good-bye. Keep me a date in Clarges Street.”
“Clarges Street is off the map,” she said coldly. “It’s South Belgravia, verging on Pimlico, nowadays. That is why Porthcawl is in China … and it explains Ducrot, too.”
An unconscious bitterness crept into the smooth voice; Medenham, who hated confidences from the butterfly type of woman, nevertheless pitied her.
“Tell me where you live and I’ll come round and hear all about it,” he said sympathetically.
She gave him an address, and suddenly smiled on him with a yearning tenderness. She watched his tall figure as he strode down the hill towards the town to keep an imaginary appointment.
“He used to be a nice boy,” she sighed, “and now he is a man… Heigh-ho, you’re a back number, Millie, dear!”
But she was her own bright self when she returned to the bald-headed Ducrot and the bewigged Mrs. Devar.
“What a small world it is!” she vowed. “I ran across Medenham in the hall.”
The banker’s shining forehead wrinkled in a reflective frown.
“Medenham?” he said.
“Fairholme’s eldest son.”
Mrs. Devar chortled.
“Such fun!” she said. “Our chauffeur calls himself George Augustus Fitzroy.”
“How odd!” agreed Countess Millicent.
“You people speak in riddles. Who or what is odd?” asked Ducrot.
“Oh, don’t worry, but listen to that adorable waltz.” Ducrot’s polished dome compared badly with the bronzed skin of the nice boy who had grown to be a man, so her ladyship’s rebellious tongue sought safety in silence, since she could not afford to quarrel with him.
It is certainly true that the gods make mad those whom they mean to destroy. Never was woman nearer to a momentous discovery than Mrs. Devar at that instant, but her active brain was plotting how best to develop a desirable acquaintance in Roger Ducrot, financier, and she missed utterly the astounding possibility that Viscount Medenham and George Augustus Fitzroy might be one and the same person.
In any other conditions Millicent Porthcawl’s sharp wits could scarcely have failed to ferret out the truth. Even if Cynthia were present it was almost a foregone conclusion that the girl would have told how Fitzroy joined her. The luncheon provided for a missing aunt, the crest on the silver and linen, the style of the Mercury, a chance allusion to this somewhat remarkable chauffeur’s knowledge of the South Downs and of Bournemouth, would surely have put her ladyship on the right track. From sheer enjoyment of an absurd situation she would have caused Fitzroy to be summoned then and there, if only to see Wiggy Devar’s crestfallen face on learning that she had entertained a viscount unawares.
But the violins were singing the Valse Bleu, and Cynthia was upstairs, longing for an excuse to venture forth into the night, and three people, at least, in the crowded lounge were thinking of anything but the amazing oddity that had puzzled Ducrot, who did not con his Burke.
Medenham, of course, realized that he had been vouchsafed another narrow escape. What the morrow might bring forth he neither knew nor cared. The one disconcerting fact that already shaped itself in the mists of the coming day was Simmonds tearing breathlessly along the Bath Road during the all too brief hours between morn and evening.
It is not to be wondered at if he read Cynthia’s thoughts. There is a language without code or symbol known to all young men and maidens – a language that pierces stout walls and leaps wide valleys – and that unlettered tongue whispered the hope that the girl might saunter towards the pier. He turned forthwith into the public gardens, and quickened his pace. Arrived at the pier, he glanced up at the hotel. Of girls there were many on cliff and roadway, girls summer-like in attire, girls slender of waist and airy of tread, but no Cynthia. He went on the pier, and met more than one pair of bright eyes, but not Cynthia’s.
Then he made off in a fume to Dale’s lodging, secured a linen dust-coat which the man happened to have with him, returned to the hotel, and hurried unseen to his room, an easy matter in the Royal Bath, where many staircases twine deviously to the upper floors, and brilliantly decorated walls dazzle the stranger.
He counted on the exigencies of Lady Porthcawl’s toilette stopping a too early appearance in the morning, and he was right.
At ten o’clock, when Cynthia and Mrs. Devar came out, the men lounging near the porch were too interested in the girl and the car to bestow a glance on the chauffeur. Ducrot was there, bland and massive in a golf suit. He pestered Cynthia with inquiries as to the exact dates when her father would be in London, and Medenham did not hesitate to cut short the banker’s awkward gallantries by throwing the Mercury into her stride with a whirl.
“By Jove, Ducrot,” said someone, “your pretty friend’s car jumped off like a gee-gee under the starting gate.”
“If that chauffeur of hers was mine, I’d boot him,” was the wrathful reply.
“Why? What’s he done?”
“He strikes me as an impudent puppy.”
“Anyhow, he can swing a motor. See that!” for the Mercury had executed a corkscrew movement between several vehicles with the sinuous grace of a greyhound.
Now it was Mrs. Devar, and not Cynthia, who leaned forward and said pleasantly:
“You seem to be in a hurry to leave Bournemouth, Fitzroy.”
“I am not enamored of bricks and mortar on a fine morning,” he answered.
“Well, I have full confidence in you, but don’t embroil us with the police. We have a good deal to see to-day, I understand.”
Then he heard the strenuous voice addressing Cynthia.
“Millicent Porthcawl says that Glastonbury is heavenly, and Wells a peaceful dream. I visited Cheddar once, some years ago, but it rained, and I felt like a watery cheese.”
Lady Porthcawl’s commendation ought to have sanctified Glastonbury and Wells – Mrs. Devar’s blue-moldy joke might even have won a smile – but Cynthia was preoccupied; strange that she, too, should be musing of Simmonds and a hurrying car, for Medenham had told her that the transfer would take place at Bristol.
She was only twenty-two, and her very extensive knowledge of the world had been obtained by three years of travel and constant association with her father. But her lines had always been cast in pleasant places. She had no need to deny herself any of the delights that life has to offer to youth and good health and unlimited means. The discovery that friendship called for discretion came now almost as a shock. It seemed to be a stupid social law that barred the way when she wished to enjoy the company of a well-favored man whom fate had placed at her disposal for three whole days. Herself a blue-blooded American, descendant of old Dutch and New England families, she was quite able to discriminate between reality and sham. Mrs. Devar, she was sure, was a pinchbeck aristocrat; Count Edouard Marigny might have sprung from many generations of French gentlemen, but her paid chauffeur was his superior in every respect save one – since, to all appearance, Marigny was rich and Fitzroy was poor.
Curiously enough, the man whose alert shoulders and well-poised head were ever in view as the car hummed joyously through the pine woods had taken on something of the mere mechanic in
