Dearest: This address isn't part of our plan of campaign. We'd meant to pass through, after pausing on the way just long enough to see Portsmouth Harbour, and Dickens's birthplace; but we've stopped here on my account, and now I wish we hadn't. I'll tell you why, in a minute; but if I don't mention a few other things first, they'll be crowded out, and I shall forget them.
After we'd seen the birthplace, and were seeing the harbour, Sir Lionel asked if I'd care to go on board a man-o'-war. Of course, my answer was "Yes"; and he said there was an old friend of his whom he would like to see, Captain Starlin, of the Thunderer, so he'd ask for an invitation.
He scribbled things in pencil on a visiting-card, and sent it on board the big gray monster, by a nice low-necked sailor. Of course, the invitation which came back was most cordial, and even Mrs. Norton appeared pleased with the idea of going over the ship. We were received by the Captain himself--rather a young-looking man, whose complexion seemed to have slipped down, like Sir Lionel's, both their foreheads being quite white, and the rest of their faces tanned brown. He took us everywhere, showing us interesting things, and presently said that, not only must we dine with him that evening, but must stay to a dance that was to be given on board afterward.
"Oh, many thanks, but we're only motoring through, and go on this afternoon," began Sir Lionel. Then he stopped short, and looked at me. "Would you like to dance?" he asked.
"She hasn't anything to wear, if she would," Mrs. Norton answered for me. "You were so strict about luggage, we've only two evening dresses apiece, plain things for hotel dinners, nothing at all suitable to a dance."
"Didn't you buy her anything good enough for dances that day in Bond Street?" snapped the Dragon.
"You bought her several things almost too good for dances, at her age," retaliated the Dragon's sister, but only in a gentle coo. "They're left at the Ritz, awaiting instructions to go on to Graylees, with most of our things, and will probably be all beggars' creases before she has a chance to wear them."
"She shall have a chance to wear any or all of them to-night, if she wants to dance," said Sir Lionel.
"Of course she wants to dance," chimed in Captain Starlin. "Did you ever see a young lady who didn't want to dance, especially on a man-o'-war?"
"Do you want to?" repeated the Dragon.
Between them I was quite dashed, and murmured something non-committal about its being very nice, if it had been convenient, but----
"There is no 'but,'" said Ellaline's guardian. "That settles it. We stop the night in Southsea, where there's no doubt a good hotel; and I will send someone immediately to the Ritz for your boxes, Emily--and yours." He never calls me by name if he can help it.
Emily was inclined to object that it would be foolish to send, and we didn't want all our things anyway, till her brother gave her a look--not cross, but--well, just one of his looks that make you do things, or stop doing them, whichever he pleases; and she didn't say any more.
I can't help rather liking his masterful ways, though they're old-fashioned now that we're all supposed to think we need votes more than frocks; but this time it really would have been ungrateful of me to disapprove, as the whole fuss was being made for me. And I was dying to go to the dance!
We went quickly back to the motor, spun into Southsea, and before the female contingent knew exactly what was happening to it, rooms were engaged for the night, and a "responsible person" despatched by the first train to town, with a letter demanding certain articles of our luggage.
I was quite excited about the evening, but outwardly was "more than usual calm," as we wandered here and there, after luncheon, seeing Southsea--which must, by the way, be a most convenient place for girls, as they can choose between Navy and Army, or play with both if they are pretty enough. Just as we were going to have a run out to Hayling Island in the car, whom should we meet in the street, close to our hotel, but Mrs. Senter and Dick Burden.
She was looking very fetching and young, almost like a girl, certainly as unlike an aunt as possible. And, mother, I know it wasn't an accident. I don't mean about her being an aunt, of course, but being in Southsea and meeting us.
The day she called, in London, when Sir Lionel was in Warwickshire, I heard her asking Mrs. Norton questions about our route; and when dear Emily mentioned Winchester, she said, "Oh, won't you be passing through Southsea?"
