and they have cause to, no doubt. She’s a very entertaining companion and possesses a keen sense of humour – one of those girls who attract a man without being aware of it. That’s the chief essential in a woman’s grace.”
“But who are these Morinis?” inquired Macbean, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Nobody seems to know exactly who or what they are.”
“You’re quite right,” responded his uncle, in a rather changed tone. “Quite between ourselves, I’ve heard that question asked a good many times. Morini himself seems a bit of a recluse, for he seldom goes anywhere. Indeed, I haven’t spoken to him more than half a dozen times in my life. But Madame Morini and her daughter are taken up by the local people because of their apparent affluence and because they rent Orton from Lady Straker.”
“What kind of man is this Morini?” asked Macbean, in an idle tone.
“Oh, rather gentlemanly, with a lot of elegant pose. Speaks English very well for a foreigner, and smokes a very excellent brand of cigar. But, if the truth were told, he’s looked upon here with a good deal of suspicion. Ill-natured people say that he’s a foreign adventurer who comes here in hiding from the police,” he added, laughing.
The young man blew a long cloud of smoke from his lips, and remained silent. He was trying to recall a face he had seen – the face of a man, evidently a foreigner, who had passed them in a dogcart as they were on the road home from Orton. The man’s features had puzzled him ever since. They were familiar, yet he could not recollect in what circumstances they had met before.
In his position as secretary to the Member for South-West Norfolk he met many men, yet somehow he held a distinct idea that in the misty past this man had created upon him some impression of evil.
“You recollect,” he exclaimed at last, “that just before we came to the cross-roads to Calthorpe we passed a dogcart coming out from Rugby, with a groom in dark green livery.”
“Yes. It was Morini’s cart. The man in it is a guest at Orton,” was the rector’s reply. “More than that,” he added, “he’s said to be engaged – or about to be engaged – to the girl you admire so much.”
“Oh, that’s interesting!” remarked Macbean. “Do you know the man’s name?”
“He’s a young French count named Dubard. I’ve met him here several times; he seems quite a decent fellow for a Frenchman.”
“Dubard? Dubard?” repeated the young man aloud, starting forward as though a sudden revelation had flashed upon him. “Surely he can’t be Jules Dubard, the – ”
“The what?” asked the rector quickly.
His nephew hesitated, recognising how he had narrowly betrayed the secret of that recognition. Then he added quite coolly —
“The Frenchman.”
Basil Sinclair, disappointed at this clever evasion, looked his nephew straight in the face, and from the pallor of his cheeks saw that whatever recollections had been conjured up by mention of that name they were evidently the reverse of pleasing.
“His name is certainly Jules, and he is a Frenchman,” he said gravely. “But you know something about him. I see it in your face.”
The young man smiled, and lolling back again in the big easy-chair, answered with admirable coolness, considering the bewildering truth that had at that moment flashed upon him —
“I am only surprised that Miss Morini should become engaged to a Frenchman. She told me to-day that her greatest regret is that they cannot live in England always.”
“Ah, my boy, she’s a thorough-going cosmopolitan,” replied the rector, his pipe still between his teeth. “Such women always marry foreigners. I daresay her father would object if she wanted to marry an Englishman. He’s a man who evidently means his daughter to marry a title.”
“In Italy it is rather a claim to distinction not to possess a title,” laughed his nephew, recollecting how many penniless counts and marquises he had come across during those happy years when he lived with his Uncle Pietro in the white, half-deserted old city of Pisa.
“Morini is Italian to the backbone, with all the Italian’s admiration for England and yet with all the Italian’s prejudices. You’ll say so when you know him.”
“But this count?” exclaimed Macbean. “Tell me what you know about him.”
“You know more than I do, my dear George,” declared Sinclair, with a sly smile, “only you don’t choose to tell me. You hold an opinion that he is not a fit and proper person to become the husband of Morini’s daughter. Admit it.”
“I don’t yet know who Morini really is,” responded his nephew, with a clever diplomacy. “You have not yet told me the general impression in the neighbourhood regarding the family.”
“As I have already said, they’re looked upon with distinct suspicion.”
“Because they are foreigners – eh?”
“Possibly. We are very insular here in Leicestershire, notwithstanding the increasing foreign element in the hunting-field.”
George slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe, saying —
“We English hold the foreigner in too great contempt. We are apt to forget that there are other Powers constantly conspiring to undermine our strength and to overthrow our sovereignty. The rural stay-at-home entertains a belief in England’s security that is really childish in its simplicity, and if we have not a wise king, a strong Cabinet, and shrewd men in our diplomatic service, the mine must explode some day, depend upon it.”
“Ah,” laughed the rector, “I suppose it’s your parliamentary associations that make you talk like that. You told me you sometimes prepare speeches for Morgan-Mason to deliver to his constituents. Is that one of his texts?”
“No, not exactly,” replied the other, with a good-humoured smile. “I only speak what I think. The ignorance of the public regarding foreigners is simply appalling. They are in utter ignorance of the state of advancement of certain foreign nations as compared with our own. We are always slow and conservative, while they are quick to adopt new inventions, new ideas, and new schemes of progress.”
“Mostly gingerbread,” remarked the rector.
“Argument upon that point is unnecessary,” said Macbean, growing serious. “I only emphasise the fact that a foreign family in England is at a far greater disadvantage than an English family on the Continent. The former is held in suspicion or shunned, while the latter is fêted and welcomed. Ah, my dear uncle, society, with all its sins and vices, is full of amazing prejudices.”
“But of course there is another side to the question of the Morinis,” his uncle said. “It got abroad last year that Morini held some very high position in Rome. Young Barton, the schoolmaster at Kilworth, went with one of Lunn’s tours to Italy, and when he came back he told an extraordinary story of how the party were being shown the outside of one of the public offices when a gentleman descended from a carriage which drove into the courtyard, and as he entered the sentries saluted. To his surprise he recognised him as Mr Morini, and on inquiry understood from one of the doorkeepers that he was His Excellency the Minister of War. Of course nobody believed him. But I’ve looked in ‘Whitaker,’ and, strangely enough, it gives Signor Camillo Morini as Minister of War!”
“Ah,
