As meekly as if I'd been put into the world for that purpose alone, I began to pour out tea for Miss Million and her guests.
The tea-table was set in the alcove of the big window, so that I had to turn my back upon the trio. But I could feel eyes upon my back. Well! I didn't mind. It was a gracefully fitted back at last, in that perfectly cut, thin black gown, with white muslin apron-strings tied in an impertinent little bow.
There was a silence in the room where the hostess had been laughing and the principal guest—I suppose she looked upon this Mr. Burke as the principal guest—had been purring away to her in that soft Irish voice of his.
I filled the cups and turned—to meet the honest sunburnt face of the other visitor, Mr. Reginald Brace. He'd got up and taken a quick step towards me. Inever saw anything quite so blankly bewildered as his expression as he tried hard not to stare at that little white muslin butterfly cap in my hair.
Of course! This was his first intimation that I, who had been Million's mistress, was now Miss Million's maid!
In a dazed voice he spoke to me: "Can't I——Do let me help you——"
"Oh, thank you," I said quietly and businesslikely. "Will you take this to Miss Million, please?"
He handed the cups to the others, and I followed and handed the cream, milk, and sugar. It felt like acting in a scene out of some musical comedy, at the Gaiety, say. And I daresay it looked like it, what with the pretty, flower-filled sitting-room, and Million's French white muslin with the grey-blue sash, and my stage-soubrette livery, and the glossily groomed Mr. Burke as the young hero! I surprised a very summing-up glance from those black-lashed blue eyes of his as I waited on him. How is it that every syllable spoken in a certain kind of Irish voice seems to mean a compliment, even if it's only "thank you" for the sugar? I went back and stood as silent and self-effacing as a statue, or a really well-trained servant, by the tea-things, while the Honourable James Burke went on improving the shining hour with his millionaire hostess.
This was the sort of conversation that had been going on, evidently, from the start:
"Isn't it an extraordinary thing, now, that I should be sitting here, cosily talking to you like this, when just at this same time last year, my dear Miss Million,I was sitting and talking to that dear old uncle of yours in Chicago?" he said. "Every afternoon I used to go and sit by his bedside——"
"A year ago, was it?" put in Million. "Why, Mr. Burke, I never knew uncle had been poorly so long as that; I thought he was taken ill quite sudden."
"Oh, yes, of course. So he was," Mr. Burke put in quickly. "But you know he had an awful bad doing a good time before that. Sprained his ankle, poor old boy, and had to lie up for weeks. Awfully tedious for him; he used to get so ratty, if you don't mind my saying so, Miss Million. He used to flare up in his tempers like a match, dear old fellow!"
"Well, I never. I'm rather that way myself," from the delighted Million, who was obviously hanging on every word that fell from the young fortune-hunter's improvising lips. "Must be in the family!"
"Ah, yes; it always goes with that generous, frank, natural disposition. Always hasty as well! So much better than sulking, I always think," from the Irishman. "When it's over, it's over. Why, as your dear old uncle used to say to me, 'Jim,' he'd say—he always called me Jim——"
"Did he really, now?" from Million. "Fancy!"
Yes, it was all "fancy," I thought.
As I stood there listening to that glib West of Ireland accent piling detail on detail to the account of the Honourable Jim's friendship with the old Chicago millionaire a queer conviction strengthened in my mind. I didn't believe a word of it!
"One of the best old chaps I ever knew. Hard andcrusty on the outside—a rough diamond, if you know what I mean—but one of Nature's own gentlemen. I'm proud to think he had a good opinion of me——"
All a make-up for the benefit of the ingenuous, ignorant little heiress to whom he was talking! He was brazenly "pulling" Miss Million's unsophisticated leg! Honourable or not, he was an unscrupulous adventurer, this Jim Burke! And the other young man—the young bank manager, who sat there balancing a cup of tea in one hand and one of the pale-green Gunter's cakes in the other? He hadn't a word to say. There he sat. I glanced at him. He looked wooden. But behind the woodenness there was disapproval, I could see. Disapproval of the whole situation. Ah! I shouldn't have to ask him what he thought of the Honourable Jim Burke. I could read Mr. Brace's opinion of him written in every line of Mr. Brace's clean-shaven, honest face that somehow didn't look so handsome this afternoon. Showiness such as that of the big, black-haired, blue-eyed Irishman is enough to "put out" the light of any one else! Why, why did I allow Million to meet him? He'd take care that this was not the only time! He was taking care of that.
I heard him saying something about taking Miss Million on the coach somewhere. I saw Miss Million clap her hands that are still rather red and rough from housework, manicure them as I will.
"What, me! On a coach? What, with all them lovely white horses and that trumpeter?" cried Million gleefully. "Would I like it? Oh, Mr. Burke!"
Mr. Burke immediately began arranging dates andtimes for this expedition. He said, I think, "the day after to-morrow——"
Oh, dear! What am I going to do about this? Forbid her to go? Up to now everything that I have said has had such an immense influence upon little Million. But now? What about that quite new gleam of defiance in her grey eyes? Alas! the influence of one girl upon the actions of another girl may be as "immense" as you please, but wait until it is countermined by some newly appeared, attractive young scoundrel of a man! (I am sure he is a scoundrel.)
I foresee heated arguments between my young mistress and myself, with many struggles ahead.
Meanwhile, I feel that my only hope lies in Mr. Brace. Without a word passing between us, I felt that he understood something of my anxiety in this situation. He might be able to help me, though I think I should have thought more of him if he had tried to talk a little this afternoon instead of allowing the conversation to consist of a monologue by that Irishman, punctuated by rapturous little Cockney comments from Miss Million.
He, Mr. Brace, left first.
I glided away from my station at the table to open the door for him.
"Thank you," he said. "Good afternoon, Miss Lovelace." I must see him again, or write to him, to ask for his help, I think!
The Honourable Jim tore himself from Million's side about five minutes later.
"Good-bye, Miss Million. I wish I could tell youhow much it's meant to me, meeting my old friend's niece in this way," purred the golden voice, while the Honourable Jim held Million's little hand in his and gazed down upon the enraptured face of her. One sees faces like that sometimes outlining the gallery railing at a theatre, while below the orchestra drawls out a phrase of some dreamy waltz and, on the stage, the matinée hero turns his best profile to the audience and murmurs thrillingly: "Little girl! Do you dream how different my life could be—withyou?"
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the Honourable Jim had made up his mind to say something of the sort to Million, quite soon!
Of course, his life would be "different" if he had heaps of money. Somehow I can't help feeling that, in spite of his clothes and the dash he cuts, he hasn't a penny to his name.
"Good-bye.A bientôt," he said to Million.
