"Your face, my Thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters."
"I see no reason why she shouldn't be," says the professor
calmly--is there a faint suspicion of hauteur in his tone? "As we
are on the subject of myself, I may as well tell you that my brother
is Sir Hastings Curzon, of whom"--he turns back as if to take up
some imaginary article from the floor--"you may have heard."
"Sir Hastings!" Mr. Hardinge leans back in his chair and gives way
to thought. This quiet, hard-working student--this man whom he had
counted as a nobody--the brother of that disreputable Hastings
Curzon! "As good as got the baronetcy," says he still thinking. "At
the rate Sir Hastings is going he can't possibly last for another
twelvemonth, and here is this fellow living in these dismal lodgings
with twenty thousand a year before his eyes. A lucky thing for him
that the estates are so strictly entailed. Good heavens! to think of
a man with all that almost in his grasp being _happy_ in a coat that
must have been built in the Ark, and caring for nothing on earth but
the intestines of frogs and such-like abominations."
"You seem surprised again," says the professor, somewhat
satirically.
"I confess it," says Hardinge.
"I can't see why you should be."
_"I_ do," says Hardinge drily. "That you," slowly, _"you_ should be
Sir Hastings' brother! Why----"
"No more!" interrupts the professor sharply. He lifts his hand. "Not
another word. I know what you are going to say. It is one of my
great troubles, that I always know what people are going to say when
they mention him. Let him alone, Hardinge."
"Oh! _I'll_ let him alone," says Hardinge, with a gesture of
disgust. There is a pause.
"You know my sister, then?" says the professor presently.
"Yes. She is very charming. How is it I have never seen you there?"
"At her house?"
"At her receptions?"
"I have no taste for that sort of thing, and no time. Fashionable
society bores me. I go and see Gwen on off days and early hours,
when I am sure that I shall find her alone. We are friends, you will
understand, she and I; capital friends, though sometimes," with a
sigh, "she--she seems to disapprove of my mode of living. But we get
on very well on the whole. She is a very good girl," says the
professor kindly, who always thinks of Lady Baring as a little girl
in short frocks in her nursery--the nursery he had occupied with
her.
To hear the beautiful, courted, haughty Lady Baring, who has the
best of London at her feet, called "a good girl," so tickles Mr.
Hardinge, that he leans back in his chair and bursts out laughing.
"Yes?" says the professor, as if asking for an explanation of the
joke.
"Oh! nothing--nothing. Only--you _are_ such a queer fellow!" says
Hardinge, sitting up again to look at him. "You are a _rara avis,_
do you know? No, of course you don't! You are one of the few people
who don't know their own worth. I don't believe, Curzon, though I
should live to be a thousand, that I shall ever look upon your like
again."
"And so you laugh. Well, no doubt it is a pleasant reflection," says
the professor dismally. "I begin to wish now I had never seen
myself."
"Oh, come! cheer up," says Hardinge, "your pretty ward will be all
right. If Lady Baring takes her in hand, she----"
"Ah! But will she?" says the professor. "Will she like Per---- Miss
Wynter?"
"Sure to," said Hardinge, with quite a touch of enthusiasm. "'To
see her is to love her, and love but'----"
"That is of no consequence where anyone is concerned except Lady
Baring," says the professor, with a little twist in his chair, "and
my sister has not seen her as yet. And besides, that is not the only
question--a greater one remains."
"By Jove! you don't say so! What?" demands Mr. Hardinge, growing
earnest.
"Will Miss Wynter like _her?"_ says the professor. "That is the real
point."
"Oh! I see!" says Hardinge thoughtfully.
The next day, however, proves the professor's fears vain in both
quarters. An early visit to Lady Baring, and an anxious appeal,
brings out all that delightful woman's best qualities. One
stipulation alone she makes, that she may see the young heiress
before finally committing herself to chaperone her safely through
the remainder of the season.
The professor, filled with hope, hies back to his rooms, calls for
Mrs. Mulcahy, tells her he is going to take his ward out for a
drive, and gives that worthy and now intensely interested landlady
full directions to see that Miss Wynter looks--"er--nice! you know,
Mrs. Mulcahy, her _best_ suit, and----"
Mrs. Mulcahy came generously to the rescue.
"Her best frock, sir, I suppose, an' her Sunday bonnet. I've often
wished it before, Mr. Curzon, an' I'm thinkin' that 'twill be the
makin' of ye; an' a handsome, purty little crathur she is an' no
mistake. An' who is to give away the poor dear, sir, askin' yer
pardon?"
"I am," says the professor.
"Oh no, sir; the likes was never known. 'Tis the father or one of
his belongings as gives away the bride, _niver_ the husband to be,
an' if ye _have_ nobody, sir, you two, why I'm sure I'd be proud to
act for ye in this matther. Faix I don't disguise from ye, Misther
Curzon, dear, that I feels like a mother to that purty child this
moment, an' I tell ye _this,_ that if ye don't behave dacent to her,
ye'll have to answer to Mrs. Mulcahy for that same."
"What d'ye mean, woman?" roars the professor, indignantly. "Do you
imagine that _--_--?"
"No. I'd belave nothin' bad o' ye," says Mrs. Mulcahy solemnly.
"I've cared ye these six years, an' niver a fault to find. But that
child beyant, whin ye take her away to make her yer wife----"
"You must be mad," says the professor, a strange, curious pang
contracting his heart. "I am not taking her away to---- I--I am
taking her to my sister, who will receive her as a guest."
"Mad!" repeats Mrs. Mulcahy furiously. "Who's mad? Faix," preparing
to leave the room, "'tis yerself was born widout a grain o' sinse!"
The meeting between Lady Baring and Perpetua is eminently
satisfactory. The latter, looking lovely, but a little frightened,
so takes Lady Baring's artistic soul by storm, that that great lady
then and there accepts the situation, and asks Perpetua if she will
come to her for a week or so. Perpetua, charmed in turn by Lady
Baring's grace and beauty and pretty ways, receives the invitation
with pleasure, little dreaming that she is there "on view," as it
were, and that the invitation is to be prolonged indefinitely--that
is, till either she or her hostess tire one of the other.
The professor's heart sinks a little as he sees his sister rise and
loosen the laces round the girl's pretty, slender throat, begging
her to begin to feel at home at once. Alas! He has deliberately
given up his ward! _His_ ward! Is she any longer his? Has not the
great world claimed her now, and presently will she not belong to
it? So lovely, so sweet she is, will not all men run to snatch the
prize?--a prize, bejewelled too, not only by Nature, but by that
gross material charm that men call wealth. Well, well, he has done
his best for her. There was, indeed, nothing else left to do.