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      XX

       A Cup of Tea

       Table of Contents

      After the tragic death of her husband, Lady Beltham — whose previous life had inclined to the austere — withdrew into almost complete retirement. The world of gaiety and fashion knew her no more. But in the world where poverty and suffering reign, in hospital wards and squalid streets, a tall and beautiful woman might often be seen, robed all in black, with distinguished bearing and eyes serene and grave, distributing alms and consolation as she moved. It was Lady Beltham, kind, good and very pitiful, bent on the work of charity to which she had vowed her days.

      Yet she had not allowed herself to be crushed by sorrow; after the tragedy which left her a widow, she had assumed the effective control of her husband's property, and, helped by faithful friends, had carried on his interests and administered his estates, spreading a halo of kindness all around her.

      To help her in the heavy correspondence entailed by all these affairs, she found three secretaries none too many. On M. Etienne Rambert's recommendation, Thérèse Auvernois was now one of these, and the young girl was perfectly happy in her new surroundings; time was helping her to forget the tragedy which had taken her grandmother from her at Beaulieu, and she enjoyed the company of the well-born, well-bred English gentlewomen.

      Lady Beltham was reclining on a sofa in the great hall of her house at Neuilly. It was a spacious room, furnished half as a lounge and half as an office, and Lady Beltham liked to receive people there. A large glass-enclosed balcony commanded a view over the garden and the boulevard Richard Wallace beyond, with the Bois de Boulogne beyond that again. A few minutes before, a footman had brought in a table and set out tea-things, and Lady Beltham was reading while Thérèse and the two young English girls were chattering among themselves.

      The telephone bell rang and Thérèse answered it.

      "Hullo? Yes ... yes: you want to know if you may call this evening? The Reverend — oh, yes: you have just come from Scotland? Hold on a minute." She turned to Lady Beltham. "It is Mr. William Hope, and he wants to know if you will see him to-night. He has just come from your place in Scotland."

      "The dear man!" exclaimed Lady Beltham; "of course he may come," and as Thérèse turned lightly to convey her permission to the clergyman waiting at the other end of the line, she caught a smile on the face of one of the other girls. "What is the joke, Lisbeth?" she enquired.

      The girl laughed brightly.

      "I think the worthy parson must have smelt the tea and toast, and wants to make up for the wretched dinner he got in the train."

      "You are incorrigible," Lady Beltham replied. "Mr. Hope is above such material matters."

      "Indeed he isn't, Lady Beltham," the girl persisted. "Why, only the other day he told Thérèse that all food deserved respect and esteem directly a blessing had been asked upon it, and that a badly cooked steak was a kind of sacrilege."

      "A badly cooked pheasant," Thérèse corrected her.

      "You are both wicked little slanderers," Lady Beltham protested gently, "and don't know the blessing a good appetite is. You do, Susannah, don't you?"

      Susannah, a pretty Irish girl, looked up from a letter she was reading, and blushed.

      "Oh, Lady Beltham, I've been ever so much less hungry since Harry's ship sailed."

      "I don't quite see the connection," Lady Beltham answered. "Love is good nourishment for the soul, but not for the body. However, a good appetite is nothing to be ashamed of, and you ought to keep your roses for your future husband, and qualify in every way to be an excellent mother of a family."

      "With lots and lots of children," Lisbeth went on wickedly: "seven or eight daughters at the very least, all of whom will marry nice young clergymen when their time comes and —— "

      She stopped speaking and the light chatter died away as a footman entered and announced the Reverend William Hope, who followed him immediately into the room, an elderly man with a full, clean-shaven face and a comfortable portliness of figure.

      Lady Beltham offered him a cordial hand.

      "I am delighted you are back," she said. "Will you have a cup of tea with us?"

      The parson made a general bow to the girls gathered about the table.

      "I got a wretched dinner in the train," he began, but Lisbeth interrupted him.

      "Don't you think this tea smells delicious?" she asked.

      The parson put out his hand to take the cup she offered to him, and bowed and smiled.

      "Precisely what I was going to observe, Miss Lisbeth."

      Thérèse and Susannah turned away to hide their amusement, and Lady Beltham adroitly changed the subject. She moved towards her writing-table.

      "Mr. Hope must have much to tell me, girls, and it is getting late. I must get to business. Did you have a good journey?"

      "Quite as good as usual, Lady Beltham. The people at Scotwell Hill are very plucky and good, but it will be a hard winter; there is snow on the hills already."

      "Have the women and children had all their woollen things?"

      "Oh, yes: twelve hundred garments have been distributed according to a list drawn up by the under-steward; here it is," and he handed a paper to Lady Beltham, who passed it on to Susannah.

      "I will ask you to check the list," she said to the girl, and turned again to the clergyman. "The under-steward is a good fellow, but he is a rabid politician; he may have omitted some families that are openly radical; but I think charity should be given equally to all, for poverty makes no political distinctions."

      "That is the right Christian view," the clergyman said approvingly.

      "And what about the sanatorium at Glasgow?" Lady Beltham went on.

      "It is very nearly finished," the good man answered. "I have got your lawyers to cut down the contractor's accounts by something like fifteen per cent, which means a saving of nearly three hundred pounds."

      "Excellent," said Lady Beltham, and she turned to Thérèse. "You must add that three hundred pounds to the funds of the Scotwell Hill coal charity," she said. "They will want all of it if the winter is going to be a hard one," and Thérèse made a note of the instruction, full of admiration for Lady Beltham's simple generosity.