Oh, why did I ever bring her to the Cecil? As the door closed behind her visitor Million breathed a heavy sigh and said, just as those theatre-going girls say at the drop of a curtain: "Wasn't he lovely?"
Then she threw herself down on to the couch, which bounced. Something fell from it on to the floor.
"There, if he hasn't left his walkin'-stick be'ind him!" exclaimed Million, picking up a heavy ebony cane with a handsome gold top to it. I realised that here was an excuse, hatched up by that conscienceless young Celt, to return shortly.
Million didn't see that. She exclaimed: "Now I've got to run after him with it, I s'pose——"
"No, you haven't, Miss Million. I will take it. It's the maid's place," I interposed. And quickly I took the cane and slipped out into the corridor with it.
I caught up with the tall visitor just as he reached the lift.
"You left your cane in Miss Million's room, sir," I said to him in a tone as stiff as that of a lady's-maid turned into a pillar of ice.
The big Irishman turned. But he did not put out his hand for the cane at once.
He just said, "That's very kind of you," and smiled at me. Smiled with all those bold blue eyes of his. Then he said in a voice lower and more flattering even than he had used to the heiress herself: "I wanted a word with you, Miss Lovelace, I think they call you. It's just this——"
He paused, smiled more broadly all over his handsome face, and added these surprising words:
"What's your game, you two?"
"Game!—I beg your pardon!" I said haughtily. (I hope I didn't show how startled and confused I was. What could he mean by "our game"?)
I gazed up at him, and he gave a short laugh. Then he said: "Is it because nothing suits a pretty woman better than that kit? Is it just because you know the man's not born that can resist ye in a cap and apron?"
I was too utterly taken aback to think of any answer. I thrust the cane into his hands, and fled back, down the corridor, into my mistress's room. And, as I went in, I think I heard the Honourable Jim still laughing.
"Don'tyou think it's about time you went and had an afternoon out, Smith?"
This was the remark addressed to me by my employer the morning after the afternoon of her first tea-party.
For a moment I didn't answer. The fact is I was too angry! This is absurd, of course. For days I've scolded Million for forgetting our quick change of positions, and for calling me "Miss" or "Miss Beatrice." And yet, now that the new heiress is beginning to realise our respective rôles and to call me, quite naturally, by the name which I chose for myself, I'm foolishly annoyed. I feel the stirring of a rebellious little thought. "What cheek!"
This must be suppressed.
"You know you did ought to have one afternoon a week," our once maid-of-all-work reminded me as she sat in a pale-blue glorified dressing-gown in front of the dressing-table mirror. I had drawn up a lower chair beside her, and was doing my best with the nails of one of her still coarse and roughened little hands, gently pushing the ill-treated skin away from the "half-moons." Million's other hand was dipped into a clouded marble bowl full of warm, lemon-scented emollient stuff.
"Here you've been doin' for me for well over the week now, and haven't taken a minute off for yourself."
"Oh, I haven't wanted one, thanks," I replied rather absently.
I wasn't thinking of what Million was saying. I was pondering rather helplessly over the whole situation; thinking of Million, of her childish ignorance and her money, of myself, of that flattering-tongued, fortune-hunting Irishman who had asked me in the corridor what "our game" was, of that coach-drive that he intended to take Million to-morrow, of what all this was going to lead to.
"Friday, this afternoon. I always had Fridays off. You'd better take it," the new heiress said, with quite a new note of authority. "You can pop out dreckly after lunch, and I shan't want you back again until it's time for you to come and do me up for late dinner."
Miss Million dines in her room; but she is, as she puts it, "breakin' in all her low-cut gowns while she's alone, so as to get accustomed to the feel of it."
I looked at her.
I thought, "Why does she want me out of the way?"
For I couldn't help guessing that this was at the bottom of Miss Million's offering her maid that afternoon out!
I said: "Oh, I don't think there's anywhere I want to go to, just yet."
"Better go, and have it settled, like. Makes it more convenient to you, and more convenient to me, later on, if we know exactly how we stand about your times off,"said Million quite obstinately. "I shan't want you after two this afternoon."
This she evidently meant quite literally.
I shall have to go, and to leave her to her own devices. I wonder what they will be? Perhaps an orgy of more shopping, without me, buying all the cerise atrocities that I wouldn't allow her to look at. Garments and trimmings of cerise would be a pitfall to Miss Million but for her maid. So would what she calls "a very sweet shade of healiotrope." Perhaps it's worse than that, though. Perhaps she's having Mr. Burke to tea again, and wishes to keep it from the maid who said such disapproving things about him. I shall have to leave that, for the present.... I shall just have to take this afternoon out.
I went out, wondering where I should go. My feet seemed of their own accord to take me westwards, through Trafalgar Square and Pall Mall. I walked along, seeing little of the sauntering summer crowds. My mind was full of my own thoughts, my own frettings. I'd cut myself off from my own people, and what was going to come of it? Not the glorious independence I'd hoped for. No; a whole heap of new difficulties, and anything but a free hand wherewith to cope with them!
I came out of this rather gloomy reflection to find myself in Bond Street. That narrow, Aristocrat-of-all-the-Thoroughfares has seen a good deal of Miss Million and her maid during the last couple of days. Not much of a change for my afternoon off! I didn't want to do any more shopping; in fact, I shan't be able to do anymore shopping for myself for the next six months, seeing that of the two quarters' salary that I asked Miss Million to advance me there remains about five shillings and sixpence.
But I might give myself a little treat; say, tea in a nice place with a good band and a picture-gallery first. That might help me to forget, for an hour or so, the troubles and trials of being the lady's-maid to a millionairess.
This was why I paid away one of my few remaining shillings at the turnstile of the Fine Art Society, and sauntered into the small, cool gallery.
There was rather an amusing picture-show on. Drawings of things that I myself had been up to my eyes in for the last day or so; the latest fashions for nineteen-fourteen! Drawings by French artists that made clothes, fashion-plates, look as fascinating and as bizarre as the most wonderful orchids. Such curious titles, too, were given to these clever little pictures of feminine attire: "It is dark in the park"; "A rose amid the roses."
There was one picture of a simple frock made not unlike Miss Million's white muslin with the blue sash, but how different frocks painted are from frocks worn! Or was it that the French manikin in the design knew how to wear the——
My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a voice speaking above my shoulder, speaking to me:
"Ah! And is this where Miss Million's maid gathers her inspirations for dressing Miss Million?"
I knew who this was, even before I turned from thepictures to face what looked like another very modern fashion-plate. A fashion-design for the attire of a young man about town, the Honourable Jim Burke! So he wasn't calling on Miss Million again this afternoon, after all! That ought to be one weight off my mind; and yet it wasn't. I felt curiously nervous of this man. I don't know why. He raised his glossy hat and smiled down at me. He spoke in the courteous tone of one enchanted to meet some old acquaintance. "Good afternoon, Miss Lovelace!"
