Checkmate Part 62

"Well, well--dear me! That is _very_ extraordinary. Did he tell you he was going to--to--Good gracious! My dear, it _is_ the most extraordinary thing. I believe you hear everything; but--a--but _listen_. Not an hour ago he came--Richard Arden, of course, we mean--and, my dear Grace, he spoke so very nicely of his troubles, poor fellow, you know--debts I mean, of course--not the least his fault, and all that kind of thing, and--he went on--I really don't know how to tell you. But he said--he said--he said he liked me, and no one else on earth; and he was on the very point of saying _everything_, when, just at that moment, who should come in but that gossiping old woman, Lady Botherton--and he whispered, as he was going, that he would return, after I had had my drive. The carriage was at the door, so, when I got rid of the old woman, I got into it, and came straight here to have a talk with you; and what do you think I ought to say? Do tell me, like a darling, do!"

"I wish you would tell _me_ what one ought to say to that question,"

said Grace Maubray with a slight disdain (that young lady was in the most unreasonable way piqued), "for I'm told he's going to ask me precisely the same question."

"_You_, my dear?" said Lady May after a pause, during which she was staring at the smiling face of the young lady; "you can't be serious!"

"_He_ can't be serious, you mean," answered the young lady, "and--who's this?" she broke off, as she saw a cab drive up to the hall-door. "Dear me! is it? No. Yes, indeed, it is Sir Richard Arden. We must not be seen together. He'll know you have been talking to me. Just go in here."

She opened the door of the boudoir adjoining the room.

"I'll send him away in a moment. You may hear every word I have to say.

I should like it. I shall give him a lecture."

As she thus spoke she heard his step on the stair, and motioned Lady May into the inner room, into which she hurried and closed the door, leaving it only a little way open.

These arrangements are hardly completed when Sir Richard is announced.

Grace is positively angry. But never had she looked so beautiful; her eyes so tenderly l.u.s.trous under their long lashes; her colour so brilliant--an expression so maidenly and sad. If it was acting, it was very well done. You would have sworn that the melancholy and agitation of her looks, and the slightly quickened movement of her breathing, were those of a person who felt that the hour of her fate had come.

With what elation Richard Arden saw these beautiful signs!

CHAPTER LXVI.

A BUBBLE BROKEN.

After a few words had been exchanged, Grace said in reply to a question of Sir Richard's,--

"Lady May and I are going together, you know: in a day or two we shall be at Brighton. I mean to bid Alice good-bye to-day. There--I mean at Brighton--we are to meet Vivian Darnley, and possibly another friend; and we go to meet your uncle at that pretty little town in Switzerland, where Lady May----I wonder, by-the-bye, you did not arrange to come with us; Lady May travels with us the entire time. She says there are some very interesting ruins there."

"Why, dear old soul!" said Sir Richard, who felt called upon to say something to set himself right with respect to Lady May, "she's thinking of quite another place. She will be herself the only interesting ruin there."

"I think you wish to vex me," said pretty Grace, turning away with a smile, which showed, nevertheless, that this kind of joke was not an unmixed vexation to her. "I don't care for ruins myself."

"Nor do I," he said, archly.

"But you don't think so of Lady May. I know you don't. You are franker with her than with me, and you tell her a very different tale."

"I must be very frank, then, if I tell her more than I know myself. I never said a civil thing of Lady May, except once or twice, to the poor old thing herself, when I wanted her to do one or two little things, to please _you_."

"Oh! come, you can't deceive me; I've seen you place your hand to your heart, like a theatrical hero, when you little fancied any one but she saw it."

"Now, really, that is too bad. I may have put my hand to my side, when it ached from laughing."

"How can you talk so? You know very well I have heard you tell her how you admire her music and her landscapes."

"No, no--not landscapes--she paints faces. But her colouring is, as artists say, too chalky--and nothing but red and white, like--what is it like?--like a clown. Why did not she get the late Mr. Etty--she's always talking of him--to teach her something of his tints?"

