Part 7 (1/2)
”Isn't there one on your desk, Sir. I'm sure I saw one lying there this morning.”
”Why, yes, so there was.” And he turned hastily back, only to exclaim after a moment's hopeless rummaging:--
”Confound it! I must have given it to Senora De Costa!”
CHAPTER V
A GENTLEMAN IN DISTRESS
Kent-Lauriston was prompt to his appointment, and it took but a few moments to establish the Secretary and himself in a private room with a plentiful supply of cigarettes, and two whiskeys and sodas.
Stanley was nervous and showed it. Kent-Lauriston adjusted his monocle, tugged at his long sandy moustache, and surveyed his companion from head to foot.
”Not feeling fit?” he queried. ”Suffering from political ennui?”
”Oh, my health is all right, as far as that goes----”
”Yes, I see,” this last remark meditatively. Then he added. ”Some deuced little sc.r.a.pe?”
Stanley nodded.
”Woman?”
”It concerns a lady--perhaps two.”
Kent-Lauriston frowned, and tugged his moustache a trifle harder, to imply that he now understood the affair to be of a more complex order, requiring the aid of skilful diplomacy, in place of the simple directness of five-pound notes.
”Want my advice, I suppose?”
”Yes,” admitted Stanley, ”and so I'd better make a clean breast of the matter.”
”Decidedly.”
”The fact is, I want to marry--or rather, don't want to marry--no, that's not it either-- I want to marry the girl bad enough, but I think I'd better not. It would be what the world--what you might call, a foolish match.”
”Deucedly hard hit, I suppose?”
”You see,” continued the Secretary, ignoring his friend's question, ”I know I oughtn't to marry her, but left to myself, I'd do it, and I need a jolly good rowing--only you mustn't be disrespectful to the lady--I--I couldn't stand that.”
”I think I know her name.”
”Miss Fitzgerald. You dined with her at the Hyde Park Club last evening.”
”Daughter of old Fitzgerald of the --th Hussars----”
”I--I believe that was her father's regiment, but now she lives----”
”Lives!” interjected Kent-Lauriston. ”No, she doesn't live--visits round with her relatives--old Irish ancestry--ruined castles and no rents--washy blue eyes and hair, at present, golden.”