Mrs. Norton answered in her vague little way that she was sure she didn't know. Then Mrs. Senter went on to say that she and Dick were invited to stay at a house near Southsea, and she thought they would probably accept. Perhaps, if they did, we might meet. But, as I wrote you, I thought it more likely we wouldn't, unless Sir Lionel should seem keen when he heard; and he didn't. He apparently took no interest whatever when his sister repeated the conversation to him next day.
Well, I'm sure Mrs. Senter made up her mind to accept her friend's invitation (even if she didn't ask for one) the minute she found out that we were likely soon to pass Southsea. She must have known we would be sure to stop for a look round Portsmouth and the neighbourhood, and thought the chance worth taking. If she hadn't, she would have stopped in London till the end of the season, no doubt, for she's the kind of person who lives for Society, and only cares for the country when it's the fashion to be in it.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she'd been patrolling the streets of Portsmouth and Southsea for a day or two, in the hope of running across us sooner or later. Or, as Dick Burden fancies himself in the part of a detective, perhaps he hit upon some surer way of getting at us.
Those two, aunt and nephew, play into each other's hands beautifully. Mamma, it seems, is visiting in Scotland at the moment, so they hunt in couples. How long "Aunt Gwen" has been a widow the saints may know; I don't--but anyway she has begun to "take notice," as people say about bright little babies. She has looked up Sir Lionel in Debrett, and marked him with a red cross for her own, I believe. Such impudence! A woman like that, to dare think of trying to grab a man of his position and record! She ought to know how unsuitable she would be for him.
As for Dick, of course he wants to flirt with me; but wait--wait till you hear the latest developments.
Sir Lionel seemed neither pleased nor displeased at the meeting, but he could not have suspected it was more than an accident, for he remarked that it was odd we should run up against each other like this!
Mrs. Senter said yes, indeed, it was, she was never more surprised in her life, though really it would have been odd, when one came to think of it, if we hadn't met, since she and Dick were stopping with friends on Hayling Island, and were constantly in Southsea.
"Do let me write a note to my friend Captain Starlin, and get you all invitations to the Thunderer dance to-night," she tacked on to the tail of her explanation.
"He's an old friend of mine, too," said Sir Lionel, "and we've not only invitations already, but have accepted them, and sent for my sister's and Miss Lethbridge's clothes."
Her face fell a little for an instant when she heard we'd sent for clothes, as probably Emily and I would have suited her better in our worst things; but she brightened up and said how pleased she was, because she and Dick were both going, and now they would really look forward to the dance; Dick had been bored with the idea before.
Well, the boxes came in good time, and the Bond Street darlings weren't crushed in the least, because I had put them to bed so nicely with sheets and pillows of tissue paper. I decided to wear a pink chiffon, with tiny button roses laid like a dainty frame all round the low neck and where the sleeves ought to have been but weren't. The chiffon's embroidered with roses to match. Can you imagine me in such a dream? I can't. But it suits me, rather. I wore pink shoes and stockings and gloves, all of the same shade, and poor Emily in gray silk, with her hair done in an aggressively virtuous way, looked like a cross between an Anglican nun and a tourist economizing luggage. Yet she wouldn't have been shocked if her brother'd had a harem in Bengal, because it was "good form." But of course, as she says, one is obliged to excuse things in men.
It was very amusing having dinner in the Captain's room, which was large and quite charming, with curtains and frilly silk cushions, and heaps of framed, signed photographs, and books, almost as if a woman had arranged it. But he told us one felt the motion there, more than anywhere else, in a storm; which must be some consolation to the "middies" who have to work for years before they can ever hope for such luxurious quarters.
Mrs. Senter and Dick weren't at dinner, which was one comfort. Besides ourselves, there were only the Captain's married sister, who had come from town for the dance, and her husband. The husband's an earl--Lord Knaresbrook; rather old; but Lady Knaresbrook is young, frightfully pretty, and knows it. She flirted fascinatingly at dinner with Sir Lionel; not as Mrs. Senter flirts, flickering her eyelashes, saying smart things as if to amuse him alone, and hang everyone else!--but just looking at him, with gorgeous, starry eyes; asking a question now and then, and listening with all her soul. I'm not sure it isn't an equally effective way, especially when done in a diamond tiara by a countess under twenty-five. I should quite have enjoyed watching it if Sir Lionel had been a stranger, but knowing him somehow made me feel 'pon honour not to look, and rather restless. I do believe that, compared with some of these men, who've been at the other end of the world for years doing important political things, Samson with his hair all cropped off was adamant to Lovely Woman!
