The Marquis was occupied for several minutes in exchanging greetings with passing acquaintances. As soon as they were alone again, he reverted to his companion's observation.
"There was a matter, I think you said, Mr. Thain, which you wished to discuss with me."
"I was going to ask you about Broomleys," David replied.
The Marquis was puzzled.
"Broomleys? Are you referring, by chance, to my house of that name?"
"I guess so."
"But, my dear Mr. Thain, you surprise me," the Marquis declared. "When did you hear of Broomleys?"
"I should have explained," David continued, "that I spent this last week-end at Cromer. There I visited an agent and told him that I would like to take a furnished house in the neighbourhood. I motored over, at his suggestion, to see Broomleys, and the tenant, Colonel Laycey, kindly showed me over. He is leaving within a few days, I believe."
"Dear me, of course he is!" the Marquis observed genially. "I had quite forgotten the fact—quite forgotten it."
The Marquis saluted more acquaintances. He was glad of an opportunity for reflection. The Fates were indeed smiling upon him! A gleam of anticipatory delight shone in his eyes as he thought of his next interview with Mr. Wadham, Junior! On his desk at the present moment there lay a letter from the firm, announcing Colonel Laycey's departure and adding that they saw little hope of letting the house at all in its present condition.
"It would be a great pleasure to us, Mr. Thain," the Marquis continued pleasantly, "to have you for a neighbour. Did the agent or Colonel Laycey, by-the-by, say anything about the rent?"
"Nothing whatever," David replied. "The Colonel pointed out to me various repairs which certainly seemed necessary, but as I am a single man, the rooms affected could very well be closed for a time. It was the garden, I must confess, which chiefly attracted me."
"Broomleys has, I fear, been a little neglected," the Marquis sighed. "These stringent days, with their campaign of taxation upon the landed proprietor, have left me, I regret to say, a poor man. Colonel Laycey was not always considerate. His last letter, I remember, spoke of restorations which would have meant a couple of years' rent."
"If I find any little thing wants doing urgently when I get there," David promised carelessly, "I will have it seen to myself. If the rent you ask is not prohibitive, it is exactly the place I should like to take for, say, a year, at any rate."
"You are a man of modest tastes, Mr. Thain," the Marquis observed. "The fact that you are unmarried, however, of course renders an establishment an unnecessary burden. You will bear in mind, so far as regards the rent of Broomleys, Mr. Thain, that the house is furnished."
"Very uncomfortably but very attractively furnished, from what I saw," David assented.
The Marquis collected himself. Colonel Laycey had been asked three hundred a year and was paying two hundred, a sum which, somehow or other, the Marquis had always considered his own pocket money, and which had never gone into the estate accounts. A little increase would certainly be pleasant.
"Would five hundred a year seem too much, Mr. Thain?" he asked. "I cannot for the moment remember what Colonel Laycey is paying, but I know that it is something ridiculously inadequate."
"Five hundred a year would be quite satisfactory," David agreed.
"I will have the papers drawn up and sent to you at once," the Marquis promised. "You will be able to enter into possession as soon as you like. You would like a yearly tenancy, I presume?"
"That would suit me quite well."
"You will be able, also, to resume your acquaintance with that singular old man whom you met upon the steamer—Richard Vont," the Marquis remarked, with a slight grimace. "I hear that he is in residence there."
"I have already done so," David announced.
The Marquis raised his eyebrows.
"You have probably heard his story, then, from his own lips," he observed carelessly. "I am told that he sits out on the lawn of his cottage, reading the Bible and cursing Mandeleys. It is a most annoying thing, Mr. Thain, as I dare say you can understand, to have your ex-gamekeeper entrenched, as it were, in front of your premises, hurling curses across the moat at you. That class of person is so tenacious of ideas as well as of life. Here comes my daughter Letitia, already well escorted, I see."
Letitia, with Grantham by her side, waved her hand without pausing, from the other side of the broad pathway. David for a moment felt the chill of the east wind.
"Grantham," the Marquis told his companion confidentially, "is one of Lady Letitia's most constant admirers. My daughter, as I dare say you have discovered, Mr. Thain, is rather an unusual young woman. Her predilections are almost anti-matrimonial. Still, I must confess that an alliance with the Granthams would give me much pleasure. I should, in that case, be enabled to give up my town house and be content with bachelor apartments—a great saving, in these hard times."
"Naturally," David murmured.
"Often, in the course of our very agreeable conversations," the Marquis went on, "I am inclined to ignore the fact of your most amazing opulence. My few friends, I am sorry to say, are in a different position. Money in this country is very scarce, Mr. Thain—very scarce, at least, on this side of Temple Bar."
David answered a little vaguely. His eyes were lifted above the heads of the scattered crowd of people through which they were passing.
"May I ask—if it is not an impertinence," he said,—"is Lady Letitia engaged to Lord Charles Grantham?"
The Marquis's manner was perhaps a shade stiffer. Mr. Thain was just given to understand that about the family matters of such a personage as the Marquis of Mandeleys there must always be a certain reticence.
"There is no formal engagement, Mr. Thain," he replied. "The fashion nowadays seems to preclude anything of the sort. One's daughter just brings a young man in, and, in place of the delightful betrothal of our younger days, the date for the marriage is fixed upon the spot."
Luncheon at 94 Grosvenor Square, notwithstanding the cocktails, was an exceedingly simple meal, a fact which the Marquis himself seemed scarcely to notice. He kept his eye on his visitor's plate, however, and passed the cutlets with an unnoticeable sigh of regret.
"Charlie wouldn't come in to lunch, father," Letitia announced. "I think he was afraid you were going to ask him his intentions."
