It was in the course of the afternoon of the second day after the departure of Mrs. Clare that Lady Pell, accompanied by Miss Ethel Thursby, arrived at Withington Chase (her maid, in company with the luggage, would follow later on). They had been driven over from the Shrublands in Mrs. Forester\'s landau. Sir Gilbert was waiting in the entrance-hall to receive them. As Lady Pell advanced he went forward with outstretched hand.
"Welcome, Louisa, thrice welcome to the Chase!" he said in his most cordial tones. "It is indeed an immense pleasure to me to see you again after so long a time." With that he drew her closer, and stooping a little--for tall though her ladyship was, he was considerably the taller of the two--imprinted a cousinly salute on her cheek, which might once have been round, but was so no longer.
Sir Gilbert had never kissed her but once previously, when she was a girl of eighteen, and only a few hours before her mother\'s illness had summoned her away at a moment\'s notice. It was a kiss which had given birth in her heart to many delicious hopes, never destined to be fulfilled, and it still lived in her memory like the faint vague fragrance exhaled from a pot-pourri. But to-day her cousin\'s second kiss, so wholly unexpected, recalled in all its pain and all its sweetness that incident of long ago. For a moment or two her heart throbbed so that she could not speak. Then, with a little shiver, she came back to the present.
"It is very kind of you, cousin, to say such pretty things to me," she replied, with a curious little tremor in her voice and a dim wistful smile. Then, more composedly: "But, indeed, I must ask you to believe me, when I assure you that I am as pleased to find myself again at the dear old Chase as you can possibly be to see me here. And now you must allow me to introduce to you Miss Ethel Thursby, a very dear young friend of mine, who is good enough to keep an old woman company, and put up with her vagaries while her regular companion is incapacitated by illness." Then turning to Ethel: "Child, this is my kinsman, Sir Gilbert Clare, of whom you have many times heard me speak."
"It is a happiness to me to welcome Miss Thursby under my roof, not merely for my cousin\'s sake, but also for her own," said the Baronet, with simple old-fashioned courtesy as he took Ethel\'s timidly offered hand in his. Next moment a thrill went through him from head to foot, which even extended to his fingertips and was perceptible to Ethel, while a strangely startled look leapt into his eyes. It was as if a ghost from out the dead past had suddenly confronted him. Then he passed his hand across his eyes as if to sweep away the vision, murmuring under his breath as he did so: "No--no; I must indeed be getting into my dotage even to imagine such a thing."
He turned away with a stifled sigh. Lady Pell had observed nothing. She was gazing round the old entrance-hall, all the features of which had that half-strange, half-familiar air which inanimate things have a way of putting on when we have not seen them for a long time, more particularly when they happen to have formed the framework of some unforgettable episode in our private history.
Presently Mrs. Burton, the housekeeper, conducted the ladies to their rooms, and nothing more was seen of them till after the second dinner gong had sounded. It may be here recorded that when Ethel accompanied Lady Pell on her visit to Withington Chase, she was wholly unaware that Everard Lisle was living within half a mile of it, and that there was rarely more than one day out of the seven on which he did not spend some hours there. If the place had ever been mentioned in her hearing as that where Everard was now located, it had escaped her memory--which by no means implies that Everard himself was forgotten.
To-day, however, Lisle had not been asked to dine at the Chase, for one reason, because Mr. Kinaby, the steward, whose health had improved during the last few days, was desirous of his help in going through certain accounts and other matters connected with his stewardship.
On entering the drawing-room the two ladies found both the Baronet and Luigi there.
"Louisa," said Sir Gilbert, "allow me to introduce to you my grandson, Lewis Clare, the only son of my late eldest son, John Alexander Clare, whom I think you met once or twice when he was a youth. Lewis--my cousin, Lady Pell." Then, a few seconds later, when her ladyship and the young man had shaken hands: "Miss Thursby--my grandson."
