Up at the castle, on the broad marble terrace, where clematis and
jessamine climbed over the balustrade and twined about its pilasters,
where oleanders grew in tall marble urns and shed their roseate petals
on the pavement, Beatrice, dressed for dinner, in white, with pearls in
her hair, and pearls round her throat, was walking slowly backwards and
forwards, reading a letter.
“There is a Peter Marchdale--I don't know whether he will be your Peter
Marchdale or not, my dear; though the name seems hardly likely to be
common--son of the late Mr. Archibald Marchdale, Q. C., and nephew of
old General Marchdale, of Whitstoke. A highly respectable and stodgy
Norfolk family. I've never happened to meet the man myself, but I'm
told he's a bit of an eccentric, who amuses himself globe-trotting, and
writing books (novels, I believe) which nobody, so far as I am aware,
ever reads. He writes under a pseudonym, Felix--I 'm not sure whether
it's Mildmay or Wildmay. He began life, by the bye, in the Diplomatic,
and was attache for a while at Berlin, or Petersburg, or somewhere; but
whether (in the elegant language of Diplomacy) he 'chucked it up,' or
failed to pass his exams, I'm not in a position to say. He will be near
thirty, and ought to have a couple of thousand a year--more or less.
His father, at any rate, was a great man at the bar, and must have left
something decent. And the only other thing in the world I know about
him is that he's a great friend of that clever gossip Margaret
Winchfield--which goes to show that however obscure he may be as a
scribbler of fiction, he must possess some redeeming virtues as a social
being--for Mrs. Winchfield is by no means the sort that falls in love
with bores. As you 're not, either--well, verbum sap., as my little
brother Freddie says.”
Beatrice gazed off, over the sunny lawn, with its trees and their
long shadows, with its shrubberies, its bright flower-beds, its marble
benches, its artificial ruin; over the lake, with its coloured sails,
its incongruous puffing steamboats; down the valley, away to the rosy
peaks of Monte Sfiorito, and the deep blue sky behind them. She plucked
a spray of jessamine, and brushed the cool white blossoms across her
cheek, and inhaled their fairy fragrance.
“An obscure scribbler of fiction,” she mused. “Ah, well, one is an
obscure reader of fiction oneself. We must send to London for Mr. Felix
Mildmay Wildmay's works.”