Part 32 (2/2)

”Oh, no, not without something. There's the past, you see.”

”And a sponge is wanted? And the bigger the sponge the better? And I'm to get my nose bitten off by asking Robert Disney for it? And if by a miracle he said yes, for all I know somebody else might say no!”

This dark reference to the Highest Quarters caused Southend to nod thoughtfully: they discussed the probable att.i.tude--a theme too exalted to be more than mentioned here. ”Anyhow the first thing is to sound Disney,” continued Southend.

”I'll think about it after I've seen the young man,” Lady Evenswood promised. ”Have you any reason to suppose he likes his cousin?”

”None at all--except, of course, the way he's cleared out for her.”

”Yielding gracefully to necessity, I suppose?”

”Really, I doubt the necessity; and, anyhow, the gracefulness needs some explanation in a case like this. Still I always fancied he was going to marry another girl, a daughter of a friend of mine--Iver--you know who I mean?”

”Oh, yes. Bring Harry Tristram to see me,” said she. ”Good-by, George.

You're looking very well.”

”And you're looking very young.”

”Oh, I finished getting old before you were forty.”

A thought struck Southend. ”You might suggest the viscounty as contingent on the marriage.”

”I shan't suggest anything till I've seen the boy--and I won't promise to then.”

Later in the afternoon Southend dropped in at the Imperium, where to his surprise and pleasure he found Iver in the smoking-room. Asked how he came to be in town, Iver explained:

”I really ran away from the cackling down at Blentmouth. All our old ladies are talking fifteen to the dozen about Harry Tristram, and Lady Tristram, and me, and my family, and--well, I dare say you're in it by now, Southend! There's an old cat named Swinkerton, who is positively beyond human endurance; she waylays me in the street. And Mrs Trumbler, the vicar's wife, comes and talks about Providence to my poor wife every day. So I fled.”

”Leaving your wife behind, I suppose?”

”Oh, she doesn't mind Mrs Trumbler. But I do.”

”Well, there's a good deal of cackling up here too. But tell me about the new girl.” Lord Southend did not appear to consider his own question ”cackling” or as tending to produce the same.

”I've only seen her once. She's in absolute seclusion and lets n.o.body in except Mina Zabriska--a funny little foreign woman--You don't know her.”

”I know about her, I saw it in the paper. She had something to do with it?”

”Yes.” Iver pa.s.sed away from that side of the subject immediately. ”And she's struck up a friends.h.i.+p with Cecily Gainsborough--Lady Tristram, I ought to say. I had a few words with the father. The poor old chap doesn't know whether he's on his head or his heels; but as they're of about equal value, I should imagine, for thinking purposes, it doesn't much matter. Ah, here's Neeld. He came up with me.”

The advent of Neeld produced more discussion. Yet Southend said nothing of the matter which he had brought to Lady Evenswood's attention.

Discretion was necessary there. Besides he wished to know how the land lay as to Janie Iver. On that subject his friend preserved silence.

”And the whole thing was actually in old Joe's diary!” exclaimed Southend.

Neeld, always annoyed at the ”Joe,” admitted that the main facts had been recorded in Mr Cholderton's Journal, and that he himself had known them when n.o.body else in England did--save, of course, the conspirators themselves.

<script>