"You are not to speak so of Lady May. You forget she is my particular friend," says the young lady; but her pretty face does not express so much severity as her words. "I do think you like her. You merely talk so to throw dust in people's eyes. Why should not you be frank with me?"

"I wish I dare be frank with you," said Sir Richard.

"And why not?"

"How can I tell how my disclosures might be punished? My frankness might extinguish the best hope I live for; a few rash words might make me a very unhappy man for life."

"Really? Then I can quite understand that reflection alarming you in the midst of a _tete-a-tete_ with Lady May; and even interrupting an interesting conversation."

Sir Richard looked at her quickly, but her looks were perfectly artless.

"I really do wish you would spare me all further allusion to that good woman. I can bear that kind of fun from any one but you. Why will you?

she is old enough to be my mother. She is fat, and painted, and ridiculous. You think me totally without romance? I wish to heaven I were. There is a reason, that makes your saying all that particularly cruel. I am not the sordid creature you take me for. I'm not insensible.

I'm not a mere stock of stone. Never was human being more capable of the wildest pa.s.sion. Oh, if I dare tell you all!"

Was all this acting? Certainly not. Never was shallow man, for the moment, more in earnest. Cool enough he was, although he had always admired this young lady, when he entered the room. He had made that entrance, nevertheless, in a spirit quite dramatic. But Miss Maubray never looked so brilliant, never half so tender. He took fire--the situation aiding quite unexpectedly--and the flame was real. It might have been over as quickly as a balloon on fire; but for the moment the conflagration was intense.

How was Miss Maubray affected? An immensely abler performer than the young gentleman who had entered the room with his part at his fingers'

ends, and all his looks and emphasis arranged--only to break through all this, and begin extemporising wildly--she, on the contrary, maintained her _role_ with admirable coolness. It was not, perhaps, so easy; for notwithstanding appearances, her histrionic powers were severely tasked; for never was she more angry. Her self-esteem was wounded; the fancy (it was no more), she had cherished for him was gone, and a great disgust was there instead.

"You shall ask me no questions till I have done asking mine," said the young lady, with decision; "and I will speak as much as I please of Lady May!"

This jealousy flattered Sir Richard.

"And I will say this," continued Grace Maubray, "you never address her except as a lover, in what you romantic people would call the language of love."

"Now, now, now! How can you say that? Is that fair?"

"You do."

"No, really, I swear--that's _too_ bad!"

"Yes, the other day, when you spoke to her at the carriage window--you did not think I heard--you accused her so tenderly of having failed to go to Lady Harbroke's garden-party, and you couldn't say what you meant in plain terms, but you said, 'Why were you false?'"

"I didn't, I swear."

"Oh! you did; I heard every syllable; 'false' was the word."

"Well, if I said 'false,' I must have been thinking of her hair; for she is really a very honest old woman."

At this moment a female voice in distress is heard, and poor Lady May comes pus.h.i.+ng out of the pretty little room, in which Grace Maubray had placed her, sobbing and shedding floods of tears.

"I can't stay there any longer, for I hear everything; I can't help hearing every word--honest old woman, and all--opprobrious. Oh! how _can_ people be so? how _can_ they? Oh! I'm very angry--I'm very angry--I'm very angry!"

If Miss Maubray were easily moved to pity she might have been at sight of the big innocent eyes turned up at her, from which rolled great tears, making visible channels through the paint down her cheeks. She sobbed and wept like a fat, good-natured child, and pitifully she continued sobbing, "Oh, I'm a-a-ho--very angry; wha-at shall I do-o-o, my dear? I-I'm very angry--oh, oh--I'm very a-a-angry!"

"So am I," said Grace Maubray, with a fiery glance at the young baronet, who stood fixed where he was, like an image of death; "and I had intended, dear Lady May, telling you a thing which Sir Richard Arden may as well hear, as I mean to write to tell Alice to-day; it is that I am to be married--I have accepted Lord Wynderbroke--and--and that's all."