Volume I Part 30 (1/2)
So she gradually drew herself away, pus.h.i.+ng him softly with her small gloved hand.
”I am sure I hate quarrelling,” she said. ”But there! Oh, George! don't let's talk of it any more! And look what you have done to my poor hair.
You dear, naughty boy!”
But though she called him ”Dear,” she frowned as she took off her gloves that she might mend what he had done.
George thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window, and waited. As he descended the great stairs in her wake he wished Castle Luton and its guests at the deuce. What pleasure was to be got out of grimacing and posing at these country-house parties? And now, according to Letty, the Maxwells were here. A great _gene_ for everybody!
CHAPTER XI
”That lady sitting by Sir George? What! Lady Maxwell? No--the other side?
Oh! that's Lady Leven. Don't you know her? She's tremendous fun!”
And the dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked young man who was sitting beside Letty nodded and smiled across the table to Betty Leven, merely by way of reminding her of his existence. They had greeted before dinner--a greeting of comrades.
Then he turned back, with sudden decorum, to this Lady Tressady, whom he had been commissioned to take in to dinner. ”Quite pretty, but rather--well, ordinary!” he said to himself, with a critical coolness bred of much familiarity with the best things of Vanity Fair. He had been Ancoats's friend at Cambridge, and was now disporting himself in the Guards, but still more--as Letty of course a.s.sumed--in the heart of the English well-born world. She knew that he was Lord Naseby, and that some day he would be a marquis. A halo, therefore, shone about him. At the same time, she had a long experience of young men, and, if she flattered him, it was only indirectly, by a sort of teasing aggression that did not allow him to take his attention from her.
”I declare you are better than any peerage!” she said to him presently, when he had given her a short biography, first of Lord Cathedine, who was sitting opposite, then of various other members of the company. ”I should like to tie you to my fan when I go out to dinner.”
”Would you?” said the young man, drily. ”Oh! you will soon know all you want to know.”
”How are poor little people from Yorks.h.i.+re to find their way about in this big world? You are all so dreadfully absorbed in each other. In the first place, you all marry each other.”
”Do we?--though I don't quite understand who 'we' means. Well, one must marry somebody, I suppose, and cousins are less trouble than other people.”
Involuntarily, the young man's eyes travelled along the table to a fair girl on the opposite side, dazzlingly dressed in black. She was wielding a large fan of black feathers, which threw both hair and complexion into amazing relief; and she seemed to be amusing herself in a nervous, spasmodic way with Sir Frank Leven. Letty noticed his glance.
”Oh! you have not earned your testimonial yet, not by any manner of means,” she said. ”That is Lady Madeleine Penley, isn't it? Is she a relation of Mrs. Allison's?”
”She is a cousin. That is her mother, Lady Kent, sitting beside poor Ancoats. Such an old character! By the end of dinner she will have got to the bottom of Ancoats, or know the reason why.”
”Is Lord Ancoats such a mystery?” said Letty, running an inquisitive eye over the black front, sharp nose, and gorgeously bejewelled neck of a somewhat noisy and forbidding old lady sitting on the right hand of the host.
Young Naseby's expression in answer rather piqued her. There was a quick flash of something that was instantly suppressed, and the youth said composedly,
”Oh! we are all mysteries for Lady Kent.”
But Letty noticed that his eyes strayed back to Lord Ancoats, and then again to Lady Madeleine. He seemed to be observing them, and Letty's sharpness at once took the hint. No doubt the handsome, large-featured girl was here to be ”looked at.” Probably a good many maidens would be pa.s.sed in review before this young Sultan made his choice! By the way he must be a good deal older than George had imagined. Clearly he left college some time ago. What a curious face he had--a small, crumpled face, with very prominent blue eyes; curly hair of a reddish colour, piled high, as though for effect, above his white brow; together with a sharp chin and pointed moustache, which gave him the air of an old French portrait. He was short in stature, but at the same time agile and strongly built. He wore one or two fine old rings, which drew attention to the delicacy of his hands; and his manner struck her as at once morose and excitable. Letty regarded him with involuntary respect as the son of Mrs. Allison--much more as the master of Castle Luton and fifty thousand a year. But if he had not been the master of Castle Luton she would have probably thought, and said, that he had a disagreeable Bohemian air.
”Haven't you really made acquaintance with Lady Kent?” said Lord Naseby, returning to the charge his laziness was somewhat at a loss for conversation. ”I should have thought she was the person one could least escape knowing in the three kingdoms.”
”I have seen her, of course,” said Letty, lightly, though, alas! untruly.
”But I am afraid you can hardly realise that I have only been three short seasons in London--two with an old aunt, who never goes out, in Cavendish Square, poor dull old dear! and another with Mrs. Watton, of Malford.”
”Oh! with Mrs. Watton, of Malford,” said Lord Naseby, vaguely. Then he became suddenly aware that Lady Leven, on the other side of the table, was beckoning to him. He leant across, and they exchanged a merry war of words about something of which Letty knew nothing.
Letty, rather incensed, thought him a puppy, drew herself up, and looked round at the ex-Governor beside her. She saw a fine head, the worn yellow face and whitened hair of a man who has suffered under a hot climate, and an agreeable, though somewhat courtly, smile. Sir Philip Wentworth was not troubled with the boyish fastidiousness of Lord Naseby. He perceived merely that a pretty young woman wished to make friends with him, and met her wish at once. Moreover, he identified her as the wife of that ”promising and well-informed fellow, Tressady,” with whom he had first made friends in India, and had now--just before dinner--renewed acquaintance in the most cordial fas.h.i.+on.