Naturally, I had to have something to look at, and I couldn't look at Lord Knaresbrook because the shape of his nose worried me; and anyhow he wanted to talk to Emily about people they both knew. Such exciting bits as this floated to my ears: "Ah, yes, he was the great-grandson of Lord This. She married the Duke of That's second cousin." So I looked a good deal at Captain Starlin, and he looked at me and not at very much else, which was quite easy, the most important lady being his own sister, who took the place of hostess; so Mrs. Norton was on his right and I on his left. As he was our host, and evidently wanted to flirt a little, I thought it my duty to gratify his wish, and played up to him. That was quite right, wasn't it? I'm sure you'll say yes, as you are a Parisienne, and have brought me up to do unto others as I would be done by. But several times I happened to catch Sir Lionel's eyes, and they had a gloomy glint in them; not angry, but as if he'd discovered a screw loose in me. I felt as uncomfortable as you do with a smudge on your nose, which you see in shop-window mirrors when you've forgotten your handkerchief; but it was too late to change my behaviour suddenly, so I went on as I had begun.
We mere females didn't leave the men at the table, perhaps because there wasn't any place where it would have been proper for us to wander unmanned. We sat for hours, and Lady Knaresbrook smoked, and wanted us to smoke, though of course she must have known that no woman with her hair done like Emily's would. Emily looked shocked, but just pressed in her lips, and didn't disapprove out aloud, as she might if Lady Knaresbrook had been plain "Mrs." But afterward she told me she was now ready to believe "all they say" about Diana Knaresbrook. Just because she smoked! Mrs. Norton could find immorality in a hard-boiled egg if she looked for it.
At last we went above, or whatever you call it on a ship, and everything had been made beautiful with flags and bunting; but nothing was as beautiful as those sailor men themselves, especially the middies. I felt like their mother (I hope that's not unmaidenly?) and should have loved to smooth their hair and pat them on the cheek--of which, by the way, they had plenty!
A good many were introduced to me; and Dick brought his aunt very early, because, he said, he didn't want to find all my dances gone. You can believe I hadn't saved any for him! But as a matter of fact, I had kept back two, thinking Sir Lionel might ask me; for after his many kindnesses I shouldn't have liked to seem not to want to dance with him, you see. When he didn't ask at first, I supposed it might be because he wasn't a dancing man (horrid expression!--sounds like a trained bear); but presently I saw him waltzing with Lady Knaresbrook; and he danced beautifully, as if he'd done nothing else all those years in Bengal. Then I said to myself: "He's vexed with me because he thinks I behaved badly at dinner, and perhaps I did." And I almost hoped he would suggest sitting out a dance, so that we could talk.
But then Dick came; and when he found I had two dances he wanted them both. "There are things I must tell you," he said. And mother, it's easy to see that the creature has some talent as a detective, because he guessed at once why I'd been saving those dances.
"It's no good keeping anything up your sleeve for Pendragon," said he, in his perky way, as if he were on an equality with the ex-Lieutenant-Governor of East Bengal. "He won't ask you to dance. He thinks you're a little girl, and is leaving you to little boys, like me, which is quite right. The only woman he's ever taken any interest in for the last fifteen years is Aunt Gwen. And you can't say he doesn't show good taste."
I couldn't, especially as Mrs. Senter was looking like the heroine of a novel which you'd be sure to forbid my reading; so I gave him the dances, partly for that reason and partly because I was cowardly enough to want to hear what he had to tell. Just at the moment he couldn't say more, though, because a sweet brown lamb of a middy came and whirled me away. So it went on for half the evening, until it was nearly time for Dick Burden's first dance, and I was sitting down to breathe (after a furious galop, which didn't go at all well with a Directoire dress), beside Mrs. Norton, who had the air of thinking a ballroom a sort of pound for lost souls.
