you! May I?”
Upon this, as vanity is seldom out of call, Sir Charles swelled like a turkey-cock, and loftily consented to indulge Bella Bruce's strange propensity. From that hour she was never at home to Mr. Bassett.
He began to suspect; and one day, after he had been kept out with the loud, stolid “Not at home” of practiced mendacity, he watched, and saw Sir Charles admitted.
He divined it all in a moment, and turned to wormwood. What! was he to be robbed of the lady he loved—and her fifteen thousand pounds—by the very man who had robbed him of his ancestral fields? He dwelt on the double grievance till it nearly frenzied him. But he could do nothing: it was his fate. His only hope was that Sir Charles, the arrant flirt, would desert this beauty after a time, as he had the others.
But one afternoon, in the smoking-room of his club, a gentleman said to him, “So your cousin Charles is engaged to the Yorkshire beauty, Bell Bruce?”
“He is flirting with her, I believe,” said Richard.
“No, no,” said the other; “they are engaged. I know it for a fact. They are to be married next month.”
Mr. Richard Bassett digested this fresh pill in moody silence, while the gentlemen of the club discussed the engagement with easy levity. They soon passed to a topic of wider interest, viz., who was to succeed Sir Charles with La Somerset. Bassett began to listen attentively, and learned for the first time Sir Charles Bassett's connection with that lady, and also that she was a woman of a daring nature and furious temper. At first he was merely surprised; but soon hatred and jealousy whispered in his ear that with these materials it must be possible to wound those who had wounded him.
Mr. Marsh, a young gentleman with a receding chin, and a mustache between hay and straw, had taken great care to let them all know he was acquainted with Miss Somerset. So Richard got Marsh alone, and sounded him. Could he call upon the lady without ceremony?
“You won't get in. Her street door is jolly well guarded, I can tell you.”
“I am very curious to see her in her own house.”
“So are a good many fellows.”
“Could you not give me an introduction?”
Marsh shook his head sapiently for a considerable time, and with all this shaking, as it appeared, out fell words of wisdom. “Don't see it. I'm awfully spooney on her myself; and, you know, when a fellow introduces another fellow, that fellow always cuts the other out.” Then, descending from the words of the wise and their dark sayings to a petty but pertinent fact, he added, “Besides, I'm only let in myself about once in five times.”
“She gives herself wonderful airs, it seems,” said Bassett, rather bitterly.
Marsh fired up. “So would any woman that was as beautiful, and as witty and as much run after as she is. Why she is a leader of fashion. Look at all the ladies following her round the park. They used to drive on the north side of the Serpentine. She just held up her finger, and now they have cut the Serpentine, and followed her to the south drive.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Bassett. “Ah then this is a great lady; a poor country squire must not venture into her august presence.” He turned savagely on his heel, and Marsh went and made sickly mirth at his expense.
By this means the matter soon came to the ears of old Mr. Woodgate, the father of that club, and a genial gossip. He got hold of Bassett in the dinner-room and examined him. “So you want an introduction to La Somerset, and Marsh refuses—Marsh, hitherto celebrated for his weak head rather than his hard heart?”
Richard Bassett nodded rather sullenly. He had not bargained for this rapid publicity.
The venerable chief resumed: “We all consider Marsh's conduct unclubable and a thing to be combined against. Wanted—an Anti-dog-in-the-manger League. I'll introduce you to the Somerset.”
“What! do you visit her?” asked Bassett, in some astonishment.
The old gentleman held up his hands in droll disclaimer, and chuckled merrily “No, no; I enjoy from the shore the disasters of my youthful friends—that sacred pleasure is left me. Do you see that elegant creature with the little auburn beard and mustache, waiting sweetly for his dinner. He launched the Somerset.”
“Launched her?”
“Yes; but for him she might have wasted her time breaking hearts and slapping faces in some country village. He it was set her devastating society; and with his aid she shall devastate you.—Vandeleur, will you join Bassett and me?”
Mr. Vandeleur, with ready grace, said he should be delighted, and they dined together accordingly.
Mr. Vandeleur, six feet high, lank, but graceful as a panther, and the pink of politeness, was, beneath his varnish, one of the wildest young men in London—gambler, horse-racer, libertine, what not?—but in society charming, and his manners singularly elegant and winning. He never obtruded his vices in good company; in fact, you might dine with him all your life and not detect him. The young serpent was torpid in wine; but he came out, a bit at a time, in the sunshine of Cigar.
After a brisk conversation on current topics, the venerable chief told him plainly they were both curious to know the history of Miss Somerset, and he must tell it them.
“Oh, with pleasure,” said the obliging youth. “Let us go into the smoking-room.”
“Let—me—see. I picked her up by the sea-side. She promised well at first. We put her on my chestnut mare, and she showed lots of courage, so she soon learned to ride; but she kicked, even down there.”
“Kicked!—whom?”
“Kicked all round; I mean showed temper. And when she got to London, and had ridden a few times in the park, and swallowed flattery, there was no holding her. I stood her cheek for a good while, but at last I told the servants they must not turn her out, but they could keep her out. They sided with me for once. She had ridden over them, as well. The first time she went out they bolted the doors, and handed her boxes up the area steps.”
“How did she take that?”
“Easier than we expected. She said, 'Lucky for you beggars that I'm a lady, or I'd break every d—d window in the house.'”
This caused a laugh. It subsided. The historian resumed.
“Next day she cooled, and wrote a letter.”
“To you?”
“No, to my groom. Would you like to see it? It is a curiosity.”
He sent one of the club waiters for his servant, and his servant for his desk, and produced the letter.
“There!” said Vandeleur. “She looks like a queen, and steps like an empress, and this is how she writes:
“'DEAR JORGE—i have got the sak, an' praps your turn nex. dear jorge he alwaies promise me the grey oss, which now an oss is life an death to me. If you was to ast him to lend me the grey he wouldn't refuse you,
“'Yours respecfully,
“'RHODA
