George Tressady came down very late for dinner, and found his hostess on
the verge of annoyance. Mrs. Watton was a large, commanding woman, who
seldom thought it worth while to disguise any disapproval she might
feel--and she had a great deal of that commodity to expend, both on
persons and institutions.
George hastened to propitiate her with the usual futilities: he had
supposed that he was in excellent time, his watch had been playing
tricks, and so on.
Mrs. Watton, who, after all, on this great day beheld in the new member
the visible triumph of her dearest principles, received these excuses at
first with stiffness, but soon thawed.
"Oh, you _naughty_ boy, you naughty, mendacious boy!" said a
sprightly voice in Tressady's ear. "'Excellent time,' indeed! I saw
you--for shame!"
And Lady Tressady flounced away from her son, laughing over her
shoulder in one of her accustomed poses. She wore white muslin over
cherry-coloured silk. The display of neck and shoulders could hardly
have been more lavish; and the rouge on her cheeks had been overdone,
which rarely happened. George turned from her hurriedly to speak to
Lord Fontenoy.
"What a fool that woman is!" thought Mrs. Watton to herself, as her
sharp eye followed her guest. "She will make George positively dislike
her soon--and all the time she is bound to get him to pay her debts, or
there will be a smash. What! dinner? John, will you please take Lady
Tressady; Harding, will you take Mrs. Hawkins"--pointing her second son
towards a lady in black sitting stiffly on the edge of an ottoman; "Mr.
Hawkins takes Florence; Sir George"--she waved her hand towards Miss
Sewell. "Now, Lord Fontenoy, you must take me; and the rest of you sort
yourselves."
As the young people, mostly cousins, laughingly did what they were told,
Sir George held out his arm to Miss Sewell.
"I am very sorry for you," he said, as they passed into the dining-room.
"Oh! I knew it would be my turn," said Letty, with resignation. "You see,
you took Florrie last night, and Aunt Watton the night before."
George settled himself deliberately in his chair, and turned to study his
companion.
"Do you mind warning me, to begin with, how I can avoid giving you a
headache? Since this morning my nerve has gone--I want directions."
"Well--" said Letty, pondering, "let us lay down the subjects we _may_
talk about first. For instance, you may talk of Mrs. Hawkins."
She gave an imperceptible nod which directed his eyes to the thin woman
sitting opposite, to whom Harding Watton, a fashionable and fastidious
youth, was paying but scant attention.
George examined her.
"I don't want to," he said shortly; "besides, she would last us no
time at all."
"Oh!--on the contrary," said Letty, with malice sparkling in her brown
eye, "she would last me a good twenty minutes. She has got on my gown."
"I didn't recognise it," said George, studying the thin lady again.
"I wouldn't mind," said Letty, in the same tone of reflection, "if Mrs.
Hawkins didn't think it her duty to lecture me in the intervals of
copying my frocks. If I disapproved of anybody, I don't think I should
send my nurse to ask their maid for patterns."
"I notice you take disapproval very calmly."
"Callously, you mean. Well, it is my misfortune. I always feel myself so
much more reasonable than the people who disapprove."
"This morning, then, you thought me a fool?"
"Oh no! Only--well--I _knew_, you see, that I knew better. _I_ was
reasonable, and--"
"Oh! don't finish," said George, hastily; "and don't suppose that I shall
ever give you any more good advice."
"Won't you?"
Her mocking look sent a challenge, which he met with outward firmness.