A maid may not cut her mistress's chosen friends, even on her afternoon out. I was obliged to say "Good afternoon," which I did in a small and icy voice. Then, in spite of myself, I heard myself saying: "My name is Smith."
The Honourable Jim said coolly: "Oh, I think not?"
I said, standing there, all in black, against the gay background of coloured French drawings: "Smith is the name that I am known by as Miss Million's maid."
"Exactly," said the big young Irishman gently, looking down at me and leaning on his ebony, gold-headed stick.
He added, almost in a friendly manner: "You know, that's just what I've been wanting to have a little talk to you about."
"A talk to me?" I said.
"Yes, to you, Miss Smith-Lovelace," he nodded. "You do belong to the old Lovelace Court Lovelaces, I suppose. The Lady Anastasia lot, that had to let the place. Great pity! Yes! I know all about you," saidthis alarming young man with those blue eyes that seemed to look through my face into the wall and out again into Bond Street. "Let's see, in your branch there'll be only you and the one brother left, I believe? Lovelace, Reginald M., Lieutenant Alexandra's Own, I.A. What does he think of this?"
"Of which?" I fenced, not knowing what else to say to this surprising and disconcerting person. "You seem to know a good deal about people's families, Mr. Burke." This I thought was a good way of carrying the war into the enemy's own country, "or to say you do."
I added this with great emphasis. I meant him to realise that I saw through him. That I'd guessed it was all pure romancing what he had been murmuring yesterday to my unsuspecting little mistress about his friendship with her uncle.
That would astonish this young fortune-hunter, thought I. That would leave him without a word to say for himself. And then he'd leave me. He'd turn and go, foiled. And even if he persisted in his attentions to the dazzled Miss Million, he would remain in a very wholesome state of terror of Miss Million's maid. This was what I foresaw happening in a flash. Picture my astonishment, therefore, at what did happen.
The young man took me up without a quiver.
"Ah, you mean that affecting little yarn about old man Million, in Chicago, don't you?" he said pleasantly. "Very touching, you'll agree, the way I'd cling to his bedside and put up with his flares of temper, the dear old (Nature's) gentleman——"
I would have given yet another quarter's salary not to have done what I did at this moment. I laughed.
That laugh escaped me—I don't know how. How awful! There I stood in the gallery, with only a sort of custodian and a couple of art-students about, laughing up at this well-dressed, showy, unprincipled Irishman as if we were quite friends! I who disapproved of him so utterly! I who mean to do all in my power to keep him and Million's money apart!
He said: "Didn't I know you had a sense of humour? Let us continue this very interesting conversation among the Polar landscapes downstairs. That's what I came in here to see. We'll sit and admire the groups of penguins among the icebergs while we talk."
"No; I don't think we will," said I. I didn't mean to do anything this young man meant me to. I wasn't Million, to be hypnotised by his looks and his clothes and his honeyed Irish voice, forsooth. "I don't care to see those photographs. Not a bit like the Pole, probably. I am not coming down, Mr. Burke."
"Ah, come along," he persisted, smiling at me as he stood at the top of the stairs that led to the other exhibition. "Be a good little girl and come, now!"
"Certainly not," I said, with considerable emphasis on the "not."
I repeated steadily: "I am not coming. I have nothing to talk to you about. And, really, I think I have seen quite enough——"
"Of you!" was my unspoken ending to this sentence. These "asides" seem to sprinkle one's conversations with words written, as it were, in invisible ink.How seldom can one publish them abroad, these mental conclusions of one's remarks! No, no; life is quite complicated enough without that.... So I concluded, rather lamely, looking round the gallery with the drawings of Orientalised Europeans: "I have seen quite enough of this exhibition. So I am going——"
"To have tea, of course. That is a very sound scheme of yours, Miss Lovelace," said Mr. Burke briskly but courteously. "You'll let me have the pleasure of taking you somewhere, won't you?"
"Certainly not," I said again. This time the emphasis was on the "certainly." Then, as I was turning to leave the gallery, I looked again at this Mr. Burke. He may be what my far-away brother Reggie would call "a wrong 'un." And I believe that he is. But he is certainly a very presentable-looking wrong 'un—far more presentable than I, Beatrice Lovelace, am—was, I mean. Thank goodness, and my mistress's salary, there is absolutely no fault to be found with my entirely plain black outdoor things. And, proportionately, I have spent more of the money on my boots, gloves, and neckwear than on the other part of my turn-out. There's some tradition in our family of Lady Anastasia's having laid down this law. It is quite "sound," as Mr. Burke called it.
Now this presentable-looking but otherwise very discreditable Mr. Burke was quite capable of following me wherever I went. And if there is one thing I should loathe it is any kind of "fuss" in a public place. So, I thought swiftly, perhaps the best way of avoiding this fuss is to go quietly—but forbiddingly—to have tea.I needn't let him pay for it. So I said coldly to the big young man at my heels in the entrance: "I am going to Blank's."
"Oh, no," said Mr. Burke pleasantly, "we are going to White's. Don't you like White's?"
I had never been there in my life, of course, but I did not tell him so.
Ina few minutes we were sitting opposite to each other at a pretty table in the upper room. We were close to the window and could look down on the Bond Street crowd of people and cars. In front of us was the daintiest little tea that I had ever seen. This young man is, of course, accustomed to ordering the sort of tea that women like?
"And this is the second time that you have poured out tea for me, Miss Lovelace!" remarked the Honourable Jim Burke, as he took the cup from my hand. "Admirable little hostess that you are, remembering not to ask me whether I take sugar; storing up in your mind that what I like is a cupful of sugar with a little tea to moisten it!"
This was quite true.
I felt myself blush as I sat there. Then I glared at him over the plate of delicious cakes. The young man smiled; a nice smile, that one must allow.
"You look like a little angry black pigeon now. You've just the movements of a pigeon ready to peck at some one, and the plumage," he said, with a critical blue eye on my close-fitting black jacket. "All it lacks is just a touch of bright coral-red somewhere. A chain, now; a charm on the bangle; a flower. It's to you I ought to have sent those carnations, instead of toyour——Do you call her your mistress, that other girl? That one with the voice? Mad idea, the whole arrangement, isn't it? Just think it over for a moment, and tell me yourself. Don't you think it's preposterous?"
"I—er——"
I didn't know what to say. I bit into one of the little cakes that seemed all chocolate and solidity outside. Inside it was all cream and soft-heartedness and sherry flavouring, and it melted over on to the crisp cloth.
"There, now, look what a mess you're making," commented the young Irishman with the undeservedly pleasant voice. "Try one of these almondy fellows that you can see what you're doing with. To return to you and your masquerade as Miss Million's maid——"
"It is not a masquerade," I explained with dignity. "I don't know what you mean by your—I am in Miss Million's service. I am her maid!"