The young people contented themselves with a simple bow, after which they each drew back a little way. Then said Sir Gilbert aside to her ladyship: "Of course you have heard that only quite recently was I made aware of the existence of my grandson."
"It would have been impossible for me not to have heard of it. It is the talk of the county--in everybody\'s mouth."
"And more than one pretty version of the affair has got into circulation, I do not doubt. Some people have more imagination than they are aware of. Give them but the merest thread of fact, and they will weave out of it a tissue of romance which does credit to their inventive powers, if to nothing else."
"But is not that your own fault in some measure? The central fact of the affair, that you had found your long-lost grandson and had installed him at the Chase, was one which you had evidently no wish to conceal, even had it been in your power to do so. Why, then---- But, really, I have no right to question you in the matter."
"Don\'t say that. Why, then, you were about to add, throw any cloak of concealment round the subordinate facts of the case? I will tell you why, my dear Louisa. Simply because, although I have chosen to acknowledge my grandson and to instal him in that position which the world--very mistakenly--regards as his by inalienable right, it by no means follows that there are not circumstances connected with the antecedents and personal history both of himself and his mother which I have no intention, if I can anyhow avoid it, of allowing to become public property. You, however, are in an altogether different position; from you I desire to have no concealments in the affair, and after dinner I will tell you all there is to tell."
It was with a curious mixture of sulkiness and gratification that Luigi took Miss Thursby in to dinner. His sulkiness arose from the fact that in the company of this beautiful girl he felt strangely bashful and out of his element; for once he was possessed by a vivid consciousness of being the very inferior creature that he really was, and it was one of those unsought conclusions which we prefer not to have forced upon us. His gratification arose from the fact that for the first time in his life he found himself in a position to treat a being in every other way so much above him, not merely as his social equal but as his inferior; for one of the parlour-maids who was deeply smitten with Luigi\'s good looks, and acted as a sort of house spy for him, had already whispered in his ear that the extremely pretty girl whom Lady Pell had brought with her was nothing more than her ladyship\'s companion.
Only a paid companion, and, as such, one who ought to feel herself honoured by whatever attentions the grandson of Sir Gilbert Clare might choose to pay her (for by this time Luigi had got into the way of taking himself and his position quite seriously), and yet, try as he might, he could not feel himself at home in her company. He felt altogether different when in the society of Miss Jennings, the barmaid at the King\'s Head, who, in her way, was a very pretty girl, and also a good girl. When with Miss J., as she was generally called by the young men of the billiard-room, he never felt in the slightest degree bashful, or ill at ease, and certainly never at a loss for words. Why, they two would go on "chaffing" each other for half an hour at a stretch when Miss J. happened to be in the humour and to have no other customers to claim her attention. And yet for all that, although he could not have told himself why, in his secret heart he did not wish Miss Thursby to be a bit different from what she was, for she was a revelation to him.
What on earth was he to talk to her about? he asked himself. His grandfather and Lady Pell were immersed in their recollections, and to go on sitting by Miss Thursby like a dummy was fast becoming intolerable. Evidently he must make a plunge of some kind.
"I suppose--er--that you and Lady Pell have knocked about a good deal together," at length he ventured to observe. Then seeing Ethel\'s look of surprise, he added hastily: "I mean that you have been great travellers, you know. I heard her ladyship say just now that something--er--put her in mind of--of something else she had seen abroad."
"I have only had the pleasure of knowing Lady Pell for about a couple of months," answered Ethel. "I believe she has been a considerable traveller in her time; indeed, she was to have gone to France this autumn had not sickness broken out in the house of the friend whom she was about to visit." It was a relief to Luigi to find that Miss Thursby was not a travelled person, as, in that case, she might have chosen to talk about things of which he knew next to nothing, and so have made his ignorance more patent than was desirable.
"I suppose, now, that you are pretty well acquainted with London," was his next remark. He was beginning to feel more at his ease.
