Volume I Part 31 (1/2)
It has been all very paternal and beautiful, and--abominably Tory and tyrannous! Many people, I suppose, think it perfect. Perhaps I don't. But then, I know very well I can't possibly disagree with her a tenth part as strongly as she disagrees with me.”
”Oh! but she admires you so much,” cried Letty, with effusion; ”she thinks you mean so n.o.bly!”
Marcella opened her eyes, involuntarily wondering a little what Lady Tressady might know about it.
”Oh! we don't hate each other,” she said, rather drily, ”in spite of politics. And my husband was Ancoats's guardian.”
”Dear me!” said Letty. ”I should think it wasn't easy to be guardian to fifty thousand a year.”
Marcella did not answer--did not, indeed, hear. Her look had stolen across to Mrs. Allison--a sad, affectionate look, in no way meant for Lady Tressady. But Letty noticed it.
”I suppose she adores him,” she said.
Marcella sighed.
”There was never anything like it. It frightens one to see.”
”And that, of course, is why she won't marry Lord Fontenoy?”
Marcella started, and drew away from her companion.
”I don't know,” she said stiffly; ”and I am sure that no one ever dared to ask her.”
”Oh! but of course it's what everyone says,” said Letty, gay and unabashed. ”That's what makes it so exciting to come here, when one knows Lord Fontenoy so very well.”
Marcella met this remark with a discouraging silence.
Letty, however, was determined this time to make her impression. She plunged into a lively and often audacious gossip about every person in the room in turn, asking a number of intimate or impertinent questions, and yet very seldom waiting for Marcella's reply, so anxious was she to show off her own information and make her own comments. She let Marcella understand that she suspected a great deal, in the matter of that handsome Lady Madeleine. It was _immensely_ interesting, of course; but wasn't Lord Ancoats a trifle wild?--she bent over and whispered in Marcella's ears; was it likely that he would settle himself so soon?--didn't one hear sad tales of his theatrical friends and the rest?
And what could one expect! As if a young man in such a position was not certain to have his fling! And his mother would have to put up with it.
After all, men quieted down at last. Look at Lord Cathedine!
And with an air of boundless knowledge she touched upon the incidents of Lord Cathedine's career, has.h.i.+ng up, with skilful deductions of her own, all that Lord Naseby had said or hinted to her at dinner. Poor Lady Cathedine! didn't she look a walking skeleton, with her strange, melancholy face, and every bone showing? Well, who could wonder! And when one thought of their money difficulties, too!
Lady Tressady lifted her white shoulders in compa.s.sion.
By this time Marcella's black eyes were wandering insistently round the room, searching for means of escape. Betty, far away, noticed her air, and concluded that the ”realisation” was making rapid, too rapid, progress. Presently, with a smiling shake of her little head, she left her own seat and went to her friend's a.s.sistance.
At the same moment Mrs. Allison, driven by her conscience as a hostess, got up for the purpose of introducing Lady Tressady to a lady in grey who had been sitting quiet, and, as Mrs. Allison feared, lonely, in a corner, looking over some photographs. Marcella, who had also risen, put out a hand to Betty, and the two moved away together.
They stopped on the threshold of a large window at the side of the room, which stood wide open to the night. Outside, beyond a broad flight of steps, stretched a formal Dutch garden. Its numberless small beds, forming stiff scrolls and circles on a ground of white gravel, lay in bright moonlight. Even the colours of the hyacinths and tulips with which they were planted could be seen, and the strong scent from them filled the still air. At the far end of this flat-patterned place a group of tall cypress and ilex, black against the sky, struck a note of Italy and the South; while, through the yew hedges which closed in the little garden, broad archways pierced at intervals revealed far breadths of silvery English lawn and the distant gleam of the river.
”Well, my dear,” said Betty, laughing, and slipping her arm through Marcella's as they stood in the opening of the window, ”I see you have been doing your duty for once. Let me pat you on the back. All the more that I gather you are not exactly enchanted with Lady Tressady. You really should keep your face in order. From the other end of the room I know exactly what you think of the person you are talking to.”
”Do you?” said Marcella, penitently. ”I wish you didn't.”
”Well you may wish it, for it doesn't help the political lady to get what she wants. However, I don't think that Lady Tressady has found out yet that you don't like her. She isn't thin-skinned. If you had looked like that when you were talking to me, I would have paid you out somehow. What is the matter with her?”
”Oh! I don't know,” said Marcella, impatiently, raising her shoulders.
”But she jarred. I pined to get away--I don't think I ever want to talk to her again.”