looking for, she said she had mislaid something that Mr. Paraday had lent her. I ascertained in a moment that the article in question is a manuscript, and I have a foreboding that it’s the noble morsel he read me six weeks ago. When I expressed my surprise that he should have bandied about anything so precious (I happen to know it’s his only copy—in the most beautiful hand in all the world) Lady Augusta confessed to me that she had not had it from himself, but from Mrs. Wimbush, who had wished to give her a glimpse of it as a salve for her not being able to stay and hear it read.
“‘Is that the piece he’s to read,’ I asked, ‘when Guy Walsingham arrives?’
“‘It’s not for Guy Walsingham they’re waiting now, it’s for Dora Forbes,’ Lady Augusta said. ‘She’s coming, I believe, early to-morrow. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wimbush has found out about him, and is actively wiring to him. She says he also must hear him.’
“‘You bewilder me a little,’ I replied; ‘in the age we live in one gets lost among the genders and the pronouns. The clear thing is that Mrs. Wimbush doesn’t guard such a treasure as jealously as she might.’
“‘Poor dear, she has the princess to guard! Mr. Paraday lent her the manuscript to look over.’
“‘Did she speak as if it were the morning paper?’
“Lady Augusta stared—my irony was lost upon her. ‘She didn’t have time, so she gave me a chance first; because, unfortunately, I go to-morrow to Bigwood.’
“‘And your chance has only proved a chance to lose it?’
“‘I haven’t lost it. I remember now—it was very stupid of me to have forgotten. I told my maid to give it to Lord Dorimont, or at least to his man.’
“‘And Lord Dorimont went away directly after luncheon.’
“‘Of course he gave it back to my maid, or else his man did,’ said Lady Augusta. ‘I dare say it’s all right.’
“The conscience of these people is like a summer sea. They haven’t time to ‘look over’ a priceless composition; they’ve only time to kick it about the house. I suggested that the ‘man,’ fired with a noble emulation, had perhaps kept the work for his own perusal; and her ladyship wanted to know whether, if the thing didn’t turn up again in time for the session appointed by our hostess, the author wouldn’t have something else to read that would do just as well. Their questions are too delightful! I declared to Lady Augusta briefly that nothing in the world can ever do so well as the thing that does best, and at this she looked a little confused and scared. But I added that if the manuscript had gone astray, our little circle would have the less of an effort of attention to make. The piece in question was very long; it would keep them three hours.
“‘Three hours! Oh, the princess will get up!’ said Lady Augusta.
“‘I thought she was Mr. Paraday’s greatest admirer.’
“‘I dare say she is—she’s so awfully clever. But what’s the use of being a princess———’
“‘If you can’t dissemble your love?’ I asked, as Lady Augusta was vague. She said, at any rate, that she would question her maid; and I am hoping that when I go down to dinner I shall find the manuscript has been recovered.”
X
“IT has not been recovered,” I wrote early the next day, “and I am moreover much troubled about our friend. He came back from Bigwood with a chill, and, being allowed to have a fire in his room, lay down a while before dinner. I tried to send him to bed, and indeed thought I had put him in the way of it; but after I had gone to dress Mrs. Wimbush came up to see him, with the inevitable result that when I returned I found him under arms and flushed and feverish, though decorated with the rare flower she had brought him for his buttonhole. He came down to dinner, but Lady Augusta Minch was very shy of him. Today he’s in great pain, and the advent of ces dames—I mean of Guy Walsingham and Dora Forbes—doesn’t at all console me. It does Mrs. Wimbush, however, for she has consented to his remaining in bed, so that he may be all right to-morrow for the listening circle. Guy Walsingham is already on the scene, and the doctor for Paraday also arrived early. I haven’t yet seen the author of ‘Obsessions,’ but of course I’ve had a moment by myself with the doctor. I tried to get him to say that our invalid must go straight home—I mean to-morrow or next day; but he quite refuses to talk about the future. Absolute quiet and warmth and the regular administration of an important remedy are the points he mainly insists on. He returns this afternoon, and I’m to be back to see the patient at one o’clock, when he next takes his medicine. It consoles me a little that he certainly won’t be able to read—an exertion he was already more than unfit for. Lady Augusta went off after breakfast, assuring me that her first care would be to follow up the lost manuscript. I can see she thinks me a shocking busybody and doesn’t understand my alarm, but she will do what she can, for she’s a good-natured woman. ‘So are they all honorable men.’ That was precisely what made her give the thing to Lord Dorimont and made Lord Dorimont bag it. What use he has for it, God only knows! I have the worst forebodings, but somehow I’m strangely without passion—desperately calm. As I consider the unconscious, the well-meaning ravages of our appreciative circle, I bow my head in submission to some great natural, some universal accident; I’m rendered almost indifferent, in fact quite gay (ha-ha!) by the sense of immitigable fate. Lady Augusta promises me to trace the precious object and let me have it, through the post, by the time Paraday is well enough to play his part with it. The last evidence is that her maid did give it to his lordship’s valet. One would think it was some thrilling number of The Family Budget. Mrs. Wimbush, who is aware of the accident, is much less agitated by it than she would doubtless be were she not for the hour inevitably engrossed with Guy Walsingham.”
Later in the day I informed my correspondent, for whom indeed I kept a sort of diary of the situation, that I had made the acquaintance of this celebrity, and that she was a pretty little girl who wore her hair in what used to be called a crop. She looked so juvenile and so innocent that if, as Mr. Morrow had announced, she was resigned to the larger latitude, her superiority to prejudice must have come to her early. I spent most of the day hovering about Neil Paraday’s room, but it was communicated to me from below that Guy Walsingham, at Prestidge, was a success. Toward evening I became conscious somehow that her superiority was contagious, and by the time the company separated for the night I was sure that the larger latitude had been generally accepted. I thought of Dora Forbes, and felt that he had no time to lose. Before dinner I received a telegram from Lady Augusta Minch. “Lord Dorimont thinks he must have left bundle in train—enquire.” How could I enquire—if I was to take the word as command? I was too worried, and now too alarmed about Neil Paraday. The doctor came back, and it was an immense satisfaction to me to feel that he was wise and interested. He was proud of being called to so distinguished a patient, but he admitted to me that night that my friend was gravely ill. It was really a relapse, a recrudescence of his old malady. There could be no question of moving him: we must at any rate see first, on the spot, what turn his condition would take. Meanwhile, on the morrow, he was to have a nurse. On the morrow the dear man was easier, and my spirits rose to such cheerfulness that I could almost laugh over Lady Augusta’s second telegram: “Lord Dorimont’s servant been to station—nothing found. Push enquiries.” I did laugh, I am sure, as I remembered this to be the mystic scroll I had scarcely allowed poor Mr. Morrow to point his umbrella at. Fool that I had been! The thirty-seven influential journals wouldn’t have destroyed it, they would only have printed it. Of course I said nothing to Paraday.
When the nurse arrived she turned me out of the room, on which I went down stairs. I should premise that at