The Marquis glanced at the modicum of curry with which he was consoling himself.
"Upon the whole, my dear," he said, "I am glad that he stayed away. He is a most agreeable person, but not at his best at luncheon time. By-the-by, do you know who our new neighbour is to be at Broomleys?"
"You haven't let it?" she asked eagerly.
"This morning, my dear," her father replied, bowing slightly towards their guest. "Mr. Thain has been spending the week-end at Cromer, was offered Broomleys by the agent there, and he and I fixed up the matter only a few minutes ago."
"How perfectly delightful!" Letitia exclaimed.
David glanced up quickly. He looked his hostess in the eyes.
"That is very kind of you, Lady Letitia," he said. She laughed at him.
"Well, I meant it," she declared, "and I still mean it, but not, perhaps, exactly in the way it sounded. Of course, it will be very pleasant to have you for a neighbour, but to tell you the truth—you see, although we're poor we are honest—our own sojourn at Mandeleys rather depends on whether we let Broomleys, and Colonel Laycey, although he has the most delightful daughter, with whom you are sure to fall in love, was a most troublesome tenant. He was always wanting things done, wasn't he, father?"
"It is certainly a relief," the Marquis sighed, watching with satisfaction the arrival of half a Stilton cheese, a present from his son-in-law, "a great relief to find a tenant like Mr. Thain."
"I asked your agent," David remarked a little diffidently, "about the shooting."
The Marquis touched his glass.
"Serve port, Gossett," he directed,—"the light wood port, if we have any," he added a little hastily, to the obvious relief of his domestic. "The shooting, eh, Mr. Thain?"
He sipped his wine and considered. First Broomleys, and then the shooting! The gods were very kind to him on this pleasant April morning.
"You haven't preserved lately, I understand," his guest observed.
"Not for some years," the Marquis acknowledged.
"I don't mind about that at all," David went on. "I am just American enough, you know, to find no pleasure in shooting tame birds. I shall have no parties, and I shall not be ambitious about bags. I like to prowl about myself with a gun."
His host nodded appreciatively.
"You shall have the refusal of the shooting," he promised. "At the moment I am not prepared to quote terms. My people of business can do that."
"Have you no friends in England, Mr. Thain?" Letitia asked, a little abruptly.
"Very few," David replied. "I do not make friends easily."
"I always thought Americans were so sociable," she remarked. "A great many of your compatriots have settled down here, you know."
David considered the matter for a moment.
"You would smile, I suppose," he said, "if I were to tell you that there are more so-called 'sets' in American Society than in your own. I am a very self-made man indeed, and I possess no womenkind to entertain for me. I am therefore dependent upon chance acquaintances."
"Such friends as may make your sojourn in Norfolk more agreeable, Mr. Thain," the Marquis promised genially, "you shall most certainly find. Mandeleys will always be open to you."
David made no immediate response. His teeth had come together with a little click. He felt a strange repugnance to lifting the glass, which the butler had just filled, to his lips. A queer little vision of Mandeleys and the cottage was there, Richard Vont, seated amongst those drooping rose bushes, his face turned towards the Abbey, his eyes full of that strange, expectant light. A sudden wave of self-disgust almost broke through a composure which had so far resisted all assaults upon it. Almost he felt that he must rise from his place, tell this strange, polished, yet curiously childlike being the truth—that he was being drawn into the nets of ruin—that he was entertaining an enemy unawares.
"You must really try that wine, Mr. Thain," he heard his host say gently. "I make no excuse for not offering you vintage port. At Mandeleys I have at least the remnants of a cellar. You shall dine with us there, Mr. Thain, and I will give you what my grandfather used to declare was 1838 vintage."
David roused himself with an effort. He brushed aside the uncomfortable twinge of conscience which had suddenly depressed him, and turning away from Letitia, looked his host in the eyes.
"You are very kind," he said. "I shall come with much pleasure."
The Duchess waved her sugar tongs imperiously, and David, who had hesitated upon the threshold of her drawing-room, made his way towards her. There were a dozen people sitting around, drinking tea and chatting in little groups.
"Now don't look sulky, please," she begged, as she gave him her left hand. "This is not a tea party, and it is quite true that I did ask you to come and have a chat with me alone, but I couldn't keep these people away. They'll all go directly, and if they don't I shall turn them out. Letitia has promised me to take care of you and to see that no one bites. Letitia, here is the shy man," she added. "There!"—thrusting a cup of tea into his hand. "Take that, help yourself to a muffin and go and hide behind the piano."
Letitia rose from her place by the side of an extremely loquacious politician, to whose animated conversation she had paid no attention since David's entrance.
"You hear my aunt's orders?" she said, nodding. "Don't try to shake hands, with that collection of things to carry. I am to pilot you into a corner and keep you quite safe until she is ready to take possession of you herself."
David looked longingly at some French windows which led out on to a wide stone terrace.
"Why not outside?" he suggested. "It's really quite warm to-day."
"Why not, indeed?" she assented. "Come along."
They passed out together, found two comfortable wicker chairs and a small table, on which, with a sigh of relief, David deposited his burden. Below them was a stretch of the Park, from which they themselves were screened by a row of tall trees.
"Don't sit down," she begged him. "Get me another of those small muffins first, and a cup of tea. If any one suggests coming out here, bolt the windows after you."
David executed his task as speedily as possible. Letitia watched him a little curiously as he returned.
"You aren't really a bit shy, you know," she told him. "I watched you through the window there. How clever you were not to see that tiresome Mrs. Raymond!"
