"Is it not always a great misfortune?"
"Yes--but in this case especially so."
"How? What do you mean, Isabella?" asked Lucille, in her impulsive way. "You are so cold and reserved. Are all Englishwomen so? It is so difficult to drag things out of you."
"Because there is nothing to drag."
"Yes, there is. I want to know why it was such a special misfortune that Mr. Howard should never have known his mother. You may not be interested in him, but I am. My mother is so fond of him--my father trusted him."
"Ah!"
"There, again," cried Lucille, with a laugh of annoyance. "You say "Ah!" and it means nothing. I look at your face and it says nothing.
With us it is different--we have a hundred little exclamations--look at mother when she talks--but in England when you say "Ah!" you seem to mean nothing.."
Lucille laughed and looked at Isabella, who only smiled.
"Well?"
"Well," answered Isabella, reluctantly, "if Mr. Howard"s mother had lived he might have been a better man."
"You call him Mr. Howard," cried Lucille, darting into one of those side issues by which women so often reach their goal. "Do you call him so to his face?"
"No."
"What do you call him?" asked Lucille, with the persistence of a child on a trifle.
"d.i.c.k."
"And yet you do not like him?"
"I have never thought whether I like him or not--one does not think of such questions with people who are like one"s own family."
"But surely," said Lucille, "one cannot like a person who is not good?"
"Of course not," answered the other, with her shadowy smile. "At least it is always so written in books."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "YOU SAY "AH!" AND IT MEANS NOTHING. I LOOK AT YOUR FACE AND IT SAYS NOTHING."]
After this qualified statement Isabella sat with her firm white hands clasped together in idleness on her lap. She was not a woman to fill in the hours with the trifling occupation of the work-basket, and yet was never aught but womanly in dress, manner, and, as I take it, thought. Lucille"s fingers, on the contrary, were never still, and before she had lived at Hopton a fortnight she had half a dozen small protegees in the village for whom she fashioned little garments.
It was she who broke the short silence--her companion seemed to be waiting for that or for something else.
"Do you think," she asked, "that mother trusts Mr. Howard too much?
She places implicit faith in all he says or does--just as my father did when he was alive."
Isabella--than whom none was more keenly alive to my many failings--paused before she answered, in her measured way:
"It all depends upon his motive in undertaking the management of your affairs."
"Oh--he is paid," said Lucille, rather hurriedly. "He is paid, of course."
"This house is his; the land, so far as you can see from any of the windows, is his also. He has affairs of his own to manage, which he neglects. A mere salary seems an insufficient motive for so deep an interest as he displays."
Lucille did not answer for some moments. Indeed, her needlework seemed at this moment to require careful attention.
"What other motive can he have?" she asked at length, indifferently.
"I do not understand the story of the large fortune that slipped so unaccountably through his fingers," murmured Isabella, and her hearer"s face cleared suddenly.
"Alphonse Giraud"s fortune?"
"Yes," said Isabella, looking at her companion with steady eyes, "Monsieur Giraud"s fortune."
"It was stolen, as you know--for I have told you about it--by my father"s secretary, Charles Miste."
"Yes; and d.i.c.k Howard says that he will recover it," laughed Isabella.
"Why not?"
"Why not, indeed? He will have good use for it. He has always been a spendthrift."
"What do you mean?" cried Lucille, laying down her work. "What can you mean, Isabella?"
"Nothing," replied the other, who had risen, and was standing by the mantelpiece looking down at the wood fire with one foot extended to its warmth. "Nothing--only I do not understand."
It would appear that Isabella"s lack of comprehension took a more active form than that displayed in the conversation reported, _tant bien que mal_, from subsequent hearsay. Indeed, it has been my experience that when a woman fails to comprehend a mystery--whether it be her own affair or not--it is rarely for the want of trying to sift it.
That Isabella Gayerson made further attempt to discover my motives in watching over Madame de Clericy and Lucille was rendered apparent to me not very long afterwards. It was, in fact, in the month of November, while Paris was still besieged, and rumours of Commune and Anarchy reached us in tranquil England, that I had the opportunity of returning in small part the hospitality of Alphonse Giraud.
Wounded and taken prisoner during the disastrous retreat upon the capital, my friend obtained after a time his release under promise to take no further part in the war, a promise the more freely given that his hurt was of such a nature that he could never hope to swing a sword in his right hand again.
This was forcibly brought home to me when I met Giraud at Charing Cross station, when he extended to me his left hand.
"The other I cannot offer you," he cried, "for a sausage-eating Uhlan, who smelt shockingly of smoke, cut the tendons of it."
He lifted the hand hidden in a black silk handkerchief worn as a sling, and swaggered along the platform with a military air and bearing far above his inches.
We dined together, and he pa.s.sed that night in my rooms in London, where I had a spare bed. He evinced by his every word and action that spontaneous affection which he had bestowed upon me. We had, moreover, a merry evening, and only once, so far as I remember, did he look at me with a grave face.
"d.i.c.k," he then said, "can you lend me a thousand francs? I have not one sou."
"Nor I," was my reply. "But you can have a thousand francs."
"The Vicomtesse writes me that you are supplying them with money during the present standstill in France. How is that?" he said, putting the notes I gave him into his purse.
"I do not know," I answered; "but I seem to be able to borrow as much as I want. I am what you call in Jewry. I have mortgaged everything, and am not quite sure that I have not mortgaged you."
We talked very gravely of money, and doubtless displayed a vast ignorance of the subject. All that I can remember is, that we came to no decision, and laughingly concluded that we were both well sped down the slope of Avernus.