"Oh, yes," she murmured, turning her eyes upon him with a half-mocking
light in them. "You have forgotten that you have been talking to a
woman."
"I don't deny it," he said. "It's the finest compliment I could pay
you. But--after?"
"And that to a woman your account of your hero-friend is--a
challenge."
He nodded and paused, with his cigar half-way to his lips.
"I'm greatly tempted to accept it, do you know!" she said.
He laughed.
"Don't: you'll be vanquished. Is that too candid, too--brutal?" he
said.
"So brutal that I _will_ accept it," she said. "Is that ring of yours a
favorite?"
"I've had it ever since I can remember. It was my mother's," he said,
rather gravely.
She held out her hand, upon which the costly gems glittered in the
sunlight.
"Choose one to set against it," she said quite quietly.
Howard, roused for once from his sleepy cynicism, met her gaze with
something like astonishment.
"You mean--?" he said, in a low voice.
"I mean that I am going to try to meet your iceberg. You will play
fair, Mr. Howard? You will stand and look on and--be silent?"
He smiled and leant back as if he had considered her strange, audacious
proposal, and felt confident.
"On my honour," he said, with a laugh. "You shall have fair play!" She
laughed softly. "You have not chosen my stake," she said meaningly.
"Ah, no. Pardon! Let me see." He took her hand and examined the rings.
"This--I think it's the most valuable."
"It does not matter," she said. "You will not win it. May I look at
yours?"
He extended his hand with an amused laugh; but without a smile, she
said:
"Yes, it is a quaint ring; I like quaint things. I shall wear it on my
little finger."
She dropped his hand quickly, for at that moment Stafford rode round
the bend of the drive. His face was grave and almost stern in its
preoccupation, but he caught sight of them, and raised his hat, then
turned his horse and rode up to the terrace.
"Good-morning, Stafford," exclaimed Howard. "Where have you been?
Hallo! Anything happened? You're coated all over with mud: had a fall?"
He nodded carelessly as he turned to the beautiful girl, lying back now
and looking up at his handsome face with an air of languid
indifference.
"What a lovely day, Miss Falconer! Where are all the others? Are you
not going for a drive, on the lake, somewhere?"
"I have just been asking Mr. Howard to take me for a row," she said,
"but he has refused."
Stafford laughed and glanced at his watch.
"I can quite believe it: he's the laziest wretch in existence. If
you'll transfer the offer to me, we'll go after lunch. By George,
there's the bell!"
"Thanks!" she murmured, and she rose with her slow grace. "I'd better
get into an appropriate costume. Mr. Howard, what will you bet me that
it does not rain before we start. But you never bet, you tell me!"
"Not unless I am sure of winning, Miss Falconer," he said,
significantly.
She looked after Stafford as he rode away to the stable.
"Nor I," she retorted, with a smile. "As you will see."