The country was discreetly conservative in its social attitude. The gulf
between it and the new owner of Temple Barholm was too wide and deep to
be crossed without effort combined with immense mental agility. It was
on the whole, much easier not to begin a thing at all than to begin it
and find one must hastily search about for not too noticeable methods
of ending it. A few unimportant, tentative calls were made, and
several ladies who had remained unaware of Miss Alicia during her first
benefactor's time drove over to see what she was like and perhaps by
chance hear something of interest. One or two of them who saw Tembarom
went away puzzled and amazed. He did not drop his h's, which they had
of course expected, and he was well dressed, and not bad-looking; but
it was frequently impossible to understand what he was talking about, he
used such odd phrases. He seemed good natured enough, and his way with
little old Miss Temple Barholm was really quite nice, queer as it was.
It was queer because he was attentive to her in a manner in which
young men were not usually attentive to totally insignificant, elderly
dependents.
Tembarom derived an extremely diluted pleasure from the visits. The few
persons he saw reminded him in varying degrees of Mr. Palford. They had
not before seen anything like his species, and they did not know what
to do with him. He also did not know what to do with them. A certain
inelasticity frustrated him at the outset. When, in obedience to Miss
Alicia's instructions, he had returned the visits, he felt he had not
gone far.
Serious application enabled him to find his way through the church
service, and he accompanied Miss Alicia to church with great regularity.
He began to take down the books from the library shelves and look them
over gravely. The days gradually ceased to appear so long, but he had
a great deal of time on his hands, and he tried to find ways of filling
it. He wondered if Ann would be pleased if he learned things out of
books.
When he tentatively approached the subject of literature with Miss
Alicia, she glowed at the delightful prospect of his reading aloud to
her in the evenings--“reading improving things like history and the
poets.”
“Let's take a hack at it some night,” he said pleasantly.
The more a fellow knew, the better it was for him, he supposed; but he
wondered, if anything happened and he went back to New York, how much
“improving things” and poetry would help a man in doing business.
The first evening they began with Gray's “Elegy,” and Miss Alicia felt
that it did not exhilarate him; she was also obliged to admit that
he did not read it very well. But she felt sure he would improve.
Personally she was touchingly happy. The sweetly domestic picture of
the situation, she sitting by the fire with her knitting and he
reading aloud, moved and delighted her. The next evening she suggested
Tennyson's “Maud.” He was not as much stirred by it as she had hoped. He
took a somewhat humorous view of it.
“He had it pretty bad, hadn't he?”' he said of the desperate lover.
“Oh, if only you could once have heard Sims Reeves sing 'Come into the
Garden, Maud'!” she sighed. “A kind friend once took me to hear him, and
I have never, never forgotten it.”
But Mr. Temple Barholm notably did not belong to the atmosphere of
impassioned tenors.
On still another evening they tried Shakspere. Miss Alicia felt that
a foundation of Shakspere would be “improving” indeed. They began with
“Hamlet.”
He found play-reading difficult and Shaksperian language baffling, but
he made his way with determination until he reached a point where he
suddenly grew quite red and stopped.
“Say, have you read this?” he inquired after his hesitation.
“The plays of Shakspere are a part of every young lady's education,” she
answered; “but I am afraid I am not at all a Shaksperian scholar.”
“A young lady's education?” he repeated. “Gee whizz!” he added softly
after a pause.
He glanced over a page or so hastily, and then laid the book down.
“Say,” he suggested, with an evasive air, “let's go over that 'Maud' one
again. It's--well, it's easier to read aloud.”
The crude awkwardness of his manner suddenly made Miss Alicia herself
flush and drop a stitch in her knitting. How dreadful of her not to have
thought of that!
“The Elizabethan age was, I fear, a rather coarse one in some respects.
Even history acknowledges that Queen Elizabeth herself used profane
language.” She faltered and coughed a little apologetic cough as she
picked up her stitch again.