Meanwhile he was inwardly haunted by a phrase he had once heard a woman
apply to the mental capacities of her best friend. "Her _mind_?--her
mind, my dear, is a shallow chaos!" The words made a neat label, he
scoffingly thought, for his own present sensations. For he could not
persuade himself that there was much profundity in his feelings towards
Miss Sewell, whatever reckless possibilities life might seem to hold at
times; when, for instance, she wore that particular pink gown in which
she was attired to-night, or when her little impertinent airs suited her
as well as they were suiting her just now. Something cool and critical in
him was judging her all the time. Ten years hence, he made himself
reflect, she would probably have no prettiness left. Whereas now, what
with bloom and grace, what with small proportions and movements light as
air, what with an inventive refinement in dress and personal adornment
that never failed, all Letty Sewell's defects of feature or expression
were easily lost in a general aspect which most men found dazzling and
perturbing enough. Letty, at any rate within her own circle, had never
yet been without partners, or lovers, or any other form of girlish
excitement that she desired, and had been generally supposed--though she
herself was aware of some strong evidence to the contrary--to be capable
of getting anything she had set her mind upon. She had set her mind, as
the spectators in this particular case had speedily divined, upon
enslaving young George Tressady. And she had not failed. For even during
these last stirring days it had been tolerably clear that she and his
election had divided Tressady's mind between them, with a balance,
perhaps, to her side. As to the _measure_ of her success, however, that
was still doubtful--to herself and him most of all.
To-night, at any rate, he could not detach himself from her. He tried
repeatedly to talk to the girl on his left, a noble-faced child fresh out
of the schoolroom, who in three years' time would be as much Letty
Sewell's superior in beauty as in other things. But the effort was too
great. The strenuous business of the day had but left him--in fatigue and
reaction--the more athirst for amusement and the gratification of another
set of powers. He turned back to Letty, and through course after course
they chattered and sparred, discussing people, plays and books, or
rather, under cover of these, a number of those topics on the borderland
of passion whereby men and women make their first snatches at
intimacy--till Mrs. Watton's sharp grey eyes smiled behind her fan, and
the attention of her neighbour, Lord Fontenoy--an uneasy attention--was
again and again drawn to the pair.
Meanwhile, during the first half of dinner, a chair immediately opposite
to Tressady's place remained vacant. It was being kept for the eldest son
of the house, his mother explaining carelessly to Lord Fontenoy that she
believed he was "Out parishing somewhere, as usual."
However, with the appearance of the pheasants the door from the
drawing-room opened, and a slim dark-haired man slipped in. He took his
place noiselessly, with a smile of greeting to George and his
neighbour, and bade the butler in a whisper aside bring him any course
that might be going.
"Nonsense, Edward!" said his mother's loud voice from the head of the
table; "don't be ridiculous. Morris, bring back that hare _entrée_ and
the mutton for Mr. Edward."
The newcomer raised his eyebrows mildly, smiled, and submitted.
"Where have you been, Edward?" said Tressady; "I haven't seen you since
the town-hall."
"I have been at a rehearsal. There is a parish concert next week, and I
conduct these functions."
"The concerts are always bad," said Mrs. Watton, curtly.
Edward Watton shrugged his shoulder. He had a charming timid air,
contradicted now and then by a look of enthusiastic resolution in the
eyes.
"All the more reason for rehearsal," he said. "However, really, they
won't do badly this time."
"Edward is one of the persons," said Mrs. Watton in a low aside to Lord
Fontenoy, "who think you can make friends with people--the lower
orders--by shaking hands with them, showing them Burne-Jones's pictures,
and singing 'The Messiah' with them. I had the same idea once. Everybody
had. It was like the measles. But the sensible persons have got over it."
"Thank you, mamma," said Watton, making her a smiling bow.
Lady Tressady interrupted her talk with the squire at the other end of
the table to observe what was going on. She had been chattering very
fast in a shrill, affected voice, with a gesticulation so free and
French, and a face so close to his, that the nervous and finicking
squire had been every moment afraid lest the next should find her white
fingers in his very eyes. He felt an inward spasm of relief when he saw
her attention diverted.
"Is that Mr. Edward talking his Radicalism?" she asked, putting up a
gold eyeglass--"his dear, wicked Radicalism? Ah! we all know where Mr.
Edward got it."
