III.

The soirée to-night was at Rose Villa; and Mrs. Knox, attired in a

striped gauze dress and the jangling ornaments she favoured, stood to

receive her guests. Beads on her thin brown neck, beads on her sharp

brown wrists, beads in her ears, and beads dropping from her waist.

She looked all beads. They were drab beads to-night, each resting in

a little cup of gold. Janet and Miss Cattledon went up in the brougham,

the latter more stiffly ungracious than usual, for she still resented

Mrs. Knox's former behaviour to Janet. I walked.

"Where can the people from next door be?" wondered Mrs. Knox, as the

time went on and Lady Jenkins did not appear.

For Lady Jenkins went abroad again. In a day or two after Mr. Tamlyn's

interview with her, Lefford had the pleasure of seeing her red-wheeled

carriage whirling about the streets, herself and her companion within

it. Old Tamlyn said she was getting strong. Dr. Knox said nothing; but

he kept his eyes open.

"I hope she is not taken ill again? I hope she is not too drowsy to

come!" reiterated Mrs. Knox. "Sometimes madame can't rouse her up from

these sleepy fits, do what she will."

Lady Jenkins was the great card of the soirée, and Mrs. Knox grew cross.

Captain Collinson had not come either. She drew me aside.

"Johnny Ludlow, I wish you would step into the next door and see whether

anything has happened. Do you mind it? So strange that Madame St.

Vincent does not send or come."

I did not mind it at all. I rather liked the expedition, and passed out

of the noisy and crowded room to the lovely, warm night-air. The sky was

clear; the moon radiant.

I was no longer on ceremony at Jenkins House, having been up to it

pretty often with Dan or Sam, and on my own score. Lady Jenkins had been

pleased to take a fancy to me, had graciously invited me to some drives

in her red-wheeled carriage, she dozing at my side pretty nearly all the

time. I could not help being struck with the utter abnegation of will

she displayed. It was next door to imbecility.

"Patty, Johnny Ludlow would like to go that way, I think, to-day may

we?" she would say. "Must we turn back already, Patty?--it has been such

a short drive." Thus she deferred to Madame St. Vincent in all things,

small and great: if she had a will or choice of her own, it seemed that

she never thought of exercising it. Day after day she would say the

drives were short: and very short indeed they were made, upon some

plea or other, when I made a third in the carriage. "I am so afraid

of fatigue for her," madame whispered to me one day, when she seemed

especially anxious.

"But you take a much longer drive, when she and you are alone," I

answered, that fact having struck me. "What difference does my being in

the carriage make?--are you afraid of fatigue for the horses as well?"

At which suggestion madame burst out laughing.

"When I am alone with her I take care not to talk," she explained; "but

when three of us are here there's sure to be talking going on, and it

cannot fail to weary her."

Of course that was madame's opinion: but my impression was that, let us

talk as much as we would, in a high key or a low one, that poor nodding

woman neither heard nor heeded it.

"Don't you think you are fidgety about it, madame?"

"Well, perhaps I am," she answered. "I assure you, Lady Jenkins is an

anxious charge to me."

Therefore, being quite at home now at Jenkins House (to return to the

evening and the soirée I was telling of), I ran in the nearest way to

do Mrs. Knox's behest. That was through the two back gardens, by the

intervening little gate. I knocked at the glass-doors of what was called

the garden-room, in which shone a light behind the curtains, and went

straight in. Sitting near each other, conversing with an eager look on

their faces, and both got up for Mrs. Knox's soirée, were Captain

Collinson and Madame St. Vincent.

"Mr. Ludlow!" she exclaimed. "How you startled me!"

"I beg your pardon for entering so abruptly. Mrs. Knox asked me to run

in and see whether anything was the matter, and I came the shortest way.

She has been expecting you for some time."

"Nothing is the matter," shortly replied madame, who seemed more put out

than the occasion called for: she thought me rude, I suppose. "Lady

Jenkins is not ready; that is all. She may be half-an-hour yet."

"Half-an-hour! I won't wait longer, then," said Captain Collinson,

catching up his crush hat. "I do trust she has not taken another chill.

Au revoir, madame."

With a nod to me, he made his exit by the way I had entered. The same

peculiarity struck me now that I had observed before: whenever I went

into a place, be it Jenkins House or Rose Villa, the gallant captain

immediately quitted it.