“I bet Ann's never seen inside Shakspere,” said Tembarom. Before reading
aloud in the future he gave some previous personal attention to the poem
or subject decided upon. It may be at once frankly admitted that when he
read aloud it was more for Miss Alicia's delectation than for his own.
He saw how much she enjoyed the situation.
His effect of frankness and constant boyish talk was so inseparable from
her idea of him that she found it a puzzling thing to realize that she
gradually began to feel aware of a certain remote reserve in him,
or what might perhaps be better described as a habit of silence upon
certain subjects. She felt it marked in the case of Strangeways. She
surmised that he saw Strangeways often and spent a good deal of time
with him, but he spoke of him rarely, and she never knew exactly what
hours were given to him. Sometimes she imagined he found him a greater
responsibility than he had expected. Several times when she believed
that he had spent part of a morning or afternoon in his room, he was
more silent than usual and looked puzzled and thoughtful. She observed,
as Mr. Palford had, that the picture-gallery, with its portraits of his
ancestors, had an attraction. A certain rainy day he asked her to go
with him and look them over. It was inevitable that she should soon
wander to the portrait of Miles Hugo and remain standing before it.
Tembarom followed, and stood by her side in silence until her sadness
broke its bounds with a pathetic sigh.
“Was he very like him?” he asked.
She made an unconscious, startled movement. For the moment she had
forgotten his presence, and she had not really expected him to remember.
“I mean Jem,” he answered her surprised look. “How was he like him? Was
there--” he hesitated and looked really interested--“was he like him in
any particular thing?”
“Yes,” she said, turning to the portrait of Miles Hugo again. “They both
had those handsome, drooping eyes, with the lashes coming together
at the corners. There is something very fascinating about them, isn't
there? I used to notice it so much in dear little Jem. You see how
marked they are in Miles Hugo.”
“Yes,” Tembarom answered. “A fellow who looked that way at a girl when
he made love to her would get a strangle-holt. She wouldn't forget him
soon.”
“It strikes you in that way, too?” said Miss Alicia, shyly. “I used to
wonder if it was--not quite nice of me to think of it. But it did seem
that if any one did look at one like that--” Maidenly shyness overcame
her. “Poor Lady Joan!” she sighed.
“There's a sort of cleft in his chin, though it's a good, square chin,”
he suggested. “And that smile of his--Were Jem's--?”
“Yes, they were. The likeness was quite odd sometimes--quite.”
“Those are things that wouldn't be likely to change much when he grew
up,” Tembarom said, drawing a little closer to the picture. “Poor Jem!
He was up against it hard and plenty. He had it hardest. This chap only
died.”
There was no mistaking his sympathy. He asked so many questions that
they sat down and talked instead of going through the gallery. He was
interested in the detail of all that had occurred after the ghastly
moment when Jem had risen from the card-table and stood looking around,
like some baited dying animal, at the circle of cruel faces drawing in
about him. How soon had he left London? Where had he gone first? How had
he been killed? He had been buried with others beneath a fall of earth
and stones. Having heard this much, Tembarom saw he could not ask more
questions. Miss Alicia became pale, and her hands trembled. She could
not bear to discuss details so harrowing.
“Say, I oughtn't to let you talk about that,” he broke out, and he
patted her hand and made her get up and finish their walk about the
gallery. He held her elbow in his own odd, nice way as he guided her,
and the things he said, and the things he pretended to think or not to
understand, were so amusing that in a short time he had made her
laugh. She knew him well enough by this time to be aware that he was
intentionally obliging her to forget what it only did her harm to
remember. That was his practical way of looking at it.
“Getting a grouch on or being sorry for what you can't help cuts no
ice,” he sometimes said. “When it does, me for getting up at daybreak
and keeping at it! But it doesn't, you bet your life on that.”
She could see that he had really wanted to hear about Jem, but he knew
it was bad for her to recall things, and he would not allow her to dwell
on them, just as she knew he would not allow himself to dwell on little
Miss Hutchinson, remotely placed among the joys of his beloved New York.
