"Miss Lundie"s governess--that"s all."
The moment during which the question was put and answered was also the moment which brought Lady Lundie and Miss Silvester face to face in the presence of the company.
The stranger at the house looked at the two women, and whispered again.
"Something wrong between the lady and the governess," he said.
The friend looked also, and answered, in one emphatic word:
"Evidently!"
There are certain women whose influence over men is an unfathomable mystery to observers of their own s.e.x. The governess was one of those women. She had inherited the charm, but not the beauty, of her unhappy mother. Judge her by the standard set up in the ill.u.s.trated gift-books and the print-shop windows--and the sentence must have inevitably followed. "She has not a single good feature in her face."
There was nothing individually remarkable about Miss Silvester, seen in a state of repose. She was of the average height. She was as well made as most women. In hair and complexion she was neither light nor dark, but provokingly neutral just between the two. Worse even than this, there were positive defects in her face, which it was impossible to deny. A nervous contraction at one corner of her mouth drew up the lips out of the symmetrically right line, when, they moved. A nervous uncertainty in the eye on the same side narrowly escaped presenting the deformity of a "cast." And yet, with these indisputable drawbacks, here was one of those women--the formidable few--who have the hearts of men and the peace of families at their mercy. She moved--and there was some subtle charm, Sir, in the movement, that made you look back, and suspend your conversation with your friend, and watch her silently while she walked. She sat by you and talked to you--and behold, a sensitive something pa.s.sed into that little twist at the corner of the mouth, and into that nervous uncertainty in the soft gray eye, which turned defect into beauty--which enchained your senses--which made your nerves thrill if she touched you by accident, and set your heart beating if you looked at the same book with her, and felt her breath on your face. All this, let it be well understood, only happened if you were a man.
If you saw her with the eyes of a woman, the results were of quite another kind. In that case you merely turned to your nearest female friend, and said, with unaffected pity for the other s.e.x, "What _can_ the men see in her!"
The eyes of the lady of the house and the eyes of the governess met, with marked distrust on either side. Few people could have failed to see what the stranger and the friend had noticed alike--that there was something smoldering under the surface here. Miss Silvester spoke first.
"Thank you, Lady Lundie," she said. "I would rather not play."
Lady Lundie a.s.sumed an extreme surprise which pa.s.sed the limits of good-breeding.
"Oh, indeed?" she rejoined, sharply. "Considering that we are all here for the purpose of playing, that seems rather remarkable. Is any thing wrong, Miss Silvester?"
A flush appeared on the delicate paleness of Miss Silvester"s face.
But she did her duty as a woman and a governess. She submitted, and so preserved appearances, for that time.
"Nothing is the matter," she answered. "I am not very well this morning.
But I will play if you wish it."
"I do wish it," answered Lady Lundie.
Miss Silvester turned aside toward one of the entrances into the summer-house. She waited for events, looking out over the lawn, with a visible inner disturbance, marked over the bosom by the rise and fall of her white dress.
It was Blanche"s turn to select the next player.
In some preliminary uncertainty as to her choice she looked about among the guests, and caught the eye of a gentleman in the front ranks. He stood side by side with Sir Patrick--a striking representative of the school that is among us--as Sir Patrick was a striking representative of the school that has pa.s.sed away.
The modern gentleman was young and florid, tall and strong. The parting of his curly Saxon locks began in the center of his forehead, traveled over the top of his head, and ended, rigidly-central, at the ruddy nape of his neck. His features were as perfectly regular and as perfectly unintelligent as human features can be. His expression preserved an immovable composure wonderful to behold. The muscles of his brawny arms showed through the sleeves of his light summer coat. He was deep in the chest, thin in the flanks, firm on the legs--in two words a magnificent human animal, wrought up to the highest pitch of physical development, from head to foot. This was Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn--commonly called "the honorable;" and meriting that distinction in more ways than one. He was honorable, in the first place, as being the son (second son) of that once-rising solicitor, who was now Lord Holchester. He was honorable, in the second place, as having won the highest popular distinction which the educational system of modern England can bestow--he had pulled the stroke-oar in a University boat-race. Add to this, that n.o.body had ever seen him read any thing but a newspaper, and that n.o.body had ever known him to be backward in settling a bet--and the picture of this distinguished young Englishman will be, for the present, complete.