"Have some strawberries and cream. Really fine strawberries, these," interpolated the Honourable Jim. "What was I saying—you her maid? Wouldn't it be just as sensible if I myself were to go and get myself taken on as valet by that other young fellow that was sitting there at tea in her rooms yesterday—the bank manager, or whatever he was? Curious idea to have a deaf-and-dumb chap as a manager."
Here I really had to bite my lips not to laugh again. Certainly poor Mr. Brace had descended, like Mr. Toots, into a well of silence for the whole of that afternoon. I daresay he thought the more.
"When I heard at the Cecil that all those boxes and things belonged to the very young lady with her maid, naturally enough I thought I knew which of the two was the mistress," pursued the Honourable Jim in a sort of spoken reverie, eating strawberries and cream with the gusto of a schoolgirl. "Then when I came up and saw the wrong one waiting on the other, and looking like a picture in her apron——"
"Please don't say those things to me," I interrupted haughtily.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't like it."
"It's a queer disposition the Lovelace women must be of, then. Different from the others. To take offence? To shy at the sound of a man's voice saying how sweet they look in something they've got new to wear? I will remember that," said Mr. Burke, still in that tone of reverie. With every word he spoke I longed more ardently to feel very angry with this young man. Yet every word seemed to make genuine anger more impossible. Sitting there over his strawberries and cream, he looked like some huge, irresponsible, and quite likeable boy. I had to listen to him. He went on: "Then when I saw you as the maid, I thought you'd just changed places for a joke. I made sure 'twas you that were Miss Million."
"What?" I cried.
For now I really was angry.
It was the same kind of hot, unreasonable, snobbish anger that surged all over me when Million (my mistress) began to lose her habit of saying "Miss," and ofspeaking to me as if I'd come from some better world. Utterly foolish and useless anger, in the circumstances. Still, there it was. I flushed with indignation. I looked straight at the Honourable Jim Burke as I said furiously: "Then you really took me—me!—for the niece of that dreadful old—of that old man in Chicago?"
"I did. But, remember," said Mr. Burke, "I'd never set eyes on that old man."
"Ah! You admit that, then," I said triumphantly and accusingly, "in spite of all that long story to Miss Million. You admit yourself that it was all a make-up! What do you suppose Miss Million will say to that?"
The young fortune-hunter looked at me with perfect calm and said: "Who's to tell her that I admitted I'd never seen her old uncle?"
"To tell her? Why!" I took up. "Her maid! Supposing I go and tell her——"
"Ah, but don't you see? I'm not supposing any such thing," said Mr. Burke. "You'll never tell, Miss Lovelace."
"How d'you know?"
"I know," he said. "Don't I know that you'd never sneak?"
And, of course, this was so true. Equally, of course, I was pleased and annoyed with him at the same time for knowing it. I frowned and stared away down Bond Street. Then I turned to him again and said: "You said to me yesterday, 'What is your game?'"
"So I did. But now that I've found out you're not the heiress herself, I know what your game is."
"What?"
"The same as mine," declared this amazing young fortune-hunter, very simply. "Neither of us has a penny. So we both 'go where money is.' Isn't that it, now?"
"No, no!" I said hotly. "You are hatching up an introduction to Miss Million, deceiving her, laughing at her, plotting against her, I expect. I'm just an ordinary lady's-maid to her, earning my wages."
"By the powers, they'll take some earning before you're done," prophesied the young Irishman, laughing, "mark my words. You'll have your work cut out for you, minding that child let loose with its hands full of fireworks. I feel for you, you poor little girl. I do, indeed."
"Really. You—you don't behave as if you did. People like you won't make my 'work' any easier," I told him severely. "You know you are simply turning Miss Million's head, Mr. Burke."
"Oh, you wrong me there," he said solemnly.
"I don't wrong you at all. I see through you perfectly," I said. And I did. His mouth might be perfectly grave, but blue imps were dancing in his eyes. "You are flattering and dazzling poor Mi—my mistress, just because she has never met any one like you before!"
"Ah! You've met so many of us unprincipled men of the world!" sighed Mr. Burke. "I daren't hope to impose on your experience, Miss Lovelace. (We'll have two lemon water ices, please"—to the waitress.)
"No, but you are imposing on her," I scolded him,"with your—your stories of knowing her uncle, and all that. And now you're——"
"Well, what are my other crimes?"
I took breath and said: "You're asking her out for drives in that coach of yours——"
"Would to Heaven it were my coach," sighed Lord Ballyneck's youngest son. "It belongs to my good pal Leo Rosencranz, that turn-out! I am merely——"
"What I want to know is," I broke in very severely, "where is all this going to lead to?"
He took the wafer off his ice before replying. Then he said very mildly: "Brighton, I thought."
Isn't an Irishman the most hopeless sort of person to whom to try to talk sense? Particularly angry sense!
"I don't mean the coach-drive," I said crossly. "You knew that, Mr. Burke. I mean your acquaintance with my employer. Where is that going to lead to?"
"I hope it's going to lead to mutual benefits," announced the Honourable Jim briskly. "Now, since you're asking me my intentions like this, I'll tell them to you. I've never before had the knife laid to my throat like this, and by a bit of a chestnut-haired girl, too! Well, I intend to see a good deal of Miss Million. I shall introduce to her a lot of people who'll be useful, one way and another. Haven't I sent two friends of mine to call on her this afternoon?"
"Have you?" I said.
So that was the reason Million insisted on my taking the afternoon off! She didn't intend me to see his friends! I wondered who they were.
Mr. Burke went on: "Between ourselves, I intendto be a sort of Cook's guide through life to your young friend—your employer, Miss Million. A young woman in her position simply can't do without some philanthropist to show her the ropes. Perhaps she began by thinking you might be able to do that, Miss—Smith?" he laughed softly. He said: "But I shall soon have her turning to me for guidance as naturally as a needle turns to the north. I tell you I'm the very man to help a forlorn orphan who doesn't know what to do with a fortune. Money, by Ishtar! How well I know where to take it! Pity I never have a stiver of my own to do it with!"
"You haven't?" I said.
"Child, I'm a pauper," he replied. "The descendant of Irish kings; need I say more? There's not a page-boy at the Cecil who hasn't more ordinary comforts in his home than I have. My father's the poorest peer in Ireland. My brother's the poorest eldest son; and I—I tell you I can't afford to spend a week at Ballyneck; the damp in the rooms would ruin my clothes; the sound of the rats rompin' up and down the tapestry would destroy my high spirits; and then where'd I be?"