Up came Sir Lionel as if to speak to her, and--I don't know what made me do it--I said, "I saved a dance for you, but you never asked me for it, so I gave it to someone else."
His face got red. Perhaps he thought I was lecturing him for being rude.
"Did you give it to Starlin?" he asked, bluntly.
"No. I've had mine with Captain Starlin. To Mr. Burden," said I.
"Do you want to dance it with him?"
"Not at all."
"Chuck him, then, and dance it with me. I should like to talk to you."
"That's what he said."
"Do you want to hear what he's got to say?"
(Well, you know, dear, I had wanted to; but suddenly I felt as if Dick didn't matter more than a fly, nor did any one else except the person I was talking to. You do feel like that with these quiet, masterful sort of people, whether you care for them or not. It's just a kind of momentary hypnotism; or, at least, that's the definition I've been giving myself.)
"I don't want to hear what he's got to say," my hypnotized Me answered, in the queer, abrupt way in which we had begun snapping out little short sentences to each other. "I'm sure he couldn't say anything really interesting."
"Don't you like Dick Burden?"
"Not much."
"Then the dance is mine. Which is it?"
"The next. Here he comes now. I see the top of his head, over the shoulder of that youth with the collar of a curate and the face of a convict."
The Dragon smiled benevolently at my wicked description of a comparatively inoffensive person, and whisked me off.
"Are you offended with me?" I asked, as we waltzed a weird but heavenly Hungarian waltz (made in Germany).
"Why do you ask that?" he wanted to know.
"Because you looked offended at dinner. What had I done? Eaten something with the wrong fork?"
"You had done nothing I oughtn't to have been prepared to see you do."
"What ought you to be prepared to see me do?"
"It doesn't matter now."
"It does. If you don't tell me, I shall scream 'Murder' at the top of my lungs, and then you'll have to speak."
"I certainly wouldn't. I'd bundle you home at once."
"I haven't got any home."
"My home is yours, till you marry."
"Or you do."
"Don't talk nonsense." (He was probably going to say "Tommy-rot" but considered such striking words unfit for the ear of a débutante. This was my début, I suppose? My very first ball.)
"Then tell me what you were unprepared for in me."
"I was prepared for it at first, before I saw you. But----"
"What?"
"Well, if you will have it, for your flirting."
Suddenly I felt impish, and said, innocently, that I supposed it was what girls came on board men-o'-war to do, so I had only done my best to please. By this time we'd stopped dancing, and were sitting down. I'd forgotten Dick Burden.
"It all depends upon the point of view," he answered, with rather a disgusted air.
"My point of view is," said I, gravely, "that soldiers as well as sailors should approve of flirting, because flirtation is a warlike act; a short incursion into the enemy's country, with the full intention of getting back untouched."
"Ah, but what of the enemy?" suggested the Dragon.
"He can always take care of himself on such incursions."
"So that's the theory? And at nineteen you have enlisted in that army?"
"What army?"
"The great army of flirts."
I couldn't keep it up any longer, for I had really started in to explain, not to joke. And you know, dear, that flirting as a profession wouldn't be in my line at all.
"Do I look like a flirt?" I asked.
"No. You don't," said he. "And I was beginning to hope----"
"Please go on hoping, then," I said. "Because I didn't want to behave badly. If I did, it was because I don't quite know the game yet. And I wanted to tell you that I didn't really mean to be silly and schoolgirlish, and disgrace you and Mrs. Norton."
Then it was his turn to apologize, and he did it thoroughly. He said that I hadn't been silly, and so far from disgracing him, he was proud of me--"proud of his ward." It was only that I seemed so much more womanly and companionable than he'd expected, that he couldn't bear to see in me, or think he saw, any likeness whatever to inferior types of woman. Whereupon I had the impertinence to ask why he'd expected me to be inferior; but the only explanation I could get him to make was that he didn't know much about girls. Which he had remarked before.
