"You can"t either of you go anywhere," said Mrs. Freddy, appearing through the balcony window, "till you"ve seen the children"s pictures."
Vida"s eye had once more fallen on the reproduction of one of the Cretan frescoes with a sudden intensification of interest.
"What is it?" Borrodaile asked, looking over her shoulder.
Woman-like she offered the man the outermost fringe of her thought.
"Even Lady Whyteleafe," she said, "would be satisfied with the attention they paid to their hair."
"Come, you two." Mrs. Freddy was at last impatient. "Jean"s got the _really_ beautiful pictures, showing them to Geoffrey. Let us all go down to help him to decide which is the best."
"Geoffrey?"
"Geoffrey Stonor--you know him, of course. But n.o.body knows the very nicest side of Geoffrey, do they?" she appealed to Borrodaile,--"n.o.body who hasn"t seen him with children?"
"I never saw him with children," said Vida, b.u.t.toning the last b.u.t.ton of her glove.
"Well, come down and watch him with Sara and Cecil. They perfectly adore him."
"No, it"s too late."
But the fond mother drew her friend to the window. "You can see them from here."
Vida was not so hurried, apparently, but what she could stand there taking in the picture of Sara and Cecil climbing about their big, kind cousin, with Jean and Mr. Freddy looking on.
"Children!" Their mother waved a handkerchief. "Here"s another friend!
Chil---- They"re too absorbed to notice," she said apologetically, turning to find Vida had left the window, and was saying good-bye to Borrodaile.
"Oh, yes," he agreed, "they won"t care about anybody else while Geoffrey is there." Lord Borrodaile stooped and picked up a piece of folded paper off the sofa. "Did I drop that?" He opened it. "_Votes for_----" He read the two words out in an accent that seemed to brand them with foolishness, even with vulgarity. "No, decidedly I did not drop it."
He was conveying the sheet to the wastepaper basket as one who piously removes some unsavoury litter out of the way of those who walk delicately. Miss Levering arrested him with outstretched hand.
"Do you want it?" His look adjured her to say, "No."
"Yes, I want it."
"What for?" he persisted.
"I want it for an address there is on it."
CHAPTER XI
It was Friday, and Mrs. Fox-Moore was setting out to alleviate the lot of the poor in Whitechapel.
"Even if it were not Friday," Vida said slyly as her sister was preparing to leave the house, "you"d invent some errand to take you out of the contaminated air of Queen Anne"s Gate this afternoon."
"Well, as I told you," said the other woman, nervously, "you ask that person here on your own responsibility."
Vida smiled. "I"m obliged to ask people here if I want to see them quietly. You make such a fuss when I suggest having a house of my own!"
Mrs. Fox-Moore ignored the alternative. "You"ll see you"re only making trouble for yourself. You"ll have to pay handsomely for your curiosity."
"Well, I"ve been rather economical of late. Maybe I"ll be able "to pay.""
"Don"t imagine you"ll be able to settle an account of that kind with a single cheque. Give people like that an inch, and they"ll expect a weekly ell."
"Are you afraid she"ll abstract the spoons?"
"I"m not only afraid, I _know_ she won"t be satisfied with one contribution, or one visit. She"ll regard it as the thin end of the wedge--getting her nose into a house of this kind." Irresistibly the words conjured up a vision of some sharp-visaged female marauder insinuating the tip of a very pointed nose between the great front door and the lintel. "I only hope," the elder woman went on, "that I won"t be here the first time Donald encounters your new friend on the doorstep.
_That"s_ all!"
Wherewith she departed to succour women and children at long range in the good old way. Little Doris was ill in bed. Mr. Fox-Moore was understood to have joined his brother"s coaching party. The time had been discreetly chosen--the coast was indubitably clear. But would it remain so?
To insure that it should, Miss Levering had a private conference with the butler.
"Some one is coming to see me on business."
"Yes, miss."
"At half-past five."
"Yes, miss."
"I specially don"t want to be interrupted."
"No, miss."
"Not by _any_body, no matter whom."
"Very well, miss." A slight pause. "Shall I show the gentleman into the drawing-room, miss?"
"It"s not a gentleman, and I"ll see her upstairs in my sitting-room."
"Yes, miss. Very well, miss."
"And don"t forget--to _any_ one else I"m not at home."
"No, miss. What name, miss?"
Vida hesitated. The servants nowadays read everything. "Oh, you can"t make a mistake. She---- It will be a stranger--some one who has never been here before. Wait! I"ll look out of the morning-room window. If it is the person I"m expecting, I"ll ring the bell. You understand. If the morning-room bell has rung just as this person comes, it will be the one I"m expecting."
"Yes, miss." With a splendid impa.s.sivity in the face of precautions so unprecedented, the servant withdrew.
Vida smiled to herself as she leaned back among the cushions of her capacious sofa, cutting the pages of a book. A pleasant place this room of hers, wide and cool, where the creamy background of wall and chintz-cover was lattice-laced with roses. The open windows looked out upon one of those glimpses of greenery made vivid to the London eye, not alone by grat.i.tude, but by contrast of the leaf.a.ge against the ebonized bark of smoke-ingrained bole and twig.
The summer wind was making great, gentle fans of the plane branches; it was swaying the curtains that hung down in long, straight folds from the high cornices. No other sound in the room but the hard grate of the ivory paper-knife sawing its way through a book whose outside alone (a muddy-brown, pimpled cloth) proclaimed it utilitarian. Among the fair-covered Italian volumes, the vellum-bound poets, and those friends-for-a-lifetime wearing linen or morocco to suit a special taste; above all, among that greater company "quite impudently French" that stood close ranked on shelves or lay about on tables--the brown book on its dusty modern theme wore the air of a frieze-coated yeoman sitting amongst broadcloth and silk. The reader glanced from time to time at the clock. When the small glittering hand on the porcelain face pointed to twenty minutes past five, the lady took her book and her paper-knife into a front room on the floor below. She sat down behind the lowered persienne, and every now and then lifted her eyes from the page and peered out between the tiny slits. As the time went on she looked out oftener. More than once she half rose and seemed about to abandon all hope of the mysterious visitor when a hansom dashed up to the door. One swift glance: "They go in cabs!"--and Miss Levering ran to the bell.