Chapter III

Lord Hinterleys leaned back in his chair and prepared to enjoy his greatest treat during the day,--his one glass of vintage port.

“So you did not go to Scotland after all, Gerald?” he remarked, on the evening of the latter’s arrival at Hinterleys.

“No, I didn’t go, sir,” Gerald replied. “Some old friends of mine turned up in town. I have been spending a good deal of time with them.”

“I would have preferred hearing that you had been on the moors,” his father observed, with a glance at his son’s pallid face and careworn expression. “London in August always seems to me intolerable.”

“It was certainly very hot,” Gerald admitted. “I was on the river a great deal of the time, though.”

There was a short silence. Lord Hinterleys was, as a rule, a reserved man, and he very much disliked the task which he had set himself. He dallied with it for a few moments, looking through the high window, across the terrace to the gardens below. His face softened as he glanced at the two girlish figures seated under the cedar tree, where coffee was being served.

“You have been guilty, I suppose, Gerald,” he said drily, “of the usual number of indiscretions, but one action of yours which threatened to come under that heading, I shall always remember with gratitude. Myrtile is the most wonderful child who ever came to brighten a somewhat dull household.”

“I am glad you approve of her, sir,” Gerald replied indifferently.

“The more I study her,” Lord Hinterleys went on earnestly, “the more she fills me with amazement. It seems as though she must be some sort of a spiritual changeling. I have always been, as you know, rather a stickler for race. Myrtile is one of those marvellous exceptions which upset all argument. She is an aristocrat to the finger tips in every way, small or great, that counts. It seems as though it were absolutely impossible for her to do an ungracious or ungraceful thing. She has destroyed every prejudice I ever possessed.”

Gerald was interested at last. It was many years since he had known his father so enthusiastic.

“I am very glad you kept her here, sir,” he remarked.

“I am more than glad--I am thankful,” was the fervent reply. “I look forward with a pleasure which I can scarcely describe to the hours she gives up for my entertainment. When I think that nothing but an outbreak of scarlet fever in the household to which she was bound was responsible for her staying here long enough for us to appreciate her, I can never feel sufficiently thankful. To watch her development, too, during the last year, has been like watching a beautiful flower.”

“She’s made a conquest of you, at any rate, dad,” Gerald remarked. “I thought myself that she looked perfectly sweet to-night at dinner time.”

“She has made a conquest of me to an extent which I should never have believed possible,” Lord Hinterleys admitted, glancing across at his son. “I have had an elderly man’s desire, Gerald, to welcome home to Hinterleys the woman whom you might decide to choose for a wife. I have kept a little list in my mind of the young women at present known to Society, whom it would give me pleasure to see here. I have never for one second contemplated the addition to that list of an unknown person. And yet----”

“There is no question of anything of that sort between Myrtile and me, sir,” Gerald declared, breaking a somewhat embarrassed pause.

Lord Hinterleys sipped his port and looked once more out of the window. Gerald, a little startled by his father’s unexpected suggestion, was suddenly conscious of that one wild moment after his supper party at the Hôtel de Paris, of Christopher’s stern figure, of that strange medley of sensations, the flare of passion which seemed to have perished in the shame of Christopher’s triumph. He, too, looked out of the window. Myrtile had been a child then. She was a woman now, more wonderful, more gracious, just as completely virginal. Yet to him she existed at that moment only as the picture of something that had passed.

“I am afraid,” his father said, a little sadly, “that Myrtile does not look at it in quite the same way. However, that is nothing. It may be only a sort of hero worship with her. It was you, I understand, who took the initiative in bringing her away from her home. Her indifference to your sex is a little abnormal for her years. Doubtless it will pass when the right man arrives. I envy that man more than any other living.”

Lord Hinterleys slowly finished his wine. Gerald produced his cigarette case.

“You are ready, sir?” he asked. “Will you take my arm?”

“Not for a moment,” was the quiet reply. “You perceive, from my references to Myrtile, that I am in a confidential frame of mind. I shall go even further to prove it.”

“You won’t mind my cigarette, sir?”

