At Love's Cost Part 27

"That means that I am late." she said, her eyes resting languidly on his cynically smiling face.

"Good heavens, no!" he responded. "You can't be late or early in this magic palace. Whenever you 'arrive' you will find things--'things' in the most comprehensive sense--ready for you. Breakfast at Brae Wood is the most moveable of feasts. I've proved that, for I'm a late bird myself; and to my joy I have learned that this is the only house with which I am acquainted that you can get red-hot bacon and kidneys at any hour from eight to twelve; that lunch runs plenteously from one to three, and that you can get tea and toast--my great and only weakness, Miss Falconer--whenever you like to ring for it. You will find Lady Clansford presiding at the breakfast-table: I believe she has been sitting there--amiable martyr as she is--since the early dawn."

She smiled at him with languid approval, as if he were some paid jester, and went into the breakfast-room. There were others there beside Lady Clansford--most of them the young people--it is, alas! only the young who can sleep through the bright hours of a summer's morn--and a discussion on the programme of the day was being carried on with a babel of voices and much laughter.

"You shall decide for us, Miss Falconer!" exclaimed one of the young men, whose only name appeared to be Bertie, for he was always addressed as and spoken of by it. "It's a toss-up between a drive and a turn on the lake in the electric launch. _I_ proposed a sail, but there seemed to be a confirmed and general scepticism as to my yachting capacities, and Lady Plaistow says she doesn't want to be drowned before the end of the season. What would you like to do?"

"Sit somewhere in the shade with a book," she replied, promptly but slowly.

There was a shout of laughter.

"That is just what Mr. Howard replied," said Bertie, complainingly.

"Oh, Mr. Howard! Everyone knows that he is the laziest man in the whole world," remarked Lady Clansford, plaintively. "What is Mr. Orme going to do? Where is he? Does anyone know?"

There was a general shaking of heads and a chorus of "Noes."

"I had a swim with him this morning, but I've not seen him since," said Bertie. "It's no use waiting for Orme; he mightn't turn up till dinner-time. Miss Falconer, if I promise not to drown you, will make one for the yacht? The man told me it would be all ready."

She shook her head as she helped herself to a couple of strawberries.

"No, thanks," she said, with her musical drawl. "I know what that means. You drift into the middle of the lake or the river, the wind drops, and you sit in a scorching sun and get a headache. Please leave me out. I shall stick to my original proposal. Perhaps, if you don't drown anyone this time, I may venture with you another day."

She leant back and smiled at them under her lids, as the discussion flowed and ebbed round her, with an air of placid contempt and wonder at their excitement; and presently, murmuring something to Lady Clansford, who, as chaperone and deputy hostess was trying to coax them into some decision, she rose and went out to the terrace.

There, lying back in a deck-chair, in a corner screened from any possible draught by the gla.s.s verandah, was Mr. Howard with one of Sir Stephen's priceless Havanas between his lips, a French novel in his hand, and a morning paper across his knees. He rose as she approached, and checking a sigh of resignation, offered her his chair.

"Oh, no," she said, with a smile which showed that she knew what the effort of politeness cost him. "You'd hate me if I took your chair, I know; and though, of course, I don't in the least care whether you hate me or not, I shouldn't like putting you to the trouble of so exhaustive an emotion."

Howard smiled at her with frank admiration.

"Let's compromise it," he said. "I'll drag that chair up here--it's out of the sun, you know--so, and arrange these cus.h.i.+ons so, and put up the end for your feet so, and--how is that, Miss Falconer?"

"Thanks," she murmured, sinking into the soft nest he had made.

"Do you object to my cigar? Say so, if you do, and--"

"You'll go off to some other nook," she put in. "No, I like it."

His eye shone with keen appreciation: this girl was not only a beauty--which is almost common nowadays--but witty, which is rare.

"Thanks! Would you like the paper? Don't hesitate if you would; I'm not reading it; I never do. I keep it there so that I can put it over my face if I feel like sleeping--which I generally do."

She declined the paper with a gesture of her white hand. "No, I'd rather talk; which means that you are to talk and I'm to listen: will it exhaust you too much to tell me where the rest of the people are? I left a party in the breakfast-room squabbling over the problem how to kill time; but where are the others? My father, for instance?"

