This particular dinner-party had been planned with some care. "Lady Linacre will come, no doubt," Mrs. Burton Smith had said one day at breakfast, conning a list she held in her hand; "and Mr. May."
But Burton Smith objected to May. "He will talk about nothing but India," he protested, "and the superiority of Calcutta to London. A little of these Bombay ducks goes a long way, my dear."
"Well, James," Mrs. Burton Smith replied placidly--the Hon. Vereker May is a son of Lord Hawthorn--"he will take me in, and I do not mind.
Only I must have Mr. Wibberley on the other side to make conversation and keep me alive. Let me see--that will be three. And Joanna Burton--she comes that afternoon--four. Do you know, James, when we were at Rothley for Christmas I thought there was something between your cousin and Mr. Wibberley?"
"Then, for goodness" sake, do not let them sit together!" Burton Smith cried, "or they will talk to one another and to no one else."
"Very well," Mrs. Smith a.s.sented. "They shall sit facing one another, and Mr. Wibberley shall take in Mrs. Galantine. She will be sure to flirt with him, and we can watch Joanna"s face. I shall soon see if there is anything between them."
Mr. Wibberley was a young man of some importance, if only in his capacity of private secretary to a Minister. He had a thousand acquaintances, and two friends--perhaps three. He might be something some day--was bound to be. He dressed well, looked well, and talked well. He was a little presumptuous, perhaps a trifle conceited; but women like these things in young men, and he had tact. At any rate, he had never yet found himself in a place too strait for him.
This evening as he dressed for dinner--as he brushed his hair, or paused to smile at some reflection--his own, but not in the gla.s.s--he was in his happiest mood. Everything seemed to be going well with him.
He had no presentiment of evil. He was going to a house where he was appreciated. Mrs. Burton Smith was a great ally of his. And then there would be, as we know, some one else. Happy man!
"Lady Linacre," said his hostess, as she introduced him to a stout personage with white hair, a double chin, and diamonds. Wibberley bowed, making up his mind that the dowager was one of those ladies with strong prejudices, who drag their skirts together if you prove to be a Home Ruler, and leave the room if you mention Sir Charles Dilke.
"Mr. May, you have met before," Mrs. Smith continued; "and you know Miss Burton, I think?"
He murmured a.s.sent, while she--Joanna--shook hands with him frankly and with the ghost of a smile, perhaps. He played his part well, for a moment; but halted in his sentence as it flashed across his mind that this was their first meeting since she had said "Yes." He recovered from his momentary embarra.s.sment, however, before even Mrs. Burton Smith could note it, and promptly offered Mrs. Galantine his arm.
She was an old friend of his--as friends go in society. He had taken her in to dinner half a dozen times. "Who is that girl?" she asked, when they were seated; and she raised her gla.s.ses and stared through them at her _vis-a-vis_. "I declare she would be pretty if her nose were not so short."
He seized the excuse to put up his gla.s.s too, and take a long look.
"It is rather short," he admitted, gazing with a whimsical sense of propriety at the deficient organ. "But some people like short noses, you know, Mrs. Galantine."
"Ah! And theatres in August!" she replied incredulously. "And drawing-room games! But, seriously, she would be pretty if it were not for that."
"Would she?" he questioned. "Well, I think she would, do you know?"
And certainly Joanna was pretty, though her forehead was too large, and her nose too small, and her lips too full. For her eyes were bright and her complexion perfect, and her face told of wit, and good temper, and freshness. She had beautiful arms, too, for a chit of nineteen. Mrs. Galantine said nothing about the arms--not out of modesty, but because her own did not form one of her strong points.
Wibberley, however, was thinking of them, and whether a bracelet he had by him would fit them. He saw Joanna wore a bracelet--a sketchy gold thing. He considered whether he should take it for a pattern, or whether it might not be more pleasant to measure the wrist for himself.
But Mrs. Galantine returned to the charge. "She is a cousin, is she not?" she asked, speaking so loudly that Joanna looked across and smiled. "I have never met her before. Tell me all about her."
Tell her all about her! Wibberley gasped. He saw a difficulty in telling "all about her," the more as the general conversation was not brisk, and Joanna must bear a part. For an instant, indeed, his presence of mind failed him, and he cast an appalled glance round the table. Then he bent to his task. "Mrs. Galantine," he murmured sweetly, "pray--pray beware of becoming a potato!"
The lady dropped her knife and fork with a clatter. "A potato, Mr.
Wibberley? What do you mean?"
"What I say," he answered simply. "You see my plate? It is a picture.
You have there the manly beef, and the feminine peas, so young, so tender! And the potato! The potato is the confidante. It is insipid.
Do you not agree with me?"
"Bravo, Mr. Wibberley! But am I to apply your parable?" she spoke sharply, glancing across the table, with her fork uplifted, and a pea upon it. "Am I to be the potato?"
"The choice is with you," he replied gallantly. "Shall it be the potato? or the peas?"
Mrs. Burton Smith, seeing him absorbed in his companion, was puzzled. Look as she might at Joanna, she saw no sign of jealousy or self-consciousness. Joanna seemed to be getting on perfectly with her partner; to be enjoying herself to the full, and to be as much interested as any one at table. Mrs. Burton Smith sighed. She had the instinct of matchmaking. And she saw clearly now that there was nothing between the two; that if there had been any philandering at Rothley neither of the young people had put out a hand--or a heart--beyond recovery.
But this success of Wibberley"s with Mrs. Galantine had its consequences. After the ladies had withdrawn he grew a trifle presumptuous. By ill-luck, the Hon. Vereker May had reached that period of the evening when India--as seen through the gla.s.ses of his memory--was accustomed to put on its rosiest tints; and the two facing one another fell to debating on a subject of which the returned Civilian had seen much and thought little, and the private secretary had read more and thought not at all. They were therefore on a par as to information, and what the younger man lacked in obstinacy he made up in readiness. It was in vain the Nabob bl.u.s.tered, a.s.serted, contradicted--finally grew sulky, silent, stertorous. Wibberley pushed his triumph, and soon paid dearly for it.
