CHAPTER VI

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A VERY CLEVER PERSON.

Lord Levallion and the Duchess of Avonmore sat at breakfast in the duchess’ own sitting-room. It was one of her habits seldom to breakfast with her guests, but to have one chosen companion at her own table. Avonmore was Liberty Hall since the death of the duke, who had not been exactly a comfortable partner for his handsome wife. She never allowed, even to herself, that she was happier without him, but the world knew it, as it knows everything unpublished.

She sat now in a Norfolk jacket and a short skirt, making an extensive breakfast. Since seven o’clock she had been tramping from her dairy to her hen walks, as thriftily as any farmer’s wife. But her handsome, weather-beaten face, with its shrewd, keen eyes, and her beautifully dressed white hair, made her look dignified, in spite of her short skirts and her full-blown figure.

Lord Levallion was drinking a cup of tea--very slowly--and looking at some dry toast with distaste. He had not been trudging in the morning air, and had had a bad night into the bargain. But the duchess and he were old friends, and he did not trouble himself to make conversation.

She shook her head at him as she saw his untouched breakfast.

“That’s not the way to get to a green old age, Levallion!” she observed as she took a second helping of bacon. “But I suppose it’s London habits that stick by you. Are you really off this morning?” He nodded.

“Surely you’re coming up again soon?” inquiringly, for she had been tempted into the country for a week by the perfect weather, and had stayed to give her yearly garden-party and get it over. “You will be losing the cream of things!

“I’m going up next week. To tell you the truth, Levallion, I feel lonely when I get to my town house and haven’t my dairy and my chickens to amuse me! It’s a big, desolate barrack, you know, and I hate it. If I’d had a daughter to bring out it might be different,” wistfully, “but without a chick or a child what are town parties to me?”

“Adopt one!” said Levallion, not unkindly.

The duchess shook her head.

“Too risky! But I thought of having some girl to stay with me, if I could find the right girl.”

“You’ve two nieces!” Levallion was clever; not a tone of his uninterested voice betrayed that he had an object in his idle talk.

“Odious brats!” returned the duchess sharply. They were the late duke’s nieces, not hers. “I couldn’t stand either of them for a day. The only girl I’ve seen and taken a fancy to is that nice-looking child of old Tom Annesley’s. But I don’t want to have any dealings with that yellow-haired stepmother of hers. I beg your pardon, Levallion! I forgot you were a friend of hers.”

Lord Levallion looked up, a curious expression on his pale, handsome face.

“You need not beg my pardon,” he said. “But I assure you Lady Annesley is--a very clever person!”

“She’s a detestable one!” retorted the duchess smartly. “And I don’t think those children have much of a life with her. I declare, you might have knocked me down with a feather when I saw the girl here in a decent gown the other day! Usually her clothes are disgraceful; last winter that woman used to let her go about blue with cold.” Her grace of Avonmore, being a duchess, did not trouble to talk like one, except to people she disliked. And she had a soft spot for Levallion, in spite of his record.

His lordship hid a grin in his teacup. So he had been correct in his little idea that it was for him Sylvia had prepared her lamb!

“Miss Annesley looked hopelessly unhappy in her fine clothes,” he said smoothly, “but extraordinarily handsome, in spite of her tears.” He pulled himself up sharply as if the last word had slipped out unawares.

“Tears!” The duchess stared at him. “What do you mean? I remember now. She never said good-by to me. I don’t like to think of Tom Annesley’s girl crying at my party. How do you know?”

“Saw her,” laconically. “Gave her some good advice and drove her home. She never spoke to me the whole way.”

A light dawned on the duchess.

“So that,” she observed slowly, “was where you went to! You’re not a good friend for any girl, Levallion, and I won’t have it with Tom’s daughter. Mind that! I shall drive over and see that child this afternoon. I’ve been a neglectful old woman not to have looked after her before.”

She pushed away her empty plate and got up. Levallion strolled meekly to the window, where he lit a cigarette. The duchess was a good woman, and Sylvia Annesley was--otherwise! But it was the latter who had discovered he was ready to marry and settle down at last. The duchess only remembered the women he had compromised; it never struck her that he might actually think of marrying a little country girl of eighteen. If it had, she would probably have put a spoke in his wheel; to have known Levallion for thirty years was not to envy his future countess.

Yet to marry Ravenel Annesley was the only thought the man had. The day before he had cleverly evaded Sylvia and paid an impromptu visit to Annesley Chase by the back gate; a piece of diplomacy for which he was rewarded by coming straight on Ravenel in the garden.

She was alone; her little chin had lifted angrily when she saw him, but the next moment she was ashamed. After all, he had been kind to her twice. She had nothing against him except that he was a friend of Sylvia’s.