The table laughed. Harding Watton looked particularly amused.
"Egeria was in this neighbourhood last week," he said, addressing Lady
Tressady. "Edward rode over to see her. Since then he has joined two new
societies, and ordered six new books on the Labour Question."
Edward flushed a little, but went on eating his dinner without any other
sign of disturbance.
"If you mean Lady Maxwell," he said good-humouredly, "I can only be sorry
for the rest of you that you don't know her."
He raised his handsome head with a bright air of challenge that became
him, but at the same time exasperated his mother.
"That _woman!_" said Mrs. Watton with ponderous force, throwing up her
hands as she spoke. Then she turned to Lord Fontenoy. "Don't _you_ regard
her as the source of half the mischievous work done by this precious
Government in the last two years?" she asked him imperiously.
A half-contemptuous smile crossed Lord Fontenoy's worn face.
"Well, really, I'm not inclined to make Lady Maxwell the scapegoat. Let
them bear their own misdeeds."
"Besides, what worse can you say of English Ministers than that they
should be led by a woman?" said Mr. Watton, from the bottom of the table,
in a piping voice. "In my young days such a state of things would have
been unheard of. No offence, my dear, no offence," he added hastily,
glancing at his wife.
Letty glanced at George, and put up a handkerchief to hide her own
merriment.
Mrs. Watton looked impatient.
"Plenty of English Cabinet Ministers have been led by women before now,"
she said drily; "and no blame to them or anybody else. Only in the old
days you knew where you were. Women were corrupt--as they were meant to
be--for their husbands and brothers and sons. They wanted something for
somebody--and got it. Now they are corrupt--like Lady Maxwell--for what
they are pleased to call 'causes,' and it is that which will take the
nation to ruin."
At this there was an incautious protest from Edward Watton against the
word "corrupt," followed by a confirmatory clamour from his mother and
brother which seemed to fill the dining-room. Lady Tressady threw in
affected comments from time to time, trying hard to hold her own in the
conversation by a liberal use of fan and Christian names, and little
personal audacities applied to each speaker in turn. Only Edward Watton,
however, occasionally took civil or smiling notice of her; the others
ignored her. They were engaged in a congenial task, the hunting of the
one disaffected and insubordinate member of their pack, and had for the
moment no attention to spare for other people.
"I shall see the great lady, I suppose, in a week or two," said George to
Miss Sewell, under cover of the noise. "It is curious that I should never
have seen her."
"Who? Lady Maxwell?"
"Yes. You remember I have been four years out of England. She was in
town, I suppose, the year before I left, but I never came across her."
"I prophesy you will like her enormously," said Letty, with decision. "At
least, I know that's what happens to me when Aunt Watton abuses anybody.
I couldn't dislike them afterwards if I tried."
"That, allow me to impress upon you, is _not_ my disposition! I am a
human being--I am influenced by my friends."
He turned round towards her so as to appropriate her again.
"Oh! you are not at all the poor creature you paint yourself!" said
Letty, shaking her head. "In reality, you are the most obstinate
person I know--you can never let a subject alone--you never know when
you're beaten."
"Beaten?" said George, reflectively; "by a headache? Well, there is no
disgrace in that. One will probably 'live to fight another day.' Do you
mean to say that you will take no notice--no notice--of all that array of
facts I laid before you this morning on the subject of Captain Addison?"
"I shall be kind to you, and forget them. Now, do listen to Aunt Watton!
It is your duty. Aunt Watton is accustomed to be listened to, and you
haven't heard it all a hundred times before, as I have."
Mrs. Watton, indeed, was haranguing her end of the table on a subject
that clearly excited her. Contempt and antagonism gave a fine energy to a
head and face already sufficiently expressive. Both were on a large
scale, but without commonness. The old-lace coif she wore suited her
waved and grizzled hair, and was carried with conscious dignity; the
hand, which lay beside her on the table, though long and bony, was full
of nervous distinction. Mrs. Watton was, and looked, a tyrant--but a
tyrant of ability.