"Why should I see her?" he asked. "She is a perfect stranger to me. She came up to me at a party, the other night, and asked me, as a great favour, to dine at her house and to tell her how to invest some money so that she could double it."
"I know," Letitia assented, with her mouth full of muffin. "She does that to all the financiers and expects them to give her tips just because she has dark eyes and asks them to a tête-à-tête dinner. I expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather gloomily, "even if we are not quite so blatant. What on earth have you been doing to father? He swaggers about as though he were already a millionaire."
"I expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather gloomily, "even if we are not quite so blatant.""I expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather gloomily, "even if we are not quite so blatant."
"I expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather gloomily, "even if we are not quite so blatant.""I expect we are all as bad, though," she went on rather gloomily, "even if we are not quite so blatant."
David smiled a little sadly as he looked out across the tree tops.
"Your father has rather a sanguine temperament," he said.
"Well, don't encourage him to speculate, please," Letitia begged. "We couldn't afford to lose a single penny. As it is," she went on, "we are only able to come to Mandeleys because you've taken that ramshackle old barn close by and paid twice as much as it's worth. About the shooting, too! I almost laughed aloud when you mentioned it! Do you know, Mr. Thain, that we haven't reared a pheasant for years, and that we don't even feed the wild ones?"
"What about the partridges, though," he reminded her, "and the hares? I talked to a farmer when I was down there the other day, and he complained bitterly that there was only one vermin-killer on the whole estate and that the place was swarming with rabbits. I rather enjoy rabbit shooting."
"Oh, well, so long as you understand," Letitia replied, with a little shrug of the shoulders, "take the shoot, for goodness' sake, and pay dad as much as he chooses to ask for it. I've always noticed," she went on reflectively, "one extraordinary thing about people who haven't the faintest idea of business. They are always much cleverer than a real business man in asking ever so much more than a thing is worth. A person with a sense of proportion, you see, couldn't do it."
"One would imagine," he complained, "that you were trying to keep me away from Mandeleys."
"Don't, please, imagine such a thing," she begged earnestly. "If there is anything I hate, it's London—or rather hate the way we have to live here. You are entirely our salvation. If you desert us now, I shall be the most miserable person alive. Only, you see, I know what father is, and what you do you must do with your eyes open."
He was silent for a moment. The echo of her words lingered in his ears. He moved a little uneasily in his place, more uneasily still when he found that she was watching him intently.
"You are really a very mysterious person, Mr. Thain," she declared, with a note of curiosity in her tone. "I hear that you decline to be interviewed, and you won't even tell the newspapers whether this is your first visit to England or not."
"I don't see what business it is of the newspapers," he rejoined. "I am not a person of any possible interest to any one. I have done nothing except make a great deal of money. That, too, was purely a matter of good fortune and a little foresight. In America," he went on, "one expects to meet with that personal curiosity. Over here, I must say that it surprises me."
"I suppose you are right," she admitted, "but, you see, under the present conditions of living, the possession of money does give such enormous power to any one. Then you must remember that our press has become Americanised lately. However, I am not a journalist, so will you answer me one question?"
"Certainly," he replied.
"Have you ever been in England before?"
"Once."
"Long ago?"
"A great many years ago."
"I don't really know why I am curious," she went on thoughtfully, "but there was a time, when I saw you first—doesn't this sound hackneyed, but it's quite true—when I fancied that I'd seen you before. It worried me for days. Even now it sometimes perplexes me."
He hated the lie which had risen so readily to his lips and choked it back.
"A dear lady, a friend of the Duchess, made the same remark to me when we were introduced," he said. "She excused herself gracefully by saying that people were so much alike, nowadays."
"I don't think that you are particularly like other people," she observed, studying him. "Would you like to hear what Ada Honeywell thinks about you?"
"So long as it leaves me still able to hold up my head," he murmured. "Mrs. Honeywell struck me as being rather severe in her strictures."
"It was only of your appearance she was speaking," Letitia continued. "She said that she could see three things in your face—a Franciscan monk, a headmaïtre d'hôtelat the most select of French restaurants, and the modern decadent criminal, as opposed to the Charles Peace type."
"I am much obliged, I'm sure," he remarked, leaning back and laughing for once quite naturally. "My type of criminal, I presume, is one who brings art to his aid in working out his nefarious schemes."
"Precisely," she murmured. "Like Wainwright, the poisoner, or the Borgias. But at any rate we agreed upon something. There is purpose in your face."
"You speak as though that were unusual! I suppose we all have a set course in life."
She nodded.
"And a good deal depends upon the goal, doesn't it?"
There was a brief—to David, an enigmatic pause. Letitia's questions had puzzled him. She might almost have suspected his identity. They both listened idly for a few moments to the music of a violin, which some one was playing in the drawing-room.
"You've asked me a great many questions," he said abruptly. "What about you? What is your goal?"
"My dear Mr. Thain," she replied, "how can you ask! I am an impecunious young woman of luxurious tastes. It is my purpose to entrap somebody with a comfortable income into marrying me. I have been at it for several seasons," she went on a little dolefully, "but so far Charles Grantham is my only certainty, and he wobbles sometimes—especially when he sees anything of Sylvia Laycey."
"Sylvia Laycey," he repeated. "Is she the daughter of the present tenant of Broomleys?"
Letitia nodded.
"And a very charming girl, too," she declared. "You'll most certainly fall in love with her. Everybody does when she comes up to stay with me."
"Falling in love isn't one of my ordinary amusements," he observed a little drily.
"Superior person!" she mocked.
The Duchess suddenly appeared upon the balcony.
"Look here," she said, "there's been quite enough of this. Mr. Thain came especially to see me. Every one else has gone."