Two other incidents besides the visit to Miles Hugo afterward marked
that day when Miss Alicia looked back on it. The first was his unfolding
to her his plans for the house-party, which was characteristic of his
habit of thinking things over and deciding them before he talked about
them.
“If I'm going to try the thing out, as Ann says I must,” he began when
they had gone back to the library after lunch, “I've got to get going.
I'm not seeing any of those Pictorial girls, and I guess I've got to see
some.”
“You will be invited to dine at places,” said Miss Alicia,--“presently,”
she added bravely, in fact, with an air of greater conviction than she
felt.
“If it's not the law that they've got to invite me or go to jail,” said
Tembarom, “I don't blame 'em for not doing it if they're not stuck on
me. And they're not; and it's natural. But I've got to get in my fine
work, or my year'll be over before I've 'found out for myself,' as Ann
called it. There's where I'm at, Miss Alicia--and I've been thinking of
Lady Joan and her mother. You said you thought they'd come and stay here
if they were properly asked.”
“I think they would,” answered Miss Alicia with her usual delicacy.
“I thought I gathered from Lady Mallowe that, as she was to be in the
neighborhood, she would like to see you and Temple Barholm, which she
greatly admires.”
“If you'll tell me what to do, I'll get her here to stay awhile,” he
said, “and Lady Joan with her. You'd have to show me how to write to ask
them; but perhaps you'd write yourself.”
“They will be at Asshawe Holt next week,” said Miss Alicia, “and we
could go and call on them together. We might write to them in London
before they leave.”
“We'll do it,” answered Tembarom. His manner was that of a practical
young man attacking matter-of-fact detail. “From what I hear, Lady Joan
would satisfy even Ann. They say she's the best-looker on the slate. If
I see her every day I shall have seen the blue-ribbon winner. Then if
she's here, perhaps others of her sort'll come, too; and they'll have to
see me whether they like it or not--and I shall see them. Good Lord!” he
added seriously, “I'd let 'em swarm all over me and bite me all summer
if it would fix Ann.”
He stood up, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and looked down
at the floor.
“I wish she knew T. T. like T. T. knows himself,” he said. It was quite
wistful.
It was so wistful and so boyish that Miss Alicia was thrilled as he
often thrilled her.
“She ought to be a very happy girl,” she exclaimed.
“She's going to be,” he answered, “sure as you're alive. But whatever
she does, is right, and this is as right as everything else. So it just
goes.”
They wrote their letters at once, and sent them off by the afternoon
post. The letter Miss Alicia composed, and which Tembarom copied, he
read and reread, with visions of Jim Bowles and Julius looking over his
shoulder. If they picked it up on Broadway, with his name signed to it,
and read it, they'd throw a fit over it, laughing. But he supposed she
knew what you ought to write.
It had not, indeed, the masculine touch. When Lady Mallowe read it, she
laughed several times. She knew quite well that he had not known what
to say, and, allowing Miss Alicia to instruct him, had followed her
instructions to the letter. But she did not show the letter to Joan,
who was difficult enough to manage without being given such material to
comment upon.
The letters had just been sent to the post when a visitor was
announced--Captain Palliser. Tembarom remembered the name, and recalled
also certain points connected with him. He was the one who was a
promoter of schemes--“One of the smooth, clever ones that get up
companies,” Little Ann had said.
That in a well-bred and not too pronounced way he looked smooth and
clever might be admitted. His effect was that of height, finished
slenderness of build, and extremely well-cut garments. He was no longer
young, and he had smooth, thin hair and a languidly observant gray eye.
“I have been staying at Detchworth Grange,” he explained when he had
shaken hands with the new Temple Barholm and Miss Alicia. “It gave me an
excellent opportunity to come and pay my respects.”
