Faro's Daughter Read online

  `Next you will be wanting to pay him the interest!' said her ladyship.

  `The interest! I had forgotten that! Oh, ought we to pay that too?' said Miss Grantham, appalled.

  Lady Bellingham flung up her hands. `Deb, you are mad! I do not know what has come over you! It was bad enough when you wantonly threw away twenty thousand pounds - and I can scarcely bear to think of that, when I remember all the shocking bills! - but when it comes to refusing to accept the dreadful mortgage, which you have spent a week trying to get from Ravenscar, it goes beyond all bounds! Anyone would have supposed that you would be thankful to get the wretched thing so easily! But not at all! I do believe you would ha, preferred to have wrested it from Ravenscar by main force `Yes, I. would,' replied Miss Grantham earnestly. `Much rather! That would have been my wits against his! This - oh, I wonder you cannot see how impossible it is!’

  'I cannot, and I never shall,' said her aunt. `At least, I hope I shall not, but sometimes I feel as though I were going mad too. I wish you will let me call in the doctor to you! I am sure you have caught a touch of the sun, or contracted some horrid disease which is sending you out of your mind!'

  Before Miss Grantham could repudiate this suggestion there was a hurried tap on the door, followed immediately by the entrance of Miss Laxton into the room, looking as white as her tucker.

  `Good God, child, what is the matter with you?' exclaimed Lady Bellingham.

  Miss Laxton took a wavering step towards Deborah. `Sir James!’ she managed to utter, and crumpled up where she stood, in a dead faint.

  `Oh, heavens, if it is not one thing it is another!' wailed her ladyship, looking round wildly for the vinaigrette. `Untie her laces! Where are those salts? Why is nothing ever where it is wanted? Ring the bell! Oh no, the hartshorn is in that cupboard! I shall go distracted! You ought to burn some feathers under her nose, but there are only the new ostrich plumes in my best hat, and really- However, take them if you like! I am sure I do not grudge them!’

  Deborah, who had dropped on to her knees beside Miss Laxton's inanimate form, raised her head to say: `My dear ma'am, it is quite unnecessary! Have the goodness to bring me a little water, and I will engage for it that she will soon come round! Poor child, what can have happened, I wonder? Did she say Sir James was here?'

  `She said Sir James, but I heard nothing more. If this is his doing, I will step downstairs immediately, and give him a piece of my mind. This may be a gaming-house, but if he thinks to come to it simply to terrify stupid girls he is very much mistaken, and so he will find before he is a day older!’

  Deborah took the glass of water from her, and sprinkled a little on Miss Laxton's face. `Hush, ma'am! She is coming to herself! There, my dear! You are better now, are you not?'

  Phoebe's eyes opened, and stared blankly up into Miss Grantham's face for a bewildered moment. Then, as realization came, she shuddered convulsively, and clutched at Miss Grantham's arm. `Oh, don't let him come in!’

  `No one shall come in whom you don't wish to see, r dear,' replied Miss Grantham calmly. `Do not agitate yours so! You are quite safe! Come, I want you to drink this hat horn-and-water, and then you will be better!’

  Miss Laxton swallowed the mixture obediently, and burst into tears. Lady Bellingham said: `For heaven's sake, child don't start crying! If Sir James is downstairs, I will very so send him about his business! His mother was a very vulgar low kind of a woman, so that I am sure one cannot be surprise at anything!'

  Miss Grantham helped Phoebe to rise from the floor, a put her into a large armchair. `Is he downstairs, Phoebe?'

  'No! Oh, no, I think not! He walked away. He will have gone to my father. I am utterly undone! What shall I d Where can I go ? I dare not stay here another minute!’

  Lady Bellingham sighed, and shook her head. `I declare cannot make head or tail of what she means! I dare say shi going mad too, if we only knew, and who shall wonder at.’

  Phoebe clasped Miss Grantham's hand feebly, and said t: indeed she was not mad. `It was my fault. It was all my fault I never thought - I went into the front saloon, to watch Adrian, and I didn't think that anyone would see me. I pulled back the blinds, to see better, and he was there!’

  `Who was there? Who was where?' demanded Ls Bellingham.

  `Sir James, in the Square, walking by the house in the direction of St James's Street

  !’

  'I daresay he was on his way to White's,' said her ladyship.

  `But he saw me! I know he saw me, and knew me too! I not immediately perceive him, and when I did look toward him he was standing quite still, staring up at me! I thought I should have died of fright! I ran away from the window came directly in search of you, Deb! Oh, what is to be doing. I won't go back, I won't, but I know Papa will come to fetch me, and Mama too, very likely!’

  'Well, if Augusta Laxton comes into this house I shall know what to do!' said Lady Bellingham, with unwonted pugnaciously. `I do not wish to speak ill of your Mama, Phoebe, but she is odious, mercenary, cheating wretch! She used to play faro at my parties, when we lived in the smaller house, and at times did I catch her cocking her card! Let her attempt to find her way in here, that is all I have to say!'

  Miss Laxton, however, refused to be comforted. She quite sure that she would be wrested from her friends' protection, and compelled to marry Sir James Filey. No representations which Miss Grantham could make of the impossibility of her being compelled to marry anyone bore any weight with her; she seemed to be determined to give herself up for lost. It was with considerable relief that Miss Grantham learned, a few minutes later, that Lord Mablethorpe was belowstairs.

  `Desire him to come up!’ she said. `You will not object to his coming into your dressing-room, aunt?'

  `Oh no, let him come!’ said her ladyship, quite exhausted by her efforts to reassure Phoebe. `I do not care who comes, if only they can put some sense into this stupid girl's head! I will say this for you, Deb: you may lock people up in the cellar, and fling thousands of pounds in their faces as though it was mud, but you don't cry! Nothing could be more tiresome, when all is said and done! If that is you at the door, Mablethorpe, come in this instant, and do something!’

  Lord Mablethorpe came in, looking a little shy, and rather startled. He began to apologize for intruding upon Lady Bellingham in her dressing-room, but stopped short at the sight of Miss Laxton, and started forward, exclaiming `Good God, what is the matter?'

  Miss Laxton, who had been lying with her eyes closed, apparently on the verge of yet another swoon, revived sufficiently to sit up, and to cast herself into his lordship's arms. Miss Grantham then abandoned her own attempts to bring relief to her suffering protegee, and stood back to see what success his lordship's efforts might meet with.

  `What a fool that woman is never to have told her daughter that nothing can be more fatal than to weep all down a man's waistcoat!' whispered Lady Bellingham, quite exasperated. `They can't bear it, and I'm sure I don't wonder!'

  But Lord Mablethorpe did not seem to mind being wept over. Miss Grantham could not but admire his handling of a situation which she frankly acknowledged to be beyond her power to mend. In a remarkably short time, Miss Laxton had stopped crying, and was even able to smile tremulously up at his lordship, and to beg his pardon for having been such a goose. Now that he had come, she said, she knew that she would be safe.

  Lord Mablethorpe then demanded to be told the cause of her distress. When it had been explained to him, once (unintelligibly) by Phoebe, and once by Deborah, his brows drew together across the bridge of his beautiful nose, and he said with more decision than Deborah had ever before heard in his voice: `That settles it, then!'

  Miss Laxton heaved a huge sigh, and tucked her hand in his `I knew you would know what to do!'

  `Well, it's to be hoped he does,' said Lady Bellingham, wit] some asperity. `If I had known that all you wanted was to hear someone say that settles it, I would have said it myself, for I an sure it is easy enough to say, and doesn't sig