Levallion was too wise to stay long, though there were no tears--and no hat-pins!--to-day. Her face was as cold as his lordship’s own, and her indifference more real. He might go or stay, as he liked--and he knew it.

But he carried away with him the memory of her strangely quiet face, uncannily, clearly pale as she walked up and down the garden paths.

“There goes Lady Levallion!” he thought, as certainly as if she stood by him at the altar. “And the sooner she is away from that devil Sylvia the better. Sylvia was always a genius at making people miserable, and the girl looks as though she beat her!”

In spite of his acuteness, he never thought--or, perhaps, would not have cared if he had--that another man had been the cause of that white face and somber eyes; nor that he himself had never seen the real Ravenel Annesley, all life and laughter, but only the ghost of a girl whose youth was dead in her. It annoyed him to fall in with Sylvia’s schemes, but, after all, that was a trifle; and he knew how to cut her claws a little. Therefore, with security and determination, Levallion laid siege to the duchess; and he smiled calmly as she bade good-by to him.

“Au revoir till next week,” he said, as they shook hands.

“Humph!” her grace coughed dryly. “I’ll send for you when I want you, my dear Levallion.”

Levallion chuckled when he got, rather stiffly, into the carriage. He was warned off. That meant Tom Annesley’s daughter was to be asked to Avonmore House. His lordship was more pleased than by a dozen cordial invitations.

The duchess, the instant his back was turned, proceeded to Annesley Chase in state, though she would far rather have gone on her bicycle. Lady Annesley was, providentially, out. Miss Annesley--Adams did not know.

“Then find out, my good girl,” remarked the duchess calmly sweeping by her into the house. She was not to be turned from Tom Annesley’s door by the servant of his twopenny second wife. “And fetch Sir Thomas,” majestically.

But Tommy had seen her coming and arrived hastily on the scene. He looked worried, and the duchess saw it.

“Where’s your sister, Tommy?” she said kindly.

The boy looked at her. She was the oldest friend they had, but even so, his sister’s secret was her own.

“She’s in the garden; she’s not very well,” he returned loyally. If Ravenel were fretting for Gordon there was no good in saying so. “Shall I call her for you?”

“Suppose we go to her!” slipping a stout arm through his. “Not well? What’s the matter with her?”

Tommy was appalled for one instant.

“Dyspepsia,” he said stoutly, with a flash of genius.

“Oh!” commented the duchess dryly. “Very like a whale in a butter-boat,” she added to herself, as she glanced at Ravenel, who rose from her knees in the garden as she heard the rustle of the duchess’ silk-lined skirts on the gravel.

“I beg your pardon for not coming in,” the girl faltered. “I thought you were Lady Annesley.” She looked doubtfully at her earthy hands and the visitor’s smart, white gloves.

The duchess, in spite of her parting words to Levallion, had not come with any definite purpose; but the sight of the girl’s white face and hard-set lips--more than all the glance of shuddering aversion she had given her, thinking she was her stepmother--brought a sudden rush of motherly tears to her kind, worldly-wise eyes.

“Never mind your hands!” she cried, sitting down on a wicker chair that creaked under her; “nor Lady Annesley either. I didn’t come to see her--I suppose there’s no one about to hear such treason!” with a hasty glance behind her. “I came to see you. I didn’t think you looked well the other day at my house”--really, the girl’s fresh beauty had astounded her--“and I came to ask you and Tommy to take pity on a lonely old woman and come to London with me for a month,” with a nod at the two which set the green and pink feathers on her smart bonnet wagging. “What do you say?”

“Oh, my eye--rather!” Sir Thomas forgot his manners in his joy. But the duchess was looking at Ravenel. She had not been prepared to see such a change in the pale, sick face.

To get away from Lady Annesley and the place that had grown hateful to her for a whole month--she and Tommy! A slow red burned into her cheeks at the thought, but a second after her face fell again. She could not go; she had no clothes fit to wear. Tommy was different; a boy did not matter. But she herself had not so much as a decent pair of gloves to wear up in the train.

“We--that is, I can’t!” she blurted out miserably.

“Why not? Because you’ve nothing to wear?” shrewdly.

“No!” with no truth and a red face, for her old friend must not think she was begging. “I just can’t.”

“Do you want to come?” slowly.

No answer. The girl’s lip was trembling at the kindness of the motherly voice.

The duchess looked at her.

“You do! Then that’s all right,” cheerfully. “As for gowns, I mean to give you those. I haven’t got any one to spend my money on except some horrid chits of nieces who don’t need it. That will be half the pleasure of having you. And I’ll settle it with your stepmother.”

But Ravenel was crying--sobbing from her sick heart against the duchess’ smart shoulder.

“My dear, I know,” said that soft-hearted lady incoherently, muttering to herself things about “that woman, who did not know how to treat Tom’s child.” And she had, like Levallion before her, never an inkling of Adrian Gordon’s part in the play.

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