"Did she remember my existence?"
"Oh dear, yes! She said she expected you on Sunday. She never asked _me_ to come." Letty looked arch. "But then one doesn"t expect her to have pretty manners. People say she is shy. But, of course, that is only your friends" way of saying that you"re rude."
"She wasn"t rude to you?" said George, outwardly eager, inwardly sceptical. "Shall I not go on Sunday?"
"But of course you must go. We shall have to know them. She"s not a woman"s woman--that"s all. Now, are we going to get some dinner, for Tully and I are famishing?"
"Come along, then, and I"ll collect the party."
George had asked a few of his acquaintance in the House to meet his betrothed, together with an old General Tressady and his wife who were his distant cousins. The party were to a.s.semble in the room of an under-secretary much given to such hospitable functions; and thither accordingly George led the way.
The room, when they reached it, was already fairly full of people, and alive with talk.
"Another party!" said George, looking round him. "Benson is great at this sort of thing."
"Do you see Lady Maxwell?" said Letty, in his ear.
George looked to his right, and perceived the lady in question. She also recognised him at once, and bowed, but without rising. She was the centre of a group of people, who were gathered round her and the small table on which she was leaning, and they were so deeply absorbed in the conversation that had been going on that they hardly noticed the entrance of Tressady and his companion.
"Leven has a party, you see," said the under-secretary. "Blaythwaite was to have taken them in--couldn"t at the last moment; so they had to come in here. This is _your_ side of the room! But none of your guests have come yet. Dinner at the House in the winter is a poor sort of business, Miss Sewell. We want the Terrace for these occasions."
He led the young girl to a sofa at the further end of the room, and made himself agreeable, to him the easiest process in the world. He was a fashionable and charming person, in the most irreproachable of frock-coats, and Letty was soon at her ease with him, and mistress of all her usual arts and graces.
"You know Lady Maxwell?" he said to her, with a slight motion of the head towards the distant group.
Letty replied; and while she and her companion chattered, George, who was standing behind them, watched the other party.
They were apparently in the thick of an argument, and Lady Maxwell, whose hands were lightly clasped on the table in front of her, was leaning forward with the look of one who had just shot her bolt, and was waiting to see how it would strike.
It struck apparently in the direction of her _vis-a-vis,_ Sir Frank Leven, for he bent over to her, making a quick reply in a half-petulant boy"s voice. He had been three years in the House, but had still the air of an Eton "swell" in his last half.
Lady Maxwell listened to what he had to say, a sort of silent pa.s.sion in her face all the time--a n.o.ble pa.s.sion n.o.bly restrained.
When he stopped, George caught her reply.
"He has neither _seen_ nor _felt_--every sentence showed it--that is all one can say. How can one take his judgment?"
George"s mouth twitched. He slipped, smiling, into a place beside Letty.
"Did you hear that?" he inquired.
"Fontenoy"s speech, of course," said the under-secretary, looking round.
"She"s pitching into Leven, I suppose. He"s as cranky and unsound as he can be. Shouldn"t wonder if you got him before long."
He nodded good-temperedly to Tressady, then got up to speak to a man on the edge of the further group.
"How amusing!" said George, his satirical eyes still watching Lady Maxwell. "How much that set has "seen and felt" of sweaters, and white-lead workers, and that ilk! Don"t they look like it?"
"Who are they?"
Letty was now using all her eyes to find out, and especially for the purpose of carrying away a mental photograph of Lady Maxwell"s black hat and dress.
"Oh! the Maxwells" particular friends in the House--most of them as well provided with family and goods as they make "em: a philanthropic, idealist lot, that yearns for the people, and will be the first to be kicked downstairs when the people gets its own. However, they aren"t all quite happy in their minds. Frank Leven there, as Benson says, is decidedly shaky. He is the member for the Maxwells" division--Maxwell, of course, put him in. He has a house there, I believe, and he married Lady Maxwell"s great friend, Miss Macdonald--an ambitious little party, they say, who simply insisted on his going into Parliament. Oh, then, Bennett is there--do you see?--the little dark man with a frock-coat and spectacles? He"s Lady Maxwell"s link with the Independents--oldest workman member--been in the House a long time, so that by now he isn"t quite as one-eyed and one-eared as the rest of them. I suppose she hopes to make use of him at critical moments--she takes care to have tools of all sorts. Gracious--listen!"
