Part 63 (1/2)

'Sir George!' echoed Lesley in her turn, shaking her head. 'No! he is not one of those who ought to know that you know, either. He may have to know, perhaps, but it should not be through you. Look! how he _will_ give the credit to Mr. Kenyon; and if he knew it was Mr. Raymond, he would insist still more on giving it to him. You know he would, Lady Arbuthnot--there would be a fuss, and every one would talk, and he would hate it--almost worse than Mr. Raymond. Why not leave it alone--if we can--what harm does it do?'

'You have grown very wise, Lesley,' said the elder woman after a pause.

'Love, they say, has eyes----'

'Love!' Lesley flashed round on her like a whirlwind. 'Ah! I wish there was no such thing in the world. Then we women would have a chance of being sensible. Love! No, Lady Arbuthnot, love has nothing to do with it---nothing.'

They stood facing each other, those two, and then a smile--distinctly a pleased smile--came to the older face. 'But, my dear child, you don't mean to tell _me_ that you are not in love with Mr. Raymond!'

The flush up to the eyes was Lesley's now; but she stood her ground bravely. 'It does not matter if I am or not; I am not going to talk of it. And I promised him----'

Grace broke in with a little peal of laughter, tender, amused, pathetic, yet acquiescent laughter. 'Has it got so far as that? Ah!

Lesley dear! I'm so glad.'

The girl looked at her with a faint wonder, a great admiration, then shook her head.

'I believe you are made different from me,' she said soberly. 'I can only understand one thing about it all--how it was that _he_ never forgot--well, never quite forgot. For there is nothing to be glad of, I can a.s.sure you--nothing at all.'

She did not, in truth, look as if there was; but Grace, as she took Sir George his tea, as she always did, had her eyes full of that mysterious gladness which any sentiment, even sorrow, brings to some women's faces. It suited hers, and so her husband's had quite a lover-like diffidence in it as he watched her fingering the thin gold chain with pink topazes hanging from it, which he took from a drawer.

'It was in that casket the police found,' he explained, 'and I told them, if no owner turned up for it, to send it for you to see, and then if you liked it----'

She looked up, smiling. 'It is too young for me. Yes! it is true, George, I am getting old--ever so old! But I'll tell you what we will do! If we can buy it, we will give it to Lesley as a wedding-present when she marries Mr. Raymond.'

Sir George sat back in his chair--perhaps she had meant that he should.

'My dear girl!' he said feebly, 'this is the first I have heard of it.

Mr. Raymond! And I thought----'

'Never mind what you thought,' she put in decidedly: 'it isn't quite settled yet; but it is going to be. Oh yes! it is going to be!'

'Well!' said Sir George--recovering himself for the usual formula,--'he is a very lucky fellow! But it is--er--all the more likely to be so, because, curiously enough, I have been told to offer Mr. Raymond the trustees.h.i.+p of the old Thakoor of Dhurmkote's affairs. In fact, the old man refused pointblank to have any one else, and as we want him to retrench and adopt an heir properly----'

'My dear George!' exclaimed Lady Arbuthnot, 'how perfectly delightful!--it--it will settle everything!'

'Yes; I--I suppose it will,' replied Sir George dubiously, and then his sober common sense came to the front--'not, my dear, that I exactly see what had to--to--er--be settled.'

'No! perhaps not,' said Grace thoughtfully, 'but it will, all the same.'

With which mysterious remark she went off to set springes for that Love with a big L, which _was_ to settle all things.

She was an expert in the art, as women of her type always are, and yet the days pa.s.sed without bringing her success. For something, of which she knew nothing, stood between those two.

Put briefly, it was a _ram-rucki_. And so when they met--which was inevitably often, under Lady Arbuthnot's skilful hands--they talked of everything under the sun--of their adventure together, of the extraordinary way in which Fate had favoured them, of Chris Davenant and Jan-Ali-shan's mysterious disappearances, of the pearls, and the signet of royalty that was not to be found anywhere. They even talked of the Thakoor of Dhurmkote, and the almost endless interest and power of such a life as that now offered to Jack Raymond--they even quarrelled over his hesitancy in accepting it; but they never talked of what Lesley had asked him to forget--what she had stigmatised scornfully as the 'rest of it.'

Grace became almost tearful over the fact. It seemed to her at last as if, even here, hers was not to be the hand to wile Jack Raymond back either to duty or pleasure.

And it was not. That task was reserved for a simpler hand; a hand that had neither clutched nor refused, the hand of a woman to whom 'the rest of it' was neither to be despised nor overestimated, and who had neither scorned it nor sought for it.

It was Auntie Khojee's when, one day, Jack Raymond and Lesley found themselves deftly man[oe]uvred by Grace Arbuthnot into the _tete-a-tete_ of a visit to the old lady; not in the least against their wills, for he was quite content with, and she vastly superior to, such palpable ruses; besides, she really wanted to see the originator of the _ram-rucki_, who was now decently established on the top of an offshoot of the city, which jutted out into that very pleasure-garden to which the old lady had come with her pet.i.tion to the bracelet-brother.