Gwendolen Read online

  "If I weren't an extremely modest sort of fellow, I might imagine she was throwing herself at my head," he said. "I thought she was engaged to young Fairhall."

  "Sh-h-h!" said Gwendolen reprovingly, casting a meaningful glance at the other dancers.

  "Nonsense!" said Lyndale. "They are all flirting with one another so madly that they wouldn't notice if we suddenly began doing a Highland reel or singing ‘God Save the King’. I never saw such an amount of ogling and sighing as goes on in polite circles in England; there would be throats cut and daggers flashing all over the place if half as much of it took place in Morocco. Fortunately, the female sex is given far less scope there to practise its wiles."

  "I daresay you mean harems," Gwendolen said, strongly disapproving, but unable to resist the promptings of curiosity. "Do tell me about them! Do the women wear trousers and—?"

  “My dear Miss Quarters!" interrupted Lyndale, with a slight, significant lift of the brows and a glance at the other dancers. "Pray consider my reputation, if not your own!"

  “But you said they were paying no heed—Oh, you are joking me!" Gwendolen broke off to say severely. "What an abominable man you are!"

  '"Because I won't talk to you about harems? That is mere self-preservation. If I were to do so, you would no doubt treat me to a bear-jaw on the inhumanity of the male sex."

  "Well, I don't think it must be a very invigorating life," Gwendolen said decidedly, "being shut up like that and having no one to talk to but a lot of other wives. I should think one would turn into a dead bore eventually, which, it seems to me, wouldn't be very agreeable for the husband, either."

  Lyndale assured her, with an air of gravity that she regarded with some suspicion, that he did not believe she would turn into a dead bore even in a harem, which he fancied would be considerably enlivened by her presence, adding that, in his experience, gentlemen in Morocco unfortunately did not place a great deal of emphasis upon the conversational abilities of their wives. He then forestalled any adverse comment upon this state of affairs by bringing up the matter of Campaspe and demanding once more to know what she was about.

  "I don't know," said Gwendolen, who would have died rather than betray her young sister, no matter how strongly she disapproved of her plan. She looked vaguely at the wall before her, where a stupendous rose-coloured tapestry, woven at Beauvais, displayed a number of buxom nymphs floating on pink clouds around a self-satisfied Jove, and went on, under inspiration, "Perhaps she has fallen in love with you."

  "A likely story," said Lyndale, grinning.

  "Oh?" Gwendolen raised her black, flyaway brows at him. “Don't women usually? I should have thought quite a few of them must have."

  He nodded coolly. "Oh, quite a few," he said outrageously. "Which is why I know the signs. Miss Quarters. And I may tell you that your young sister displays none of them."

  "Does Miss Courtney?" enquired Gwendolen, with an air of great innocence. "She seems very much interested in you."

  Lyndale cast a glance across the room at Miss Courtney, who, having rejected several applications for the honour of standing up with her in favour of sitting beside the Duke, was allowing him to hold her hand under her fan.

  "Miss Courtney," he said dryly, "is very much interested in my title and my fortune, but I doubt that there is any love for me stirring in her maiden heart. Now don't tell me," he went on, as Gwendolen opened her mouth to speak, "that Miss Campaspe has also decided that a marchioness's robes would suit her better than they would your sister Jane, Miss Quarters, because I will tell you, that cock won't fight."

  "Oh, no!" said Gwendolen seriously. "Cammie cares nothing for title and fortune; I shouldn't dream of trying to tell you such a rapper. By the bye, I haven't thanked you yet for taking my advice about Jane. I consider that you behaved very nicely in that matter."

  "Do you, indeed?" said Lyndale, politely but very noncommittally, and as they were separated at that moment by the movement of the dance, she had no opportunity to continue on the subject.

  When they were able to resume their conversation, Lyndale seemed more interested in discussing horses than people, having the highest opinion, he said, of the chances of Mr. Quarters's Conqueror in the Cheltenham Races, and as Gwendolen, though by no means so horse-mad as her father, had a good deal of knowledge about the equine species and was an excellent horsewoman and whip herself, the conversation went on in such an interesting fashion that before she knew it the set was at an end.