There was, indeed, a very storm of discussion sweeping through the rival party. Lady Maxwell"s penetrating but not loud voice seemed to pervade it, and her eyes and face, as she glanced from one speaker to another, drew alternately the shafts and the sympathy of the rest.
Tressady made a face.
"I say, Letty, promise me one thing!" His hand stole towards hers. Tully discreetly looked the other way. "Promise me not to be a political woman, there"s a dear!"
Letty hastily withdrew her fingers, having no mind at all for caresses in public.
"But I _must_ be a political woman--I shall have to be! I know heaps of girls and married women who get up everything in the papers--all the stupidest things--not because they know anything about it, or because they care a rap, but because some of their men friends happen to be members; and when they come to see you, you must know what to talk to them about."
"Must you?" said George, "How odd! As though one went to tea with a woman for the sake of talking about the very same things you have been doing all day, and are probably sick to death of already."
"Never mind," said Letty, with her little air of sharp wisdom. "I _know_ they do it, and I shall have to do it too. I shall pick it up."
"Will you? Of course you will! Only, when I"ve got a big Bill on, let me do a little of it for myself--give me some of the credit!"
Letty laughed maliciously.
"I don"t know why you"ve taken such a dislike to her," she said, but in rather a contented tone, as her eye once more travelled across to Lady Maxwell. "Does she trample on her husband, after all?"
Tressady gave an impatient shrug.
"Trample on him? Goodness, no! That"s all part of the play, too--wifely affection and the rest of it. Why can"t she keep out of sight a little?
We don"t want the women meddling."
"Thank you, my domestic tyrant!" said Letty, making him a little bow.
"How much tyranny will you want before you accept those sentiments?" he asked her, smiling tenderly into her eyes. Both had a moment"s pleasant thrill; then George sprang up.
"Ah, here they are at last!--the General, and all the lot. Now, I hope, we shall get some dinner."
Tressady had, of course, to introduce his elderly cousins and his three or four political friends to his future wife; and, amid the small flutter of the performance, the break-up and disappearance of the rival party pa.s.sed unnoticed. When Tressady"s guests entered the dining-room which looks on the terrace, and made their way to the top table reserved for them, the Leven dinner, near the door, was already half through.
George"s little banquet pa.s.sed merrily enough. The grey-haired General and his wife turned out to be agreeable and well-bred people, quite able to repay George"s hospitality by the dropping of little compliments on the subject of Letty into his half-yielded ear. For his way of taking such things was always a trifle cynical. He believed that people say habitually twice what they mean, whether in praise or blame; and he did not feel that his own view of Letty was much affected by what other people thought of her.
So, at least, he would have said. In reality, he got a good deal of pleasure out of his _fiancee"s_ success. Letty, indeed, was enjoying herself greatly. This political world, as she had expected, satisfied her instinct for social importance better than any world she had yet known.
She was determined to get on in it; nor, apparently, was there likely to be any difficulty in the matter. George"s friends thought her a pretty, lively creature, and showed the usual inclination of the male s.e.x to linger in her society. She mostly wanted to be informed as to the House and its ways. It was all so new to her!--she said. But her ignorance was not insipid; her questions had flavour. There was much talk and laughter; Letty felt herself the mistress of the table, and her social ambitions swelled within her.
Suddenly George"s attention was recalled to the Maxwell table by the break-up of the group around it. He saw Lady Maxwell rise and look round her as though in search of someone. Her eyes fell upon him, and he involuntarily rose at the same instant to meet the step she made towards him.
"I must say another word of thanks to you"--she held out her hand. "That girl and her grandmother were most grateful to you."
"Ah, well!--I must come and make my report. Sunday, I think you said?"
She a.s.sented. Then her expression altered: