To Win the Love He Sought Part 21

"How did the affair end?" Lord St. Maurice asked, sipping his soup. "I hope you got them locked up, Lumley."

"Why, the termination of the affair was the part on which I do really congratulate myself," he answered. "A policeman came up at once, but before I could give them in charge--in which case I should, of course, have been called upon to prosecute and got generally mixed up in the affair--one of the fellows began thumping the policeman; so of course he collared them and marched them off. I slipped away, and I noticed the next morning that they got pretty heavily fined for a.s.saulting a policeman in the execution of his duty."

"A satisfactory ending to a most unpleasant affair," Lord St. Maurice remarked.

During dinner Lord Lumley devoted himself to their guest, but for a long time the burden of the conversation lay altogether upon his shoulders.

It was not until he chanced to mention the National Gallery, in connection with the season's exhibition of pictures, that Margharita abandoned her monosyllabic answers and generally reserved demeanor. He saw at once that he had struck the right note, and he followed it up with tact. He was fresh from a tour among the galleries of southern Europe and Holland, and he himself was no mean artist. But Margharita, he soon found, knew nothing of recent art. She was hopelessly out of date. She knew nothing of the modern cant, of the nineteenth century philistinism, at which it was so much the fas.h.i.+on to scoff. She had not caught the froth of the afternoon talk at fas.h.i.+onable studios, and, having jumbled it together in the popular fas.h.i.+on, she was not prepared to set forth her views on art in somebody else's pet phrases. Lord Lumley had met that sort of young lady, and had shunned her. Margharita had simply acquired from a hurried visit to Italy, when she was quite young, a dim but vast appreciation of the soul of the great masters. She could not have defined art, nor could she have expressed in a few nicely-rounded sentences her opinion of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, or of the genius of Pico della Mirandola. But she felt that a great world lay beyond a larger knowledge and understanding of these things, and some day she hoped, after time, and thought, and study, to enter it.

And Lord Lumley, reading her thoughts with a keen and intuitive sympathy, talked to her that night at dinner and afterward in a corner of the perfumed rose-lit drawing room, as no man had ever talked to her before--talked to her so earnestly, and with so much effect, that Lady St. Maurice rose from her writing table at the other end of the room, watched them with pale and troubled face, and more than once made some faint effort to disturb them. He showed her the systems and manner of thought by which the dimly-felt, wondering admiration of the uncultured, yet sensitive, mind can develop into the large and soul-felt appreciation of the artist. It was the keys of her promised land which he held out to her with winning speech and a kindliness to which she was unaccustomed. He was young himself, but he had all the advantages of correct training, of travel, and of delicate artistic sensibilities. He had taught himself much, and fresh from the task of learning, he had all the best enthusiasm of the teacher. He had told himself that he, too, like the Athenians, wors.h.i.+ped beauty, but never in his life had he seen anything so beautiful as Margharita's face as she listened to him.

Spiritual life seemed to have been poured into a piece of beautiful imagery. Her lips were parted and her dark eyes were softened. It was the face of a St. Cecilia. How long before it would become the face of a woman!

It was Lord St. Maurice's arrival which dissolved the spell. He had missed his after-dinner cigar and chat with Lumley, and directly he entered the drawing room he saw the cause. Adrienne's eyes and his met.

A little annoyed by his son's defection he did not hesitate to act.

"Miss Briscoe, are you too tired, or may we ask for a little music?" he said, walking up to the pair.

She looked up, frowning a little at the interruption. Then a swift recollection of her position came to her, and the light died out of her face. She rose at once.

"I shall be pleased to do what I can. I sing a little, but I play badly."

She affected not to notice Lord St Maurice's arm, but crossed the room by his side toward the piano. He opened it, arranged the stool, and remained standing there.