  The last strains of music had only just died away when she found Campaspe and Captain Belville beside her.

  "Oh, Lord Lyndale," Campaspe said, addressing the Marquis in what Gwendolen, with great vexation, saw she obviously considered the air of a dashing woman of the world, "I do hope you are going to ask me to stand up with you for this next set! I am dying to ask you all about Morocco—or is it Algeria?—and the native dances, which I am sure you must have learned to perform to perfection!"

  Lyndale cocked an eyebrow at Gwendolen in a way that caused her to think seriously of murdering him. "That is very kind of you," he said to Campaspe, "but don't you think I ought to ask your sister Jane to stand up with me before I ask you? As a matter of fact, Miss Quarters has just been reminding me of my duty in that respect."

  "Oh," said Campaspe, quite undaunted, "Jane isn't in the least accustomed to standing upon her dignity! And," with a coaxing air, "I do so want to hear all about Algeria!"

  Gwendolen saw that Captain Belville was looking quite aghast at this unblushing exhibition of the pursuing female, and that Lieutenant Fairhall, who was seated near enough to their little group to hear what was being said, had an expression of thunderstruck disapproval upon his fresh, youthful face. Deciding on the instant to take matters into her own hands, she said curtly, "Don't be a ninnyhammer, Cammie! Of course Lord Lyndale wishes to dance with Jane! Come along; I’ll take you to Mama."

  And she swept her unwilling young sister relentlessly off, quite undisturbed by the word, "Traitress!" hissed into her ear by Campaspe.

  "Have you seen Alain?" Campaspe went on fiercely, as they approached the sofa from which Lady Otilia was complacently observing the dancing. "He looks quite ill! Have you no sense of human compassion?"

  "I shall have none for you, if you don't put an end to this ridiculous pursuit of Lyndale at once!" Gwendolen promised her forcefully. "Now do sit down beside Mama and try for some conduct!"

  Campaspe, looking mulish, suffered herself with the greatest unwillingness to be installed upon the sofa beside Lady Otilia. Gwendolen, turning to face what she considered would be the inevitable application from Captain Belville, who had followed them across the room, to stand up with him for the next set, found herself adroitly intercepted at the same moment by Lord Wilfrid.

  "Miss Quarters—will you do me the honour—?" he said, bowing slightly and offering her his arm.

  Gwendolen looked at the Captain, but he, with a face that clearly displayed the conflict going on in the inner man between the jealousy of the betrothed lover and reverence for a title, merely compressed his lips, looked black, and said nothing.

  "Oh, very well!" Gwendolen said to Lord Wilfrid, and walked off with him to join the set.

  Lord Wilfrid at once began to talk about an impromptu picnic that he was planning for the following day.

  "It came to me as I was dancing with the lovely Jane," he said, "that I must see the three sisters, like the Three Graces, strolling arm in arm upon the greensward in a leafy glade. I can never remember their names—the Three Graces, that is— though I am quite sure none of them was called Jane; but Gwendolen and Campaspe would seem suitable, even if not entirely accurate."

  Gwendolen said she thought one of them was called Euphrosyne, which was even worse than Campaspe, and that she believed Jane would have been called that if they had not fortunately happened to have a great-aunt named Jane who had a little money.

  "And I should dearly love to go on a picnic," she said. “We all should. Are we to drive
or ride? And where are we to go?"

  Lord Wilfrid, looking at her askance, said she could not possibly wish to go jauntering about the countryside in such sultry weather as they were having at present.

  "Well, but how are we to have a picnic, then?" Gwendolen demanded practically.

  "We shall," Lord Wilfrid said, shrugging languidly, "have it here, on the grounds of Beauworth, of course, Miss Quarters. I seldom stray beyond the gates when I make one of my rare excursions into Gloucestershire. I find the country so excessively vulgar, you see—all that fresh air, and then I believe there are cows—"

  "Oh, yes, quite a few of them," Gwendolen assured him. "I rather like them—but then I have never been to London."

  "We are going to remedy that, if you will remember. Are you still engaged to the prosaic Captain?"

  "Yes, of course; how could I have become unengaged at a dinner party, even if I wished to? But perhaps I shan't be some day. One never knows," said Gwendolen, regarding Lord Wilfrid thoughtfully.

