CHAPTER VII
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HER LADYSHIP SHUFFLES THE CARDS.
Lady Annesley sat in speechless fury over the note that arrived from the duchess the very next morning.
About her was spread her whole wardrobe, which she had been looking over with the eye of a born milliner, quite certain that Levallion’s hints about London had meant he would give her the money to take Ravenel there. And this--with a vicious glance at the duchess’ letter--was their real meaning!
“For, of course, it’s all Levallion!” She drummed angrily on her knee with slim, white fingers. “I have half a mind to checkmate him. He might, considering everything, have sent me to town. But for me he never would have seen his pink-and-white doll.”
She threw the duchess’ letter on a table, where it hit a pile of other letters--blue enveloped, ominous--and sent them rustling to the floor. They were merely the quarter’s bills from the butcher and the wine-merchant for those luxuries Sylvia Annesley could never deny herself, but she picked them up with a vicious hand.
“It’s well for you, Levallion, that I haven’t a penny to pay these, or you might whistle for my lovely stepdaughter!” she said aloud. “But I can’t stand five more years like this before Tom comes of age. Five more years of dulness, of skimping, without a soul to speak to, and then the prospect of turning out of this and living on nothing a week in lodgings--no! it’s not to be done!”
She went to the glass and looked at herself feverishly, pushing back her curled golden hair from her temples, dragging up the blinds till the unkind daylight made her look every hour of her age.
“I’m getting old--old and hideous!” she stamped with passion. “I who love youth and good looks and life. Why did I ever bury myself here with the old fool who’s dead? Oh, I want to go out into the world again--to live! To dine, dress, and gamble, to make fools of men--that is life. And that girl’s marriage to Levallion is the only way I shall ever see it again. He shall marry her if I have to swallow my pride ten times over. He’d have to give me an allowance that would not disgrace Lady Levallion’s mother! Ravenel shall go to the duchess; Levallion will take care no other man gets a chance at her”--in spite of her rage with him, she was secure in her old knowledge of his cleverness--“and I will stay here and try to help things on!” with a pale smile.
She went to the door and locked it, then to her dressing-case and dragged out a photograph. For a minute she stood and stared at it, biting her lips.
“I can’t do anything with it,” she thought angrily. “And I daren’t trust any one--but----” With swift inspiration a thought had come to her.
“Hester Murray!” she cried half-aloud. “Hester can tell her a bit of--truth! The silly old duchess will never imagine that Hester and I are old acquaintances--Hester, who runs in and out of Avonmore to help me; if she doesn’t I’ll make an unpleasant squall in the Murray mansion. This match-making,” with a little laugh, “is most amusing.”
Her ill humor gone utterly, she sat down at her writing-table and constructed a letter to make her old friend shake in her shoes, in spite of its affection. She sealed up her letter and the photograph, for Hester might not have one, and then turned her attention to something else.
“I have a great mind to get rid of Adams,” she thought. “She is getting beyond herself. But I’ll wait a little; she might talk. And, after all, ‘better a devil you know than a devil you don’t know’!” forcibly. “Though I doubt if Hester will think so,” with a curious look, as if something had come back from the past and pleased her.
“Well,” she said half-aloud, “I suppose the duchess will deck out my dear stepdaughter in purple and fine linen, but unless I want to look a beast, I suppose I ought to provide her with at least one gown. I, who haven’t two coins to rub together nowadays. She wouldn’t wear my clothes if I gave them to her, and I’ve no desire to part with them. I don’t care to interview her, either. She does hate me so!” for her ladyship’s wits at least were young still, whatever her eyes might be.
“I must do the best I can,” she said thoughtfully; and there alone in the little rose-colored room did a curious thing, for Lady Annesley, not for a woman who loved her dead husband’s child. She took a ruby ring from her finger and slipped it in a note quickly written and addressed to her stepdaughter. It was a simple little effort enough, saying merely that she had received from the duchess an invitation for Tom and Ravenel to spend a month with her in London and would accept for them with pleasure if they cared to go.
“As for gowns,” it ran, “I will do the best I can for you, but as that may be small just now, I send you this ring, which you can wear or turn into money, as you choose. It is one your father gave me. I would send for you to talk over your frocks, but my neuralgia is terrific to-day.”
She rang for Adams to deliver the note and waited for her to come back with a curious anxiety. It looked well to be generous, but she hated giving away her rubies. It seemed half a year before the maid returned with--yes--with a note!
Lady Annesley tore it open, and her strained lips grew triumphant. She had been generous at no cost whatever.
“Thank you very much”--Ravenel had written with furious haste, having no mind for any more of her ladyship’s gifts--“but I don’t want to keep your ring. I send it back in this. You had better wear it yourself.
“RAVENEL.”
That was absolutely all. Lady Annesley slipped her recovered ring on her finger.
“You can go, Adams,” she said carelessly. But when she was alone she laughed a laugh that showed her gums.
“I’ll have my house in town,” she gasped. “You’re a clever man, Levallion, but you’ll never know who is helping me to get you married. I’ll take care that you go on thinking me a fool. But to make Hester Murray help to get you--it’s too good!” She wiped her eyes where she sat helpless with laughter.
“Hester!” she murmured, “of all people.”
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