She struck a few minor chords, and suddenly the room seemed full of a sad, plaintive music rising gradually to a higher pitch, and then dying away as her voice took up the melody and carried it on. Lady St. Maurice held her hand to her side for a moment, and her husband frowned. It was a Sicilian love song which she was singing; the song of a peasant whose bride lies dead by his side, the victim of another's jealousy. Adrienne had heard it often in the old days, and the beautiful wild music which rang in their ears was full of memories to her. It closed abruptly, and only Lumley, with an unusual sparkle in his eyes, found words to thank her.

"Are all your songs sad ones, Miss Briscoe?" Lord St. Maurice asked abruptly. "Can't you offer us something in the shape of an antidote?"

She sat down at the piano again.

"I do not know anything gay," she said. "I can only sing what I feel. I will play something."

She dashed off into a light Hungarian dance, full of _verve_ and sparkle, and Lord St. Maurice kept time with his foot, smiling approvingly. Directly it was over she closed the piano and turned to Lady St. Maurice.

"If I may I should be glad to go to my room now," she said. "I had no idea it was so late."

Lumley held the door open for her, and felt unreasonably disappointed because she pa.s.sed out with a slight inclination of the head, but without looking at him. Then he turned back into the room, and they all three looked at one another for a moment.

"She is marvelously handsome," Lord St. Maurice p.r.o.nounced.

"Marvelously!" his son echoed softly.

But Lady St. Maurice said nothing.

CHAPTER XX

LORD LUMLEY AND MARGHARITA

"Geoffrey, come here for a moment!"

The Earl of St. Maurice, who was a most obedient husband, folded up his paper and joined his wife at the window.

"Well, dear."

"Look there."

He followed her finger. It pointed to three figures; a man in shooting clothes, with a gun under his arm, a girl and a child between them, strolling along the cliffs outside the grounds. He glanced at them carelessly, and back into his wife's face as though for an explanation.

"Well?"

"This is the third morning that Lumley has joined Margharita and Gracie in their walk."

"Very good natured of him," the Earl replied carelessly. "He always was fond of Gracie though, wasn't he?"

"I wish I could feel sure that it was entirely for Gracie's sake," she answered anxiously.

Her husband whistled, and his brows contracted a little.

"You mean to suggest, I suppose, that Miss Briscoe is the attraction,"

he remarked thoughtfully.

"How can I help thinking so? Both yesterday and this morning he was in the schoolroom until I heard her tell him quite severely that he must go, as he was interrupting their work. Both mornings I have asked him to drive with me, and each time he made an excuse. If Margharita's name is mentioned before him, he is either unusually silent and reserved, or very talkative. As a rule, you know, Lumley does not care for girls.

That makes me all the more anxious."

"Miss Briscoe is certainly wonderfully beautiful," he said. "Yet I think that Lumley has common sense."

"He has peculiar ideas," his wife answered. "I have always been afraid of his doing something _bizarre_, and as you say, Margharita is wonderfully beautiful--far more so than her mother, I think. What would you advise me to do, Geoffrey?"

He stroked his long gray mustache, and looked thoughtful.

"It's a delicate matter," he said. "To even hint at the girl going away because Lumley admires her would be unjust, and, at the same time, if Lumley got an inkling of the reason it would certainly make him think more of her than he does now. You have no fault to find with her in any way?"

"None! absolutely none! Her behavior is perfect. She is proud, but I do not consider that a fault. Her manners are the manners of a perfectly-bred lady."

"And Gracie likes her?"

"Gracie adores her!"

"She certainly doesn't attempt to encourage Lumley in any way," the Earl continued thoughtfully.

"Her manners and behavior, in fact, her whole conduct, is perfectly irreproachable," Lady St. Maurice acknowledged. "In certain ways she has been a great disappointment to me, but I wish to be just to her, and I feel bound to say so. It makes the situation all the more difficult."

"In that case we can do nothing," her husband said decidedly. "Things must take their course. If they develop, as we will hope they may not, I will speak to Lumley privately."

"You see she is coming back because Lumley has joined them," Lady St.

Maurice said. "Geoffrey, look at her now at the top of that hill. Does she not remind you of him?"

He took up a pair of field gla.s.ses from the table and looked at her steadily.