I looked at him. He, too, then, was of the nouveaux-pauvres, the class that is sinking down, down under the scrambling, upward-climbing feet of the successful. But he took the situation in a different spirit from the way in which my Aunt Anastasia took it. He frankly made what he could out of it. He hoisted the Jolly Roger and became a pirate on the very seas that had engulfed the old order.
Disgraceful of him.... One ought not to wish to listen to what he had to say.
"Champagne tastes on a beer income; that's bad. But here's this little—this little Million girl with a champagne income and no tastes at all yet. I shall be worth half her income to her in consequence," he announced. "I shall be able to give her priceless tips. Advice, you know, about—oh, where to buy all the things she'll want. The cars. The wines and cigars. (Even a grown-up woman isn't often to be trusted about those.) The country house she'll have to take. What about Lovelace Court, Miss Lovelace? Care to have her there, in case the people who have got it want to turn out? I've no doubt I could wangle that for you, if you liked."
I said, feeling bewildered, and flurried, and amused all at once: "What is 'wangle'?"
The Honourable Jim Burke laughed aloud as he devoured his lemon water ice.
"You'll know the meaning of that mystic verb before you have known me very long," he said. "It's the way I make my living."
I looked at him, sitting there so debonair and showy in his expensive raiment, talking so cynically in that golden voice. So typically one of "our" world, as Aunt Anastasia prophetically calls it; yet so ready to rub shoulders with every other kind of world that there may be—Jews, theatrical people, hotel porters, pork-butchers, heiresses!
I asked, rather inquisitively: "Make your living how? What do you do?"
"People, mostly," said the Honourable Jim with a cheery grin.
No; there's no getting any truth or any sense out of a man like that.
Just before we rose from the tea-table I said to him: "And the end of it all? I suppose you'll marry—I suppose you'll get Miss Million to marry you!"
"Marry?" said Mr. Burke with a little quick movement of his broad chest and shoulders. An odd movement! It seemed mixed up of a start, a shudder, and a shaking aside of something. "Marry? A woman with a voice like that? And hands like that?"
This touched my professional pride as manicurist and lady's-maid. I told him: "Her hands are much better since I've been looking after them!"
"They must have been pretty rough-hewn," said Mr. Burke, candidly, "before!"
"Of course, they were in a horrid state," I said unguardedly. "But yours would be red and rough if you'd had to scrub and to wash up and to black-lead fireplaces——"
"What? Had the little Million been doing all that before she came into Uncle's money?" cried the Honourable Jim, with delighted interest beaming all over his face. "Truth is stranger than cinema films! Tell me on, now; where was this Dollar Princess in service?"
"With m——" I began. Then I shut my lips with a snap. What was happening? This young man that I had meant to cross-examine was simply "pumping" me! Not only that, but I was very nearly getting to the point of being ready to tell him anything he asked.How had this come about? Anyhow, it must not be. I put on a very forbidding look and said: "I shall not tell you where Miss Million was."
"Haven't ye told me? She was with you or your relatives. If that isn't the grandest joke!" chuckled this unsuppressable young man. "Don't attempt to deny it, for I see it all now. Isn't it the finest bit of light opera? Isn't it better than me wildest dreams? And how did she shape, the heiress? What sort of a character would you give her? Was she an early riser—honest, obliging? Could she wait at table? And is it a bit of her own she's getting back now, setting you to hand round the cups?" He laughed aloud. "Can't I see it all now—the pride of her? She that was waiting on you, she's got you to skivvy for her now! Oh, I wouldn't have missed this Drama of the Domestic Servant Problem! Don't hope to keep me out of the stalls, Miss Lovelace, after this! It's in the front row I shall be in future for every performance!"
With this alarming threat he finished his ice and laughed once more, joyously. While I was debating what to say, he took up the conversation again.
"Tell me, are you going to get Miss Million's hands to look exactly like yours?" he asked, fastening his eyes on my fingers. I clenched my fists and hid them away under the table. "Ah, but I noticed them at once. And your voice? Are you going to teach her to speak exactly as you do? Because, when that happens——" He paused (at last).
"Well?" I said, beginning to put on my new gloves. "When that happens, what?"
"Why, then I shall certainly beg her to marry me," declared the Irishman. "Faith, I'll go down on my knees to the girl then."
"Not until then?" I suggested. I was really anxious to get through this baffling young man's nonsense. I wanted to find out what he really meant to do about all this.
But he only shook his head with that mock-solemn air. He only said: "Child, who knows what's going to happen to any of us, and when?"
Half the way back to the Cecil (Mr. Burke had hailed a taxi for me and had then got into it with me) I was wondering what I am to say to my mistress, Miss Million, about the happenings of my afternoon out. How am I to break it to her that I spent nearly the whole of it in the society of a young man against whom I have been warning her—Million—ever since he first sent in his card?
"Does your Miss Million allow flowers?" Mr. Burke said cheerfully as we whizzed down the Haymarket. "To you, I mean?"
It was an outrageous thing to say. But in that voice it somehow didn't sound outrageous, or even disrespectful. The voice of the Celt, whether Irish, Highland-Scottish, or Welsh, does always seem to have the soft pedal down on it. And it's a most unfair advantage, that voice, for any man to possess.
I said hastily: "Really, I don't think you need speak to me as if I were a maid on her afternoon——"
Here I remembered that this was exactly what I was. And again I was forced into reluctant laughter.
"You've no business to be taking the job on at all," said the young man at my side in the taxi, quite gravely this time. "Was there nothing else you could do, Miss Lovelace?"
"No; nothing."
"What about woman's true sphere? You ought to get married."
"Very easy to say that, for a man," I said. "How could I get married?"
Really earnestly he replied: "Have you tried?"
"No! Of course not!"
"You should," he said. He looked down at me in a curious, kindly way. He said: "I've wangled things harder than that both for myself and my friends. Men like a wife that can wear diamonds as if they belonged to her; a wife that can talk the same language as some of their best clients. Well! Here's a charming young girl, with looks, breeding, and a fine old name. Can do!" he brought his flat hand down on the top of his ebony cane, and added, "Have you a hatred of foreigners?"
"Foreigners?" I repeated, rather breathless again over the sudden conversational antics of a young man who can't be serious for two seconds together. "Foreigners? What for?"
"Why, for a husband! Supposing now that I were to introduce to you a fellow I knew, a fellow with 'a heart of gold' and pretty well everything else in metal to match it, like all these German Jews——"
I gasped: "You think I ought to marry a German Jew?"
"That's just the merest idea of mine. Startled you, did it? We'll discuss it later, you and I. But it'll take time. Lots of time—and, by Jove! There isn't any too much of that now," he exclaimed, glancing at his wrist-watch as we passed the lions of Trafalgar Square, "if I'm to get back to your—to our Miss Million——"
"Is she expecting you," I asked rather sharply, "again?"