Ethel shook her head. "My knowledge of London is very limited indeed. I spent a fortnight there once with my aunts, but that is the only time I have been there. I was brought up in a small provincial town, and know very little of the world beyond its narrow limits."
"I hope Lady Pell intends making a long stay at the Chase," he presently ventured to remark, "as, in that case, we shall also have the pleasure of your society, Miss Thursby. It\'s precious dull here, I can tell you. My grandfather goes nowhere, and only by rare chance does a visitor find his way to the Chase. Of course one can get through the day pretty well, but the evenings are awful. Most nights grandad has his secretary fellow to play chess, or backgammon with him, and there\'s poor me left without a soul to talk to. It\'s something cruel, I can assure you."
There was quite a pathetic note in Luigi\'s voice as he spoke the last words. Having once begun to touch on the subject of his own imaginary grievances, he could be fluent enough.
"But no doubt you have resources within yourself, Mr. Clare, sufficient to cause the time not to hang too heavily on your hands. Books and music, for instance, and--and probably other things."
"I don\'t know so much about that, Miss Thursby. I\'m not much of a reading man, not built that way, don\'t you know. And one can\'t be everlastingly jingling by oneself on the piano; besides, Sir Gilbert wouldn\'t stand it when he\'s deep in a game of chess. No; what I do is to get through an awful amount of yawning, mixed with a little bit of drawing, for which--the drawing, not the yawning--there are people who say I have something of a gift. All the same it\'s inf--uncommonly slow work, Miss Thursby, I give you my word."
"Is it asking too much to be allowed to see your drawings, Mr. Clare?" queried Ethel. "Not that I have the slightest pretension to set myself up as a critic," she made haste to add, "being all but destitute of technical knowledge, and only able to appreciate a work of art of any kind in so far as it satisfies my conceptions of the beautiful, or appeals to my sense of humour, or pathos, or teaches me something which I feel it is good for me that I should know."
Luigi felt that the conversation was getting a little beyond him, so he contented himself with saying: "Oh, my sketches are quite at your service, you know; but I give you my word that you will find them awful rubbish."
After dinner, the evening was so sunny and pleasant, that Sir Gilbert caused a couple of lounging chairs to be placed on the terrace, where he and Lady Pell stationed themselves, ostensibly to watch the sunset, but in reality that they might enjoy a tête-à-tête without any risk of being overheard by the young people. At dinner their talk had mostly concerned itself with reminiscences of people whom they had known when they were forty years younger.
Meanwhile, Ethel, with Luigi standing by her, his hands deep in his pockets, was going through the latter\'s portfolio of drawings.
"And now," said Lady Pell presently, settling herself in her chair with a comfortable conviction that she was about to listen to a most interesting recital, "and now, cousin Gilbert, for your chapter of family romance. I confess that I am dying to hear the genuine version of the affair."
For a couple of minutes or so Sir Gilbert lay back with closed eyes, as if endeavouring to concentrate his thoughts on the task he had set himself to go through with. Then, in a low voice, slowly and hesitatingly at first, he began to tell that story with which the reader is already familiar. With some of its earlier incidents Lady Pell was acquainted; for instance, she knew that Alec Clare had left home in consequence of having quarrelled with his father about money matters, that, later on, he had settled in the United States, and there, some few years afterwards, had come to an untimely end. But the rest of Sir Gilbert\'s narrative, from the incident of the cutting off of the entail to his daughter-in-law\'s presentation of herself at the Chase, and his ultimate acknowledgment of his grandson, had for Lady Pell all the charm of novelty. She knew how much Sir Gilbert disliked being interrupted, and she listened to him in silence, but she causedand three minutes him to feel that it was the silence of one who was deeply interested in all he had to tell her. Neither was she in a hurry to speak when at length he had come to an end.
Her first words were: "Thank you, cousin Gilbert." Then, after a momentary pause: "I appreciate to the full the confidence you have seen fit to repose in me, and I need scarcely tell you it will............