"A neighbour of theirs in Brookshire," she was saying, "was giving me
last week the most extraordinary account of the doings at Mellor. She was
the heiress of that house at Mellor"--here she addressed young Bayle,
who, as a comparative stranger in the house, might be supposed to be
ignorant of facts which everybody else knew--"a tumbledown place with an
income of about two thousand a year. Directly she married she put a
Socialist of the most unscrupulous type--so they tell me--into
possession. The man has established what they call a 'standard rate' of
wages for the estate--practically double the normal rate--coerced all the
farmers, and made the neighbours furious. They say the whole district is
in a ferment. It used to be the quietest part of the world imaginable,
and now she has set it all by the ears. _She_, having married thirty
thousand a year, can afford her little amusements; other people, who must
live by their land, have their lives worried out of them."
"She tells me that the system works on the whole extremely well," said
Edward Watton, whose heightened colour alone betrayed the irritation of
his mother's chronic aggression, "and that Maxwell is not at all unlikely
to adopt it on his own estate."
Mrs. Watton threw up her hands again.
"The _idiocy_ of that man! Till he married her he was a man of sense. And
now she leads him by the nose, and whatever tune he calls, the Government
must dance to, because of his power in the House of Lords."
"And the worst of it is," said Harding Watton, with an unpleasant laugh,
"that if she were not a handsome woman, her influence would not be half
what it is. She uses her beauty in the most unscrupulous way."
"I believe that to be _entirely_ untrue," said Edward Watton, with
emphasis, looking at his brother with hostility.
George Tressady interrupted. He had an affection for Edward Watton, and
cordially disliked Harding. "Is she really so handsome?" he asked,
bending forward and addressing his hostess.
Mrs. Watton scornfully took no notice.
"Well, an old diplomat told me the other day," said Lord Fontenoy--but
with a cold unwillingness, as though he disliked the subject--"that she
was the most beautiful woman, he thought, that had been seen in London
since Lady Blessington's time."
"Lady Blessington! dear, dear!--Lady Blessington!" said Lady Tressady
with malicious emphasis--an unfortunate comparison, don't you think? Not
many people would like to be regarded as Lady Blessington's successor."
"In any other respect than beauty," said Edward Watton, haughtily, with
the same tension as before, "the comparison, of course, would be
ridiculous."
Harding shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting his chair back, said in the
ear of a shy young man who sat next him:
"In my opinion, the Count d'Orsay is only a question of time! However,
one mustn't say that to Edward."
Harding read memoirs, and considered himself a man of general
cultivation. The young man addressed, who read no printed matter outside
the sporting papers that he could help, and had no idea as to who Lady
Blessington and Count d'Orsay might be, smiled vaguely, and said nothing.
"My dear," said the squire, plaintively, "isn't this room extremely hot?"
There was a ripple of meaning laughter from all the young people, to many
of whom this particular quarrel was already tiresomely familiar. Mr.
Watton, who never understood anything, looked round with an inquiring
air. Mrs. Watton condescended to take the hint and retire.
In the drawing-room afterwards Mrs. Watton first allotted a
duty-conversation of some ten minutes in length, and dealing strictly
with the affairs of the parish, to Mrs. Hawkins, who, as clergyman's
wife, had a definite official place in the Malford House circle, quite
irrespective of any individuality she might happen to possess. Mrs.
Hawkins was plain, self-conscious, and in no way interesting to Mrs.
Watton, who never took the smallest trouble to approach her in any other
capacity than that upon which she had entered by marrying the incumbent
of the squire's home living. But the civilities and respects that were
recognised as belonging to her station she received.