"She is not. But here are these two friends of mine calling on her; and I'm bound to put in an appearance before they leave. Rather so! I'm not turning them loose on any new heiresses, without keeping my eye on what they're up to," explained the Honourable James Burke with his usual bland frankness. "So here I stop the taxi."
He got out. I saw him feel in all his pockets, and at last he took out half a sovereign. (The last, I daresay.)
Then he turned to me. "I'll give you three minutes' start, child, to get back to the hotel and into that cap and apron of yours. One more word.... Go through the lounge, and you'll see the animals feeding. Go on, man"—to the taxi driver: "The Hotel Cecil; fly!"
Miss Millionand her callers were having tea in the bigger "lounge," or whatever they call the gilded hall behind the great glass doors which shut it off from the main entrance.
Now, this was the first time that my mistress had plucked up courage to take a meal downstairs since we had come to the Cecil.
I wondered how she'd been getting on. I must see!
So, still in my outdoor things, I passed the glass doors. I walked into the big tea-room. There were palms, and much gilding, and sofas, and dark-eyed, weary-looking waiters wheeling round little carts spread with dainties, and offering the array of éclairs and flat apple-cakes to the different groups—largely made up of American visitors—who were sitting at the plate-glass-topped tables.
I couldn't see Million—Miss Million's party—anywhere at first!
I looked about....
At the further end of the place a string band, half-hidden behind greenery, was playing "I Shall Dream of You the Whole Night." Peals of light laughter and ripples of talk came from a gay-looking group of frocks—with just one man's coat amongst them—gathered around a table near the band.
I noticed that the eyes of everybody within earshot were turning constantly towards this table. So I looked, too.
At whom were they all staring? At a plump, bright-haired woman in all-white, who was obviously entertaining the party—to say nothing of the rest of the room.
She had a figure that demanded a good deal of French lingerie blouse, but not much skirt. The upright feather in her hat was yellow; jewelled slides glittered in her brass-bright hair; her eyes were round and very black.
She reminded me of a sulphur-crested, white cockatoo I had seen at the Zoo.
But where had I seen her before? She puzzled and fascinated me. I stood a little way off, forgetting my errand, watching this vivacious lady, the centre of the group. She was waving her cigarette to punctuate her remarks——
"Oh, young Jim's one of the best—the very best, my dears. Tiptop family and all. Who says blood doesn't tell, Leo? Ah! he's a good old pal o' mine, is the Hon. Jim Burke, specially on Fridays (treasury day, my dear); but it's the Army I'm potty about myself. The Captain (and dash the whiskers), that's the tiger that puts Leo and his lot in the shade——"
Here followed a wave of the cigarette towards the only man of the party. He was stout and astrachan-haired; a Jew even from the back view.
"Give me the military man, what, what," prattled on the cockatoo lady, whose cigarette seemed to spina web about her of blue floating smoke wisps. "That's the boy that makes a hole in Vi's virgin heart!"
A fan-like gesture of her left hand, jewelled to the knuckles, upon the spread of the lady's embroidered blouse emphasised this declaration.
"Them's the fellers! Sons of the Empire—or of the Alhambra!" wound up the cockatoo lady with a rollicking laugh.
And as she laughed I caught her full face and the flash of a line of prominent, fascinatingly white teeth that lighted up her whole expression as a white wave lights up the whole shore.
Then I knew where I'd seen her before—in a hundred theatrical posters between the Hotel Cecil and the Bond Street tea-shop that I had just left. Yes, I'd seen this lady's highly coloured portrait above the announcement:
MISS VI VASSITY,London's Love.England's Premier Comedienne!
So that was who she was!
Beside her on the couch a couple of younger girls, also rather "stagily" dressed, were hanging on every word that fell from the music-hall favourite's vermilioned lips.
With her back to me, and with her chair drawn a little aside from the others, there sat yet another woman. She was enormously tall and slim, and eccentrically clad in Oriental draperies of some sombre, richly patterned stuff. This gave her the air of some graceful snake.
She turned and twisted the whole of her long, lissom person, now putting up a hand to smooth her slim throat, now stretching out a slender ankle; but all the time posing, and admiring the poses in the nearest mirror. She was scarcely listening to Miss Vi Vassity's chatter.
"Tea? Any more, anybody?" Miss Vassity's black eyes glanced about her. "Baby? Sybil? Lady G.?" (the latter to the cobra-woman).
"You, my dear?" turning to some one who was hidden behind her. "Half a cup—oh, come on now. It'll have to be a whole cup; we don't break our china here, as my dear old mother used to say at Baa-lamb.
"You know I sprang from the suburbs, girls, don't you? Better to spring than to sink, eh, Miss Millions—and trillions? Here you are; I'll pour it out."
The music-hall idol leant forward to the tea-tray. Beyond her sumptuous shoulder I caught a glimpse at last of the woman who'd been hidden.
I gasped with surprise. She was my Miss Million!
Yes! So these were the friends whom Mr. Burke had sent to call on her! And there she sat—or shrank—she who was supposed to be the hostess of the party!
Beneath her expensive new hat—quite the wrong one to wear with that particular frock, which she changed when I went out—her face was wide-eyed and dazed. She who had shown so much self-confidence at her last tea-party with just those two young men had lost it all in the midst of these other people.
There she sat, silent, lips apart, bewildered eyes moving from one to the other. Between the languid, posingcobra-woman and the gay, chattering, sulphur-crested cockatoo, she looked like a small hypnotised rabbit.
I slipped up to her with my best professional manner on.
"Did you want me for anything, Miss?" I asked in my lowest and most respectful tone.
Poor little Million's face lighted up into a look of the most pathetic relief as she turned and beheld her one friend in that tea-room.
"Ow! S-Smith! Come in, have you?" she exclaimed, giggling nervously. Then, turning to the music-hall artiste, she explained: "This is my lady's-maid!"
"And very nice, too!" said Miss Vi Vassity promptly, with one of those black-eyed glances that seemed to swing round from me to Million, thence to the cobra-woman, the other girls, the stout young Jew, all of whom were staring hard at me.
She ended up in a lightning-quick wink and a quick turn to the long glass that stood beside her teacup which, I suppose, had contained what those people the other day called a rattlesnake cocktail.
"I didn't send for you, Smith, but never mind since you're here," my young mistress said, almost clinging to me in her nervousness. "You can pop upstairs and begin to put out my evening things, as usual——"
"Extra smart to-night, Smith, extra smart; she's comin' on to a box at the Palace to see little Me in my great Dazzling act," put in the actress. "Got to be very dressy for that, old dear. Gala night at the Opera isn't in it.
"The black pearl rope you'll wear, of course. And your diamond fender to wave your hand to me in, please!"