  She knew enough of the fashionable world, from reading and from having come into occasional improving contact with such persons as her aunt, Lady Priscilla, to be aware that Lord Wilfrid had none of the earmarks of a marrying man; and she wondered with a good deal of anticipation if she might eventually receive an improper proposal from him. On the whole she thought him, in his own way, almost as boring as the Captain; but one could not pick and choose when it came to improper proposals, and the romantic part of her nature that she had inherited from Lady Otilia at once began formulating a dramatic scene in which Lord Wilfrid, finding himself spurned by a virtuous female, gave vent to the lower side of his nature in an attempt to force her compliance to his will, only to be thwarted by the arrival of her gallant betrothed, Captain Belville, who would worst him decisively in single combat.

  The one flaw in this picture was that she could not envision any circumstance under which Captain Belville would so far forget the deference due a member of the higher nobility as to attack Lord Wilfrid; but then, she thought hopefully, he might turn out to have hidden depths. After all, as she had so justly observed to Lord Wilfrid, one never knew.

  Lord Wilfrid's attentions to Gwendolen, at any rate, were very satisfactorily assiduous during the remainder of the set-so much so, in fact, that when it had ended and Captain Belville was at last successful in obtaining her hand for the next set, he was in the sulks to such an extent that he scarcely vouchsafed a word of conversation to her all the while they were dancing. She saw Lyndale, who had asked—to Miss Courtney's obvious displeasure—one of the other ladies of the London party to stand up with him, regarding them with the air of detached amusement that appeared to Gwendolen to constitute his usual response to her discomfitures, and, gritting her teeth, began determinedly chattering away to the unresponsive Belville.

  At last the set came to an end, and she was free to leave the Captain to his sullens and go and sit beside young Lieutenant Fairhall, who also appeared to be finding the evening a far from satisfactory one. In the first place, he cared nothing for the ducal splendours of Beauworth; in the second place, he could not dance; and in the third place, he was obviously seething with frustration and jealousy over the fact that Campaspe had paid not the least attention to him all evening, but instead was making what he characterised as a dashed cake of herself running after Lyndale.

  "What the deuce does she think she is up to?" he demanded wrathfully. "Lord! if ever I saw such a cork-brained wag-feather! Lyndale has offered for Jane, hasn't he? They're as good as engaged, my mother says—and Cammie and I are engaged, dash it all! It's my belief she must be queer in her attic this evening!"

  Gwendolen did her best to soothe him, but was somewhat perplexed as to how to convince him that Campaspe was impelled by the purest of motives in her pursuit of Lyndale without actually confiding that motive to him. And that, she was certain, would not do at all. She was very fond of Neil, but he had not much more discretion, she thought, than Campaspe, and if she were to tell him that Campaspe was doing her best to see to it that Jane was not obliged to marry Lyndale because she was in love with Alain de Combray, the matter would soon be spread over the entire neighbourhood.

  So she told him instead that he must realize that Campaspe was very young, and that she, Gwendolen, would Speak to Her —which, indeed, she did, but without the slightest effect, for Campaspe, flown with the excitement of what she called the first really grown-up party she had ever attended, was in no mood to accept prudent counsel. She declared instead that she was going to ask Lyndale again to stand up with her, and, crossing the room to the place where he stood, proceeded at once to do so. Gwendolen, following her, was soon involved in a somewhat heated but outwardly amiable (for the sake of Miss Courtney, who was standing nearby) conversation with her, which was suddenly brought to an end, as the orchestra began to play, by Lyndale's leading her, not Campaspe, on to the floor.

  "Oh, dear! Ought I? Shouldn't you rather have asked Miss Courtney?" she asked a trifle distractedly, feeling a bit like a Sabine maiden being swept off by a ruthless Roman, for the orchestra was playing a waltz and instead of facing her partner decorously across a safe distance of parquet floor she was in his arms, being whirled down the room in his masterful embrace. "After all, this is the second time this evening, and you have not danced once with her—"

  "Miss Quarters," said Lyndale, "if you do not stop telling me whom I ought and ought not to dance with, I shall do something drastic—"

  "But what could you do?" Gwendolen interrupted, much interested. "You could not listen to me, of course, but that isn't drastic—*

  "Well, for one thing, I could dance with you for the rest of the evening," Lyndale said.