This however, alas! was not enough for Mrs. Hawkins, who was full of
ambitions, which had a bad manner, a plague of shyness, and a narrow
income, were perpetually thwarting. As soon as the ten minutes were over,
and Mrs. Watton, who was nothing if not political, and saw no occasion to
make a stranger of the vicar's wife, had plunged into the evening papers
brought her by the footman, Mrs. Hawkins threw herself on Letty Sewell.
She was effusively grateful--too grateful--for the patterns lent her by
Miss Sewell's maid.
"Did she lend you some patterns?" said Letty, raising her brows. "Dear
me; I didn't know."
And her eyes ran cooly over Mrs. Hawkins's attire, which did, indeed,
present a village imitation of the delicate gown in which Miss Sewell had
robed herself for the evening.
Mrs. Hawkins coloured.
"I specially told my nurse," she said hastily, "that of course your leave
must be asked. But my nurse and your maid seem to have made friends. Of
course my nurse has plenty of time for dressmaking with only one child of
four to look after, and--and--one really gets no new ideas in a poky
place like this. But I would not have taken a liberty for the world."
Her pride and _mauvaise honte_ together made both voice and manner
particularly unattractive. Letty was seized with the same temper that
little boys show towards flies.
"Of course I am delighted!" she said indifferently. "It's so nice and
good to have one's things made at home. Your nurse must be a treasure."
All the time her gaze was diligently inspecting every ill-cut seam and
tortured trimming of the homemade triumph before her. The ear of the
vicar's wife, always morbidly sensitive in that particular drawing-room,
caught a tone of insult in every light word. A passionate resentment
flamed up in her, and she determined to hold her own.
"Are you going in for more visits when you leave here?" she inquired.
"Yes, two or three," said Letty, turning her delicate head unwittingly.
She had been throwing blandishments to Mrs. Watton's dog, a grey Aberdeen
terrier, who stood on the rug quietly regarding her.
"You spend most of the year in visits, don't you?"
"Well, a good deal of it," said Letty.
"Don't you find it dreadfully time-wasting? Does it leave you leisure
for _any_ serious occupations at all? I am afraid it would make _me_
terribly idle!"
Mrs. Hawkins laughed, attempting a tone of banter.
Letty put up a small hand to hide a sudden yawn, which, however, was
visible enough.
"Would it?" she said, with an impertinence which hardly tried to
conceal itself. "Evelyn, do look at that dog. Doesn't he remind you of
Mr. Bayley?"
She beckoned to the handsome child of sixteen who had sat on George
Tressady's left hand at dinner, and, taking up a pinch of rose-leaves
that had dropped from a vase beside her, she flung them at the dog,
calling him to her. Instead of going to her, however, the dog slowly
curled himself up on the rug, and, laying his nose along his front paws,
stared at her steadily with the expression of one mounting guard.
"He never will make friends with you, Letty. Isn't it odd?" said Evelyn,
laughing, and stooping to stroke the creature.
"Never mind; other dogs will. Did you see that adorable black Spitz of
Lady Arthur's? She has promised to give me one."
The two cousins fell into a chatter about their county neighbours, mostly
rich and aristocratic people, of whom Mrs. Hawkins knew little or
nothing. Evelyn Watton, whose instincts were quick and generous, tried
again and again to draw the vicar's wife into the conversation. Letty was
determined to exclude her. She lay back against the sofa, chatting her
liveliest, the whiteness of her neck and cheek shining against the red of
the damask behind, one foot lightly crossed over the other, showing her
costly little slippers with their paste buckles. She sparkled with jewels
as much as a girl may--more, indeed, in Mrs. Hawkins's opinion, than a
girl should. From head to foot she breathed affluence, seduction,
success--only the seduction was not for Mrs. Hawkins and her like.
The vicar's wife sat flushed and erect on her chair, disdaining after a
time to make any further effort, but inwardly intolerably sore. She could
not despise Letty Sewell, unfortunately, since Letty's advantages were
just those that she herself most desired. But there was something else in
her mind than small jealousy. When Letty had been a brilliant child in
short frocks, the vicar's wife, who was scarcely six years older, had
opened her heart, had tried to make herself loved by Mrs. Watton's niece.