"Do I frighten Captain Collinson away?" I said to madame on the spur of

the moment.

"_You_ frighten him! Why should you?"

"I don't know why. If he happens to be here when I come in, he gets up

and goes away. Did you never notice it? It is the same at Mrs. Knox's.

It was the same once at Mrs. Hampshire's."

Madame laughed. "Perhaps he is shy," said she, jestingly.

"A man who has travelled to India and back must have rubbed his shyness

off, one would think. I wish I knew where I had met him before!--if I

have met him. Every now and again his face seems to strike on a chord of

my memory."

"It is a handsome face," remarked madame.

"Pretty well. As much as can be seen of it. He has hair enough for a

Russian bear or a wild Indian."

"Have wild Indians a superabundance of hair?" asked she gravely.

I laughed. "Seriously speaking, though, Madame St. Vincent, I think I

must have met him somewhere."

"Seriously speaking, I don't think that can be," she answered; and her

jesting tone had become serious. "I believe he has passed nearly all his

life in India."

"Just as you have passed yours in the South of France. And yet there is

something in your face also familiar to me."

"I should say you must be just a little fanciful on the subject of

likenesses. Some people are."

"I do not think so. If I am I did not know it. I----"

The inner door opened and Lady Jenkins appeared, becloaked and

beshawled, with a great green hood over her head, and leaning on Lettice

Lane. Madame got up and threw a mantle on her own shoulders.

"Dear Lady Jenkins, I was just coming to see for you. Captain Collinson

called in to give you his arm, but he did not wait. And here's Mr.

Johnny Ludlow, sent in by Mrs. Knox to ask whether we are all dead."

"Ay," said Lady Jenkins, nodding to me as she sat down on the sofa: "but

I should like a cup of tea before we start."

"A cup of tea?"

"Ay; I'm thirsty. Let me have it, Patty."

She spoke the last words in an imploring tone, as if Patty were her

mistress. Madame threw off her mantle again, untied the green hood of

her lady, and sent Lettice to make some tea.

"You had better go back and tell Mrs. Knox we are coming, though I'm

sure I don't know when it will be," she said aside to me.

I did as I was told; and had passed through the garden-gate, when my eye

fell upon Master Richard Knox. He was standing on the grass in the

moonlight, near the clump of laurels, silently contorting his small form

into cranks and angles, after the gleeful manner of Punch in the show

when he has been giving his wife a beating. Knowing that agreeable youth

could not keep himself out of mischief if he tried, I made up to him.

"Hush--sh--sh!" breathed he, silencing the question on my lips.

"What's the sport, Dicky?"

"She's with him there, beyond the laurels; they are walking round," he

whispered. "Oh my! such fun! I have been peeping at 'em. He has his arm

round her waist."

Sure enough, at that moment they came into view--Mina and Captain

Collinson. Dicky drew back into the shade, as did I. And I, to my very

great astonishment, trod upon somebody else's feet, who made, so to say,

one of the laurels.

"It's only I," breathed Sam Jenkins. "I'm on the watch as well as Dicky.

It looks like a case of two loviers, does it not?"

The "loviers" were parting. Captain Collinson held her hand between both

his to give her his final whisper. Then Mina tripped lightly over the

grass and stole in at the glass-doors of the garden-room, while the

captain stalked round to the front-entrance and boldly rang, making

believe he had only then arrived.

"Oh my, _my_!" repeated the enraptured Dicky, "won't I have the pull of

her now! She'd better tell tales of me again!"

"Is it a case, think you?" asked Sam of me, as we slowly followed in the

wake of Mina.

"It looks like it," I answered.

Janet was singing one of her charming songs, as we stole in at the

glass-doors: "Blow, blow, thou wintry wind:" just as she used to sing

it in that house in the years gone by. Her voice had not lost its

sweetness. Mina stood near the piano now, a thoughtful look upon her

flushed face.

"Where did you and Dicky go just now, Sam?"

Sam turned short round at the query. Charlotte Knox, as she put it,

carried suspicion in her low tone.

"Where did I and Dicky go?" repeated Sam, rather taken aback. "I--I only

stepped out for a stroll in the moonlight. I don't know anything about

Dicky."

"I saw Dicky run out to the garden first, and you went next," persisted

Charlotte, who was just as keen as steel. "Dick, what was there to see?

I will give you two helpings of trifle at supper if you tell me."

