The Red House Mystery. Duchess

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СКАЧАТЬ Ambert; and if he thought he would have it all his own way afterwards—why, she would show him. She hadn't the least doubt about his proposing to her. She gave herself no trouble on that head; and, indeed, she used to know great mirth sometimes, when he had been specially laborious over his efforts to prove to her that he had twenty or forty heiresses in his eye, who would all be ready at a moment's notice to accept his title, his debts, and his bald head.

      For all that, she was determined to marry him. This, however, did not prevent her indulging in small flirtations here and there. There were several young officers in the barracks in the next town who were literally at her feet, and there was the curate, Tom Blount, who every one knew was a very slave to her every caprice.

      "Ah, Mr. Blount," said she, as she passed him now on her way to the conservatory. "Here? And you haven't asked me for a single dance."

      "I don't dance," said Tom Blount. "The bishop doesn't like it, you know, and to ask you to sit out a dance with me would be more than I dare venture."

      He smiled at her out of two honest blue eyes. And she smiled back at him out of two very dishonest ones, though all four were much of the same colour.

      "'If thy heart fail thee,'" quoted she daringly.

      "Well, I shan't let it fail me," said the curate suddenly. His smile was somewhat forced, however. "Will you sit out one with me?"

      "You don't deserve it," said she. "But—"

      Here Lord Ambert bent and whispered something into her ear. He was evidently urging her to refuse the insolent request of this nobody, this curate of a small country parish. But his words took no effect. Elfrida listened to them, nodded and smiled as if acquiescing, and then—

      "The fourteenth is a quadrille, for the sake of appeasing old Lady Saunders, I believe," said she, looking at the curate. "Will you have that dance—to sit it out with me?"

      "Won't I!" said the curate enthusiastically, who had not long left Oxford, and who was wonderfully young in many ways.

      "You promised that quadrille to me," said Ambert, frowning.

      "Yes, I know. But as I never dance quadrilles—" She paused and looked up at Ambert. "You see?"

      "No, I don't," said he.

      "Well I am sure Mr. Blount does," said Elfrida audaciously. "Now, remember, Mr. Blount, the fourteenth is ours."

      Lord Ambert looked at him.

      Really the audacity of this contemptible curate passed comprehension. To speak so to her, his—Ambert's—future wife. He frowned and bit his lip. That was the worst of marrying into the middle classes; they never know how to keep those beneath them in order.

      Lord Ambert, holding her hand during her descent from the steps to the garden beneath, ventured a cold remonstrance.

      "Is it wise of you—you will pardon, I hope, my interference—but is it wise of you to be so kind to a person of that sort?"

      "A person? Is he a person?" asked Miss Firs-Robinson with much airy astonishment. "I quite understood he was a man of good family. Whereas a 'person' must be of no family whatever."

      "If without money," put in Lord Ambert quickly, "quite so. There are, of course, grades."

      "Grades?"

      "Yes. A man of no birth with money is not the same as a man of no birth without it. For money educates, refines, elevates." This he pointed with little emphases, as a small hint to her.

      "And a man of birth without money?"

      "Sinks." Here Lord Ambert's voice took even a lower tone. "Sinks until he meets the extreme—that is, the lowest of all classes—with which he unites. I am afraid that young man you have just been talking to will come to that end. His people, I believe, were in a decent set at one time; but there is no money there now, and probably he will marry his landlady's daughter, or the young woman who manages the school in the village, and—repent it soon after."

      "Repentance is good for the soul," said Elfrida; she laughed.

      "But as you show it, money is everything. Even the 'person' can be raised by it."

      "It is sad of course, but I am afraid that is really the case. In these days money is of great importance—of nearly as great importance as birth or position. It lifts the 'person,' as you call it—"

      "Has it, then, lifted me?"

      "Dear Miss Firs-Robinson! What a question! Surely you do not consider yourself part of this discussion?"

      He, however, had considered her so, and had taken pleasure in the argument that had laid her low. This was part of what he called his "training" of her!

      "You—who are a thing apart, a thing most precious—"

      "I don't want to be a 'thing,' however precious," said Miss Firs-Robinson, with decision. "I should much rather be a 'person,' for choice, however criminal it sounds. It only wants 'age' put to it to be magnificent. And so you call Mr. Blount 'a person'?"

      "Perhaps I was wrong," said Ambert contemptuously; "a 'beggar' would be nearer the mark."

CHAPTER V

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      Meanwhile Agatha was left standing near the doorway, whilst her chaperon was explaining the reason of her late arrival to old Miss Firs-Robinson, Elfrida's aunt.

      The girl's eyes were directed towards the dancers, and so absorbed was her gaze that she started visibly when a voice sounded at her elbow—that hated voice!

      "May I have the pleasure of this waltz, Miss Nesbitt?"

      Agatha looked up. Dr. Darkham, tall, handsome, almost young, was standing beside her.

      "I am sorry—but the dance is promised," said Agatha, gently but coldly.

      "I am unfortunate." He looked keenly at her, with open question in his eyes. He had educated himself very carefully on the lines of social etiquette; but education of that sort, unless it comes by nature, is often defective and sometimes he forgot. It did not now suggest itself to him that to question Agatha's word, whether that word were true or false, was a bêtise. Some men had come up to ask, Agatha for a dance, and when they were gone he spoke.

      "It is promised, then?" he said. "And yet you have only just come?"

      Agatha looked at him for a moment as if surprised.

      "It is promised," she said again.

      She made no attempt to explain herself. Her manner, however, was very quiet, although her face was set and her tone frozen.

      Suddenly, however, her expression changed. It lit up with a happy fervour, and her eyes shone. They were looking past Dr. Darkham's towards something beyond, and the latter, as though unable to control his СКАЧАТЬ