Part 17 (1/2)

Let.i.tia 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 amus.e.m.e.nts,” he observed a little drily.

”Superior person!” she mocked.

The d.u.c.h.ess 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,” Let.i.tia observed, glancing at the watch upon her wrist. ”All right, aunt, I'll go. You wouldn't believe, Mr. Thain,” she added, b.u.t.toning 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,”

Let.i.tia 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.

Let.i.tia kissed her aunt and departed. The d.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.sured her.

The d.u.c.h.ess was evidently staggered.

”You surprise mo,” 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 s.h.i.+lling,” the d.u.c.h.ess declared earnestly. ”Let me just tell you how they live. Let.i.tia 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 Let.i.tia's, except the few ha'pence she spends on clothes, go to keeping an establishment together. Reginald has sold every sc.r.a.p 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.”