For two helpings of trifle Dick would have sold his birthright. "Such

fun!" he cried, beginning to jump. "She was out there with the captain,

Lotty: he came to the window here and beckoned to her: I saw him. I

dodged them round and round the laurels, and I am pretty nearly sure he

kissed her."

"Who was?--who did?" But the indignant glow on Lotty's face proved that

she scarcely needed to put the question.

"That nasty Mina. She took and told that it was me who eat up the big

bowl of raspberry cream in the larder to-day; and mother went and

believed her!"

Charlotte Knox, her brow knit, her head held erect, walked away after

giving us all a searching look apiece. "I, like Dicky, saw Collinson

call her out, and I thought I might as well see what he wanted to be

after," Sam whispered to me. "I did not see Dicky at all, though, until

he came into the laurels with you."

"He is talking to her now," I said, directing Sam's attention to the

captain.

"I wonder whether I ought to tell Dr. Knox?" resumed Sam. "What do you

think, Johnny Ludlow? She is so young, and somehow I don't trust him.

Dan doesn't, either."

"Dan told me he did not."

"Dan fancies he is after her money. It would be a temptation to some

people,--seven thousand pounds. Yet he seems to have plenty of his

own."

"If he did marry her he could not touch the money for three or four

years to come."

"Oh, couldn't he, though," answered Sam, taking me up. "He could touch

it next day."

"I thought she did not come into it till she was of age, and that Dr.

Knox was trustee."

"That's only in case she does not marry. If she marries it goes to her

at once. Here comes Aunt Jenkins!"

The old lady, as spruce as you please, in a satin gown, was shaking

hands with Mrs. Knox. But she looked half silly: and, may I never be

believed again, if she did not begin to nod directly she sat down.

"Do you hail from India? as the Americans phrase it," I suddenly ask of

Captain Collinson, when chance pinned us together in a corner of the

supper-room, and he could not extricate himself.

"Hail from India!" he repeated. "Was I born there, I conclude you mean?"

"Yes."

"Not exactly. I went there, a child, with my father and mother. And,

except for a few years during my teens, when I was home for education, I

have been in India ever since. Why do you ask?"

"For no particular reason. I was telling Madame St. Vincent this evening

that it seemed to me I had seen you before; but I suppose it could not

be. Shall you be going back soon?"

"I am not sure. Possibly in the autumn, when my leave will expire: not

till next year if I can get my leave extended. I shall soon be quitting

Lefford."

"Shall you?"

"Must do it. I have to make my bow at a levée; and I must be in town for

other things as well. I should like to enjoy a little of the season

there: it may be years before the opportunity falls to my lot again.

Then I have some money to invest: I think of buying an estate. Oh, I

have all sorts of business to attend to, once I am in London."

"Where's the use of buying an estate if you are to live in India?"

"I don't intend to live in India always," he answered, with a laugh. "I

shall quit the service as soon as ever I can, and settle down

comfortably in the old country. A home of my own will be of use to me

then."

Now it was that very laugh of Captain Collinson's that seemed more

familiar to me than all the rest of him. That I had heard it before, ay,

and heard it often, I felt sure. At least, I should have felt sure but

for its seeming impossibility.

"You are from Gloucestershire, I think I have heard," he observed to me.

"No; from Worcestershire."

"Worcestershire? That's a nice county, I believe. Are not the Malvern

Hills situated in it?"

"Yes. They are eight miles from Worcester."

"I should like to see them. I must see them before I go back. And

Worcester is famous for--what is it?--china?--yes, china. And for its

cathedral, I believe. I shall get a day or two there if I can. I can do

Malvern at the same time."

"Captain Collinson, would you mind giving Lady Jenkins your arm?" cried

Mrs. Knox at this juncture. "She is going home."

"There is no necessity for Captain Collinson to disturb himself: I can

take good care of Lady Jenkins," hastily spoke Madame St. Vincent, in

a tart tone, which the room could not mistake. Evidently she did not

favour Captain Collinson.

But the captain had already pushed himself through the throng of people

and taken the old lady in tow. The next minute I found myself close to

Charlotte Knox, who was standing at the supper-table, with a plate of

cold salmon before her.

"Are you a wild bear, Johnny Ludlow?" she asked me privately, under

cover of the surrounding clatter.

"Not that I know of. Why?"

"Madame St. Vincent takes you for one."