  "No, you couldn't, for I shouldn't stand up with you," Gwendolen said promptly. "You don't waltz particularly well, you know; you are far too intent upon going your own way, so that even if it were proper for me to stand up so often with you, I don't think I should enjoy it. But I expect they don't do the waltz in Morocco, so you have not had an opportunity to learn it properly. I admit I am not very expert at it myself, for it is not danced much here in the country, but Jane has been trying to teach me since she returned from London. She performs it beautifully."

  "So I see," said Lyndale, looking quite unperturbed by her strictures upon his terpsichorean abilities.

  His eyes went across the room to where Jane, who had allowed Alain de Combray to lead her on to the floor, was gliding with him in long, dreamy circles down the room. Her lips were slightly parted; her cheeks were suffused with soft, glowing colour; and Gwendolen saw with some dismay that her blue eyes, fixed upon the young Frenchman's face, were shining with a kind of mournful intensity that could not fail to strike anyone observing her. She stole a quick glance at Lyndale's face. It appeared quite calm, but rather thoughtful.

  "They make," he remarked presently, "a handsome pair— your sister and young M. de Combray, Miss Quarters."

  "Yes, indeed!" agreed Gwendolen, trying to conceal an uncomfortable feeling over the turn the conversation was taking and speaking, she immediately felt, rather too enthusiastically. She then tried to remedy matters by saying in a disparaging tone that almost any gentleman appeared to advantage when dancing with Jane.

  "As I have told you, she learned to waltz beautifully in London," she said.

  "And learned a great many other things there, as well, I expect," said Lyndale, still in that thoughtful voice. He looked down at Gwendolen abruptly. "Will you and your sisters attend Wilfrid's picnic tomorrow?" he asked, changing the subject abruptly.

  Gwendolen, slightly surprised, said she expected they would if Lady Otilia found no objection to it, and she saw no reason why she should.

  "Why do you ask?" she demanded.

  "Mere curiosity," said Lyndale briefly, which she had no difficulty in interpreting as a polite euphemism for, "That is none of your affair, Miss Quarters."

  She looked at him suspiciously. She had the feeling that he had some plan
in mind, a plan that in some way involved Jane and Alain de Combray, and she found it necessary to suppress a sigh of exasperation over the tangled state of affairs that made it expedient for her to be alarmed at this notion. If only Jane would make up her mind, she thought, to tell Lyndale that she did not wish to marry him, and to throw in her fortunes with Alain, even though they were to be as poor as church-mice and Brightleaves fell into the hands of Messrs. Smith and Brown, one would know where one stood and could act accordingly.

  As it was, she did not know whether to be glad or sorry that Lyndale had seen that look upon Jane's face; but on the whole she felt a bit nervous about it. Gentlemen who had spent an extended period of time in Morocco might, she felt, have taken some rather peculiar ideas about affianced wives (even if they weren't officially affianced) who looked at other gentlemen in the particularly significant way Jane had looked at M. de Combray; and even if they hadn't, she had the feeling that Lyndale was unpredictable, at best

  However, there was nothing she could do about it but to warn Jane, after they had returned to Brightleaves that night, against looking at Alain at all if she wasn't able to manage her eyes better when she did; but as they were all rather tired by the time they did return, and Jane seemed already in the lowest of spirits, she eventually decided not to broach the subject.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ON THE FOLLOWING day a splendid barouche upholstered in plum-coloured velvet and with a ducal crest on the panel arrived at Brightleaves to take the three young ladies to Beau-worth, Lady Otilia having declined an invitation to accompany them for the ostensible reason that it was the day upon which she customarily visited the sick and needy in the village, but actually because she had an obscure feeling that Lyndale might take the occasion to bring Jane to the point if no prospective mother-in-law were in the picture. She had satisfied herself, of course, that Lady Maria and one of the London ladies, a Mrs. Webley, would be present as chaperons, and thus felt no need to worry her head over the proprieties.