There was a hint of uncertainty in the observant gray eye. The fact was
that he realized in the space of five minutes that he knew his ground
even less than he had supposed he did. He had not spent his week at
Detchworth Grange without making many quiet investigations, but he had
found out nothing whatever. The new man was an ignoramus, but no one had
yet seemed to think him exactly a fool. He was not excited by the new
grandeurs of his position and he was not ashamed of himself. Captain
Palliser wondered if he was perhaps sharp--one of those New Yorkers
shrewd even to light-fingeredness in clever scheming. Stories of a newly
created method of business dealing involving an air of candor and
almost primitive good nature--an American method--had attracted Captain
Palliser's attention for some time. A certain Yankee rawness of manner
played a part as a factor, a crudity which would throw a man off guard
if he did not recognize it. The person who employed the method was
of philosophical non-combativeness. The New York phrase was that “He
jollied a man along.” Immense schemes had been carried through in that
way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch
in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his
ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself,
was of this dangerous new school.
What, however, could he scheme for, being the owner of Temple Barholm's
money? It may be mentioned at once that Captain Palliser's past had
been such as had fixed him in the belief that every one was scheming
for something. People with money wanted more or were privately arranging
schemes to prevent other schemers from getting any shade the better of
them. Debutantes with shy eyes and slim figures had their little plans
to engineer delicately. Sometimes they were larger plans than the
uninitiated would have suspected as existing in the brains of creatures
in their 'teens, sometimes they were mere fantastic little ideas
connected with dashing young men or innocent dances which must be
secured or lovely young rivals who must be evaded. Young men had also
deft things to do--people to see or not to see, reasons for themselves
being seen or avoiding observation. As years increased, reasons for
schemes became more numerous and amazingly more varied. Women with
daughters, with sons, with husbands, found in each relationship
a necessity for active, if quiet, manoeuvering. Women like Lady
Mallowe--good heaven! by what schemes did not that woman live and have
her being--and her daughter's--from day to day! Without money, without
a friend who was an atom more to be relied on than she would have been
herself if an acquaintance had needed her aid, her outwardly well-to-do
and fashionable existence was a hand-to-hand fight. No wonder she had
turned a still rather brilliant eye upon Sir Moses Monaldini, the great
Israelite financier. All of these types passed rapidly before his mental
vision as he talked to the American Temple Barholm. What could he want,
by chance? He must want something, and it would be discreet to find out
what it chanced to be.
If it was social success, he would be better off in London, where in
these days you could get a good run for your money and could swing
yourself up from one rung of the ladder to another if you paid some
one to show you how. He himself could show him how. A youngster who
had lived the beastly hard life he had lived would be likely to find
exhilaration in many things not difficult to purchase. It was an odd
thing, by the way, the fancy he had taken to the little early-Victorian
spinster. It was not quite natural. It perhaps denoted tendencies--or
lack of tendencies--it would also be well to consider. Palliser was
a sufficiently finished product himself to be struck greatly by the
artistic perfection of Miss Alicia, and to wonder how much the new man
understood it.
He did not talk to him about schemes. He talked to him of New York,
which he had never seen and hoped sometime shortly to visit. The
information he gained was not of the kind he most desired, but it
edified him. Tembarom's knowledge of high finance was a street lad's
knowledge of it, and he himself knew its limitations and probable
unreliability. Such of his facts as rested upon the foundation of
experience did not include multimillionaires and their resources.
Captain Palliser passed lightly to Temple Barholm and its neighborhood.
He knew places and names, and had been to Detchworth more than once.
He had never visited Temple Barholm, and his interest suggested that he
would like to walk through the gardens. Tembarom took him out, and they
strolled about for some time. Even an alert observer would not have
suspected the fact that as they strolled, Tembarom slouching a trifle
and with his hands in his pockets, Captain Palliser bearing himself with
languid distinction, each man was summing up the other and considering
seriously how far and in what manner he could be counted as an asset.
“You haven't been to Detchworth yet?” Palliser inquired.