"I wonder if that might be considered a hint," Letitia observed, glancing at the watch upon her wrist. "All right, aunt, I'll go. You wouldn't believe, Mr. Thain," she added, buttoning her gloves, "that one's relations are supposed to be a help to one in life?"
"You're only wasting your time with Mr. Thain, dear," her aunt replied equably. "I've studied his character. We were eight days on that steamer, you know, and all the musical comedy young ladies in the world seemed to be on board, and I can give you my word that Mr. Thain is a woman-hater."
"I am really more interested in him now than I have ever been before," Letitia declared, laughing into his eyes. "My great grievance with Charlie Grantham is that he cannot keep away from our hated rivals in the other world. However, you'll talk to me again, won't you, Mr. Thain?"
David was conscious of a curious fit of reserve, a sudden closing up of that easy intimacy into which they seemed to have drifted.
"I shall always be pleased," he said stiffly.
Letitia kissed her aunt and departed. The Duchess sank into her empty place.
"I am going to be a beast," she began. "Have you been lending money to my brother?"
"Not a sixpence," David assured her.
The Duchess was evidently staggered.
"You surprise me," she confessed. "However, so much the better. It won't interfere with what I have to say to you. I first took you to Grosvenor Square, didn't I?"
"You were so kind," he admitted.
"Now I come to think of it," she reflected, "I remember thinking it strange at the time that, though I couldn't induce you to go anywhere else, or meet any one else, you never hesitated about making Reginald's acquaintance."
"He was your brother, you see," David reminded her.
"It didn't occur to me," she replied drily, "that that was the reason. However, what I want to say to you is this, in bald words—don't lend him money."
David looked once more across the tops of the trees.
"I gather that the Marquis, then, is impecunious?" he said.
"Reginald hasn't a shilling," the Duchess declared earnestly. "Let me just tell you how they live. Letitia has two thousand a year, and so has Margaret, from their mother. Margaret's husband, who is a decent fellow, won't touch her money and makes her an allowance, so that nearly all her two thousand, and all of Letitia's, except the few ha'pence she spends on clothes, go to keeping an establishment together. Reginald has sold every scrap of land he could, years ago. Mandeleys is the only estate he has left, and there isn't a square yard of that that isn't mortgaged to the very fullest extent. It's always a scramble between his poor devils of lawyers and himself, whether there's a little margin to be got out of the rents after paying the interest. If there is, it goes, I believe, towards satisfying the claims of a lady down at Battersea."
"A lady down at Battersea," David replied. "Is it—may I ask—an old attachment?"
"A very old one indeed," the Duchess replied, "and, to tell you the truth, it's one of the most reputable things I know connected with Reginald. He is inconstant in everything else he does, and without being in any way wilfully dishonest, he is absolutely unreliable. But this lady at Battersea—she belonged to one of his tenants or something—I forget the story—has kept him within reasonable bounds for more years than I should like to say— What do you see over there, Mr. Thain?" she broke off suddenly, following his steadfast gaze.
David dropped his eyes from the clouds. His fingers relaxed their nervous clutch of the sides of his chair.
"Nothing," he answered. "I am interested. Please go on."
"Reginald has stuck at nothing to get money," the Duchess continued. "He has been on the board of any company willing to pay him a few guineas for his name. I believe things have come to such a pitch in that direction that the most foolhardy investor throws the prospectus away if his name is on it. He has drained his relatives dry. And yet, if you can reconcile all these things, he is, in his way, the very soul of honour. Now, having told you this, you can do as you please. If you lend him money, you'll probably never get it back. If you've any to chuck away, I can show you a hundred deserving charities. Reginald without money is really a harmless and extraordinarily amusing person. Reginald in search of money is the most dangerous person I know. That is what I wanted to tell you, and if you like now you can run away. My hairdresser is waiting for me, and he is just a little more independent than my chef. Stop, though, there's one thing more."
The Duchess had rung a bell with her foot, and a servant was waiting at the windows to show David out. The latter turned back.
"You are not making a fool of yourself with Letitia, are you?"
David was very white and cold for a moment. He looked his hostess in the face, and, as she expressed it afterwards, froze her up.
"I am afraid that I do not understand you, Duchess," he said.
"Oh, don't be silly!" she replied. "Remember that I am your oldest friend in this country, and I say what I like to everybody. You avoid most women as you would the plague—most women except Letitia. I've warned you against the father. Now I am warning you against the daughter. And then you can go and lose your heart to one and lend a million to the other, if you want. Letitia, for all her apparent amiability, is the proudest girl I ever knew. I hope you understand me?"
"Perfectly!"
"Letitia will marry for money, all right," her aunt continued. "She understands that that is her duty, and she will do it. But it will be some one—you will forgive me, Mr. Thain—with kindred associations, shall I say? Letitia, fortunately, takes after her father. She has no temperament, but a sense of family tradition which will give her all the backbone she needs."
"Is there any other member of the family," David began—
"Don't be a silly boy," the Duchess interrupted, "because that's what you are, really, in this world and amongst our stupid class of people. You are just as nice as can be, though. Run along, and don't forget that you are coming to dine on Friday. You'll meet the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he's going to try and persuade you to settle down here, for the sake of your income tax."
"Another plunderer!" David groaned. "I am beginning to feel rather like a lamb with an exceedingly long fleece."
"You would look better with your hair cut," the Duchess remarked, as she waved her hand. "Try that place at the bottom of Bond Street. The Duke always goes there. A Mr. Saunders is his man. Better ask for him. You'll find him at the top end of the room."