"He is in the library with Baron Wirsch, Mr. Griffenberg, and the other financiers. They are doubtless engaged in some mystic rites connected with the wors.h.i.+p of the Golden Calf, rites in which the words 'shares,'

'stocks,' 'diamonds,' 'concessions,' appear at frequent intervals. I suppose your father, having joined them, is a member of the all-powerful sect of money-wors.h.i.+ppers."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I suppose so. And Mr. Orme--is he one of them?" she asked, with elaborate indifference.

Howard smiled cynically.

"Stafford! No; all that he knows about money is the art of spending it; and what he doesn't know about that isn't worth knowing. It slips through his fingers like water through a sieve; and one of those mysteries which burden my existence is, how he always manages to have some for a friend up a tree."

"Is he so generous, then?" she asked, with a delicate yawn behind her hand.

Howard nodded, and was silent for a moment, then he said musingly:

"You've got on my favorite subject--Stafford--Miss Falconer. And I warn you that if I go on I shall bore you."

"Well, I can get up and go away," she said, languidly. "He is a friend of yours, I suppose? By the way, did you know that he stopped those ridiculous horses last night and probably saved my life?"

"For goodness sake don't let him hear you say that, or even guess that you think it," he said, with an affectation of alarm. "Stafford would be inexpressibly annoyed. He hates a fuss even more than most Englishmen, and would take it very unkindly if you didn't let a little thing like that pa.s.s unnoticed. Oh, yes, I am his greatest friend. I don't think"--slowly and contemplatively--"that there is anything he wouldn't do for me or anything I wouldn't do for him--excepting get up early--go out in the rain--Oh, it isn't true! I'm only bragging," he broke off, with a groan. "I've done both and shall do them whenever he wants me to. I'm a poor creature, Miss Falconer." "A martyr on the altar of friends.h.i.+p," she said. "Mr. Orme must be very irresistible."

"He is," he a.s.sented, with an air of profound melancholy. "Stafford has the extremely unpleasant knack of getting everybody to do what he wants. It's very disgusting, but it's true. That is why he is so general a favourite. Why, if you walk into any drawing-room and asked who was the most popular man in London, the immediate and unanimous reply would be 'Stafford Orme.'"

She settled the cus.h.i.+ons a little more comfortably.

"You mean amongst men?" she said.

Howard smiled and eyed her questioningly.

"Well--I didn't," he replied, drily.

She laughed a little scornfully.

"Oh, I know the sort of man he is," she said. "I've read and heard about them. The sort of man who falls in love with every woman he meet.

'A servant of dames'!"

Howard leant back and laughed with cynical enjoyment.

"You never were further out," he said. "He flirts--oh, my aunt, how he flirts!--but as to falling in love--Did you ever see an iceberg, Miss Falconer?"

She shook her head.

"Well, it's one of the biggest, the most beautiful frauds in the world.

When you meet one sailing along in the Atlantic, you think it one of the nicest, sweetest things you ever saw: it's so dazzlingly bright, with its thousand and one colours glittering in the sunlight. You quite fall in love with it, and it looks so harmless, so enticing, that you're tempted to get quite close to it; which no doubt is amusing to the iceberg, but is slightly embarra.s.sing for you; for the iceberg is on you before you know it, and--and there isn't enough left of you for a decent funeral. That's Stafford all the way. He's so pleasant, so frank, so lovable, that you think him quite harmless; but while you're admiring his confounded ingratiating ways, while you're growing enthusiastic about his engaging tricks--he's the best rider, the best dancer, the best shot--oh, but you must have heard of him!--he is bearing down upon you; your heart goes under, and he--ah, well, he just sails over you smiling, quite unconscious of having brought you to everlasting smash."

"You are indeed a friend," she said with languid irony.

"Oh, you think I'm giving him away?" he said. "My dear Miss Falconer, everybody knows him. Every ball-room every tennis-court, is strewed with his wrecks. And all the time he doesn't know it; but goes his way crowned with a modesty which is the marvel and the wonder of this most marvellous of ages."

"It sounds like a hero out of one of 'Ouida's' novels," she remarked, as listlessly as before.

But behind her lowered lids her eyes were s.h.i.+ning with a singular brightness.