There had been a moment when they had been "Madge" and "Letty" to each
other, even since Letty had "come out." Now, whenever Mrs. Hawkins
attempted the Christian name, it stuck in her throat; it seemed, even to
herself, a familiarity that had nothing to go upon; while with every
succeeding visit to Malford, Letty had dropped her former friend more
decidedly, and "Madge" was heard no more.
The gentlemen, deep in election incident and gossip, were, in the view
chiefly of the successful candidate, unreasonably long in leaving the
dining-room. When they appeared at last, George Tressady once more
made an attempt to talk to someone else than Letty Sewell, and once
more failed.
"I want you to tell me something about Miss Sewell," said Lord Fontenoy
presently in Mrs. Watton's ear. He had been sitting silent beside her on
the sofa for some little time, apparently toying with the evening papers,
which Mrs. Watton had relinquished to him.
Mrs. Watton looked up, followed the direction of his eyes towards a
settee in a distant corner of the room, and showed a half-impatient
amusement.
"Letty? Oh! Letty's my niece--the daughter of my brother, Walter Sewell,
of Helbeck. They live in Yorkshire. My brother has my father's place--a
small estate, and rents very irregular. I often wonder how they manage to
dress that child as they do. However, she has always had her own way
since she was a foot high. As for my poor brother, he has been an
invalid for the last ten years, and neither he nor his wife--oh! such a
stupid woman!"--Mrs. Watton's energetic hands and eyes once more, called
Heaven to witness--"have ever counted for much, I should say, in Letty's
career. There is another sister, a little delicate, silent thing, that
looks after them. Oh! Letty isn't stupid; I should think not. I suppose
you're alarmed about Sir George. You needn't be. She does it with
everybody."
The candid aunt pursued the conversation a little further, in the same
tone of a half-caustic indulgence. At the end of it, however, Lord
Fontenoy was still uneasy. He had only migrated to Malford House for the
declaration of the poll, having spent the canvassing weeks mainly in
another part of the division. And now, on this triumphant evening, he was
conscious of a sudden sense of defective information, which was
disagreeable and damping.
* * * * *
When bedtime came, Letty lingered in the drawing-room a little behind the
other ladies, on the plea of gathering up some trifles that belonged to
her. So that when George Tressady went out with her to light her candle
for her in the gallery, they found themselves alone.
He had fallen into a sudden silence, which made her sweep him a look of
scrutiny as she took her candlestick. The slim yet virile figure drawn to
its full height, the significant, long-chinned face, pleased her senses.
He might be plain--she supposed he was--but he was, nevertheless,
distinguished, and extraordinarily alive.
"I believe you are tired to death," she said to him. "Why don't you
go to bed?"
She spoke with the freedom of one accustomed to advise all her male
acquaintance for their good. George laughed.
"Tired? Not I. I was before dinner. Look here, Miss Sewell, I've got a
question to ask."
"Ask it."
"You don't want to spoil my great day, do you? You do repent that
headache?"
They looked at each other, dancing laughter in each pair of eyes,
combined in his with an excited insistence.
"Good-night, Sir George," she said, holding out her hand.
He retained it.
"You do?" he said, bending over her.
She liked the situation, and made no immediate effort to change it.
"Ask me a month hence, when I have proved your statements."
"Then you admit it was all pretence?"
"I admit nothing," she said joyously. "I protected my friend."
"Yes, by injuring and offending another friend. Would it please you if I
said I missed you _very_ much at Malford to-day?"
"I will tell you to-morrow--it is so late! Please let me have my hand."
He took no notice, and they went hand-in-hand, she drawing him, to the
foot of the stairs.
"George!" said a shrill, hesitating voice from overhead.
George looked up, and saw his mother. He and Letty started apart, and in
another second Letty had glided upstairs and disappeared.