There was just one drop of alloy in the perfect contentment with which the Marquis contemplated his new prospects, and that was contained in a telephone message from Mr. Wadham, Junior, which he received upon the afternoon of David's call upon the Duchess.
"I must apologise for troubling your lordship," Mr. Wadham began. "I know your objection to the telephone, but in this instance it was quite impossible to send a message."
"I accept your apology and am listening," the Marquis declared graciously. "Be so good as to speak quite slowly, and don't mumble."
Mr. Wadham, Junior, cleared his throat before continuing. He was a little proud of his voice, although its rise and fall was perhaps more satisfactory from the point of view of a Chancery Court than from one who expected to gather the sense of every syllable.
"I am ringing up your lordship," he continued, "concerning the large batch of shares in the Pluto Oil Company of Arizona, which you entrusted to us for safe keeping, and for deposit with the bank against the advance required last Monday."
"I can hear you perfectly," the Marquis acknowledged suavely. "Pray continue."
"Your lordship's bankers sent for me this morning," Mr. Wadham went on, "in connection with these shares. They thought it their duty to point out, either through us or by communication with you direct, that according to the advice of a most reliable broker, their commercial value is practically nil."
"Is what?" the Marquis demanded.
"Nil—nix—not worth a cent," Mr. Wadham, Junior, proclaimed emphatically.
The Marquis, in that slang phraseology which he would have been the first to decry, never turned a hair. He had not the least intention, moreover, of permitting his interlocutor at the other end of the telephone even a momentary sensation of triumph.
"You can present my compliments to the manager," he said, "and tell him that the value of the shares in question does not concern either him or his brokers. In any case, they could not possibly have any information concerning the company, as it is only just registered and has not yet commenced operations. You understand me, Mr. Wadham?"
"Perfectly, your lordship," was the smooth reply. "The fact remains, however, that the brokers do know something about the company and the persons interested in it, and that knowledge, I regret to say, is most unfavourable. We felt it our duty, therefore, to pass on these facts."
"I am exceedingly obliged to you for your anxieties on my behalf," the Marquis declared. "My legal interests are, I am quite sure, safe in your hands. My financial affairs—my outside financial affairs, that is to say—I prefer to keep under my own control. I might remind you that these shares are supported, and came into my hands, in fact, through the agency of Mr. David Thain, the great financier."
There was a moment's pause.
"I had not forgotten the fact," Mr. Wadham admitted diffidently, "and it certainly seems improbable that Mr. Thain would introduce a risky investment to your lordship within a few weeks of his arrival in this country. At the same time, we feel compelled, of course, to bring to your notice the broker's report."
"Quite so," the Marquis acquiesced. "Kindly let the people concerned know that I am acting in this matter upon special information. Good-day, Mr. Wadham. My compliments to your father."
So the conversation terminated, but the Marquis for the remainder of that day felt as though just the shadow of a cloud rested upon his happiness. Twice he stared at the address of David's rooms, which occupied a prominent place upon his study table, but on both occasions he resisted the impulse to seek him out and obtain the reassurance he needed. He buried himself instead in a Review.
Letitia came in to see him on the way back from her aunt's tea party. The Marquis carefully made a note of his place and laid down his periodical.
"You found your aunt well, I trust, dear?"
"Oh, she was all right," Letitia replied. "She had an irritating lot of callers there, though."
Her father nodded sympathetically.
"The extraordinary habit which people in our rank of life seem to have developed lately for making friends outside their own sphere is making Society very difficult," he declared. "Members of our own family are, I am afraid, amongst the transgressors. Whom did you meet this afternoon?"
Letitia mentioned a few names listlessly.
"And Mr. Thain," she concluded.
Her father betrayed his interest.
"Mr. Thain was there, eh? I understood that he was much averse to paying calls."
"He looked as though he had been roped in," Letitia observed, "and aunt was all over herself, apologising to him for having other people there. She wanted to consult him, it seems, about something or other, and she turned him over to me until she was ready."
"And you," the Marquis enquired, with questioning sympathy, "were perhaps bored?"
"Not bored, exactly—rather irritated! I think I am like you, in some respects, father," Letitia went on, smoothing out her gloves. "I prefer to find my intimates within the circle of our own relatives and connections. A person like Mr. Thain in some way disturbs me."
"That," the Marquis regretted, "is unfortunate, as he is likely to be our neighbour at Mandeleys."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, it is of no consequence," she replied. "I shall never feel the slightest compunction in anything I might do or say to him. If he pays more for Broomleys than it is worth, he has the advantage of our countenance, which I imagine, to a person in his position, makes the bargain equal. Mr. Thain does not seem to me to be one of those men who would part with anything unless he got some return."
"Money, nowadays," the Marquis reflected, pressing the tips of his fingers together, "is a marvellously revitalising influence. People whose social position is almost, if not quite equal to our own, have even taken it into the family through marriage."
Letitia's very charming mouth twitched. Her lips parted, and she laughed softly. Nothing amused her more than this extraordinary blindness of her father to actual facts—such, for instance, as the Lees' woollen mills!
"I do hope," she remarked, "that you are not thinking of offering me up, dad, on the altar of the God of Dollars?"
"My dear child," the Marquis protested, "I can truthfully and proudly say that I am acquainted with no young woman of your position in connection with whom such a suggestion would be more sacrilegious. I have sometimes hoped," he went on, "that matters were already on the eve of settlement in another direction."
"I don't know, I'm sure," Letitia answered thoughtfully. "I sometimes think that I have a great many more feelings, dad, than the sole remaining daughter of the Right Honourable Reginald Thursford, Marquis of Mandeleys, ought to possess. The fact is, there are times when I can't stand Charlie anywhere near me, and as to discussing any subject of reasonable interest, well, he can only see anything from his own point of view, and that is always wrong."
