The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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СКАЧАТЬ luncheon or dinner could be sent in at a quarter of an hour's notice. And to-day the arrangement, of which he very rarely availed himself, stood him in good stead.

      There are a certain number of people who go through life instinctively taking every chance of advancement or of useful friendship offered to them. Such a person was Katty Winslow.

      Even in the midst of her real sorrow and distress, she did not lose sight of the fact that Lord St. Amant, with whom her acquaintance up to the present had been so slight as to be negligible, might prove a very useful friend in what now looked like her immediately dreary future. She was well aware that he was probably, nay, almost certainly, prejudiced against her, for she and Mrs. Tropenell had never been on cordial terms; but she set herself, even now, with this terrible thing which she feared, nay, felt almost sure, was true, filling up the whole background of her mind, to destroy that prejudice. To a certain extent she succeeded, during the few minutes, the precious ten minutes, she secured practically alone with her host, in compassing her wish.

      Laura sat down, in the attractive, if rather dark, sitting-room into which Lord St. Amant had shown her, and, blind to everything about her, she was now staring into the fire, oppressed, stunned, by the terrible thing which perchance lay before her.

      Lining the panelled walls, which were painted a deep yellow tint, hung a series of curious old colour-prints of London, and, on the writing-table—itself, as Katty's quick eyes had at once realised, a singularly fine piece of eighteenth-century English lacquer—were two portraits. The one was a miniature of a lady in the stiff yet becoming costume of early Victorian days—probably Lord St. Amant's mother; and the other was a spirited sketch of a girl in an old-fashioned riding habit—certainly Mrs. Tropenell forty years ago.

      Katty had remained standing, and soon she wandered over to the open door of the room where, with noiseless celerity, the table was being laid for luncheon. It was from there that she almost imperceptibly beckoned to her host. With some prejudice and a good deal of curiosity, he followed her, and together they went over to the deep embrasured window overlooking the tiny square.

      There, looking up earnestly into Lord St. Amant's shrewd, kindly face, she said in a low voice: "I want to ask you, Lord St. Amant, to do me a kindness—" she waited a moment, "a true kindness! I want you to arrange that I go to this place, to Duke House, with whoever goes there to find out if the news contained in that horrible letter is true!"

      And as he looked extremely surprised, she hurried on, with a little catch in her voice, "Godfrey Pavely was my dear—my very dear, friend. When we were quite young people, when I was living with my father in Pewsbury——"

      "I remember your father," said Lord St. Amant, in a softened, kindly tone, and his mind suddenly evoked the personality of the broken-down, not very reputable gentleman to whom the surrounding gentry had taken pains to be kind.

      "In those days," went on Katty rather breathlessly, "Godfrey and I fell in love and became engaged. But his people were furious, and as a result—well, he was made to go to Paris for a year, and the whole thing came to an end. Later, after I had divorced my husband, when I was living at Rosedean, it—it——"

      She stopped, and tears—the first tears she had shed this terrible morning—came into her eyes.

      "I quite understand—you mean that it all began again?"

      Lord St. Amant, hardened man of the world though he was, felt moved, really moved by those hurried, whispered confidences, and by the bright tears which were now welling up in his guest's brown eyes.

      Katty nodded. "He was unhappy with Laura—Laura had never cared for him, and lately she, Laura——" Again she broke off what she was saying, and reddened deeply.

      "Yes?" said Lord St. Amant interrogatively. He felt suddenly on his guard. Was Mrs. Winslow going to bring in Oliver Tropenell? But her next words at once relieved and excessively surprised him.

      "You know all about the Beath affair?"

      And it was his turn to nod gravely.

      "Well, there was something of the same kind thought of—between Godfrey and myself. If—if Laura could have been brought to consent, then I think I may say, Lord St. Amant, that Godfrey hoped, that I hoped——"

      Once more she broke off short, only to begin again a moment later: "But I want you to understand—please, please believe me—that neither he nor I was treacherous to Laura. You can't be treacherous to a person who doesn't care, can you? I've only told you all this to show you that I have a right to want to know whether Godfrey is alive or—or dead."

      And then Lord St. Amant asked a question that rather startled Katty—and put her, in her turn, on her guard. He glanced down at the letter, that extraordinary typewritten letter, which Laura had handed to him.

      "Have you any reason to suppose that Godfrey Pavely was really associated in business with this mysterious man?" he asked.

      Looking down into her upturned face he saw a queer little quiver wave across her mouth, that most revealing feature of the face. But she eluded the question. "I did not know much of Godfrey's business interests. He was always very secret about such things."

      "She certainly knows there is such a man as Fernando Apra!" he said to himself, but aloud he observed kindly: "I presume Mr. Pavely wrote to you during the early days of his stay in London?"

      Katty hesitated. "Yes," she said at last, "I did have a letter from him. But it was only about some business he was doing for me. I was not at Rosedean, Lord St. Amant. I was away on a visit—on two visits."

      And then Katty flushed—flushed very deeply.

      He quickly withdrew his gaze from her now downcast face, and—came to a quite wrong conclusion. "I see," he said lightly, "you were away yourself, and probably moving about?"

      "Yes—yes, I was," she eagerly agreed.

      She was feeling a little more comfortable now. Katty knew the great value of truth, though she sometimes, nay generally, behaved as if truth were of no value at all.

      In a sense Lord St. Amant had known Katty from her childhood—known her, that is, in the way in which the great magnate of a country neighbourhood, if a friendly, human kind of individual, knows every man, woman and child within a certain radius of his home. He was of course well aware of Mrs. Tropenell's prejudice against Katty, and, without exactly sharing it, he did not look at her with the kindly, indulgent eyes with which most members of his sex regarded the pretty, unfortunate, innocent divorcée, to whom Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Pavely had been so truly kind.

      But now, as the upshot of Katty's murmured confidences, her present host certainly acquired a new interest in, and a new sympathy for, Mrs. Winslow. Of course she had not deceived him as completely as she believed herself to have done, for he felt certain that she knew more of Godfrey Pavely's movements, during the early days of his stay in London a fortnight ago, than she admitted. He was also quite convinced that they had met secretly during their joint absence from home.

      But Lord St. Amant would have felt a hypocrite indeed had he on that account thought any the worse of Katty Winslow. He told himself that after all the poor little woman did not owe him all the truth! If Godfrey Pavely had indeed come to his death in this extraordinary, accidental way, then Katty, whatever Mrs. Tropenell might feel, was much to be pitied; nice women, even so broad-minded a woman as was his own, close friend, are apt to be hard on a woman who is not perhaps quite—nice!

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