Part 8 (1/2)

”Oh, Jim, dear, do you think she is so sure to succeed?”

”If she doesn't, it will be pure cussedness on her part, and nothing else,” said Jim.

Clara reflected that she would tell Lettice what her husband said. She moved to the window and looked out. She was waiting for her guests, Lettice and Mrs. Campion, in the soft dusk of a sweet May evening, and she was a little impatient for their arrival. She had had a comfortable, nondescript meal, which she called dinner-tea, set ready for them in the dining-room, and as this room was near the hall-door, she had installed herself therein, so that she could the more easily watch for her visitors. Mr. Graham, a tall, thin man, with coal-black beard, deep-set dark eyes, and marked features, had thrown himself into a great arm-chair, where he sat buried in the current number of a monthly magazine. His wife was universally declared to be a very pretty woman, and she was even more ”stylish,” as women say, than pretty; for she had one of those light, graceful figures that give an air of beauty to everything they wear. For the rest, she had well-cut features, bright dark eyes, and a very winning smile. A brightly impulsive and affectionate nature had especially endeared her to Lettice, and this had never been soured or darkened by her experiences of the outer world, although, like most people, she had known reverses of fortune and was not altogether free from care. But her husband loved her, and her three babies were the most charming children ever seen, and everybody admired the decorations of her bright little house in Edwardes Square; and what more could the heart of womankind desire?

”I wonder,” she said presently, ”whether Sydney will come with them. He was to meet them at Liverpool Street; and of course I asked him to come on.”

”I would have gone out if you had told me that before,” said Mr. Graham, tersely.

”Why do you dislike Sydney Campion so much, Jim?”

”Dislike? I admire him. I think he is the coming man. He's one of the most successful persons of my acquaintance. It is just because I feel so small beside him that I can't stand his company.”

”I must repeat, Jim, that if you talk like that to Lettice----”

”Oh, Lettice doesn't adore her precious brother,” said Graham, irreverently. ”She knows as well as you and I do that he's a selfish sort of brute, in spite of his good looks and his gift of the gab. I say, Clara, when are these folks coming? I'm confoundedly hungry.”

”Who's the selfish brute now?” asked Clara, with triumph. ”But you won't be kept waiting long: the cab's stopping at the door, and Sydney hasn't come.”

She flew to the door, to be the first to meet and greet her visitors.

There was not much to be got from Mrs. Campion that evening except tears--this was evident as soon as she entered the house, leaning on Lettice's arm; and the best thing was to put her at once to bed, and delay the evening meal until Lettice was able to leave her. Graham was quite too good-natured to grumble at a delay for which there was so valid a reason; for, as he informed his wife, he preferred Miss Campion's conversation without an accompaniment of groans. He talked lightly, but his grasp of the hand was so warm, his manner so sympathetic, when Lettice at last came down, that Clara felt herself rebuked at having for one moment doubted the real kindliness of his feeling.

Lettice in her deep mourning looked painfully white and slender in Clara's eyes; but she spoke cheerfully of her prospects for the future, as they sat at their evening meal. Sad topics were not broached, and Mr.

Graham set himself to give her all the encouragement in his power.

”And as to where you are to set up your tent,” he said, ”Clara and I have seen a cottage on Brook Green that we think would suit you admirably.”

”Where is Brook Green?” asked Lettice, who was almost ignorant of any save the main thoroughfares of London.

”In the wilds of Hammersmith----”

”West Kensington,” put in Clara, rather indignantly.

”Well, West Kensington is only Hammersmith writ fine. It is about ten minutes' walk from us----”

”Oh, I am glad of that,” said Lettice.

”--And it is not, I think, too large or too dear. You must go and look at it to-morrow, if you can.”

”Is there any garden?”

”There is a garden, with trees under which your mother can sit when it is warm. Clara told me you would like that; and there is a gra.s.s-plot--I won't call it a lawn--where you can let your dog and cat disport themselves in safety. I am sure you must have brought a dog or a cat with you, Miss Campion. I never yet knew a young woman from the country who did not bring a pet animal to town with her.”

”Jim, you are very rude,” said his wife.

”I shall have to plead guilty,” Lettice answered, smiling a little. ”I have left my fair Persian, Fluff, in the care of my maid, Milly, who is to bring her to London as soon as I can get into my new home.”

”Fluff,” said Clara, meditatively, ”is the creature with a tail as big as your arm, and a ruff round her neck, and Milly is the pretty little housemaid; I remember and approve of them both.”

The subject of the new house served them until they went upstairs into Clara's bright little drawing-room, which Graham used to speak of disrespectfully as his wife's doll's house. It was crowded with pretty but inexpensive knick-knacks, the profusion of which was rather bewildering to Lettice, with her more simple tastes. Of one thing she was quite sure, that she would not, when she furnished her own rooms, expend much money in droves of delicately-colored china pigs and elephants, which happened to be in fas.h.i.+on at the time. She also doubted the expediency of tying up two peac.o.c.ks' feathers with a yellow ribbon, and hanging them in solitary glory on the wall flanked by plates of Kaga ware, at tenpence-halfpenny a-piece. Lettice's taste had been formed by her father, and was somewhat masculine in its simplicity, and she cared only for the finer kinds of art, whether in porcelain or painting. But she was fain to confess that the effect of Clara's decorations was very pretty, and she wondered at the care and pains which had evidently been spent on the arrangement of Mrs. Graham's ”Liberty rags” and Oriental ware. When the soft yellow silk curtains were drawn, and a subdued light fell through the jewelled facets of an Eastern lamp upon the peac.o.c.k fans and richly-toned Syrian rugs, and all the other hackneyed ornamentation by which ”artistic” taste is supposed to be shown, Lettice could not but acknowledge that the room was charming. But her thoughts flew back instantly to the old study at home, with its solid oak furniture, its cus.h.i.+oned window-seats, its unfas.h.i.+onable curtains of red moreen; and in the faint sickness of that memory, it seemed to her that she could be more comfortable at a deal table, with a kitchen chair set upon unpolished boards, than in the midst of Clara's pretty novelties.