"I don"t know, Brenda. I wish I did. All I do know is that it was stolen that very night out of Dad"s study in the Old Wing, and that I"ve got to tell Lord Leighton all about it. I"m sure Dad could have told him much better, only somehow he seems afraid."
"Oh, is that all--just the stealing of what was perhaps a very valuable relic? They try to steal much fresher corpses than that in the States if there are dollars in the business."
"Don"t be brutal, Brenda! I know you don"t mean it, and it isn"t like you. Now, listen. Before he went to Egypt this time Lord Leighton asked me to marry him. I said "No," and for two reasons. I knew that he liked me very much--he always has done--and poor Dad took his liking for love and encouraged him: but I"m a woman and, I know, that liking isn"t love--and then I love some one else. And now he, I mean Lord Leighton--loves some one else. Turn your face to the moon. Yes, you know who the some one else is. I"m so glad, for I do think you----"
"Niti, you"re talking arrant nonsense for an educated young woman. I"ve only known His Lordship for a day, and how can you----"
"Because female Bachelors of Science and graduates of Va.s.sar, whatever stupid people may say, have hearts _as_ well as intellects, dear, and so they know. I seem to have had a kind of sixth sense given to me to-day, and, when you met Lord Leighton, I saw it, and I believe you _felt_ it.
I saw your eyes brighten and your face flush--only a little, but it did, and so did his. You know my belief in the Doctrine. You may have been lovers--perhaps wedded lovers--once upon a time, as they say in the fairy tales."
"How awful--no, I mean how wonderful--if it could only be true! And now, as you"ve told me all this, you might as well tell me who your some one else is."
"Really, Brenda, I thought you had more perception. He"s there on the verandah smoking with your Lord Leighton."
"Oh! Then, of course, you"re going to marry him?"
"I"m sorry to say Dad doesn"t want me to. With all his genius and learning he is a perfect child in that sort of thing. He has no idea of Natural Selection. Now listen again, Brenda.. When I had to tell Mark that Dad wouldn"t let me marry him, he picked me up out of a chair in the verandah there, where your father and mine are sitting, and kissed me three times."
"And I"ll gamble ten cents that you kissed him back. That"s Natural Selection, if I know anything about it. Niti, if that man--and he is a man--doesn"t get killed in a fight, he"ll marry you in spite of all the misguided scientific Dads on earth. Don"t you worry. You"ve made me just happy. I"m not emotional that way, but I"d like to kiss you if the moon wasn"t so bright. Suppose we go back and try to a.s.sist the kindly Fates a little bit?"
The Fates which, in some dimly-perceived fashion, seem to shape our little successive phases of existence, were certainly in a kindly mood that "lovely night in June." The two Professors had retired to Franklin Marmion"s sanctum for the discussion of whisky and soda and the possibilities of physical manifestations of the Occult. Mrs van Huysman was frankly and comfortably sleeping in the deep, amply-cushioned armchair, and the two young men were almost as frankly pining for sweeter companionship than their own.
But the pairing off, which was so deftly managed by Nitocris, did not at first appear entirely satisfactory to them, yet a very few minutes"
conversation sufficed to convince them of the wisdom of the arrangement.
Brenda, with all the delicate tact which makes every highly-trained woman a skilled diplomatist, managed, not only to completely charm Merrill as a man who is in love with another woman likes to be charmed, but also to make him understand even more clearly than he had done how greatly the Fates had blessed him by giving him the love of such a girl as Nitocris; and then, by a few very deftly conveyed suggestions, she further gave him to understand that, so far as Lord Leighton had ever been an unconscious obstacle in his path, he was even now engaged in removing himself. Wherefore Commander Merrill enjoyed his smoke and stroll under the beeches a good deal more than he had antic.i.p.ated.
More difficultly ambiguous, certainly, was the position in which Lord Leighton found himself with Nitocris, but here also her tact and perfect candour helped his own innate chivalry to accomplish all that was desirable with the slightest possible friction. She began by telling him, as she had told Brenda, of the mysterious stealing of the Mummy, and made a sort of apology for her father having deputed the telling of it to her--of course, in perfect innocence of the real reason for his doing so. He deplored with her the loss of what they both believed to be a priceless relic of the Golden Age of Egypt, but he pa.s.sed it over lightly, chiefly for the reason that there was something in his mind just now that was much more serious than even the loss of the mummy of her long-dead namesake.
There had been a little silence between them after he had made his condolences, and then he said, with a hesitation which told quite plainly what was coming:
"Miss Marmion, I have a rather awkward confession to make to you--I have got to tell you, in fact, I think it is my duty to--well, honestly I really don"t quite know how to put it properly, but--but--er, something has happened to me to-day that is a good deal more important to me, at least, than the disappearance of half a dozen royal mummies."
"Indeed?" said Nitocris, with a demurely perfect a.s.sumption of ignorance. "A good many things seem somehow to have happened to-day. It is something connected with that wonderful Adept"s marvels, perhaps?
They have certainly astonished most of us, I think."