“Not in the least.--Gerald, I do not, as a rule, interfere in such matters, as you know, but I take a certain natural interest, I think, in your associates and your affairs generally. It has come to my knowledge through various channels that you have spent the greater part of the last month with two ladies bearing a French name--an aunt and a niece, I believe--both unknown to English Society.”

“That is true, sir,” Gerald admitted.

“Furthermore,” Lord Hinterleys continued, “although again I am a little outside my province, I must confess that I was somewhat disturbed to hear from Mr. Bendover that you had offered for sale a portion of the Lutsall property and were considering a mortgage upon Rhysalls.”

“I do not know why Mr. Bendover should have troubled you with these details,” Gerald said, a little uneasily, “but in the main they are correct.”

“I make you an allowance, as you know,” his father continued, “as my only son and the heir to Hinterleys, of five thousand a year, which I can well afford to do. You have yourself something like the same amount, I believe. You occupy a portion of Hinterleys House in town, and you have the use of my servants there. Your polo ponies, by express arrangement, have always been charged to my own stable expenses. You must forgive my feeling some surprise, therefore, at the fact that you have found it necessary to raise these large sums of money.”

Gerald was silent for a moment, conscious of and inwardly resenting his father’s anxious scrutiny. Something of the bitterness which he was feeling showed itself, perhaps, in his tone.

“I needed the money, dad,” he said. “It will probably all come back to me, or its value.”

“If the necessity is occasioned by your losses at cards or on the turf,” Lord Hinterleys continued, “I should prefer making you some advance myself, to having you part with land which belonged to your great-grandmother, or executing a mortgage upon any part of your property.”

“I have needed the money for quite a different purpose,” Gerald explained, “a purpose which precluded my applying to you. There are other people involved.”

“I see,” Lord Hinterleys concluded drily. “We will leave the matter where it is, then, for the present.--If you will give me your arm now, we will take our coffee in the gardens.”

“Sorry, dad, to seem mysterious and uncommunicative, and that sort of thing,” Gerald apologised, with an attempt at levity. “I’m not quite off my head, I can assure you.”

“You have never presented yourself to my mind, Gerald,” his father admitted, “as being a likely tool for the adventurers or harpies of the world. I shall continue to believe that you are able to take care of yourself, although I am bound to say that I regret your lack of confidence.”

“I shall be in a position to tell you the whole story very shortly,” Gerald promised. “The element of secrecy about it at present has nothing to do with me.”

They made their way through the window, on to the terrace, down the steps and across the lawn to the cedar tree. Myrtile was standing behind the coffee tray, and Gerald, remembering his father’s recent words, gazed at her with a new, though somewhat languid interest. She was wearing a simple frock of grey muslin, her hair was parted in the middle and drooped low over her ears. The thinness of a year ago had given place to the slender perfection of early womanhood. She had the air of being wholly and gracefully at her ease, yet the sweetness of her smile, a certain ever-present but unobtrusive desire to please, seemed like the hallmarks of her constant but unexpressed gratitude. Lady Mary, sunburnt and amiable, lolled in a hammock, with a cigarette between her teeth. There was a telegram upon her knee. She seemed content with life.

“Have you heard the news?” she asked. “Christopher has been invited to stand for West Leeds. It is a certain seat and he has accepted. He is coming down to-morrow afternoon.”

“Good old Chris!” Gerald murmured. “Though what on earth he wants to spend half his time pottering about the House of Commons for, I can’t imagine.”

“Your friend Christopher Bent,” Lord Hinterleys observed, “finds his pleasures, without a doubt, somewhat interfered with by the possession of some out-of-date principles. He will be very welcome here.--My coffee and the evening paper, if you please, Myrtile.”

Myrtile’s attention had momentarily wandered. Her eyes were fixed upon Gerald, who was looking paler and more tired than ever in the clear evening twilight.

“You found it hot in the city?” she asked softly, as she poured out the coffee.

He frowned impatiently. There is nothing which irritates a selfish man more than the evidences of an affection which he does not covet.

“If it was, I don’t deserve any sympathy,” he replied. “I was only there because it amused me.”

He threw himself into a chair, declined coffee with unnecessary abruptness, and asked for brandy. Myrtile, with a little pain at her heart, no infrequent visitor there, took her place apart from the others, near Lord Hinterleys, and, spreading out the newspaper, commenced her evening task.