“No, not yet,” answered Tembarom. The Granthams were of those who had
not yet called.
“It's an agreeable house. The Granthams are agreeable people.”
“Are there any young people in the family?” Tembarom asked.
“Young people? Male or female?” Palliser smilingly put it. Suddenly it
occurred to him that this might give him a sort of lead.
“Girls,” said Tembarom, crudely--“just plain girls.”
Palliser laughed. Here it was, perhaps.
“They are not exactly 'plain' girls, though they are not beauties.
There are four Misses Grantham. Lucy is the prettiest. Amabel is quite
tremendous at tennis.”
“Are they ladies?” inquired Tembarom.
Captain Palliser turned and involuntarily stared at him. What was the
fellow getting at?
“I'm afraid I don't quite understand,” he said.
The new Temple Barholm looked quite serious. He did not, amazing to
relate, look like a fool even when he gave forth his extraordinary
question. It was his almost business-like seriousness which saved him.
“I mean, do you call them Lady Lucy and Lady Amabel?” he answered.
If he had been younger, less hardened, or less finished, Captain
Palliser would have laughed outright. But he answered without
self-revelation.
“Oh, I see. You were asking whether the family is a titled one. No;
it is a good old name, quite old, in fact, but no title goes with the
estate.”
“Who are the titled people about here?” Tembarom asked, quite unabashed.
“The Earl of Pevensy at Pevensy Park, the Duke of Stone at Stone Hover,
Lord Hambrough at Doone. Doone is in the next county, just over the
border.”
“Have they all got daughters?”
Captain Palliser found it expedient to clear his throat before speaking.
“Lord Pevensy has daughters, so has the duke. Lord Hambrough has three
sons.”
“How many daughters are there--in a bunch?” Mr. Temple Barholm suggested
liberally.
There Captain Palliser felt it safe to allow himself to smile, as though
taking it with a sense of humor.
“'In a bunch' is an awfully good way of putting it,” he said. “It
happens to apply perhaps rather unfortunately well; both families are
much poorer than they should be, and daughters must be provided for.
Each has four. 'In a bunch' there are eight: Lady Alice, Lady Edith,
Lady Ethel, and Lady Celia at Stone Hover; Lady Beatrice, Lady Gwynedd,
Lady Honora, and Lady Gwendolen at Pevensy Park. And not a fortune among
them, poor girls!”
“It's not the money that matters so much,” said the astounding
foreigner, “it's the titles.”
Captain Palliser stopped short in the garden path for a moment. He could
scarcely believe his ears. The crude grotesqueness of it so far got the
better of him that if he had not coughed he would have betrayed himself.
“I've had a confounded cold lately,” he said. “Excuse me; I must get it
over.”
He turned a little aside and coughed energetically.
After watching him a few seconds Tembarom slipped two fingers into his
waistcoat pocket and produced a small tube of tablets.
“Take two of these,” he said as soon as the cough stopped. “I always
carry it about with me. It's a New York thing called 'G. Destroyer.' G
stands for grippe.”
Palliser took it.
“Thanks. With water? No? Just dissolve in the mouth. Thanks awfully.”
And he took two, with tears still standing in his eyes.
“Don't taste bad, do they?” Mr. Temple Barholm remarked encouragingly.
“Not at all. I think I shall be all right now. I just needed the relief.
I have been trying to restrain it.”
“That's a mistake,” said Tembarom. They strolled on a pace or so, and
he began again, as though he did not mean to let the subject drop. “It's
the titles,” he said, “and the kind. How many of them are good-lookers?”
Palliser reflected a moment, as though making mental choice.
“Lady Alice and Lady Celia are rather plain,” he said, “and both of them
are invalidish. Lady Ethel is tall and has handsome eyes, but Lady Edith
is really the beauty of the family. She rides and dances well and has a
charming color.”
“And the other ones,” Tembaron suggested as he paused--“Lady Beatrice
and Lady Gwynedd and Lady Honora and Lady Gwendolen.”