"You and he, then," the Marquis observed, "appear to share—or rather to possess every essential for domestic happiness. The constant propinquity in which married people of the middle and lower classes are forced to live is no doubt responsible, in many cases, for the early termination of their domestic happiness."
"I always thought the middle classes were horribly virtuous," Letitia yawned. "However!—Thursday night, dad. You are dining out, aren't you?"
"Thursday night," the Marquis repeated, telling for the hundredth time, with bland ease, the falsehood which had almost ceased to have even the intention to deceive. "Yes, I dine at my club to-night, dear."
She bent over and kissed his forehead.
"Remember, my dear," he enjoined, "that I do not wish you to develop any feelings of positive dislike towards Mr. Thain. Such people have their uses in the world. We must not forget that."
Letitia laughed at him understandingly, but she closed the door in silence.
Marcia, more especially perhaps during these later days, felt her sense of humour gently excited every time she crossed the threshold of Trewly's Restaurant. The programme which followed was always the same. The Marquis rose from a cushioned seat in the small entrance lounge to greet her, very distinguished looking in his plain dinner clothes, his black stock, vainly imitated by the younger generation, his horn-rimmed eyeglass, his cambric-fronted shirt with the black pearls, which had been the gift of the Regent to his great-grandfather. The head waiter, and generally the manager, hovered in the background while their greetings were exchanged and Marcia's coat delivered to the care of an attendant. Then they were shown with much ceremony to the same table which they had occupied on these weekly celebrations for many years. It was in a corner of the room, a corner which formed a slight recess, and special flowers, the gift of the management, were invariably in evidence. The rose-shaded lamp, with its long, silken hangings, was arranged at precisely the right angle. The Marquis asked his usual question and waved away the menu.
"What you choose to offer us, Monsieur Herbrand," he would say, in his old-world but perfect French. "If Madame has any fancy, we will send you a message."
So the meal commenced. Trewly's was a restaurant with a past. In the days of the Marquis's youth, when such things were studied more carefully than now, it was the one first-class restaurant in London to which the gilded youth of the aristocracy, and perhaps their sires, might indulge in the indiscretion of entertaining a young lady from the Italian chorus without fear of meeting staider relatives. The world of bohemian fashion had changed its laws since those days, and Trewly's had been left, high and dry, save for a small clientele who remembered its former glories and esteemed its cellar and cuisine. It belonged to the world which the Marquis knew, the world whose maxims he still recognised. After all these years, he would still have thought himself committing a breach of social etiquette if he had invited Marcia to lunch with him at the Ritz or the Carlton.
They drank claret, decanted with zealous care and served by a black-aproned cellarman, who waited anxiously by until the Marquis had gravely sipped his first glassful and approved. Their dinner to-day was very much what it had been a dozen years ago—the French-fed chicken, the artichokes, and strawberries served with liqueurs remained, whatever the season. And their conversations. Marcia leaned back in her chair for a moment, and again the corners of her lips twitched as she remembered. Faithfully, year after year, she could trace those conversations—the courtly, old-fashioned criticism of the events of the week, criticism from the one infallible standard, the standard of the immutable Whiggism upon which the constitution itself rested; conversation with passing references to any new event in art, and, until lately, the stage. To-night Marcia found herself tracing the gradual birth of her stimulating rebellion. She remembered how, years ago, she had sat in that same seat and listened as one might listen to the words of a god. And then came the faint revolt, the development of her intellect, the necessity for giving tongue to those more expansive and more subtle views of life which became her heritage. To do him justice, the Marquis encouraged her. He was as good a judge of wit and spirit as he was of claret. If Marcia had expressed a single sentence awkwardly, if her grammar had ever been at fault, her taste to be questioned, he would have relapsed into the stiffness of his ordinary manner, and she would have felt herself tongue-tied. But, curious though it seemed to her when she looked back, she was forced to realise that it was he who had always encouraged the birth of her new thoughts, her new ideals, her new outlook upon life, her own drastic and sometimes unanswerable criticisms of that state of life in which he lived. She represented modernity, seeking for expression in the culture of the moment. He, remaining of the ancient world, yet found himself rejuvenated, mentally refreshed, week by week, preserved from that condition of obstinate ossification into which he would otherwise have fallen, by this brilliant and unusual companionship. In all the many years of their intimacy he had felt no doubts concerning her. He was possessed of a self-confidence wholly removed from conceit, which had spared for him the knowledge of even a moment's jealousy. In her company he had felt the coming and, as he now realised, the passing of middle age. It was only within these last few hours that certain formless apprehensions had presented themselves to him.
"You drink your wine slowly to-night," she observed. "I was just thinking how delicious it was."
He touched the long forefinger of his left hand, just a little swollen.
"A touch of gout," he said, "come to remind me, I suppose, that however much we set our faces against it, change does exist. You are the only person, Marcia, who seems to defy it."
She laughed at him, but not with entire naturalness. He found himself studying her, during the next few moments. Just as he was a celebrated connoisseur ofobjets d'arts, a valued visitor to Christie's, although his purchases were small, so he was, in his way, an excellent judge of the beautiful in living things. He realised, as he studied her, that Marcia had only more fully developed the charm which had first attracted him. Her figure was a little rounder but it had lost none of its perfections. Her neck and throat were just as beautiful, and the success of her work, and her greater knowledge of life, had brought with them an assured and dignified bearing. There was not a vestige of grey in her soft brown hair, not a line in her face, nor any sign of the dentist's handiwork in her strong, white teeth. Only—was it his fancy, he wondered, or was there something missing from the way she looked at him?—a half shy, half baffled appeal for affection which had so often shone out upon him during these evenings, a wholly personal, wholly human note, the unspoken message of a woman to her lover. He asked himself whether that had gone, and, if it had, whether the companionship which remained sufficed.