We'd sat out two dances before we--I mean I--knew it; and nobody had dared to come near us, because a middy can't very well snatch a partner out of a celebrity's pocket. And Dick, too, though he seems to have the courage of most of his convictions, drew the line at that. But suddenly I did remember. I smiled at a hovering laddie with the most smoothly polished hair you ever saw, just like a black helmet; and when the laddie had swung me away in the Merry Widow waltz Sir Lionel went back to Mrs. Senter. Rather an appropriate air for her to dance to, I thought. I do pray I'm not getting kitten-catty? Anyhow, I'm not in my second kittenhood!
You will be wondering by this time why I'm sorry we stayed at Southsea, when it was all for me, and I seem to have been having the "time of my life." But I'm coming to the part you want to know about.
I thought perhaps Dick Burden would be vexed at my going off with Sir Lionel, under his nose, just as he was ready to say "my dance." However, he walked up to me as if nothing had happened, when it was time for the second, so I didn't apologize. I thought it best to let sleeping partners lie.
We danced a little, but Dick, who is one-and-twenty, doesn't waltz half as well as Sir Lionel, who is forty; and he saw that I thought so. Presently he asked if I'd rather sit out the rest, and I answered, yes; so he said he would tell me the things he had to say. He found a quiet place, which must have looked as if deliberately selected for a desperate flirtation; and then he didn't do much beating about the bush. He just told me that he knew everything. He'd partly "detected" it, and partly found out by chance; but of course he made the most of the detecting bit.
Don't be frightened and get a palpitation at the news, dearest; it isn't worth it. There's going to be no flare-up. Of course, if I were the heroine of a really nice melodrama, in such a scene as Dick and I went through, I should have been accompanied by slow music, with lime-light every time I turned my head, which would have heartened me up very much; while Dick would have had villain music--plink, plink, plunk! But I did as well as I could without an accompaniment, and I think, on the whole, managed the business very well.
You see, I had to think of Ellaline. I dared not let her out of my mind for a single instant, for if I should fail her now, at the crucial time, it would be my fault if her love story burst and went up the spout. If I'd stopped thinking of her, and saying in my mind while Dick talked, "I must save Ellaline, no matter what happens to me!" I should certainly have boxed his ears and told him to go to limbo.
He began by telling me that he'd met a friend of mine, a Miss Bennett--Kathy Bennett. Oh, mother, just for a minute my heart beat under my pretty frock like a bird caught in a child's hand! You remember my writing you what a friendship Ellaline and Kathy struck up, before Kathy left school to go back to England, and how she sent Ellaline cuttings from the London Radical papers about Sir Lionel Pendragon in Bengal? I do think it's almost ungentlemanly of so many coincidences to happen in connection with what I'm trying to do for Ellaline. But Kathy's such a lump, it's too great a compliment to call her a coincidence. Anyhow, Dick met her in town, at a tea party (a "bun worry," he called it) where he went with his dear Aunt Gwen; and when Kathy mentioned being at school at Madame de Maluet's, he asked if she knew Miss Lethbridge. She said of course she did, and she thought Ellaline was a "very naughty little thing" not to write or come and see her. She had read in the papers about the arrival of Sir Lionel with his sister and ward, you see.
Dick remarked that he'd hardly call Miss Lethbridge a "little thing," whereupon Kathy defended her adjective by saying Ellaline was only about up to her ear.
Of course that set Mr. Dick's detective bump to throbbing furiously. He reassured me by announcing that he hadn't said any more to Kathy, but that he'd thought a lot. In fact, he thought so much that he asked if she'd give him a line of introduction to Madame, as he had a cousin who wanted to go to a French school, and next time he "ran across to Paris," he might have a look at Versailles. Kathy gave the note, and that same night, if you'll believe it, the horrid little boy did "run across." At the earliest hour possible in the morning he called at the school, only to find Madame already away for her holidays. But you know she always leaves her sister, Mademoiselle Prado, to look after things, and when Mademoiselle heard what Dick wanted, she showed him all over the place. He said he would like to see photographs of the young ladies in groups, if any such existed, because he could write his Australian cousin what nice, happy-looking girls they were. Promptly that poor, unsuspecting female produced the big picture Madame had done of the tea-party on the lawn, a year ago in June, and there was I in it. But Dick was too foxy to begin by asking questions about me. Kathy adorned the photograph also, with Ellaline on her right and me in the perspective of her left ear, which must have seemed to point at me accusingly. Dick could claim Kathy quite naturally, as he'd come with her letter, and presently he led up to me, saying he seemed to have seen me somewhere. Was I a great friend of Miss Bennett's, and was it probable that she had my portrait?