"No," he replied, still a trifle hesitatingly, "it is nothing connected with him or his miracles, as far as I know, except that there was certainly something decidedly queer about the man and the impression he made upon one. Of course I have seen something like the same thing in Egypt and the Farther East; but he seemed quite what I might call uncanny. Still, that"s not the point, although possibly it may have had something to do with it."
He hesitated again. She looked at him with a sideway glance, and said, almost in a whisper: "Yes?"
The moonlight was bright enough for him to see the notes of interrogation in her eyes, and he took the plunge.
"Miss Marmion, I once told you that I loved you and wanted you for my wife, and--and the real fact is that it--I mean I know now that it wasn"t true--and so I thought I ought to tell you. You know, of course, that the Professor----"
"My dear Lord Leighton," she answered, with an air of quite superior wisdom, "my learned father is a very clever man in his own subjects: but I think I know a great deal more about this particular one than he does.
You are quite right. You did not love me. You liked me very much, I have no doubt----"
"Yes, and so I do still, and always shall do, but----"
"But your liking was great enough to make you mistake it for love.
Women"s instincts are quicker and keener in these relations than men"s are, and I saw that you did not love me as a real woman has to be loved, and, to be quite frank with you, some one else did. I like you very much, Lord Leighton, and I am going to go on liking you; but, you see, I could not give you what I had already given away. Now, you have told me so much that you ought to tell me a little more. How did your sudden enlightenment on that interesting subject come about?"
He was infinitely relieved by the absolutely frank and friendly way in which she had treated the whole subject, and so he had courage to reply with a laugh:
"In short, Miss Marmion, you ask me who the other girl is. Well, you certainly have a right to know, because, curiously enough, I might never have got to know her but for you----"
"Is it Brenda?"
The question was whispered, and he replied in a whisper:
"Yes; do you think I have any chance?"
A cohort of wild cats would not have torn Brenda"s secret out of her friend"s soul, and so she replied in a tone that was almost judicious in its evenness:
"That, my friend, is a question that you can only get answered by asking another--and you must ask her, not me."
"Oh yes, of course I must," he said rather limply. "But she"s so splendid--so beautiful, so exquisite--and--I do wish she wasn"t so very rich. You see, even if I had the great good fortune to--to get her to marry me, I have lots for both; and, you know, the moment an Englishman with a t.i.tle gets engaged to an American millionairess everybody says that he is simply dollar-hunting."
"That, unfortunately, is usually too well justified by the facts," she replied seriously. "But only the most idiotic and ignorant of gossips could possibly say that of you. Every one who is any one knows that the Kyneston coronet does not want re-gilding."
And then she went on, glancing sideways at him again:
"Still, as you know perfectly well, in matters of this kind, these very delicate diplomatic considerations, I do not care whether it is a question of fifty shillings a week or fifty thousand a year. You once paid me the very great compliment of offering me rank, position, and almost everything that a girl, from the merely material point of view could ask for. I refused, because I felt certain that you and I did not love each other--however much we may have liked and respected each other--as a man and woman ought to do, unless they become guilty of a great sin against each other. To put it in a very hackneyed way, we were not each other"s affinities. I had already found mine--and I think, and hope, that you have found yours--and I wish you all the good fortune that you may, and, perhaps, can win."
"If is very, very good of you, Miss Marmion; but do you think you could--well, help me a little? I know I don"t deserve it."
"No, sir, you do not," she laughed softly, because the other two were coming back on to the lawn. "I wonder that you have--I have half a mind to say the impudence--to ask such a thing. You have confessed your fickleness in an almost shameless way; and now you ask me to help you with the other girl! No, my lord: if I know anything of Brenda van Huysman"s nature, there is no one who can help you except yourself. Of course she might----"
"Do you really think she might--I mean in that way?"
"Who am I that I should know the secrets of another woman"s soul?" she replied, with unhesitating prevarication. "There she is. Go and ask her, and take my best wishes with you. Now I am going to talk to _my_ affinity for a few minutes."
"So it was Merrill, after all!" he said to himself, as they joined the others. "Well, I"m glad. He"s a splendid fellow; and she--of course, she"s worth the love of the best man on earth--and I"m afraid that"s not--anyhow, I"ll have Miss Brenda"s opinion on the subject before I go home to-night."
It now need hardly be added that the said opinion was not only entirely satisfactory, but also very sweetly expressed.
CHAPTER XIII
OVER THE TEA AND THE TOAST
The next morning there were, at least, three eventful breakfasts "partaken of," as it was once the fashion to say; one at "The Wilderness," one at the Savoy, and one at the Kyneston town house in Prince"s Gate.
When Professor Marmion came down he was a little late, for he had done a long night"s work, finishing his lecture-notes to his own satisfaction, or, at least, as nearly as he could get there. Like all good workers, he was never quite satisfied with what he did. When the maid had closed the door of the breakfast-room, he looked across the table at his daughter with a twinkle in his eyes, and said:
"Niti, before Lord Leighton left last night he had a talk with me, and you were partly the subject of it."