Freddy Ducane.
'Have you come to fix the time for your ride?' asks she cordially, beaming upon him. He, at least, has wrenched himself out of Circe's sty. 'Do you want Prue? She is in the garden.'
The young man looks a shade embarrassed.
'Yes,' he says; 'I do. No; I do not – at least, I have something to say to her, but I think' – insinuatingly – 'that I had rather say it to you. You know, Peggy, how fond I am of saying things to you! There is no one to whom I can say things as comfortably as I can to you.'
At this preface her heart sinks a little.
'What is it?' she asks curtly.
'Oh, only my luck!' throwing himself into a chair. 'By Jove' – looking round the room – 'how cool you feel! and how good you smell!'
'I do not suppose that you came here to say that,' rejoins she, still standing over him in expectant anxiety.
His answer is to try and get possession of her hand.
'Peggy,' he says plaintively, 'that is not a nice way to speak to me; that is not the way I like to be spoken to. The reason why I came here – it is very inhospitable of you to insist upon my giving a reason – was to say' – sighing profoundly – 'that I fear dear little Prue and I shall have to give up our ride this afternoon.'
Her foreboding was a true one then!
'Why?'
'Oh, because – because – just my luck!'
'I understand,' replies she caustically. 'You are in the case of the man who telegraphed to the house where he did not wish to stay, "So sorry. Cannot come. No lie ready."'
Freddy colours.
'Peggy, if I were not so really fond of you,' he says, in an injured voice, 'I should not allow you to speak to me like that. There are days when you rasp one like a file. Prue never rasps one.'
'Is that the reason why you think yourself justified in always letting her go to the wall?' asks Margaret, with a bitterness that seems out of proportion to the occasion; but in her mind's eye she sees the poor little figure that has been frolicking among the geraniums with dog and cat – sees, too, the metamorphosis that will be worked in it.
Freddy rolls his curly head uneasily to and fro on the chair-back.
'You talk as if I were not quite as disappointed as she,' he says, in a lamentable tone. 'But what is one to do? When one has guests, one must entertain them. Somebody must entertain her.'
'Must entertain whom?'
'Oh, you know as well as I do! You are only asking out of ill-nature. Betty, of course!'
'Betty, of course!' repeats she after him, with an indefinable accent.
'Well, Peggy, I appeal to you. What could I do, when she asked me point-blank? You know that I never can refuse to do anything that anybody asks me point-blank.'
'Then suppose that I ask you point-blank to throw her over?' suggests Margaret, looking full at him with her straightforward blue eyes.
'But you would not,' returns he hastily. 'You dear thing, it would not be the least like you; and it would only make her hate Prue for life. Ah, you do not know Betty!'
'And, meanwhile, where is her âme damnée, pray?' asks Margaret with a curling nose.
'"Where is John Talbot? Where is valiant John?"'
Freddy shrugs his shoulders.
'Valiant John is a little slack of late; he wants poking up a bit. But' – with a coaxing change of tone – 'it will be just the same to Prue to go another day, will not it? and you will tell her, will not you? I – I really am in a great hurry this morning; and I – I – think I had rather you told her.'
'I will do nothing of the kind,' replies Peggy severely. 'You may do your own errands.'
Nor do any of his blandishments, any of his numerous assertions of the reverential attachment he has always felt for herself, any of his asseverations of the agonising grief it causes him to give the slightest pain to Prue, avail to make her budge one inch from her original resolution. She watches him as, with a somewhat hang-dog air, he walks across the grass-plot to meet her sister, who comes treading on air to meet him. And then Margaret looks away. She cannot bear to witness the extinction of that poor short radiance. She does not again meet young Ducane; nor does Prue reappear until luncheon-time, when she comes down from her bedroom with red eyes, but an air of determined cheerfulness.
'It would have been much too hot for riding to-day,' she says, fanning herself; 'unbearable, indeed! We are going a far longer ride in a day or two. He says he does not think that they will stay long. He was so bitterly disappointed. I do not think that I ever saw any one so disappointed – did you?' casting a wistful glance at her elder.
'He said he was,' replies Peggy sadly.
The incident has made her own heart heavy; and it is with an unelastic step that she sets off in the afternoon to the Manor, summoned thither by one of Lady Roupell's almost daily cocked-hat notes, to hold sweet converse upon the arrangements of an imminent village concert. A casual sentence to the effect that everybody but the old lady herself will be out has decided Margaret to obey the summons, which, did it expose her to a meeting with Lady Betty and John Talbot, she would have certainly disregarded.
Prue accompanies her to their gate, still with that strained look of factitious content on her childish face; and, as she parts from her sister, whispers feverishly:
'Find out how soon they are going!'
Dispirited as she was on leaving her own home, Miss Lambton's cheerfulness undergoes still further diminution before she reaches her goal; as, in passing through the park, has not she, in a retired and bosky dell, caught a glimpse of a white gown, and of a supine male figure, with a curly head and a poetry book, stretched beside it? She starts at the sight.
Freddy had certainly implied that he was going out riding with Lady Betty. On searching her memory, she found that he had not actually said so; but he had knowingly conveyed that idea to her mind. It is not the first time by many that Freddy Ducane has succeeded in conveying impressions that do not absolutely tally with the fact; but each fresh discovery of his disingenuousness gives her a new shock. Lady Roupell's boudoir is upstairs; and, following her usual custom, Margaret repairs thither unannounced. In doing so she passes the day nursery's open door; and, through it, sees Miss Harborough sitting on the floor, buttoning her boots. Peggy stops a moment to throw the child a greeting; but is instantly checked by the nurse.
'Oh, please, ma'am, do not speak to her! I am sure that she does not deserve it! she has been a real naughty girl!'
On inquiry, it appears that the enemy of man having again entered into Miss Lily, she has cut the string of her necklace, strewed the beads all over the floor, and then told a barefaced lie, and entirely denied it.
During this recital of her iniquities she continues her buttoning quite calmly; and merely says, with a dispassionate tone of indifference and acquiescence:
'Yes, I am bad.'
It is two hours later – so long does the discussion over the penny reading last – before Margaret again passes the nursery door. The interval has been filled by a discussion