"So the journey down to Mandeleys has not materialised yet?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"To tell you the truth," she told him, "I rather shrank from it. I could not seem to bring it into perspective—you know what I mean. How am I to go to him? I don't suppose he has changed. He is still splendidly faithful to the ideas of his earlier days. I do not suppose he has moved a step out of his groove. He is looking at the same things in the same way. Am I to go to him as a Magdalen, as a penitent? Honestly, Reginald, I couldn't play the part."
Their eyes met, and they both smiled.
"It is very difficult," he admitted, "to discuss or to hold in common a matter of importance with a person of another world. Why do you go?"
"Because," she replied, "he is, after all, my father; because I know that the pain and rage which he felt when he left England are there to-day, and I would like so much to make him see that they have all been wasted. I want him to realise that my life has been made, not spoilt."
"I should find out indirectly, if I were you, how he is feeling," the Marquis advised. "I rather agree with you that you will find him unchanged. His fierce opposition to my reasonable legal movements against him give one that impression."
"I shall probably be sorry I went," she admitted, "but it seems to me that it is one of those things which must be done. Let us talk of something else. Tell me how you have spent the week?"
"For one thing, I have improved my acquaintance with the American, David Thain, of whom I have already spoken to you," he told her.
"And your great financial scheme?"
"It promises well. Of course, if it is entirely successful, it will be like starting life all over again."
"There is a certain amount of risk, I suppose?" she asked, a little anxiously.
The Marquis waved his hand.
"In this affair quite negligible," he declared.
"It would make you very happy, of course, to free the estates," she ruminated.
The Marquis for a moment revealed a side of himself which always made Marcia feel almost maternal towards him.
"It would give me very great pleasure, also," he confessed, "to point out to my solicitors—to Mr. Wadham, Junior, especially—that the task which they have left unaccomplished for some twenty-five years I have myself undertaken successfully."
"This Mr. Thain must be rather interesting," Marcia said musingly. "Could you describe him?"
It was at that precise moment that the Marquis raised his head and discovered that David Thain was being shown by an obsequiousmaître d'hôtelto the table adjoining their own.
In the case of almost any other of his acquaintances, the Marquis's course of action would have been entirely simple. David, however, complicated things. With the naïve courtesy of his American bringing up, he no sooner recognised the Marquis than he approached the table and offered his hand.
"Good evening, Marquis," he said.
The Marquis shook hands. Some banalities passed between the two men. Then, as though for the first time, David was suddenly and vividly aware of Marcia's presence. Some instinct told him who she was, and for a moment he forgot himself. He looked at her steadily, curiously, striving to remember, and Marcia returned his gaze with a strange absorption which at first she failed to understand. This slim, nervous-looking man, with the earnest eyes and the slight stoop of the head, was bringing back to her some memory. From the first stage of the struggle her common sense was worsted. She was looking back down the avenues of her memory. Surely somewhere in that shadowland she had known some one with eyes like these!—there must be something to explain this queer sense of excitement. And then the Marquis, who had been deliberating, spoke the words which brought her to herself.
"Marcia, let me present to you Mr. David Thain, of whom we were speaking a few minutes ago. Mr. Thain, this is Miss Marcia Hannaway, whose very clever novel you may have read."
David's eyes were still eagerly fixed upon her face, but the introduction had brought Marcia back to the earth. There could be no connection between those half-formed memories and the American millionaire whose name was almost a household word!
"I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Hannaway," David said. "I was just telling the Marquis that I was surprised to find any one here whom I knew. I asked a friend to tell me of a restaurant near my rooms where I should meet no one, and he sent me here."
"Why such misanthropy?" she asked.
"It is my own bad manners," he explained. "I accepted an invitation for this evening, and found at the last moment so much work that I was obliged to send an excuse."
"You carry your work about with you, then?"
"Not always, I hope," he replied, "only I am just now clearing out a great many of my interests in America, and that alone is sufficient to keep one busy."
He passed on with a little bow, and took his place at the table which themaître d'hôtelhad indicated. The Marquis, to whom his coming had been without any real significance, continued his conversation with Marcia until he found to his surprise that she was giving him less than her whole attention.
"What do you think of our hero of finance?" he enquired, a little coldly.
"He seems very much as you described him," Marcia answered. "To tell you the truth, his sudden appearance just as we were talking about him rather took my breath away."
"It was a coincidence, without doubt," the Marquis acknowledged.
Her eyes wandered towards the man who had given his brief order for dinner, and whose whole attention now seemed absorbed by the newspaper which he was reading.
"It is Mr. Thain, is it not, who introduced to you this wonderful speculation?" she asked, a little abruptly.
"That is so," the Marquis admitted. "I have always myself, however, been favourably disposed towards oil."
Marcia suddenly withdrew her glance, laughed softly to herself and sipped her wine.
"I was indulging in a ridiculous train of thought," she confessed. "Mr. Thain looks very clever, even if he is not exactly one's idea of an American financier. I expect the poor man does get hunted about. A millionaire, especially from foreign parts, has become a sort of Monte Cristo, nowadays."
The subject of David Thain dropped. The Marquis, as their coffee was brought, began to wonder dimly whether it was possible that the thread of their conversation was a little more difficult to hold together than in the past; whether that bridge between their interests and daily life became a little more difficult to traverse as the years passed. He fell into a momentary fit of silence. Marcia leaned towards him.