Mademoiselle innocently said no, Miss Bennett was much more likely to have Mees Lethbridge's portrait than Mees Brendon's, as Mees Brendon was not a pupil of the school, only a teacher of singing, and Mees Kathy was not musical. But Mees Lethbridge, la petite jeune fille on the right, was a friend of Mees Bennett.
Now you'll admit that Dick was rather smart to have chopped all these branches off the tree of knowledge with his little hatchet. I think his cleverness worthy of a better cause.
The next thing he did was to ask, naïvely, if that Miss Lethbridge was the Miss Lethbridge--the ward of Sir Lionel Pendragon, so much talked of in the papers just now? Proud that her sister's school had moulded a celebrity, Mademoiselle chatted away about Ellaline, saying what a dear child she was, how sorry Madame was to part from her, and how Madame de Blanchemain, Ellaline's chère marraine, at St. Cloud, must be missing her mignonne at this very moment.
It goes without saying that Mr. Dick's next step took him at a single stride to St. Cloud. He didn't call on Madame de Blanchemain, not wishing to stir up a tempest in a teapot, but simply pryed and peered, and did all sorts of sneaky things, only excusable in a professional detective, who must (or thinks he must) live.
He found out about Madame de Blanchemain's nephew, Ellaline's Honoré, and put this and that together, until he'd patched up the theory of a love affair. But further he dared not go, on that track, so he pranced back to Versailles, and found out things about Audrie Brendon.
The way he did that was through noticing the name of the Versailles photographer who took the group in the garden. Dick called on him, and said he wanted a copy of the picture, because his "cousin" was in it. The man had several on hand, as parents occasionally wrote for them, and when Dick got his he inquired who I was. The obliging photographer, perhaps scenting a romance, told him I lived in the Rue Chapeau de Marie Antoinette with my mother. Then the wretch actually had the impudence to describe to me a visit he paid our apartment, ringing at the door, and asking dear Philomene for Madame Brendon!
In five minutes, he had heard all our family affairs, as far as that dear, simple, talkative soul could tell him. That you were in Switzerland, and I had gone to England to visit a friend.
I sat and listened to the end of the story, saying never a word, though I was in one of the moods which make me a person that nobody but myself could stand for a moment. I should simply have smiled if wild horses had come along to tear him in two.
"So you see," said he, at last, when I didn't speak, "I'm in the game with you."
"It isn't my game," said I.
"You're playing it," said he.
"Because I have to," said I.
"Is it Sir Lionel who's making you play it?" he asked.
"Oh, dear, no," I broke out, before I stopped to think.
"Then, he isn't in it?"
I thought it looked more respectable to admit that, whatever the "game" was, Sir Lionel and I were not playing it together.
"You're doing it for your friend," deduced our young detective.
I gently intimated that that was my business. But Mr. Burden advised me that I would be wise to accept him as my partner if I didn't want the business to fail.
"What have I done to you, that you should interfere?" I wanted to know, only I didn't dare--actually didn't dare, for Ellaline's sake, to speak angrily. Oh, I did feel like a worm's paper doll!
"You've made me like you, awfully," he said.
"Then you shouldn't want to do me any harm," I suggested.
"I don't want to do you harm," he defended himself. "What I want is to see as much of you as possible, and also I'd like to give Aunt Gwen a little pleasure, thrown in with mine. I want you to ask Sir Lionel to invite us to join your party. There's plenty of room for us in that big motor-car of his. I went to see it in the garage to-day."
"You would!" I couldn't resist sputtering. But he took no notice.