"Yes, mother," said George, impatiently.
"Will you come here?"
He mounted, and found Lady Tressady a little discomposed, but as
affected as usual.
"Oh, George! it was so dark--I didn't see--I didn't know. George, will
you have half an hour's talk with me after breakfast to-morrow? Oh,
George, my dear boy, my _dear_ boy! Your poor mammy understands!"
She laid one hand on his shoulder and, lifting her feather fan in the
other, shook it with playful meaning in the direction whither Letty
had departed.
George hastily withdrew himself. "Of course I will have a talk with you,
mother. As for anything else, I don't know what you mean. But you really
must let me go to bed; I am much too tired to talk now. Good-night."
Lady Tressady went back to her room, smiling but anxious.
"She has caught him!" she said to herself; "barefaced little flirt! It is
not altogether the best thing for me. But it may dispose him to be
generous, if--if I can play my cards."
Letty Sewell meanwhile had reached the quiet of a luxurious bedroom, and
summoned her maid to her assistance. When the maid departed, the mistress
held long counsel with herself over the fire: the general position of her
affairs; what she desired; what other people intended; her will, and the
chances, of getting it. Her thoughts dealt with these various problems in
a skilled and business-like way. To a particular form of self-examination
Letty was well accustomed, and it had become by now a strong agent in the
development of individuality, as self-examination of another sort is said
to be by other kinds of people.
She herself was pleasantly conscious of real agitation. George Tressady
had touched her feelings, thrilled her nerves, more than--Yes! she said
to herself decidedly, more than anybody else, more than "the rest." She
thought of "the rest," one after the other--thought of them
contemptuously. Yet, certainly few girls in her own set and part of the
country had enjoyed a better time--few, perhaps, had dared so many
adventures. Her mother had never interfered with her; and she herself had
not been afraid to be "talked about." Dances, picnics, moonlight walks;
the joys of outrageous "sitting-out," and hot rivalries with prettier
girls; of impertinences towards the men who didn't matter, and pretty
flatteries towards the men who did--it was all pleasant enough to think
of. She could not reproach herself with having missed any chances, any
opportunities her own will might have given her.
And yet--well, she was tired of it!--out of love altogether with her
maiden state and its opportunities. She had come to Malford House in a
state of soreness, which partly accounted, perhaps, for such airs as she
had been showing to poor Mrs. Hawkins. During the past year a particular
marriage--the marriage of her neighbourhood--had seemed intermittently
within her reach. She had played every card she knew--and she had failed!
Failed, too, in the most humiliating way. For the bride, indeed, was
chosen; but it was not Letty Sewell, but one of Letty's girl-neighbours.
To-night, almost for the first time, she could bear to think of it; she
could even smile at it. Vanity and ambition alone had been concerned, and
to-night these wild beasts of the heart were soothed and placable.
Well, it was no great match, of course--if it came off. All that Aunt
Watton knew about the Tressadys had been long since extracted from her by
her niece. And with Tressady himself Letty's artless questions had been
very effective. She knew almost all that she wished to know. No doubt
Ferth was a very second-rate "place"; and, since those horrid miners had
become so troublesome, his income as a coal-owner could not be what his
father's had been--three or four thousand a year, she supposed--more,
perhaps, in good years. It was not much.
Still--she pressed her hands on her eyes--he was _distinguished_; she saw
that plainly already. He would be welcome anywhere.
"And we are _not_ distinguished--that is just it. We are small people, in
a rather dull set. And I have had hard work to make anything of it. Aunt
Watton was very lucky to marry as she did. Of course, she _made_ Uncle
Watton marry her; but that was a chance--and papa always says nobody else
could have done it!"
She fell happily thinking of Tressady's skirmishes with her, her face
dimpling with amusement. Captain Addison! How amazed he would be could he
know the use to which she had put his name and his very hesitating
attentions. But he would never know; and meanwhile Sir George had been
really pricked--really jealous! She laughed to herself--a low laugh of
pure pleasure.
