Part 38 (1/2)
Next day at luncheon Mr. Amherst, having carefully mapped out one of his agreeable little surprises, and having selected a moment when every one is present, says to her, with a wicked gleam of antic.i.p.ative amus.e.m.e.nt in his cunning old eyes:
”Sir Penthony is in England.”
Although she has neither hint nor warning of what is coming, Lady Stafford is a match for him. Mr. Potts's intelligence of the evening before stands her now in good stead.
”Indeed!” she says, without betraying any former knowledge, turning eyes of the calmest upon him; ”you surprise me. Tired so soon of Egyptian sphinxes! I always knew he had no taste. I hope he is quite well. I suppose you heard from him?”
”Yes. He is well, but evidently pines for home quarters and old friends. Thinking you would like to see him after so long a separation, I have invited him here. You--you don't object?”
”I?” says her ladys.h.i.+p, promptly, reddening, but laughing too very successfully. ”Now, why should I object? On the contrary, I shall be charmed; he will be quite an acquisition. If I remember rightly,”--with a little affected drooping of the lids,--”he is a very handsome man, and, I hear, amusing.”
Mr. Amherst, foiled in his amiable intention of drawing confusion on the head of somebody, subsides into a grunt and his easy-chair. To have gone to all this trouble for nothing, to have invited secretly this man, who interests him not at all, in hopes of a little excitement, and to have those hopes frustrated, disgusts him.
Yet, after all, there will, there must be some amus.e.m.e.nt in store for him, in watching the meeting between this strange pair. He at least may not prove as cool and indifferent as his pretty wife.
”He will be here to dinner to-day,” he says, grumpishly, knowing that all around him are inwardly rejoicing at his defeat.
This is a thunder-bolt, though he is too much disheartened by his first defeat to notice it. Lady Stafford grows several shades paler, and--luncheon being at an end--rises hurriedly. Going toward the door, she glances back, and draws Molly by a look to her side.
”Come with me,” she says; ”I must speak to some one, and to you before any of the others.”
When they have reached Cecil's pretty sitting-room, off which her bedroom opens, the first thing her ladys.h.i.+p does is to subside into a seat and laugh a little.
”It is like a play,” she says, ”the idea of his coming down here, to find _me_ before him. It will be a surprise; for I would swear that horrible old man never told him of my being in the house, or he would not have come. Am I talking Greek to you, Molly? You know my story, surely?”
”I have heard something of it--not much--from Mr. Luttrell,” says Molly, truthfully.
”It is a curious one, is it not? and one not easily matched. It all came of that horrible will. Could there be anything more stupid than for an old man to depart this life and leave behind him a doc.u.ment binding two young people in such a way as makes it 'do or die' with them? I had never seen my cousin in all my life, and he had never seen me; yet we were compelled at a moment's notice to marry each other or forfeit a dazzling fortune.”
”Why could you not divide it?”
”Because the lawyers said we couldn't. Lawyers are always aggressive.
My great-uncle had particularly declared it should not be divided. It was to be all or none, and whichever of us refused to marry the other got nothing. And there was so much!” says her ladys.h.i.+p, with an expressive sigh.
”It was a hard case,” Molly says, with deep sympathy.
”It was. Yet, as I managed it, it wasn't half so bad. Now, I dare say many women would have gone into violent hysterics, would have driven their relations to the verge of despair and the s.h.i.+vering bridegroom to the brink of delirious joy, and then given in,--married the man, lived with him, and been miserable ever after. But not I.”
Here she pauses, charmed at her own superior wisdom, and, leaning back in her chair, with a contented smile, puts the tips of her fingers together daintily.
”Well, and you?” says Molly, feeling intensely interested.
”I? I just reviewed the case calmly. I saw it was a great deal of money,--too much to hesitate about,--too much also to make it likely a man would dream of resigning it for the sake of a woman more or less.
So I wrote to my cousin explaining that, as we had never known each other, there could be very little love lost between us, and that I saw no necessity why we ever _should_ know each other,--and that I was quite willing to marry him, and take a third of the money, if he would allow me to be as little to him in the future as I was in the present, by drawing up a formal deed of separation, to be put in force at the church-door, or the door of any room where the marriage ceremony should be performed.”
”Well?”
”Well, I don't know how it would have been but that, to aid my request, I inclosed a photograph of our parlormaid (one of the ugliest women it has ever been my misfortune to see), got up in her best black silk, minus the cap, and with a flaming gold chain round her neck,--you know the sort of thing,--and I never said who it was.”