Blanche"s eye naturally rested on him. Blanche"s voice naturally picked him out as the first player on her side.
"I choose Mr. Delamayn," she said.
As the name pa.s.sed her lips the flush on Miss Silvester"s face died away, and a deadly paleness took its place. She made a movement to leave the summer-house--checked herself abruptly--and laid one hand on the back of a rustic seat at her side. A gentleman behind her, looking at the hand, saw it clench itself so suddenly and so fiercely that the glove on it split. The gentleman made a mental memorandum, and registered Miss Silvester in his private books as "the devil"s own temper."
Meanwhile Mr. Delamayn, by a strange coincidence, took exactly the same course which Miss Silvester had taken before him. He, too, attempted to withdraw from the coming game.
"Thanks very much," he said. "Could you additionally honor me by choosing somebody else? It"s not in my line."
Fifty years ago such an answer as this, addressed to a lady, would have been considered inexcusably impertinent. The social code of the present time hailed it as something frankly amusing. The company laughed.
Blanche lost her temper.
"Can"t we interest you in any thing but severe muscular exertion, Mr. Delamayn?" she asked, sharply. "Must you always be pulling in a boat-race, or flying over a high jump? If you had a mind, you would want to relax it. You have got muscles instead. Why not relax _them_?"
The shafts of Miss Lundie"s bitter wit glided off Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn like water off a duck"s back.
"Just as you please," he said, with stolid good-humor. "Don"t be offended. I came here with ladies--and they wouldn"t let me smoke. I miss my smoke. I thought I"d slip away a bit and have it. All right!
I"ll play."
"Oh! smoke by all means!" retorted Blanche. "I shall choose somebody else. I won"t have you!"
The honorable young gentleman looked unaffectedly relieved. The petulant young lady turned her back on him, and surveyed the guests at the other extremity of the summer-house.
"Who shall I choose?" she said to herself.
A dark young man--with a face burned gipsy-brown by the sun; with something in his look and manner suggestive of a roving life, and perhaps of a familiar acquaintance with the sea--advanced shyly, and said, in a whisper:
"Choose me!"
Blanche"s face broke prettily into a charming smile. Judging from appearances, the dark young man had a place in her estimation peculiarly his own.
"You!" she said, coquettishly. "You are going to leave us in an hour"s time!"
He ventured a step nearer. "I am coming back," he pleaded, "the day after to-morrow."
"You play very badly!"
"I might improve--if you would teach me."
"Might you? Then I will teach you!" She turned, bright and rosy, to her step-mother. "I choose Mr. Arnold Brinkworth," she said.
Here, again, there appeared to be something in a name unknown to celebrity, which nevertheless produced its effect--not, this time, on Miss Silvester, but on Sir Patrick. He looked at Mr. Brinkworth with a sudden interest and curiosity. If the lady of the house had not claimed his attention at the moment he would evidently have spoken to the dark young man.
But it was Lady Lundie"s turn to choose a second player on her side.
Her brother-in-law was a person of some importance; and she had her own motives for ingratiating herself with the head of the family. She surprised the whole company by choosing Sir Patrick.
"Mamma!" cried Blanche. "What can you be thinking of? Sir Patrick won"t play. Croquet wasn"t discovered in his time."
Sir Patrick never allowed "his time" to be made the subject of disparaging remarks by the younger generation without paying the younger generation back in its own coin.
"In _my_ time, my dear," he said to his niece, "people were expected to bring some agreeable quality with them to social meetings of this sort.
In your time you have dispensed with all that. Here," remarked the old gentleman, taking up a croquet mallet from the table near him, "is one of the qualifications for success in modern society. And here," he added, taking up a ball, "is another. Very good. Live and learn. I"ll play! I"ll play!"
Lady Lundie (born impervious to all sense of irony) smiled graciously.
"I knew Sir Patrick would play," she said, "to please me."