twenty-two," said her grandfather. "And you have seen a good deal of society in several capitals. Have you ever fallen in love?"
Oddly, the face of Ste. Marie came before Miss Benham's eyes as if she had summoned it there. But she frowned a little and shook her head, saying —
"No, I can't say that I have. But that means nothing. There's plenty of time for that.
"And you know," she said after a pause, "you know I'm rather sure I could fall in love – pretty hard. I'm sure of that. Perhaps I have been waiting. Who knows?"
"Ay, who knows?" said David. He seemed all at once to lose interest in the subject, as old people often do without apparent reason, for he remained silent for a long time, puffing at the long black cigar or rolling it absently between his fingers. After awhile he laid it down in a metal dish which stood at his elbow and folded his lean hands before him over the invalid's table. He was still so long that at last his granddaughter thought he had fallen asleep, and she began to rise from her seat, taking care to make no noise, but at that the old man stirred, and put out his hand once more for the cigar.
"Was young Richard Hartley at your dinner party?" he asked. And she said —
"Yes. Oh, yes, he was there. He and M. Ste. Marie came together, I believe. They are very close friends."
"Another idler," growled old David. "The fellow's a man of parts – and a man of family. What's he idling about here for? Why isn't he in Parliament where he belongs?"
"Well," said the girl, "I should think it is because he is too much a man of family – as you put it. You see, he'll succeed his cousin, Lord Risdale, before very long, and then all his work would have been for nothing, because he'll have to take his seat in the Lords. Lord Risdale is unmarried, you know, and a hopeless invalid. He may die any day. I think I sympathise with poor Mr. Hartley. It would be a pity to build up a career for one's self in the lower House and then suddenly in the midst of it have to give it all up. The situation is rather paralysing to endeavour, isn't it?"
"Yes, I dare say," said old David absently. He looked up sharply. "Young Hartley doesn't come here as much as he used to do."
"No," said Miss Benham, "he doesn't." She gave a little laugh.
"To avoid cross-examination," she said, "I may as well admit that he asked me to marry him and I had to refuse. I'm sorry, because I like him very much indeed."
Old David made an inarticulate sound which may have been meant to express surprise – or almost anything else. He had not a great range of expression.
"I don't want," said he, "to seem to have gone daft on the subject of marriage, and I see no reason why you should be in any haste about it – certainly, I should hate to lose you, my child, but – Hartley, as the next Lord Risdale, is undoubtedly a good match. And you say you like him." The girl looked up with a sort of defiance, and her face was a little flushed.
"I don't love him," she said. "I like him immensely but I don't love him, and after all – well, you say I'm cold and I admit I'm more or less ambitious, but, after all – well, I just don't quite love him. I want to love the man I marry."
Old David Stewart held up his black cigar and gazed thoughtfully at the smoke which streamed thin and blue and veil-like from its lighted end.
"Love!" he said in a reflective tone. "Love." He repeated the word two or three times slowly, and he stirred a little in his bed.
"I have forgotten what it is," said he. "I expect I must be very old. I have forgotten what love – that sort of love – is like. It seems very far away to me and rather unimportant. But I remember that I thought it important enough once, a century or two ago. Do you know, it strikes me as rather odd that I have forgotten what love is like. It strikes me as rather pathetic." He gave a sort of uncouth grimace and stuck the black cigar once more into his mouth.
"Egad!" said he, mumbling indistinctly over the cigar, "how foolish love seems when you look back at it across fifty or sixty years!"
Miss Benham rose to her feet smiling, and she came and stood near where the old man lay propped up against his pillows. She touched his cheek with her cool hand, and old David put up one of his own hands and patted it.
"I'm going to bed now," said she. "I've sat here talking too long. You ought to be asleep and so ought I."
"Perhaps! Perhaps!" the old man said. "I don't feel sleepy, though. I dare say I shall read a little." He held her hand in his and looked up at her.
"I've been talking a great deal of nonsense about marriage," said he. "Put it out of your head! It's all nonsense. I don't want you to marry for a long time. I don't want to lose you." His face twisted a little quite suddenly.
"You're precious near all I have left, now," he said.
The girl did not answer at once, for it seemed to her that there was nothing to say. She knew that her grandfather was thinking of the lost boy, and she knew what a bitter blow the thing had been to him. She often thought that it would kill him before his old malady could run its course.
But after a moment she said very gently —
"We won't give up hope. We'll never give up hope. Think! he might come home to morrow. Who knows?"
"If he has stayed away of his own accord," cried out old David Stewart in a loud voice, "I'll never forgive him – not if he comes to me to-morrow on his knees! Not even if he comes to me on his knees!"
The girl bent over her grandfather, saying: "Hush! hush! You mustn't excite yourself." But old David's grey face was working and his eyes gleamed from their cavernous shadows with a savage fire.
"If the boy is staying away out of spite," he repeated, "he need never come back to me. I won't forgive him." He beat his unemployed hand upon the table before him, and the things which lay there jumped and danced.
"And if he waits until I'm dead and then comes back," said he, "he'll find he has made a mistake – a great mistake. He'll find a surprise in store for him. I can tell you that. I won't tell you what I have done, but it will be a disagreeable surprise for Master Arthur. You may be sure."
The old gentleman fell to frowning and muttering in his choleric fashion, but the fierce glitter began to go out of his eyes, and his hands ceased to tremble and clutch at the things before him. The girl was silent because again there seemed to her to be nothing that she could say. She longed very much to plead her brother's cause, but she was sure that would only excite her grandfather, and he was growing quieter after his burst of anger. She bent down over him and kissed his cheek.
"Try to go to sleep!" she said. "And don't torture yourself with thinking about all this. I'm as sure that poor Arthur is not staying away out of spite as if he were myself. He's foolish and headstrong, but he's not spiteful, dear. Try to believe that! And now I'm really going. Good-night!"
She kissed him again and slipped out of the room. And as she closed the door she heard her grandfather pull the bell-cord which hung beside him and summon the excellent Peters from the room beyond.
CHAPTER V
STE. MARIE SETS FORTH UPON THE GREAT ADVENTURE
Miss Benham stood at one of the long drawing-room windows of the house in the Rue de l'Université and looked out between the curtains upon the rather grimy little garden, where a few not very prosperous cypresses and chestnuts stood guard over the rows of lilac shrubs and the box-bordered flower-beds and the usual moss-stained fountain.
