The Wicked Marquis. E. Phillips Oppenheim

Wadham felt in all his pockets.

      "Thank you," he replied gloomily, "I'll walk."

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      Lady Letitia Thursford, the only unmarried daughter of the Marquis, stood in a corner of the spacious drawing-room at 94 Grosvenor Square, talking to her brother-in-law. Sir Robert, although he wanted his luncheon very badly and, owing to some mistake, had come a quarter of an hour too soon, retained his customary good nature. He always enjoyed talking to his favourite relation-in-law.

      "I say, Letty," he remarked, screwing his eyeglass into his eye and looking around, "you're getting pretty shabby here, eh?"

      Lady Letitia smiled composedly.

      "That is the worst of you nouveaux riches," she declared. "You do not appreciate the harmonising influence of the hand of Time. This isn't shabbiness, it's tone."

      "Nouveaux riches, indeed!" he repeated. "Better not let your father hear you call me names!"

      "Father wouldn't care a bit," she replied. "As for this drawing-room, Robert, well, sixty years ago it must have been hideous. To-day I rather like it. It is absolutely and entirely Victorian, even to the smell."

      Sir Robert sniffed vigorously.

      "I follow you," he agreed. "Old lavender perfume, ottomans, high-backed chairs, chintzes that look as though they came out of the ark, and a few mouldy daguerreotypes. The whole thing's here, all right."

      "Perhaps it's just as well for us that it is," she observed. "I have come to the conclusion that furniture people are the least trustful in the world. I don't think even dad could get a van-load of furniture on credit."

      Sir Robert nodded sympathetically. He was a pleasant-looking man, a little under middle age, with bright, alert expression, black hair and moustache, and perhaps a little too perfectly dressed. He just escaped being called dapper.

      "Chucking a bit more away in the Law Courts, isn't he?"

      Letitia indulged in a little grimace.

      "Not even you could make him see reason about that," she sighed. "He is certain to lose his case, and it must be costing him thousands."

      "Dashed annoying thing," Sir Robert remarked meditatively, "to have a cottage within a hundred yards of your hall door which belongs to some one else."

      "It is annoying, of course," Letitia assented, "but there is no doubt whatever that Uncle Christopher made it over to the Vonts absolutely, and I don't see how we could possibly upset the deed of gift. I am now," she continued, moving towards a stand of geraniums and beginning to snip off some dead leaves, "about to conclude the picture. You behold the maiden of bygone days who condescended sometimes to make herself useful."

      The scissors snipped energetically, and Sir Robert watched his sister-in-law. She was inclined to be tall, remarkably graceful in a fashion of her own, a little pale, with masses of brown hair, and eyes which defied any sort of colour analysis. But what Sir Robert chiefly loved about her were the two little lines of humour at the corners of her firm, womanly mouth.

      "Yes, you're in the setting all right, Letty," he declared, "and yet you are rather puzzling. Just now you look as though you only wanted the crinoline and the little curls to be some one's grandmother in her youth. Yet at that picture show the other night you were quite the most modern thing there."

      "It's just how I'm feeling," she confided, with a little sigh, standing back and surveying her handiwork. "I have that rare gift, you know, Robert, of governing my personality from inside. When I am in this room, I feel Victorian, and I am Victorian. When I hear that Russian man's music which is driving every one crazy just now—well, I feel and I suppose I look different. Here's Meg coming. How well she looks!"

      They watched the motor-car draw up outside, and the little business of Lady Margaret Lees's descent carried out in quite the best fashion. A footman stood at the door, a grey-haired butler in plain clothes adventured as far as the bottom step; behind there was just the suggestion of something in livery.

      "Yes, Meg's all right," Sir Robert replied. "Jolly good wife she is, too. Why don't you marry, Letty?"

      "Perhaps," she laughed, leaning a little towards him, "because I did not go to a certain house party at Raynham Court, three years ago."

      "Are you conceited enough," he inquired, "to imagine that I should have chosen you instead of Meg, if you had been there?"

      "Perhaps I should have been a little too young," she admitted. "Why haven't you a brother, Robert?"

      "I don't believe you'd have married him, if I had," he answered bluntly. "I'm not really your sort, you know."

      Lady Margaret swept in, very voluble but a little discursive.

      "Isn't this just like Bob!" she exclaimed. "I believe he always comes here early on purpose to find you alone, Letty! Who's coming to lunch, please? And where's dad?"

      "Father should be on his way home from the Law Courts by now," Letitia replied, "and I am afraid it's a very dull luncheon for you, Meg. Aunt Caroline is coming, and an American man she travelled over on the steamer with. I am not quite sure whether she expects to let Bayfield to him or offer him to me as a husband, but I am sure she has designs."

      "The Duchess is always so helpful," Robert grunted.

      "So long as it costs her nothing," Lady Margaret declared, "nothing makes her so happy as to put the whole world to rights."

      "Here she comes—in a taxicab, too," Sir Robert announced, looking out of the window. "She is getting positively penurious."

      "She is probably showing off before the American," Lady Margaret remarked. "She is always talking about living in a semi-detached house and making her own clothes. Up to the present, though, she has stuck to Worth."

      The Duchess, who duly arrived a few moments later, brought with her into the room a different and essentially a more cosmopolitan atmosphere. She was a tall, fair woman, attractive in an odd sort of way, with large features, a delightful smile, and a habit of rapid speech. She exchanged hasty greetings with every one present and then turned back towards the man who had followed her into the room.

      "Letty dear, this is Mr. David Thain—Lady Letitia Thursford. I told you about Mr. Thain, dear, didn't I? This is almost his first visit to England, and I want every one to be nice to him. Mr. Thain, this is my other niece, Lady Margaret Lees, and her husband, Sir Robert Lees. Where's Reginald?"

      "Father will be here directly," Letitia replied. "If any one's famished, we can commence lunch."

      "Then let us commence, by all means," the Duchess suggested. "I have been giving the whole of the morning to Mr. Thain, improving his mind and showing him things. We wound up with the shops—although I am sure Alfred's tradespeople are no use to any one."

      Letitia moved a few steps towards the bell, and on her way back she encountered the somewhat earnest gaze of her aunt's protégé. Even in those few moments since his entrance, she had been conscious of a somewhat different atmosphere in the faded but stately room. He had the air of appraising everything yet belonging nowhere, of being wholly out of touch with an environment which he could scarcely be expected to understand or appreciate. He was not noticeably ill-at-ease. On the other hand, his deportment was too rigid for naturalness, and she was conscious of some quality in his rather too steadfast scrutiny of herself which militated strongly against her usual toleration. He seemed to stand for events, and in the lives which they mostly lived, events were ignored.

      The butler opened the door and announced luncheon. They crossed the very handsome, if somewhat empty hall, into the sombre, mahogany-furnished dining room, the walls of which were closely hung with oil paintings. Letitia motioned the stranger to sit at her