"You needn't be afraid that Aunt Gwen's in this," he went on to assure me. "I've kept mum as an oyster. All she knows is that I saw you--Miss Lethbridge--in Paris, and haven't been the same man since. She helped me get to know you, of course. She's a great chum of mine, and her being an old pal of Sir Lionel's too, meant a lot for me in the beginning. She's a ripper, and stanch as they make 'em--but they don't make 'em perfectly stanch where other women are concerned. And as long as you and I hunt in couples she shan't have a suspicion."
"You'd tell her, if I refused to hunt in that way?" I asked.
"I might think it my duty to let Sir Lionel know how he's being humbugged. At present I'm shuttin' my eyes to duty, and lookin' at you. What?"
"Why does Mrs. Senter want to come with us?" I ventured to inquire.
"Because," explained her loyal nephew, "she's fed up with visiting, and she loves motoring. So do I, with the right people. I'm sure it's not much to ask. We won't sponge on Sir Lionel. We'll pay our own hotel bills; and I'm sure, even though you are in a wax with me just now, you must admit Aunt Gwen and I would wake things up a bit--what? All's fair in love and war, so you oughtn't to blame me for anything I've done. You'd think it jolly well romantic if you read it in a book."
I denied this, but said I would consider. He must give me till to-morrow morning to make up my mind; which he flatly refused to do. To-morrow would be too late. He saw in my eye that I hoped to slip off, but it was "no good my being foxy." Things must be fixed up, or blown up, on board this ship to-night.
Whether or not he really meant to do his worst, if I wouldn't give in, I can't be sure, but he looked as obstinate as six pigs, and I didn't dare risk Ellaline's future. My own impression is that there's a big mistake somewhere, and that she would be perfectly safe in Sir Lionel's hands if she would tell him frankly all about Honoré du Guesclin--I, meanwhile, vanishing through a stage trap or something. But she may be right. And I may be wrong. That's why I was forced to promise Dick. And I kept my promise, as soon as we got home to our hotel--Sir Lionel, Mrs. Norton, and I.
I knew it would be a most horrid thing to do, but it was even horrider than I thought.
All the way going back I was planning what to say, and feeling damp on the forehead, thinking how impudent it would seem in me, a young girl and a guest, to make such a suggestion. But it had to be done, so I screwed up my courage, swallowed half of it again, with a lump in my throat, and exclaimed in a gay, spontaneous way, like the sweet, innocent angel I am: "Oh, Sir Lionel, wouldn't it be fun if Mrs. Senter and--and her nephew were going with us for a little way? They both love motoring."
He looked surprised and Emily pursed her lips.
"Do you want them to come?" he asked.
"Well, I just thought of it," I stammered.
"I thought you didn't like Burden," he said. No wonder, as I'd unfortunately unbosomed myself of my real sentiments not three hours before!
"I think he's amusing enough," I tried to slide out of the difficulty. "And Mrs. Senter probably wouldn't go without him."
"I somehow gathered an impression that you didn't admire her particularly," went on Sir Lionel, looking at me with a very straight look.
"Oh, I never said so!" I cried. "I admire her immensely."
"In that case, I'll ask them, with pleasure," said Sir Lionel. "The idea did cross my mind in London, but I didn't think you'd care for it, somehow. Emily will be pleased, I know. Won't you, Emily? And if Mrs. Senter will be as reasonable as you two in the matter of luggage we shall have plenty of room."
"It is your car, and the idea of the tour is yours," said Mrs. Norton, very feminine and resigned, also feeling that my "cheek" deserved a tiny scratch. "I am pleased with whatever pleases you."
Next morning (or rather the same morning, and this morning) Sir Lionel got his sister to write a note to Mrs. Senter, and he wrote one too, or added a P. S. "Aunt Gwen's" reply was a ladylike warwhoop of joy; and we are now waiting till the latest additions to our party have broken the news to their hostess at Hayling Island, packed a few things to take, and sent the rest "home" (wherever that may be) with Mrs. Senter's maid.
Good-bye, my Parisienne Angel.
Your broken and badly repaired
Audrie-Ellaline.
I long to hear whether you think I ought to have braved Dick.