"Reginald," she said, "do you know, there was something I wanted to ask you this evening. Shall I ask it now?"
"If you will, dear."
She paused for a moment. The matter had seemed so easy and reasonable when she had revolved it in her mind, yet at this moment of broaching it, she realised, not for the first time, how different he was from other men; how difficult a nameless something about his environment made certain discussions. Nevertheless, she commenced her task.
"Reginald," she began, "do you realise that during the whole of my life I have never dined alone with any other man but you?"
"Nor I, since you came, with any other woman," he rejoined calmly. "You have some proposition to make?"
She was surprised to find that he had penetrated her thoughts.
"Don't you think, perhaps," she continued, "that we are a little too self-enclosing? Thanks to you, as I always remember, dear, the world has grown a larger place for me, year by year. At first I really tried to avoid friendships. I was perfectly satisfied. I did not need them. But my work, somehow, has made things different. It has brought me amongst a class of people who look upon freedom of intercourse between the sexes as a part of their everyday life. I found a grey hair in my head only the night before last, and do you know how it came? Just by refusing invitations from perfectly harmless people."
"I have never placed any restrictions upon your life," her companion reminded her.
"I know it," she admitted, "but, you see, the principal things between us have always been unspoken. I knew just how you felt about it. What I want to know is, now that the times have changed around you as well as around me, whether you would feel just the same if I, to take an example, were to lunch or dine with Mr. Borden, now and then, or with Morris Hyde, the explorer. I met him at an Authors' Clubconversazioneand he was immensely interesting. It struck me then that perhaps I was interpreting your wishes a little too literally."
The Marquis selected a cigarette from his battered gold case with its tiny coronet, tapped it upon the table and lit it. Marcia was already smoking.
"I fear that I am very old-fashioned in my notions, Marcia," he confessed. "I should find it very difficult to adapt myself to the perfectly harmless, I am sure, lack of restraint which, as you say, has opened the doors to a much closer friendship between men and women. The place which you have held in my life has grown rather than lessened with the years. It is only natural, however, that the opposite should be the case with you. I should like to consider what you have said, Marcia."
"You have meant so much to me," she continued, "you have been so much. In our earlier days, too, especially during that year when we travelled, you were such a wonderful mentor. It was your fine taste, Reginald, which enabled me to make the best of those months in Florence and Rome. You knew the best, and you showed it to me. You never tried to understand why it was the best, but you never made a mistake."
"Those things are matters of inheritance," he replied, "and cultivation. It was a great joy to me, Marcia, to give you the keys."
"Yes," she repeated, "that is what you did, Reginald—you gave me the keys, and I opened the doors."
"And now," he went on, "you have pushed your way further, much further into the world where men and women think, than I could or should care to follow you. Is it likely to separate us?"
She saw him suddenly through a little mist of tears.
"No!" she exclaimed, "it must not! It shall not!"
"Nevertheless," he persisted, "the thought is in your mind. I cannot alter my life, Marcia. I live to a certain extent by tradition, and by habits which have become too strong to break. There is a great difference in our years and in our outlook upon life. There is much before you, flowers which you may pick and heights which you may climb, which can have no message for me."
"Nothing," Marcia declared fervently, "shall disturb our—our friendship."
"That does not rest with you, dear, but rather with Fate," he replied. "You might control your actions, and I know that you would, but your will, your desires, your temperament, may still lead you in opposite directions. I have been your lover too long to slip easily into the place of your guardian. Hold out your hand, if you will, now, and bid me farewell. Try the other things, and, if they fail you, send for me."
"I shall do nothing of the sort," she objected. "We are both of us much too serious. The only question we are considering is whether you would object to my dining with Mr. Borden and lunching with Mr. Hyde?"
"It would give you an opportunity," he remarked, with a rather grim smile, "of seeing the inside of some other restaurant."
"How understanding you are!" she exclaimed. "Do you know, although I love our dinners here, I sometimes feel as though this room were a little cage, a little corner of the world across the threshold of which you had drawn a chalk line, so that no one of your world or mine might enter. The coming of Mr. Thain was almost like an earthquake."
With every moment it seemed to him that he understood her a little more, and with every moment the pain of it all increased.
"My dear Marcia," he said, "you have spoken the word. More than once lately I have fancied that I noticed indications of this desire on your part. I am glad, therefore, that you have spoken. Dine with your publisher, by all means, and lunch with Mr. Hyde. Take to yourself that greater measure of liberty which it is only too natural that you should covet. We will look upon it as a brief vacation, which certainly, after all these years, you have earned. When you have made up your mind, write to me. I shall await your letter with interest."
"But you mean that you are not coming down to see me before then?" she asked, a little tremulously.
"I think it would be better not," he decided. "I have kept you to myself very stringently, Marcia. You see, I recognise this, and I set you free for a time."
He paid the bill, and they left the room together.
"You are coming home?" she whispered, as they passed down the vestibule.
He shook his head.
"Not to-night, if you will excuse me, Marcia," he said. "The car is here. I will take a cab myself. There is a meeting of the committee at my club."
They were on the pavement. She gripped his hand.
"Do come," she begged.
He handed her in with a smile.
"You will go down to Battersea, James," he told the chauffeur, "and fetch me afterwards from the club."
A queer feeling caught at her heart as the car glided off and left him standing there, bareheaded. It was the first time—she felt something like the snap of a chain in her heart—the first time in all these years! Yet she never for a moment deceived herself. The tears which stood in her eyes, the pain in her heart, were for him.