said the young man indignantly.
The mother and son had scarcely left the room when Netta turned to her daughter with trembling lips.
"I haven"t"--half whispering--"told them anything about the Hermes!"
"It was no theft!" said Felicia pa.s.sionately. "I would tell anybody!"
Netta was silent, her face working with unspoken fear. Suddenly, Felicia said in her foreign English, p.r.o.nounced with a slight effort, and very precisely:
"That is a very beautiful young man!"
Netta was startled.
"Lord Tatham? Not at all, Felicia. He is very nice, but I do not even call him good-looking."
"He is a very beautiful young man," repeated Felicia with emphasis, "and I am going to marry him!"
"Felicia! for heaven"s sake--do not show your mad ways here!" cried Netta, white with new alarm.
For the first time for many, many days Felicia smiled. She got up and went to a gla.s.s that hung on the wall. Taking one of the sidecombs from her curls, she began to pull them out, winding them round her tiny fingers, making more of them, and patting them back into place, till her head was one silky ma.s.s of ripples. Then she looked at herself.
"I must have a new dress at once!" she said peremptorily.
"I don"t know where you"ll get it!" cried Netta--"you foolish child!"
"The young man will give it me." And still before the gla.s.s, she gave a little bound, like a kitten. Then she ran back to her mother, took Netta"s face in her hands, dashed a kiss at it, and subsided, weak and gasping, on to a sofa. When Victoria reappeared Felicia was motionless as before, but there was a first streak of colour in her thin, cheeks, and a queer brightness in her eyes.
Faversham was sitting in his Pengarth office, turning over the morning"s post. He had just ridden in from the Tower. Before him lay a telephone message taken down for him by his clerk, before his arrival:
"Lord Tatham will be at Mr. Faversham"s office by 12:30. He wishes to speak to Mr. Faversham on important business."
Something, no doubt, to do with the right-of-way proceedings to which Tatham was a party; or, possibly, with a County Council notice which had roused Melrose to fury, to the effect that some Threlfall land would be taken compulsorily for allotments under a recent Act, if the land were not provided by arrangement.
"Perfectly reasonable! And every complaint that Tatham will make--if he has come to complain--will be perfectly reasonable. And I shall have to tell him to go to the devil!"
He sat pen in hand, staring at the paper on his desk, his mind divided between a bitter disgust with his day"s work and the consciousness of a deep central resolve, which that disgust did not affect, and would not be allowed to affect. He was looking hara.s.sed, pale, and perceptibly older.
No doubt his general health had not yet fully recovered from his accident. But those who disliked in him a certain natural haughtiness, said that he had now more "side on" than ever.
A bell below warned him of Tatham"s arrival. He hurriedly took out papers from various drawers, and arranged them on the office table. They related to the matter on which he thought Tatham might wish to confer with him.
His door opened.
"Hullo, Faversham! Hope you"re quite strong," said the incomer.
"All right, thank you." The two men shook hands. "You"ve been doing Scotland as usual?"
"Two months of it. Beastly few birds. Not at all sorry to come back.
Well, now--I"ve got something very surprising to talk to you about. I say"--he looked round him--"we shan"t be disturbed?"
Faversham rose, gave a telephone order and resumed his seat.
"Who do you think we"ve got staying at Duddon?"
"I haven"t an idea. Have a cigarette?"
"Thanks. Has Melrose ever talked to you about his wife and daughter?"
Faversham stared, took a whiff at his cigarette, and put it down.
"Are you her to tell me anything about them?"
"They are staying at Duddon at this moment," said Tatham, watching his effect; "arrived last night--penniless and starving."
Faversham flushed.
"You"re sure they are the right people?" he said after a pause.
Tatham laughed.
"My mother remembers Mrs. Melrose twenty years ago; and the daughter, if it weren"t that she"s little more than skin and bone, would be the image of Melrose--on a tiny scale. Now, look here! this is their story."
The young man settled down to it, telling it just as it had been told to him, until toward the end a tolerably hot indignation forced its way, and he used some strong language with regard to Melrose, under which Faversham sat silent.
"I"ve no doubt he"s told you the same lies he"s told everybody else!"
exclaimed Tatham, after waiting a little for comments that were slow in coming.
"I was quite aware they were alive," said Faversham, slowly.
"You were, by Jove!"
"And I have already appealed to Melrose to behave reasonably toward them."
"Reasonably! Good heavens!" Tatham had flushed in his turn. "A man is bound to behave rather more than "reasonably"--toward his daughter, anyway--I don"t care what the mother had done. I tell you the girl"s a real beauty, or will be, when she"s properly fed and dressed. She"s a girl anybody might be proud of. And there he"s been wallowing in wealth, while his child has been starving. And threatening to stop their wretched allowance! Well, you know as well as I, what public opinion will be, if these facts get about. Public opinion is pretty strong already. But, by George, when this is added to the rest! Can"t you persuade him to behave himself before it all gets into the papers? It will get into them of course. There the poor things are, and we mean to stand by them. There must be a proper provision for the wife--that the courts can get out of him. And as to the girl--why, she is his heiress!--and ought to be acknowledged as such."
Tatham turned suddenly, as he spoke, and fixed a pair of very straight blue eyes on his companion.
"Mr. Melrose is not bound to make her his heir," said Faversham quietly.
"Not bound! I daresay. But who else is there? He"s not very likely to leave it to any of _us_," said Tatham with a grin. "And he"s not the kind of gentleman to be endowing missions. Who is there?" he repeated.
"Mr. Melrose will please himself," said Faversham, coldly. "Of that we may be sure. Now then--what is it exactly that these ladies have come to ask?" he continued, in a sharp businesslike tone. "You are aware of course that Mrs. Melrose left her husband of her own free will--without any provocation?"
"You won"t get a judge to believe that very easily--in the case of Melrose! Anyway she"s done nothing criminal. And she"s willing, poor wretch! to go back to him. But if not, she asks for a maintenance allowance, suitable to his wealth and position, and that the daughter should be provided for. _You_ can"t surely refuse to support us so far?"
Tatham had insensibly stiffened in his chair. His manner which at first, though not exactly cordial, had still been that of the college friend and contemporary, had unconsciously, in the course of the conversation, a.s.sumed a certain tone of authority, as though there spoke through him the force of a settled and traditional society, of which he knew himself to be one of the natural chiefs.
To Faversham, full of a secret bitterness, this second manner of Tatham"s was merely arrogance. His own pride rose against it, and what he felt it implied. Not a sign of that confidence in the new agent which had been so freely expressed at Duddon a couple of months before! His detractors had no doubt been at work with this jolly, stupid fellow, whom everybody liked. He would have to fight for himself. Well, he would fight!