Yes--she had made up her mind. With a sigh, she put away from her all
other and loftier ambitions. She supposed that she had not money or
family enough. One must face the facts. George Tressady would take her
socially into another _milieu_ than her own, and a higher one. She told
herself that she had always pined for Parliament, politics, and eminent
people. Why should she not succeed in that world as well as in the
Helbeck world? Of course she would succeed!
There was his mother--silly, painted old lady! She was naturally the
_great_ drawback; and Aunt Watton said she was absurdly extravagant, and
would ruin Tressady if it went on. All the more reason why he should be
protected. Letty drew herself sharply together in her pretty white
dressing-gown, with the feeling that mothers of that kind must and could
be kept in their place.
A house in town, of course--and _not_ in Warwick Square, where,
apparently, the Tressadys owned a house, which had been let, and was now
once more in Sir George's hands. That might do for Lady Tressady--if,
indeed, she could afford it when her son had married and taken other
claims upon him.
Letty allowed her thoughts to wander dreamily on, envisaging the London
life that was to be: the young member, Lord Fontenoy's special friend and
_protégé_--the young member's wife making her way among great people,
giving charming little parties at Ferth--
All very well! But what, please, were the facts on his side? She buried
her small chin deep in her hands as she tried, frowning, to think it out.
Certainly he was very much drawn, very much taken. She had watched him,
sometimes, trying to keep away from her--and her lips parted in a broad
smile as she recalled the triumph of his sudden returns and submissions.
She believed he had a curious temper--easily depressed, for all his
coolness. But he had never been depressed in her company.
Still, _nothing_ was certain. All that had happened might melt away into
nothingness with the greatest ease if--well! if the right steps were not
taken. He was no novice, any more than she; he must have had scores of
"affairs" by now, with that manner of his. Such men were always capable
of second thoughts, of tardy retreats--and especially if there were the
smallest thought of persecution, of pursuit.
She believed--she was nearly certain--he would have a reaction to-morrow,
perhaps because his mother had caught them together. Next morning he
would be just a little bored by the thought of it--a little bored by
having to begin again where he had left off. Without great tact and skill
the whole edifice might tumble together like a house of cards. Had she
the courage to make difficulties--to put a water-ditch across his path?
It was close on midnight when Letty at last raised her little chin from
the hands that held it and rang the bell that communicated with her
maid's room, but cautiously, so as not to disturb the rest of the
sleeping house.
"If Grier _is_ asleep, she must wake up, that's all!"
Two or three minutes afterwards a dishevelled maid startled out of her
first slumber appeared, to ask whether her mistress was ill.
"No, Grier, but I wanted to tell you that I have changed my mind about
staying here till Saturday. I am going to-morrow morning by the 9.30
train. You can order a fly first thing, and bring me my breakfast early."
The maid, groaning at the thought of the boxes that would have to be
packed in this inconceivable hurry, ventured to protest.
"Never mind, you can get the housemaid to help you," said Miss Sewell,
decidedly. "I don't mind what you give her. Now go to bed, Grier. I'm
sorry I woke you up; you look as tired as an owl."
Then she stood still, looking at herself--hands clasped lightly before
her--in the long glass.
"'Letty went by the nine o'clock train,'" she said aloud, smiling, and
mocking her own white reflection. "'Dear me! How sudden! how
extraordinary! Yes, but that's like her. H'm--' Then he must write to me,
for I shall write _him_ a civil little note asking for that book I lent
him. Oh! I _hope_ Aunt Watton and his mother will bore him to death!"
She broke out into a merry laugh; then, sweeping her mass of pretty hair
to one side, she began rapidly to coil it up for the night, her fingers
working as fast as her thoughts, which were busy with one ingenious plan
after another for her next meeting with George Tressady.