"Who was Veynol?" asked Charlotte Grey. "It seems to me I"ve heard the name, but--"
"South African diamond man. She married him after a week"s acquaintance at Cape Town, and he died in five months and left her a Mrs. Croesus,"
Waltheof made clear. "The girl calls herself Veynol, too, but that isn"t her name, of course."
"Americans hold their names so lightly, don"t they?" observed Charlotte.
"George says they change them at the drop of the hat."
"Due princ.i.p.ally to the divorce courts and the bankruptcy laws,"
explained the man illuminatingly. "They"re a rum lot out there."
He had never been to America; but the average Briton invariably a.s.sumes a wisdom if he has it not, especially when conversing with the dependent s.e.x.
As events turned out, however, Rosamond Veynol didn"t change her name again on the twelfth of April. For some reason which was not altogether made clear the wedding was postponed.
The published report was that Miss Veynol was ill, but Miss Veynol was not ill in the least, as a number of eye-witnesses who saw her in Paris, where she was temporarily residing, stood ready to prove.
There was no end of question, naturally, and there was no end of gossip.
This condition lasted for three months. And then, to society"s intense surprise, it received invitations for the nuptial ceremony at St.
Margaret"s, Westminster, and for the wedding breakfast at Mrs. Veynol"s recently leased establishment in Park Lane.
Lady Bellingdown was up in town for the express purpose of selecting a wedding gift, in which Lord Waltheof had kindly volunteered to a.s.sist--"Donty-Down," her lord and master, being in Paris just then--when she chanced upon Nina Darling coming out of a shop in New Bond Street and looking absolutely radiant.
"The widow without a sorrow!" she exclaimed, grasping both her hands and kissing her through her veil. "I called you that the other day, and now I see how well it suits you."
"If it was the other day you were wrong," Nina returned. "But to-day you are right. I feel as free as the robins in St. James"s Park. I have just sent the most importunate of Austrian archdukes about his business, and I breathe freely for the first time in six weeks."
"My dear, you are incorrigible. Aren"t you ever going to make some deserving man happy?"
"There is no such animal," declared this outrageous flirt. "I am a righteously avenging Nemesis. I dispense to man his just deserts."
"You are _la belle dame sans merci_."
"Tell me of Nibbetts, Mrs. Darling," Waltheof cut in suggestively. "I"ve not seen him in months."
"Nor I," replied Nina. "He"s been in Dundee. I hear he"s in love with a Scotch la.s.sie. I suspect she"s a marmalade-maker."
"Really!" exclaimed the tame cat, taking her seriously. "Too devilish bad!"
"Yes. Isn"t it? Fancy how tired he must get of smelling orange peel every time he kisses her hand!" She made a grimace and turned back to Kitty Bellingdown. "You didn"t come up for the season? Why?"
"I"ve been wretched. So upset over Caryll"s affair. I hadn"t the heart to face any one. But now it"s all quite straightened out, you know, and I"m so glad for the boy"s sake."
"Do tell me what it was," Nina urged. "I heard the mother fell in love with him and was jealous of the girl."
"No, it wasn"t that," was the non-committal reply.
"Odd, but I haven"t seen Caryll since we were kiddies. How has he grown?
Handsome?"
"Oh, very. A sweet boy. He"d make any woman happy."
"Then he"s a phenomenon. I wish I might have met him."
Waltheof laughed. "He seems to have had trouble enough," he said.
But Sir Caryll Carleigh"s troubles weren"t over by any means. At the last minute the wedding invitations were recalled and the presents returned. A fortnight later his aunt received from him the following letter, dated from a village in Perthshire:
DEAR AUNT KITTY: I"m up here spearing salmon and all that sort of thing, don"t you know, and trying to forget. It was a beastly cropper--this wedding mess--and I"ve gone to pieces over it, for I did love Rosamond awfully. Such a ripping girl! Twenty thousand a year in her own right, too, left her by that diamond chap, just for taking his rotting name. Sounds like a disinfectant or some chemist stuff to me. Veynol. Pah!
However, she decided at the last minute that she liked it better than Carleigh, and there you are. And here am I, most fearfully cut up. I"ll never get over it. I jolly well know I sha"n"t. It is a sickener, I can tell you, and I"m thinking strongly of going in for the church--joining some order or brotherhood or some such silly old thing.
One thing I am sure of. I"ll never look a woman in the face again.
I hate the whole bally lot. Of course, you"re not in this, you know--for you have been a good sort all through. Regular top-hole, you are. But I mean other women--girls--and all that rubbishy lot.
And now, dearest and best of aunties, I"ve a favor to ask. This mess-up, you know, has cost me a pretty penny, and the truth is, I"m stony. Do send me a tenner by return of post. I"ll pay you back when I sell the engagement ring. It"s ripping. It is really.
Your affectionate but heart-broken nephew, CARYLL.
CHAPTER IX
There"s a La.s.s in Dundee!
Into Nina"s flat in Mayfair, one rare August morning, entered Lord Kneedrock, unannounced. He found her in her little drawing-room arranging flowers in a vase--flowers not a whit more lovely than herself.
"Whose?" he asked, nodding toward them. It was his first and only word, and she had not seen him for two months.
She went him one better--one letter better.
"Mine."
"Who sent them?"
"The florist."
"Who paid for them?"
"n.o.body as yet. His bill won"t be in until the first of the month."
"Who ordered them?"
"I did. Anything more?" She seemed delighted.
He strode over to an open, awninged window and dropped into an invitingly cushioned chair. He was still bearded, still rather leonine, but he was better groomed than in those days in India.
He employed a tailor that was an artist in his craft, and a hair-dresser that was no less so. After a fashion he was almost attractive.