Part 42 (1/2)

Miss Levering smiled down at her. 'What a funny little person you are.

Do you know who I am?'

'No.'

'It hasn't ever occurred to you to ask?'

The face turned to her with a half roguish smile. 'Oh, I thought you looked all right.'

'I'm the person who had the interview with your friend, Miss Claxton.'

As no recollection showed in the face, 'At Queen Anne's Gate,' she added.

'I don't think I knew about that,' said Ernestine, absently. Then alert, disdainful, 'Fancy the member for Wrotton saying---- Yes, we went to see him this morning.'

'Oh, that is very exciting! What was he like?'

'Quite a feeble sort of person, I thought.'

'Really!' laughed Miss Levering.

'He talked such nonsense to us about that old Plural Voting Bill. His idea seemed to be to get us to promise to behave nicely while the overworked House of Commons considered the iniquity of some men having more than one vote--they hadn't a minute this session to consider the much greater iniquity of no women having any vote at all! Of course he said he _had_ been a great friend to Woman Suffrage, until he got shocked with our tactics.' She smiled broadly. 'We asked him what he'd ever done to show his friends.h.i.+p.'

'Well?'

'He didn't seem to know the answer to that. What strikes me most about men is their being so illogical.'

Lady John Ulland had been openly surprised, even enthusiastically grateful, at discovering before this that Vida Levering was ready to help her with some of the unornamental duties that fall to the lot of the 'great ladies' of England.

'I don't know what that discontented creature, her sister, means by saying Vida is so unsympathetic about charity work.'

Neither could Lady John's neighbour, the Bishop, understand Mrs.

Fox-Moore's reproach. Had not his young kinswoman's charity concerts helped to rebuild the chantry?

'Such a _nice creature_!' was Lord John's contribution. Then, showing the profundity of his friendly interest, 'Why doesn't she find some nice fella to marry her?'

'People don't marry so early nowadays,' his wife rea.s.sured him.

Lord Borrodaile, to whom Vida still talked freely, he alone had some understanding of the changed face life was coming to wear for her. When he found that laughing at her failed of the desired effect, he offered touching testimony to his affection for her by trying to understand. It was no small thing for a man like Borrodaile, who, for the rest, found it no easier than others of his cla.s.s rightly to interpret the modern scene as looked down upon from the narrow lancet of the mediaeval tower which was his mind.

When she got him to smile at her report of the humours of the populace, he did so against his will, shaking his long Van d.y.k.e head, and saying--

'It spoils the fun for me to think of your being there. I have a quite unconquerable distrust of eccentricity.'

'There's nothing the least original about my mixing with ”The People,”

as my sister would call them. The women of my world would often go slumming. The only difference between me and them may be that I, perhaps, shall go a little farther, that's all.'

'Well, I devoutly hope you won't!' he said, with unusual emphasis. 'Let the proletariat attend to the affairs of the proletariat. They don't need a woman like you.'