"Ow!" breathed the dismayed heiress. "Well, I—I don't know as how I'd expected——"
She hasn't acquired any ornaments at all as yet. And, somehow, I knew that this black-eyed, bright-haired actress knew that perfectly well. For some reason she was pulling poor Million's leg just as mercilessly as her precious friend the Honourable Jim——
Even as I was thinking this there strolled up the room to our group the cool, detached, and prosperous-looking figure of the Honourable Jim himself—the man who had just got out of my taxi at Charing Cross.
Miss Vi jingled her gold mesh vanity-bag at him with its hanging cluster of gold charms, gold pencil, gold cigarette-case.
"Hi, Sunny Jim! You that know everything about 'what's worn, and where,'" she cried. "I'm just telling your friend Miss Million that nobody'd call on her again unless she puts on all the family diamonds for our little supper after the show to-night!"
Miss Million looked anguished. She really believed that she was going to be "let down" before her much-admired Mr. Burke (scamp!) before the cobra-lady and the other theatrical lights.
I knew how she felt!
She would be covered with disgrace, she would be "laughed at behind her back" because she was a millionairess—without any diamonds.... They'd think she wasn't a real millionairess....
I had to come to the rescue.
So I looked Million steadily and reassuringly in the eye as I announced quite distinctly, but in my "quiet, respectful" voice: "I am afraid, Miss, that there is scarcely time to get the diamonds for to-night. You remember that all the jewellery is at the bank."
Indescribable relief spread itself over Million's small face. She felt saved. She didn't mind anything now, not even the loudness with which the bright-haired comedienne burst out laughing again.
I wonder why that shrewd, vivacious woman comes to call on Million? It's not the money this time, surely?
Miss Vi Vassity must draw the largest salary of any one on the halls? Why does she sit beaming at my young mistress, drawing her out, watching her? And the other, the cobra-woman; what's she doing there in a world to which she doesn't seem to belong at all?
And the Jew they call Leo? Will they all be at the party they're taking Miss Million to to-night?
They all burst into fresh chatter about it. Under cover of the noise the Honourable Jim edged closer to me and murmured, without looking at me: "All her jewels at the bank, is it? That's not true, child, while she has a Kohinoor—for a maid!"
Fearful impertinence again. But, thank goodness, none of the others heard it.
And he, who's been drinking tea and chattering with me the whole afternoon, had the grace not to glance at me as I slipped away out of the tea-room and to the hall.
Here another surprise awaited me.
Miss Million began to enjoy her tea-party tremendously—as soon as it was all over and she herself was safely back in her own bedroom with her maid.
She didn't seem to realise that she had only then emerged from a state of shrinking and speechless panic!
"Jer see all those people, Smith, that I was having such a fine old time with?" she exulted, as I began to unfasten her afternoon frock.
"Miss Vi Vassity, if you please! Jer recanise her from the pictures? Lor'! When I did use to get to a music-hall to hear her, once in a blue moon, little did I ever think I'd one day be sitting there as close to her as I am to you, talkin' away nineteen to the dozen to her, as if she was nobody!
"Wasn't that a sweet blouse she'd got on? I wonder what she's goin' to put on to-night after the theatre; you know we're having supper all together, her and me and the Honourable Mr. Burke and Lady Golightly-Long, that tall lady, and some other gentlemen and ladies that's coming on from somewhere.
"And, Smith! I don't think I'm going to wear that white frock you're putting out there," concluded my young mistress, rather breathlessly; "there don't seem to me to be enough style about it for the occasion; I'll wear me cerise evening one with the spangles."
"Cerise? But you haven't got a cerise evening frock," I began. "I didn't let you order that——"
Then I caught Million's half-rueful, half-triumphant glance at a new white carton box on the wicker chair beside her bed. And I saw what had happened.
No sooner was her maid's back turned than MissMillion had wired, or telephoned, or perhaps called at that shop, and secured that cherry-coloured creation. It would have looked daringly effective on—say, Miss Lee White in an Alhambra burlesque. On little Million it would have a vulgarity not to be described in words. I'd thought I'd guided her safely away from it! And now this!
"Yes, you see I thought better of buying that gown," said the heiress, flushed but defiant. "You see, you were wrong about those very bright shades not being the c'rect thing; why, look at what that Lady Golightly-Long had got on her back! Red and green and blue trimmings, and I don't know what all, all stuck on at once. And she ought to know what's what, if anybody did," Million persisted, "c'nsidering she's a Earl's cousin and one of the Highest in the Land!"
"Certainly one of the longest," I said, thinking of those unending lissom limbs swathed in the Futurist draperies of that cobra-woman.
Million went on to inform me, impressively, that this lady, too, was "a Perfeshional." Does classic dancing, they call it. Needn't do it for her living, of course. But she says she's 'wrapped up in the Art of it.' Likes to do what she likes, I s'pose she means.
"She's got a lovely home of her own, Miss Vi Vassity told me, in Aberdeenshire.
"Not only that, but a big bungalow she has near the river. Sometimes she has down parties of her own particular friends to watch her dancing on the lawn there, in the moonlight. And, Smith!" Here Milliongave a little skip out of her skirt, "What jer think?"
"What?" I asked, as I drew the cerise frock from its wrappings. (Worse, far worse than in the shop. Still, I'd got to let her wear it, I suppose. And it may be drowned by Miss Vi Vassity's voice at the supper-table.)
"Why, she's going to ask me down there, too, to one of her week-end parties! Think o' that! An invitation to visit! Some time when Mr. Burke's going. He often goes to the house. All most artistic, he told me; and a man-cook from Vienna. Fancy!" breathed Miss Million. "Fancy me stayin' in a house like that!"
I took up her ivory brushes and began to do her hair.
"You're very quiet to-night," said Million. "Didn't you enjoy your afternoon out?"
"Oh, yes. Quite, thank you," I said rather absently.
I was longing to have the room to myself, with peace and quiet to put away Miss Million's things—and to think in. To think over "my afternoon out," with its unexpected encounter, its unexpected conversation! And to meditate over that other surprise that I'd found waiting for me at the end of it.
At last Miss Million was dressed. I put the beautiful mother-o'-pearl, satin-lined wrap upon her shoulders, sturdily made against the flaring, flimsy, cerise-coloured ninon.
"Needn't wait up for me," said my mistress, bright-eyedas a child with tremulous excitement over this new expedition. "I'll wake you if I can't manage to undo myself. Don't suppose I shall get back until 'the divil's dancin' hour,' as that Mr. Burke calls it. He'll be waitin' for me now, downstairs."
Really that young man lives a life of contrasts!
Tea with Miss Million's maid! Dinner and supper with Miss Million herself!
I wonder which he considers the more amusing bit of light opera?
