"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 greatest
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 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 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 I----?"
"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.