her forty and more years. She lived with her niece Olivia the child of a sister long since dead, and with Miss Pewsey, to whom she gave a home as a companion. But Miss Wharf well knew, that Lavinia Pewsey was worth her weight in gold owing to the way she praised up her good, kind, devoted, loving, sweet, friend. The adjectives are Miss Pewsey's own, but some people said that Sophia Wharf did not deserve to have them attached to her. The lady had her enemies, and these openly declared, as the Major had done, that she was a mass of granite. Other people, less prejudiced, urged that Miss Wharf looked after Olivia, who was a penniless orphan. To which the grumblers retorted that Miss Wharf liked someone to vent her temper on, and that the poor girl, being too pretty, did duty as a whipping boy. This was possibly true, for Olivia and her aunt did not get on well together. In her own way the girl looked as cold as Miss Wharf, but this coldness was merely a mask to hide a warm and loving nature, while Miss Wharf was an ice-berg through and through. However, on the whole, Sophia Wharf was well liked, and took care to make the most of her looks and her moderate income and her reputation as a charitable lady. And Miss Pewsey was the show-woman who displayed her patroness's points to their best advantage.
The drawing-room of Ivy Lodge was a flimsy, pretty, feminine, room, furnished in a gim-crack fashion, of the high art style. The floor was waxed, and covered with Persian praying mats, the chairs were gilt and had spindle legs, the settee was Empire, the piano was encased in green wood and adorned with much brass, the sofa was Louis Quinze and covered with brocade, and there were many tables of rose-wood, dainty and light, heaped high with useless nick-knacks.
The walls of pale green were adorned with watercolour pictures, and many mirrors draped with Liberty silk. Everywhere were large bowls of flowers, miniatures of Miss Wharf at various times of her life, curiosities from China and Japan and the near East, and all sorts of odds and ends which Miss Wharf had collected on her travels. Not that she had been to the East, for the evidences of civilisation in those lands came from Dr. Forge and Major Tidman, but Miss Wharf had explored Germany, Switzerland and Italy and consequently had brought home cuckoo-clocks, quaint carvings, pictures of the Madonna, Etruscan idols and such like things with which every tourist loads himself or herself. The result was, that the drawing-room looked like a curiosity shop, but it was considered to be one of the prettiest drawing-rooms in Essex.
Miss Wharf looked too large and too substantial for the frail furniture of the room. She had a double chin and was certainly very stout. Very wisely she had a special arm-chair placed in the window—from which she could see all that was going on—and here she sat working most of the day. She was great on doing fancy articles for bazaars, and silk ties for such gentlemen as she admired, for Miss Wharf, old maid as she was, liked male society. The Major was her great admirer, so was young Walker, Lady Jabe's nephew. Sophia was not very sure of this last gentleman, as she shrewdly suspected—prompted by Miss Pewsey—that he admired Olivia. Rupert also admired Olivia and wanted to marry her, a proceeding which Miss Wharf objected to. Miss Pewsey supported her in this, for both women were envious of the youth which had passed from them for ever. But Miss Wharf had also another reason, which Miss Pewsey knew, but of which Olivia was ignorant. Hitherto Sophia had kept it from the girl but this afternoon in a fit of rage she let it out. The explosion did not come at once, for Lady Jabe was in the room drinking tea, and Miss Pewsey was flitting about, filling odd vases with flowers. Olivia sat on the settee very straight and very cold, looking dark and handsome, and altogether too splendid a woman for her aunt to tolerate.
"Can't you do something?" said Miss Wharf turning her jealous eyes on the girl. "I should think you must be tired, twiddling your thumbs all day."
"I'll do whatever you wish me to do," said Olivia coldly.
"Then help Lavinia with the flowers."
Olivia rose to do so, but Miss Pewsey refused her assistance in a shrill speech spoken as usual between her teeth and with an emphasis on every other word. "Oh no dear, dear, Sophia," cried Miss Pewsey, "I have just finished, and I may say that my eye for colour is better than Olivia's—you don't mind my saying so, darling," she added to the girl.
"Not at all," replied Miss Rayner who detested the sycophant. "I never give the matter a thought."
"You should think," said Lady Jabe joining in heavily. She was a tall masculine-looking woman with grey hair and bushy grey eyebrows, and with an expression of face that suggested she should have worn a wig and sat on the bench. She dressed in rather a manly way, and far too young for her fifty years. On the present occasion she wore a yachting-cap, a shirt with a stand-up, all round, collar and a neat bow; a leather belt and a bicycling skirt of blue serge. Her boots and shoes were of tanned brown leather, and she carried a bamboo cane instead of a sunshade. No one could have been more gentlemanly. "You should think," added she once more, "for instance you should think of marriage."
Miss Wharf drew herself up in her cold way. "I fancy that Olivia, few brains as she has, is yet wise enough not to think of marriage at twenty."
"It would not be much good if I did," said Olivia calmly. "I have no money, and young men want a rich wife."
"Not all," said Lady Jabe, "there's Chris——"
"Chris is out of the question," said Miss Rayner quickly.
"And pray why is he?" asked Sophia in arms at once. She never liked Olivia to have an opinion of her own.
"Because I don't love him."
"But Chris loves you," said Lady Jabe, "and really he's getting a very good salary in that Tea-merchant's office. Chris, as you are aware, Olivia, is foreign corresponding clerk to Kum-gum Li & Co. He knows Chinese," finished Lady Jabe, with tremendous emphasis.
"Oh," Miss Pewsey threw up her claws, "how delicious to be made love to in Chinese. I must really ask Mr. Walker what is the Chinese for 'I love you.'"
"Olivia prefers to hear it in English," said Miss Wharf, spitefully.
"Quite so, aunt," retorted her niece, her colour rising, "but don't you think we might change the subject. It really isn't very interesting."
"But indeed I think it is," said Lady Jabe smartly, "I come here to plead the cause of poor Chris. His heart is breaking. Your aunt is willing to——"
"But I am not," said Miss Rayner quickly, "so please let us say no more about the matter. Mr. Walker can marry Lotty Dean."
"But she's a grocer's daughter," said Lady Jabe, who was herself the widow of an oil-merchant, "and remember my title."
"Lotty isn't going to marry you, Lady Jabe."
"Nor Chris, if I can help it," said the other grimly.
Miss Wharf was just about to crush Olivia with a particularly disagreeable remark, when the door opened and two gentlemen entered. One was Christopher Walker, a slim, boyish-looking young fellow, in that callow stage of manhood which sees beauty in every woman. The other, who followed, was Miss Pewsey's nephew.
There was nothing immature about him, although he was but twenty eight years of age. Clarence Burgh was tall, thin, dark and had the appearance of a swashbuckler as he swaggered into the room. His black eyes snapped with an unholy light and his speech smacked too much of the Lands at the Back of Beyond, where he had passed the most part of his life. He was an expert rider, and daily rode a bucking squealing, kicking stallion up and down the road, or took long gallops into the country to reduce the fire of the unruly beast. Burgh was bad all through, daring, free, bold, and had a good deal of the untamed savage about him; but he was emphatically a man, and it was this virile atmosphere about him, which caused his withered aunt to adore him. And indeed Miss Wharf admired him also, as did many of