"Pity I can't take you with me to-night, really ... seems so lonely-like for you, left in this great place and all," said the kind-hearted little Million at the door. "Got something to read, have you?"
"Oh, yes, thanks!" I laughed and nodded. "I have got something to read."
Andas the door shut behind my mistress I took that "something to read" out of its hiding-place behind my belt and my frilly apron-bib.
It's the letter that was waiting for me when I came in. I've hardly had time to grasp the contents of it yet. It's addressed in a small, precise, masculine hand:
"ToMiss Smith,
"c/o Miss Million,
"Hotel Cecil."
But inside it begins:
"My Dear Miss Lovelace:—"
And then it goes on:
"I am putting another name on the envelope, because I think that this is how you wish to be addressed for business purposes. I hope you will not be offended, or consider that I am impertinent in what I am going to say."
It sounds like the beginning of some scathing rebuke to the recipient of the letter, doesn't it? But I don't think it's that. The letter goes on:
"Am writing to ask you whether you will allow me the privilege of seeing you somewhere for a few minutes'private conversation? It is on a matter that is of importance."
The last sentence is underlined, and looks most curiosity-rousing in consequence:
"If you would allow me to know when I might see you, and where, I should be very greatly obliged. Believe me,
"Yours very truly,
"Reginald Brace."
That's the young manager, of course. That's the fair-haired young man who lives next door to us—to where we used to live in Putney; the young man of the garden-hose and of the "rows" with my Aunt Anastasia, and of the bank that looks after Miss Million's money!
Is it about Miss Million's money matters that he wishes to have this "few minutes' private conversation"? Scarcely. He wouldn't come to Miss Million's maid about that.
But what can he want to see me about? "A matter of importance." What can this be?
I can't guess.... For an hour now I have been sitting in Miss Million's room, with Miss Million's new possessions scattered about me, and the scent still heavy in the air of those red carnations sent in by the Honourable—the Disgraceful Jim Burke.
Opposite to the sofa on which I am sitting there hangs an oval mirror in a very twiggly-wiggly gilt frame, wreathed with golden foliage held by a littleCupid, who laughs at me over a plump golden shoulder, and seems to point at my picture in the glass.
It shows a small, rather prettily built girl in a delicious black frock and white apron, with her white butterfly-cap poised pertly on her chestnut hair, and on her face a look of puzzled amusement.
It's really mysterious; but I can't make out the mystery. I shall have to wait until I can ask that young man himself what he means by it all.
Now, as to "when and where" I am to see him.
Not here. I am not Miss Million. I can't invite my acquaintances to tea and rattlesnake cocktails and gimlets and things in the Cecil lounge. And I can scarcely ask her to let me have her own sitting-room for the occasion.
Outside the hotel, then. When? For at any moment I am, by rights, at Miss Million's beck and call. Her hair and hands to do; herself to dress three times a day; her new trousseau of lovely garments to organise and to keep dainty and creaseless as if they still shimmered in Bond Street.
I don't like the idea of "slipping out" in the evenings, even if my mistress is going to keep dissipated hours with cobras and sulphur-crested cockatoos. So—one thing remains to me.
It's all that remains to so many girls as young and as pretty as I am, and as fond of their own way, but in the thrall of domestic service. Oh, sacred right of the British maid-servant! Oh, one oasis in the desert of subjection to another woman's wishes! The "Afternoon Off"!
Next Friday I shall be free again. I must write to Mr. Brace. I must tell him that the "important matter" must wait until then....
But apparently it can't wait.
For even as I was taking up my—or Miss Million's—pen, one of those little chocolate-liveried page-boys tapped at Miss Million's sitting-room door and handed in a card "for Miss Smith."
I took it.... His card?
Mr. Brace's card?
And on it is written in pencil: "May I see you at once? It is urgent!"
Extraordinary!
Well, "urgent" messages can't wait a week! I shall have to see him.
I said to the page-boy: "Show the gentleman up."
I don't know what can be said for a maid who, in her mistress's absence, uses her mistress's own pretty sitting-room to receive her—the maid's—own visitors.
Well, I couldn't help it. Here the situation was forced upon me—I, in my cap and apron, standing on Miss Million's pink hearthrug in front of the fern-filled fireplace, and facing Mr. Brace, very blonde and grave-looking, in his "bank" clothes.
"Will you sit down?" I said, standing myself as if I never meant to depart from that attitude. He didn't sit down.
"I won't keep you, Miss Lovelace," said the young bank manager, in a much more formal tone than I had heard from him before. "But I was obliged to call because, after I had sent off my note to you, I foundI was required to leave town on business to-morrow morning early. Consequently I should only be able to speak to you about the matter which I mentioned in my note if I came at once."
"Oh, yes," I said. "And the important matter was——"
"It's about your friend, Miss Million."
"My mistress," I reminded him, fingering my apron.
The young man looked very uncomfortable.
Being so fair, he reddens easily. He looks much less grown-up and reliable than he had seemed that first morning at the bank. I wonder how this is.
He looked at the apron and said: "Well, if you must call her your mistress—I don't think it's at all—but, never mind that now—about Miss Million."
"Don't tell me all her money's suddenly lost!" I cried in a quick fright.
The manager shook his fair head. "Oh, nothing of that kind. No. Something almost as difficult to tell you, though. But I felt I had to do it, Miss Lovelace."
His fair face set itself into a sort of conscientious mask. "I turned to you instead of to her because—well, because for obvious reasons you were the one to turn to.
"Miss Million is a young—a young lady who seems at present to have more money than friends. It is natural that, just now, she should be making a number of new acquaintances. It is also natural that she should not always know which of these acquaintances are a wise choice——"
"Oh, I know what you mean," I interposed, for I thought he was going on in that rather sermony style until Million came home. "You're going to warn me that Mr. Burke, whom you met here, isn't a fit person for Mill—for Miss Million to know."
Mr. Brace looked relieved, yet uncomfortable and a little annoyed all at once.
He said: "I don't know that I should have put it in exactly those words, Miss Lovelace."
"No, but that's the gist of it all," I said rather shortly. Men are so roundabout. They take ages hinting at things that can be put into one short sentence. Then they're angry because some woman takes a short cut and translates.
"Isn't that what you mean, Mr. Brace?"
"If I had a young sister," said this roundabout Mr. Brace, "I certainly do not think that I should care to allow her to associate with a man like that."
"Like what?" I said.
"Like this Mr. Burke."
"Why?" I asked.
"I don't think he is a very desirable acquaintance for a young and inexperienced girl."
"How well do you know him?" I asked.
"Oh! I don't know him at all. I don't wish to know him," said Mr. Brace rather stiffly. "I had only seen him once before I met him in Miss Million's room here the other day. I was really annoyed to find him here."
I persisted. "Why?"