“You remember their names well,” Palliser remarked with a half-laugh.
“Oh, I shall remember them all right,” Tembarom answered. “I earned
twenty-five per in New York by getting names down fine.”
“The Talchesters are really all rather taking. Talchester is Lord
Pevensy's family name,” Palliser explained. “They are girls who have
pretty little noses and bright complexions and eyes. Lady Gwynedd and
Lady Honora both have quite fascinating dimples.”
“Dimples!” exclaimed his companion. “Good business.”
“Do you like dimples particularly?” Palliser inquired with an impartial
air.
“I'd always make a bee-line for a dimple,” replied Mr. Temple Barholm.
“Clear the way when I start.”
This was New York phrasing, and was plainly humorous; but there was
something more than humor in his eye and smile--something hinting
distantly at recollection.
“You'll find them at Pevensy Park,” said Palliser.
“What about Lady Joan Fayre?” was the next inquiry.
Palliser's side glance at him was observant indeed. He asked himself how
much the man could know. Taking the past into consideration, Lady Joan
might turn out to be a subject requiring delicate handling. It was not
the easiest thing in the world to talk at all freely to a person with
whom one desired to keep on good terms, about a young woman supposed
still to cherish a tragic passion for the dead man who ought to stand
at the present moment in the person's, figuratively speaking, extremely
ill-fitting shoes.
“Lady Joan has been from her first season an undeniable beauty,” he
replied.
“She and the old lady are going to stay at a place called Asshawe Holt.
I think they're going next week,” Tembarom said.
“The old lady?” repeated Captain Palliser.
“I mean her mother. The one that's the Countess of Mallowe.”
“Have you met Lady Mallowe?” Palliser inquired with a not wholly
repressed smile. A vision of Lady Mallowe over-hearing their
conversation arose before him.
“No, I haven't. What's she like?”
“She is not the early-or mid-Victorian old lady,” was Palliser's reply.
“She wears Gainsborough hats, and looks a quite possible eight and
thirty. She is a handsome person herself.”
He was not aware that the term “old lady” was, among Americans of the
class of Mrs. Bowse's boarders, a sort of generic term signifying almost
anything maternal which had passed thirty.
Tembarom proceeded.
“After they get through at the Asshawe Holt place, I've asked them to
come here.”
“Indeed,” said Palliser, with an inward start. The man evidently did
not know what other people did. After all, why should he? He had been
selling something or other in the streets of New York when the thing
happened, and he knew nothing of London.
“The countess called on Miss Alicia when we were in London,” he heard
next. “She said we were relations.”
“You are--as we are. The connection is rather distant, but it is near
enough to form a sort of link.”
“I've wanted to see Lady Joan,” explained Tembarom. “From what I've
heard, I should say she was one of the 'Lady's Pictorial' kind.”
“I am afraid--” Palliser's voice was slightly unsteady for the
moment--“I have not studied the type sufficiently to know. The
'Pictorial' is so exclusively a women's periodical.”
His companion laughed.
“Well, I've only looked through it once myself just to find out. Some
way I always think of Lady Joan as if she was like one of those Beaut's
from Beautsville, with trains as long as parlor-cars and feathers
in their heads--dressed to go to see the queen. I guess she's been
presented at court,” he added.
“Yes, she has been presented.”
“Do they let 'em go more than once?” he asked with casual curiosity.
“Confound this cough!” exclaimed Captain Palliser, and he broke forth
again.
“Take another G,” said Tembarom, producing his tube. “Say, just take the
bottle and keep it in your pocket.”
