The door had no sooner closed behind Tressady than Betty Leven, with a quick look after him, bent across to her hostess, and said in a stage whisper:
"Who? Post me up, please."
"One of Fontenoy"s gang," said her husband, before Lady Maxwell could answer. "A new member, and as sharp as needles. He"s been exactly to all the places where I want to go, Betty, and you won"t let me."
He glanced at his wife with a certain sharpness. For Tressady had spoken in pa.s.sing of nilghai-shooting in the Himalayas, and the remark had brought the flush of an habitual discontent to the young man"s cheek.
Betty merely held out a white child"s wrist.
"b.u.t.ton my glove, please, and don"t talk. I have got ever so many questions to ask Marcella."
Leven applied himself rather sulkily to his task while Betty pursued her inquiries.
"Isn"t he going to marry Letty Sewell?"
"Yes," said Lady Maxwell, opening her eyes rather wide. "Do you know her?"
"Why, my dear, she"s Mr. Watton"s cousin--isn"t she?" said Betty, turning towards that young man. "I saw her once at your mother"s."
"Certainly she is my cousin," said that young man, smiling, "and she is going to marry Tressady at Easter. So much I can vouch for, though I don"t know her so well, perhaps, as the rest of my family do."
"Oh!" said Betty, drily, releasing her husband and crossing her small hands across her knee. "That means--Miss Sewell isn"t one of Mr. Watton"s _favourite_ cousins. You don"t mind talking about your cousins, do you?
You may blacken the character of all mine. Is she nice?"
"Who--Letty? Why, of course she is nice," said Edward Watton, laughing.
"All young ladies are."
"Oh goodness!" said Betty, shaking her halo of gold hair. "Commend me to cousins for letting one down easy."
"Too bad, Lady Leven!" said Watton, getting up to escape. "Why not ask Bayle? He knows all things. Let me hand you over to him. He will sing you all my cousin"s charms."
"Delighted!" said Bayle as he, too, rose--"only unfortunately I ought at this moment to be at Wimbledon."
He had the air of a typical official, well dressed, suave, and infinitely self-possessed, as he held out his hand--deprecatingly--to Lady Leven.
"Oh! you private secretaries!" said Betty, pouting and turning away from him.
"Don"t abolish us," he said, pleading. "We must live."
"_Je n"en vois pas la necessite!_" said Betty, over her shoulder.
"Betty, what a babe you are!" cried her husband, as Bayle, Watton, and Bennett all disappeared together.
"Not at all!" cried Betty. "I wanted to get some truth out of somebody.
For, of course, the real truth is that this Miss Sewell is--"
"Is what?" said Leven, lost in admiration all the time, as Lady Maxwell saw, of his wife"s dainty grace and rose-leaf colour.
"Well--a--_minx!_" said Betty, with innocent slowness, opening her blue eyes very wide; "a mischievous--rather pretty--hard-hearted--flirting--little minx!"
"Really, Betty!" cried Lady Maxwell. "Where have you seen her?"
"Oh, I saw her last year several times at the Wattons" and other places,"
said Betty, composedly. "And so did you too, please, madam. I remember very well one day Mrs. Watton brought her into the Winterbournes" when you and I were there, and she chattered a great deal."
"Oh yes!--I had forgotten."
"Well, my dear, you"ll soon have to remember her! so you needn"t talk in that lofty tone. For they"re going to be married at Easter, and if you want to make friends with the young man, you"ll have to realise the wife!"
"Married at Easter? How do you know?"
"In the first place Mr. Watton said so, in the next there are such things as newspapers. But of course you didn"t notice such trifles, you never do."
"Betty, you"re very cross with me to-day!" Lady Maxwell looked up at her friend with a little pleading air.
"Oh no! only for your good. I know you"re thinking of nothing in the world but how to make that man take a reasonable view of Maxwell"s Bill.
And I want to impress upon you that _he"s_ probably thinking a great deal more about getting married than about Factory Bills. You see, _your_ getting married was a kind of accident. But other people are different.
And oh, dear, you do know so little about them when they don"t live hi four pair backs! There, don"t defend yourself--you sha"n"t!"
And, stooping, Betty stifled her friend"s possible protest by kissing her.
"Now then, come along, Frank--you"ve got your speech to write--and I"ve got to copy it out. Don"t swear! you know you"re going to have two whole days" golfing next week. Good-bye, Marcella! My love to Aldous--and tell him not to be so late next time I come to tea. Good-bye!"
And off she swept, pausing, however, on the landing to open the door again and put in an eager face.
"Oh! and, by the way, the young man has a mother--Frank reminded me. His womenkind don"t seem to be his strong point--but as she doesn"t earn _even_ four-and-sixpence a week--very sadly the contrary--I won"t tell you any more now, or you"ll forget. Next time!"
When Marcella Maxwell was at last left alone, she began to pace slowly up and down the large bare room, as it was very much her wont to do.
She was thinking of George Tressady, and of the personality his talk had seemed to reveal.
"His heart is all in _power_--in what he takes for magnificence." she said to herself. "He talks as if he had no humanity, and did not care a rap for anybody. But it is a pose--I _think_ it is a pose. He is interesting--he will develop. One would like--to show him things."
After another pensive turn or two she stopped beside a photograph that stood upon her writing-table. It was a photograph of her husband--a tall, smoothfaced man, with pleasant eyes, features of no particular emphasis, and the free carriage of the country-bred Englishman. As she looked at it her face relaxed unconsciously, inevitably; under the stimulus of some habitual and secret joy. It was for his sake, for his sake only that she was still thinking of George Tressady, still pondering the young man"s character and remarks.
So much at least was true--no other member of Fontenoy"s party had as yet given her even the chance of arguing with him. Once or twice in society she had tried to approach Fontenoy himself, to get somehow into touch with him. But she had made no way. Lord Fontenoy had simply turned his square-jawed face and red-rimmed eyes upon her with a stupid irresponsive air, which Marcella knew perfectly well to be a mask, while it protected him none the less effectively for that against both her eloquence and her charm. The other members of the party were young aristocrats, either of the ultra-exclusive or of the sporting type. She had made her attempts here and there among them, but with no more success. And once or twice, when she had pushed her attack to close quarters, she had been suddenly conscious of an underlying insolence in her opponent--a quick glance of bold or sensual eyes which seemed to relegate the mere woman to her place.
But this young Tressady, for all his narrowness and bitterness, was of a different stamp--or she thought so.
She began to pace up and down again, lost in reverie, till after a few minutes she came slowly to a stop before a long Louis Quinze mirror--her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes half consciously studying what she saw.
Her own beauty invariably gave her pleasure--though very seldom for the reasons that would have affected other women. She felt instinctively that it made life easier for her than it could otherwise have been; that it provided her with a natural and profitable "opening" in any game she might wish to play; and that even among the workmen, unionist leaders, and officials of the East End it had helped her again and again to score the points that she wanted to make. She was accustomed to be looked at, to be the centre, to feel things yielding before her; and without thinking it out, she knew perfectly well what it was she gained by this "fair seeming show" of eye and lip and form. Somehow it made nothing seem impossible to her; it gave her a dazzling self-confidence.
The handle of the door turned. She looked round with a smiling start, and waited.
A tall man in a grey suit came in, crossed the room quickly, and put his arms round her. She leant back against his shoulder, putting up one hand to touch his cheek caressingly.