She was almost beautiful in the moonlight, quite ethereal-looking, and her hair a nimbus for that small white face of hers; just as small, just as white, and just as smooth as when those big eyes used to look up into our eyes under an Indian moon. And she is always agreeable, always witty, or at least "smart." Still, I must confess that I was ungallantly absent-minded until something she said waked me up from a brown study.
"He really _is_ a nice boy," she was saying, "and after all, it"s a tribute to your distinguished qualities that he should be afraid to speak to you."
I guessed at once that she must have been talking of her nephew.
"What is he afraid to say to me?" I enquired.
"Afraid to ask you for Miss Lethbridge," she explained.
I think just about that time an ugly black eyelid shut down over the moon. Anyhow, the world darkened for me.
"Isn"t it rather old-fashioned, in these rapid days, for a young man to ask a guardian"s permission to make love to his ward?" said I, savage as a chained dog.
She laughed. "Oh, he hasn"t waited for that to make love, I"m afraid,"
she returned. "But he"s afraid she won"t accept him without your consent."
"He seems to be afraid of several things," I growled. "Afraid to speak to me--afraid to speak to her."
"He is young, and love has made him modest," Mrs. Senter excused her favourite. "He knows he isn"t a _grand parti_. But if they care for each other?"
"I have seen no reason to believe that she cares for him," said I, thinking myself (more or less) safe in the recollection of Ellaline"s words at Winchester. I told you about them, I think.
"Ah, well," said Mrs. Senter, "she cares enough, anyhow, to have entered into a pact of some sort with the poor boy--a kind of understanding that, if _you_ approve, she may at least _think_ of being engaged to him in the future."
"You are sure she has done that?" I asked, staggered by this statement, which I was far from expecting.
"Quite sure, unless love (in the form of d.i.c.k) is deaf as well as blind.
He certainly flatters himself that they are on these terms."
"Since when?" I persisted. (By the by, I wonder if the inquisitors ever hit on the ingenious plan of making prisoners torture themselves?
Nothing hurts worse than self-torture.)
"Only since Lulworth Cove, or you would have heard of it before. You know when we came back from our walk, and saw them sitting on the beach together, I said what a pretty picture they made?"
Naturally, I remembered extremely well.
"That was when they had their great scene. d.i.c.k begged me, as an old friend of yours, to say a word when I found the chance. And I confess, I"ve _made_ the chance to-night. I do hope you won"t think me impertinent and interfering? I"m fond of d.i.c.k. He"s about all I have to be fond of in the world. And besides--just because I"ve never been happy myself, I want others to be, while they"re young, not to waste time."
I muttered something, I hardly know what, and she went on to talk to me of her past, for the first time. Said she had married when little more than a child, and had made the mistake of marrying a man she thought she could manage to live happily with, instead of one she couldn"t manage to live happily without. That was all; but it had made _all_ the difference--and if Miss Lethbridge had given her first love to d.i.c.k----
I nearly said, "Hang first love!" but I held my tongue, fortunately, for of course she meant well, and was only doing her best for her nephew.
But how anyone could love that fellow pa.s.ses my understanding! Why, it seems to me the creature"s parents could hardly have loved him, unless he had had something of the monstrous hypnotism, as well as the selfishness, of a young cuckoo in its stolen nest. Yet the same hypnotism may influence birds outside the nest, I suppose. That"s the only way to account for an infatuation on the part of Ellaline.
"If you are angry, d.i.c.k and I must go away," Mrs. Senter went on. "But he couldn"t help falling in love, and to me they seem made for each other."
I had to answer that of course I wasn"t angry, but I thought any talk of love premature, to say the least.
"You won"t actually refuse your consent, then?" asked she.
"Much good my refusing would do, if the girl really cares!" said I. "I shan"t disinherit her, whatever she does."
Mrs. Senter laughed at that. "Why, even if you did," said she, "it wouldn"t matter greatly to them, because d.i.c.k has something of his own, and she is an heiress, isn"t she?"
Then--I don"t know whether I was wrong or not--but I swear I made the answer I did without any mean or selfish motives--if I can read my own soul. If Burden were a fortune-hunter, I wanted to save her from him, that"s all. I told Mrs. Senter that Ellaline had very little money of her own. "I shall look after her, of course," I said. "But the amount of the _dot_ I may give will be determined by circ.u.mstances."
I don"t know that I mayn"t have put this in a tactless way. Anyhow, Mrs.
Senter looked rather odd--hurt, or distressed, or something queer--I couldn"t make quite out. She said, nevertheless, that d.i.c.k did not care for Miss Lethbridge"s money. He had fallen in love with her the first time they met. Nothing else mattered, as they would have enough to live on. But she had supposed the girl almost too rich for d.i.c.k. Wasn"t Ellaline a relation of the millionaire family of Lethbridges? She had heard so.
I answered that the relationship was distant. That Ellaline"s father had once been a friend of mine, and that her mother had been my cousin, though a French girl.
"Oh!" said Mrs. Senter, as if suddenly enlightened. "Is she--by any chance--the daughter of a _Frederic_ Lethbridge?"
What she recalled about Fred Lethbridge, I can"t guess. She isn"t old enough to have known him, unless as a child or a very young girl. But she certainly had some thought in connection with him which made her silent and reflective. I hope I have done Ellaline no harm--in case the girl really does care for Burden. I never had the intention of keeping her parentage secret, though at the same time it would pain me to have any gossip reach her. However, to do Mrs. Senter justice, I don"t think she is a gossip. She likes to say "smart" things, but so far as I have heard, she is never smart at other people"s expense. And since her confidences to me concerning her past, I am sorry for the poor little woman.
Not much more pa.s.sed between us on the subject of Ellaline and d.i.c.k, except that I refused to recommend the young man to the girl"s good graces. I had to tell Mrs. Senter that, not even for the pleasure of pleasing her, could I consent to do what she asked. But I did finally promise to let Ellaline know that personally I had no objection to the alleged "understanding," if it were for her happiness. Nevertheless, I would advise her that she must do nothing rash. Mrs. Senter not only permitted, but actually suggested, this extra clause; and our _seance_ ended.
Some things are too strange not to be true; and I suppose this infatuation of Ellaline"s, if it exists, is one of them. And it must exist. There can be no doubt of it, since Mrs. Senter has it from the boy--who apparently has it from the girl.
What to make of it, however, that she told me only about ten days ago, she didn"t like him? Yet I am forgetting. We have it on good authority that ""tis best to begin with a little aversion."
I ought to have known that a daughter of Ellaline de Nesville and Frederic Lethbridge couldn"t develop into the star-high being this girl has seemed to me; and I must make the best of it that she"s something less in soul than, in my first burst of astonished admiration, I was inclined to appraise her. After all, why feel bitter against people because they have disappointing shortcomings, if not defects, instead of the dazzling virtues that glittered in your imagination? Cream always rises to the top, yet we don"t think less of it because there"s nothing but milk underneath.
Yes, if I find out that she likes this hypnotic cuckoo I mustn"t despise her for it. But I must find out as soon as I can. Suspense is the one unbearable pain. And you are at liberty to laugh at me as I hope I shall soon be laughing at myself.
L. P.
XV
AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
_Osborne Hotel, Torquay_, _August 6th_
Ma Pet.i.te Minerve-de-Mere: A hundred and six and a half thanks for your counsels and consolations. I needed both, and not a bit the less because I"m not unhappy now. I"m violently happy. It won"t last, but I love it--this happiness. I keep it sitting on my shoulder and stroking its wings, so it mayn"t remember when it"s time to fly away.
That letter I wrote you _was_ silly. I was a regular cry-baby to write it. But I"m so glad you answered quickly. I don"t know how I should have borne it if the man at the Poste Restante window had said: "Nothing for you, miss." I might have responded with blows.
There was a letter from Ellaline, too. I"d sent her the "itinerary" as far as I knew it, and Torquay was the last place on the list. I was wondering if anything were the matter, but there isn"t--though there _is_ news. She waited to write, she says, so that her plans might be decided and she could tell them to me.
The military manoeuvres go on; and the news has nothing directly to do with the adored Honore. But Ellaline has made a confidante--a Scotch girl she has met. I don"t mean she"s told everything; far from that, apparently. She has kept the fraudulent part, about me, secret, and only confided the romantic part, about herself. What she says she has told is, that she"s run away from cruel persons who want to have all her money, and to prevent her from having any happiness. That she"s hiding till the man she"s engaged to can take her to Scotland and have a Scotch marriage--at Gretna Green, if possible, because it would be romantic, and her mother was married there. The Scotch girl, with northern coldness of reason, has pointed out that Gretna Green is nowadays like any other place, but Ellaline is not weaned from the idea. She appears to have fascinated her new friend (as she did her old ones), in spite of the northern coldness, and has received a pressing invitation to visit at the girl"s house in Scotland until Honore can claim her.
There is a mother, as well as a girl, but only a stepmother, and apparently a detail; for the girl has the money and the strength of will. The two are stopping in a pension near Madame de Blanchemain"s house. The girl is a Miss McNamarra, with freckles and no figure, but engaged to an officer, and consequently sympathetic. She has advised Ellaline that, if she travels from France to Scotland with Honore, on the way to be married, he mayn"t respect her as much as if she had friends and chaperons, and a nice place to wait for him. Ellaline is too French at heart not to feel that this advice is good--though she adds in her letter that she, of course, trusts darling Honore completely;--so she has accepted the invitation.
The only trouble is, she wants more money at once. She must let golden louis run through her fingers like water, for I sent her nearly all Sir Lionel handed me before we started on the trip. I shall have to ask him for more, and I"ll hate doing that, because, though I shall be gone out of his life so soon, I"m too vain and self-conscious (it must be that!) to like making a bad impression on his mind while we"re together.