Lady Rose's Daughter. Mrs. Humphry Ward

      "Then the world contains more fools than even I give it credit for!" said Lady Henry, with energy. "Why should any one exchange with me--a poor, blind, gouty old creature, with no chick or child to care whether she lives or dies?"

      "Ah, well, that's a misfortune--I won't deny that," said Sir Wilfrid, kindly. "But I come home after three years. I find your house as thronged as ever, in the old way. I see half the most distinguished people in London in your drawing-room. It is sad that you can no longer receive them as you used to do: but here you sit like a queen, and people fight for their turn with you."

      Lady Henry did not smile. She laid one of her wrinkled hands upon his arm.

      "Is there any one else within hearing?" she said, in a quick undertone. Sir Wilfrid was touched by the vague helplessness of her gesture, as she looked round her.

      "No one--we are quite alone."

      "They are not here for me--those people," she said, quivering, with a motion of her hand towards the large drawing-room.

      "My dear friend, what do you mean?"

      "They are here--come closer, I don't want to be overheard--for a woman--whom I took in, in a moment of lunacy--who is now robbing me of my best friends and supplanting me in my own house."

      The pallor of the old face had lost all its waxen dignity. The lowered voice hissed in his ear. Sir Wilfrid, startled and repelled, hesitated for his reply. Meanwhile, Lady Henry, who could not see it, seemed at once to divine the change in his expression.

      "Oh, I suppose you think I'm mad," she said, impatiently, "or ridiculous. Well, see for yourself, judge for yourself. In fact, I have been looking, hungering, for your return. You have helped me through emergencies before now. And I am in that state at present that I trust no one, talk to no one, except of banalités. But I should be greatly obliged if you would come and listen to me, and, what is more, advise me some day."

      "Most gladly," said Sir Wilfrid, embarrassed; then, after a pause, "Who is this lady I find installed here?"

      Lady Henry hesitated, then shut her strong mouth on the temptation to speak.

      "It is not a story for to-night," she said; "and it would upset me. But, when you first saw her, how did she strike you?"

      "I saw at once," said her companion after a pause, "that you had caught a personality."

      "A personality!" Lady Henry gave an angry laugh. "That's one way of putting it. But physically--did she remind you of no one?"

      Sir Wilfrid pondered a moment.

      "Yes. Her face haunted me, when I first saw it. But--no; no, I can't put any names."

      Lady Henry gave a little snort of disappointment.

      "Well, think. You knew her mother quite well. You have known her grandfather all your life. If you're going on to the Foreign Office, as I suppose you are, you'll probably see him to-night. She is uncannily like him. As to her father, I don't know--but he was a rolling-stone of a creature; you very likely came across him."

      "I knew her mother and her father?" said Sir Wilfrid, astonished and pondering.

      "They had no right to be her mother and her father," said Lady Henry, with grimness.

      "Ah! So if one does guess--"

      "You'll please hold your tongue."

      "But at present I'm completely mystified," said Sir Wilfrid.

      "Perhaps it'll come to you later. You've a good memory generally for such things. Anyway, I can't tell you anything now. But when'll you come again? To-morrow--luncheon? I really want you."

      "Would you be alone?"

      "Certainly. That, at least, I can still do--lunch as I please, and with whom I please. Who is this coming in? Ah, you needn't tell me."

      The old lady turned herself towards the entrance, with a stiffening of the whole frame, an instinctive and passionate dignity in her whole aspect, which struck a thrill through her companion.

      The little Duchess approached, amid a flutter of satin and lace, heralded by the scent of the Parma violets she wore in profusion at her breast and waist. Her eye glanced uncertainly, and she approached with daintiness, like one stepping on mined ground.

      "Aunt Flora, I must have just a minute."

      "I know no reason against your having ten, if you want them," said Lady Henry, as she held-out three fingers to the new-comer. "You promised yesterday to come and give me a full account of the Devonshire House ball. But it doesn't matter--and you have forgotten."

      "No, indeed, I haven't," said the Duchess, embarrassed. "But you seemed so well employed to-night, with other people. And now--"

      "Now you are going on," said Lady Henry, with a most unfriendly suavity.

      "Freddie says I must," said the other, in the attitude of a protesting child.

      "Alors!" said Lady Henry, lifting her hand. "We all know how obedient you are. Good-night!"

      The Duchess flushed. She just touched her aunt's hand, and then, turning an indignant face on Sir Wilfrid, she bade him farewell with an air which seemed to him intended to avenge upon his neutral person the treatment which, from Lady Henry, even so spoiled a child of fortune as herself could not resent.

      Twenty minutes later, Sir Wilfrid entered the first big room of the Foreign Office party. He looked round him with a revival of the exhilaration he had felt on Lady Henry's staircase, enjoying, after his five years in Teheran, after his long homeward journey by desert and sea, even the common trivialities of the scene--the lights, the gilding, the sparkle of jewels, the scarlet of the uniforms, the noise and movement of the well-dressed crowd. Then, after this first physical thrill, began the second stage of pleasure--the recognitions and the greetings, after long absence, which show a man where he stands in the great world, which sum up his past and forecast his future. Sir Wilfrid had no reason to complain. Cabinet ministers and great ladies, members of Parliament and the permanent officials who govern but do not rule, soldiers, journalists, barristers--were all glad, it seemed, to grasp him by the hand. He had returned with a record of difficult service brilliantly done, and the English world rewarded him in its accustomed ways.

      It was towards one o'clock that he found himself in a crowd pressing towards the staircase in the wake of some departing royalties. A tall man in front turned round to look for some ladies behind him from whom he had been separated in the crush. Sir Wilfrid recognized old Lord Lackington, the veteran of marvellous youth, painter, poet, and sailor, who as a gay naval lieutenant had entertained Byron in the Ægean; whose fame as one of the raciest of naval reformers was in all the newspapers; whose personality was still, at seventy-five, charming to most women and challenging to most men.

      As the old man turned, he was still smiling, as though in unison with something which had just been said to him; and his black eyes under his singularly white hair searched the crowd with the animation of a lad of twenty. Through the energy of his aspect the flame of life still burned, as the evening sun through a fine sky. The face had a faulty yet most arresting brilliance. The mouth was disagreeable, the chin common. But the general effect was still magnificent.

      Sir Wilfrid started. He recalled the drawing-room in Bruton Street; the form and face of Mademoiselle Le Breton; the sentences by which Lady Henry had tried to put him on the track. His mind ran over past years, and pieced together the recollections of a long-past scandal. "Of course! Of course!" he said to himself, not without excitement. "She is not like her mother, but she has all the typical points of her mother's race."

II

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      It was a cold, clear morning in February, with a little pale sunshine