It happened that he was the last to enter the drawing-room. The evening was chilly, and the ladies had grouped themselves about the fire, protected from a.s.sault, by a couple of gipsy-tables bearing shaded lamps. The incomers, one by one, pa.s.sed through these outworks--all but Wibberley. He cast a glance of comic despair at Joanna, who was by the fireplace in the heart of the citadel; then, resigning himself to separation, he took a low chair by one of the tables, and began to turn over the books which lay on the latter.
There were but half a dozen. He scanned them all, and then his eyes fell on a bracelet which lay beside them; a sketchy gold bracelet, with one big boss--Joanna"s.
He looked at the party--himself sitting a little aside, as we have said. They were none of them facing his way. They were discussing a photograph on the overmantel, a photograph of children. He extended his hand and covered the bracelet. He would take it for a pattern, and to-morrow Joanna should ransom it. He tried, as his fingers closed on it, to catch her eye. He would fain have seen her face change and her colour rise. It would have added to the charm which the boyish, foolish act had for him, if she had been privy to it--yet unable to prevent it.
But she would not look; and he was obliged to be content with his plunder. He slid the gold trifle deftly under the fringe of the table, and clasped it round his arm--not a l.u.s.ty arm--thrusting it as high as it would go that no movement of his shirt-cuff might disclose it. He had a keen sense of the ridiculous, and he would not for the world that any besides Joanna should see the act: that doddering old fossil May, for instance, who, however, was safe enough--standing on the rug with his back turned, and his slow mind forming an opinion on the photograph.
Then--or within a few minutes, at any rate--Wibberley began to find the party dull. He saw no chance of a private word with Joanna. Lady Linacre, his nearest neighbour, was prosing on to Mrs. Burton Smith, his next nearest. And he himself, after shining at dinner, had fallen into the background. Hang it, he would go! It was ten o"clock.
He rose, and was stooping across the table, murmuring his excuses to Mrs. Burton Smith, when Lady Linacre uttered an exclamation. He was leaning across her between her head and the lamp, and he fancied he had touched her head-dress. "Pray pardon me, Lady Linacre!" he cried gaily. "I am just going--I have to leave early. So the encroachment will be but for a moment."
"It is not that," the old lady replied. "But where is my bracelet?"
She was feeling about the table as she spoke, shifting with her white, podgy hands the volumes that lay on it.
No one on the instant took in the situation. Mrs. Burton Smith had risen, and was listening to Wibberley. The others were talking. But Lady Linacre was used to attention; and when she spoke again her voice was shrill, and almost indecently loud. "Where is my bracelet?" she repeated. "The one with the Agra diamond that I was showing you, Mrs.
Burton Smith. It was here a moment ago, and it is gone! It is gone!"
Wibberley was still speaking to his hostess. He heard the old lady"s words, but did not at once apply them. He finished his leave-taking at his leisure, and only as he turned recollected himself, and said, with polite solicitude, "What is it, Lady Linacre? Have you dropped something? Can I find it for you?"
He stooped as he spoke; and she drew her skirt aside, and both peered at the floor, while there was a chorus from those sitting nearest of, "What is it, Lady Linacre? Dear Lady Linacre, what have you lost?"
"My Agra diamond!" she replied, her head quivering, her fingers groping about her dress.
"No?" some one said in surprise. "Why, it was here a moment ago. I saw it in your hand."
The old lady held up her wrists. "See!" she said fussily, "I have not got it!"
"But are you sure it is not in your lap?" Burton Smith suggested. Lady Linacre had rather an ample lap. By this time the attention of the whole party had been drawn to the loss, and one or two of the most prudent were looking uncomfortable.
"No," she answered; "I am quite sure that I placed it on the table by my side. I am sure I saw it there. I was going to put it on when the gentlemen came in, and I laid it down for a minute, and--it is gone!"
She was quite clear about it, and looked at Wibberley for confirmation. The table stood between them. She thought he must have seen it; Mrs. Burton Smith being the only other person close to the table.
Burton Smith saw the look. "I say, Wibberley," he said, appealing to him, half in fun, half in earnest, "you have not hidden it for a joke, have you?"
"I? Certainly not!"
To this day Ernest Wibberley wonders when he made the disagreeable discovery of what he had done--that he had taken the wrong bracelet!
It was not at once. It was not until the aggrieved owner had twice proclaimed her loss that he felt himself redden, and awoke to the consciousness that the bracelet was on his arm. Even then, if he had had presence of mind, he might have extricated himself. He might have said, "By Jove! I think I slipped it on my wrist in pure absence of mind," or, he might have made some other excuse for his possession of it--an excuse which would have pa.s.sed muster, though one or two might have thought him odd. But time was everything; and he hesitated. He hated to seem odd, even to one or two; he thought that presently he might find some chance of restoring the bracelet. So he hesitated, peering at the carpet, and the golden opportunity pa.s.sed. Then each moment made the avowal more difficult, and less ordinary; until, when his host appealed to him--"If you have hidden it for a joke, old fellow, out with it!"--madness overcame him, and he answered as he did.
He looked up, indeed, with well acted surprise, and said his "I?
Certainly not!" somewhat peremptorily.
Half a dozen of the guests were peering stupidly about as if they expected to find the lost article in a flower-vase, or within the globe of a lamp. Presently their hostess stayed these explorations.
"Wait a moment!" she said abruptly, raising her head. "I have it!"
"Well?"