Volume Ii Part 13 (1/2)

”_She_ will break down if it goes on,” said Lady Madeleine, in a melancholy voice.

Naseby laughed.

”Not at all! Lady Maxwell was made for war--she thrives on it. Don't you, too, enjoy it?”

”I don't know,” said the girl, drearily. ”I don't know what I was made for.”

And over her feather fan her wide eyes travelled to the distant ogress figure of her mother, sitting majestical in black wig and diamonds beside the Russian Amba.s.sador. Naseby's also travelled thither--unwillingly. It was a disagreeable fact that Lady Kent had begun to be very amiable to him of late.

Lady Madeleine's remark made him silent a moment. Then he looked at her oddly.

”I am going to offend you,” he said deliberately. ”I am going to tell you that you were made to wear white satin and pearls, and to look as you look this evening.”

The girl flushed hotly.

”I knew you despised women,” she said, in a strained voice, staring back at him reproachfully. During her months of distress and humiliation she had found her only comfort in ”movements” and ”causes”--in the moral aspirations generally--so far as her mother would allow her to have anything to do with them. She had tried, for instance, to work with Marcella Maxwell--to understand her.

But Naseby held his ground.

”Do I despise women because I think they make the grace and poetry of the world?” he asked her. ”And, mind you, I don't draw any lines. Let them be county councillors and guardians, and inspectors, and queens as much as they like. I'm very docile. I vote for them. I do as I'm told.”

”Only, you don't think that _I_ can do anything useful!”

”I don't think you're cut out for a 'platform woman,' if that's what you mean,” he said, laughing--”even Lady Maxwell isn't. And if she was, she wouldn't count. The women who matter just now--and you women are getting a terrible amount of influence--more than you've had any time this half century--are the women who sit at home in their drawing-rooms, wear beautiful gowns, and attract the men who are governing the country to come and see them.”

”Lady Maxwell doesn't sit at home and wear beautiful gowns!”

”I vow she does!” said Naseby, with spirit. ”I can vouch for it. I was caught that way myself. Not that I belong to the men who are governing the country. And now she has roped me to her chariot for good and all.

Ah, Ancoats! how do you do?”

He got up to make room for the master of the house as he spoke. But as he walked away he said to himself, with a kind of delight: ”Good! she didn't turn a hair.”

Lady Madeleine, indeed, received her former suitor with a cool dignity that might have seemed impossible to anyone so plaintively pretty. He lingered beside her, twirling his carefully pointed moustache, that matched the small Richelieu chin, and looking at her with a furtive closeness from time to time.

”Well--so you have just come back from Paris?” she said indifferently.

”Yes; I stayed a day or two after my mother. One didn't want to come back to this dull hole.”

”Did you see the new piece at the Francais?”

He made a face.

”Not I! One couldn't be caught by such _vieux jeu_ as that! There was a splendid woman in one of the _cafes chantants_--but I suppose you don't go to _cafes chantants?”_

”No,” said Madeleine, eyeing him over her fan with a composure that astonished herself. ”No, I don't go to _cafes chantants_.”

Ancoats looked blank a moment, then resumed, with fervour:

”This woman's divine--_epatant_! Then, at the Chat Noir--but--ah! well, perhaps you don't go to the Chat Noir?”