When the brief paroxysm was over and they moved on again, Palliser was
looking an odd thing or so in the face. “I always think of Lady Joan”
was one of them. “Always” seemed to go rather far. How often and why had
he “always thought”? The fellow was incredible. Did his sharp, boyish
face and his slouch conceal a colossal, vulgar, young ambition? There
was not much concealment about it, Heaven knew. And as he so evidently
was not aware of the facts, how would they affect him when he discovered
them? And though Lady Mallowe was a woman not in the least distressed or
hampered by shades of delicacy and scruple, she surely was astute
enough to realize that even this bounder's dullness might be awakened
to realize that there was more than a touch of obvious indecency in
bringing the girl to the house of the man she had tragically loved, and
manoeuvering to work her into it as the wife of the man who, monstrously
unfit as he was, had taken his place. Captain Palliser knew well that
the pressing of the relationship had meant only one thing. And how, in
the name of the Furies! had she dragged Lady Joan into the scheme with
her?
It was as unbelievable as was the new Temple Barholm himself. And how
unconcerned the fellow looked! Perhaps the man he had supplanted was no
more to him than a scarcely remembered name, if he was as much as that.
Then Tembarom, pacing slowly by his side, hands in pockets, eyes on the
walk, spoke:
“Did you ever see Jem Temple Barholm?” he asked.
It was like a thunderbolt. He said it as though he were merely carrying
his previous remarks on to their natural conclusion; but Palliser felt
himself so suddenly unadjusted, so to speak, that he palpably hesitated.
“Did you?” his companion repeated.
“I knew him well,” was the answer made as soon as readjustment was
possible.
“Remember just how he looked?”
“Perfectly. He was a striking fellow. Women always said he had
fascinating eyes.”
“Sort of slant downward on the outside corners--and black eyelashes
sorter sweeping together?”
Palliser turned with a movement of surprise.
“How did you know? It was just that odd sort of thing.”
“Miss Alicia told me. And there's a picture in the gallery that's like
him.”
Captain Palliser felt as embarrassed as Miss Alicia had felt, but it was
for a different reason. She had felt awkward because she had feared she
had touched on a delicate subject. Palliser was embarrassed because he
was entirely thrown out of all his calculations. He felt for the moment
that there was no calculating at all, no security in preparing paths.
You never know where they would lead. Here had he been actually alarmed
in secret! And the oaf stood before him undisturbedly opening up the
subject himself.
“For a fellow like that to lose a girl as he lost Lady Joan was pretty
tough,” the oaf said. “By gee! it was tough!”
He knew it all--the whole thing, scandal, tragically broken marriage,
everything. And knowing it, he was laying his Yankee plans for getting
the girl to Temple Barholm to look her over. It was of a grossness
one sometimes heard of in men of his kind, and yet it seemed in its
casualness to out-leap any little scheme of the sort he had so far
looked on at.
“Lady Joan felt it immensely,” he said.
A footman was to be seen moving toward them, evidently bearing a
message. Tea was served in the drawing-room, and he had come to announce
the fact.
They went back to the house, and Miss Alicia filled cups for them and
presided over the splendid tray with a persuasive suggestion in the
matter of hot or cold things which made it easy to lead up to any
subject. She was the best of unobtrusive hostesses.
Palliser talked of his visit at Detchworth, which had been shortened
because he had gone to “fit in” and remain until a large but uncertain
party turned up. It had turned up earlier than had been anticipated, and
of course he could only delicately slip away.
“I am sorry it has happened, however,” he said, “not only because one
does not wish to leave Detchworth, but because I shall miss Lady Mallowe
and Lady Joan, who are to be at Asshawe Holt next week. I particularly
wanted to see them.”
Miss Alicia glanced at Tembarom to see what he would do. He spoke before
he could catch her glance.
“Say,” he suggested, “why don't you bring your grip over here and stay?
I wish you would.”
“A grip means a Gladstone bag,” Miss Alicia murmured in a rapid
undertone.
Palliser replied with appreciative courtesy. Things were going extremely
well.
“That's awfully kind of you,” he answered. “I should like it
tremendously. Nothing better. You are giving me a delightful
opportunity. Thank you, thank you. If I may turn up on Thursday I shall
be delighted.”
There was satisfaction in this at least in the observant gray eye when
he went away.