Маргарет Олифант
Old Mr. Tredgold
CHAPTER IX
Lady Jane walked into the room squarely, with her short skirts and her close jacket. She looked as if she were quite ready to walk back the four miles of muddy road between her house and the Cliff. And so indeed she was, though she had no intention of doing so to-day. She came in, pushing aside the footman, as I have said, who was very much frightened of Lady Jane. When she saw the dark figures of Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay sitting against the large light of the window, she uttered a suppressed sound of discontent. It might be translated by an “Oh,” or it might be translated, as we so often do as the symbol of a sound, by a “Humph.” At all events, it was a sound which expressed annoyance. “You here!” it seemed to say; but Lady Jane afterwards shook hands with them very civilly, it need not be said. For the two old cats were very respectable members of society, and not to be badly treated even by Lady Jane.
“That was your funny little carriage, I suppose,” she said, when she had seated herself, “stopping the way.”
“Was it stopping the way?” cried Mrs. Shanks, “the midge? I am astonished at Mr. Perkins. We always give him the most careful instructions; but if he had found one of the servants to gossip with, he is a man who forgets everything one may say.”
“I can’t undertake what his motives were, but he was in the way, blocking up the doors,” said Lady Jane; “all the more astonishing to my men and my horses, as they were brought out, much against their will, on the full understanding that nobody else would be out on such a day.”
“It is a long way to Steephill,” said Miss Mildmay, “so that we could not possibly have known Lady Jane’s intentions, could we, Jane Shanks? or else we might have taken care not to get into her way.”
“Oh, the public roads are free to every one,” said Lady Jane, dismissing the subject. “What rainy weather we have had, to be sure! Of course you are all interested in that bazaar; if it goes on like this you will have no one, not a soul to buy; and all the expense of the decorations and so forth on our hands.”
“Oh, the officers will come over from Newport,” said Miss Mildmay; “anything is better than nothing. Whatever has a show of amusement will attract the officers, and that will make the young ladies happy, so that it will not be thrown away.”
“What a Christian you are!” said Lady Jane. “You mean it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. I have several cousins in the garrison, but I don’t think I should care so much for their amusement as all that.”
“Was there ever a place,” said Mrs. Shanks, with a certain tone of humble admiration, which grated dreadfully upon her companion, “in which you had not a number of cousins, Lady Jane? They say the Scotch are the great people for having relatives everywhere, and my poor husband was a Scotchman; but I’m sure he had not half so many as you.”
Lady Jane answered curtly with a nod of her head and went on. “The rain is spoiling everything,” she said. “The men, of course, go out in spite of it when they can, but they have no pleasure in their work, and to have a shooting party on one’s hands in bad weather is a hard task. They look at you as if it were your fault, as if you could order good weather as easily as you can order luncheon for them at the cover side.”
“Dear me, that is not at all fair, is it, Ruth Mildmay? In my poor husband’s lifetime, when we used to take a shooting regularly, I always said to his friends, ‘Now, don’t look reproachfully at me if it’s bad weather. We can’t guarantee the weather. You ought to get so many brace if you have good luck. We’ll answer for that.’”
“You were a bold woman,” said Lady Jane; “so many brace without knowing if they could fire a gun or not! That’s a rash promise. Sir John is not so bold as that, I can tell you. He says, ‘There’s a bird or two about if you can hit ’em.’ Katherine, you may as well let me see those things of yours for my stall. It will amuse me a little this wet day.”
“They are all upstairs, Lady Jane.”
“Well, I’ll go upstairs. Oh, don’t let me take you away from your visitors. Stella, you can come with me and show them; not that I suppose you know anything about them.”
“Not the least in the world,” said Stella very clearly. Her face, so delicately tinted usually, and at present paler than ordinary, was crimson, and her attitude one of battle. She could propitiate and play with the old cats, but she dare not either cajole or defy Lady Jane.
“Then Katherine can come, and I can enjoy the pleasure of conversation with you after. Shall I find you still here,” said Lady Jane, holding out her hand graciously to the other ladies, “when I come downstairs again?”
“Oh, we must be going–”
Mrs. Shanks was interrupted by Miss Mildmay’s precise tones. “Probably you will find me here, Lady Jane; and I am sure it will be a mutual pleasure to continue the conversation which–”
“Then I needn’t say good-bye,” said the great lady calmly, taking Katherine by the arm and pushing the girl before her. Stella stood with her shoulders against the mantel-piece, very red, watching them as they disappeared. She gave the others an angry look of appeal as the door closed upon the more important visitor.
“Oh, I wish you’d take me away with you in the midge!” she cried.
“Ah, Stella,” cried Mrs. Shanks, shaking her head, “the times I have heard you making your fun of the midge! But in a time of trouble one finds out who are one’s real friends.”
Miss Mildmay was softened too, but she was not yet disposed to give in. She had not been able to eat that special muffin which Stella had re-toasted for her. Lady Jane, in declining tea curtly with a wave of her hands, had made the tea-drinkers uncomfortable, and especially had arrested the eating of muffins, which it is difficult to consume with dignity unless you have the sympathy of your audience. It was cold now, quite cold and unappetizing. It lay in its little plate with the air of a thing rejected. And Miss Mildmay felt it was not consistent with her position to ask even for half a cup of hot tea.
“It has to be seen,” she said stiffly, “what friends will respond to the appeal; everybody is not at the disposal of the erring person when and how she pleases. I must draw a line–”
“What do you say I have done, then?” cried Stella, flushing with lively wrath. “Do you think I went out in that boat on purpose to be drowned or catch my death? Do you think I wanted to be ill and sea-sick and make an exhibition of myself before two men? Do you think I wanted them to see me ill? Goodness!” cried Stella, overcome at once by the recollection and the image, “could you like a man—especially if he was by way of admiring you, and talking nonsense to you and all that—to see you ill at sea? If you can believe that you can believe anything, and there is no more for me to say.”
The force of this argument was such that Miss Mildmay was quite startled out of her usual composure and reserve. She stared at Stella for a moment with wide-opened eyes.
“I did not think of that,” she said in a tone of sudden conviction. “There is truth in what you say—certainly there is truth in what you say.”
“Truth in it!” cried the girl. “If you had only seen me—but I am very thankful you didn’t see me—leaning over the side of that dreadful boat, not minding what waves went over me! When you were a girl and had men after you, oh, Miss Mildmay, I ask you, would you have chosen to have them to see you then?”
Miss Mildmay put the plate with the cold muffin off her knees. She set down her empty cup. She felt the solemnity of the appeal.
“No,” she said, “if you put it to me like that, Stella, I am obliged to allow I should not. And I may add,” she went on, looking round the room as if to a contradictory audience, “I don’t know any woman who would; and that is my opinion, whatever anybody may say.” She paused a moment with a little triumphant air of having conducted to a climax a potent argument, looking round upon the baffled opponents. And then she came down from that height and added in soft tones of affectionate reproach: “But why did you go out with them at all, Stella? When I was a girl, as you say, and had—I never, never should have exposed myself to such risks, by going out in a boat with–”
“Oh, Miss Mildmay,” cried Stella, “girls were better in your time. You have always told us so. They were not perhaps so fond of—fun; they were in better order; they had more—more—” said the girl, fishing for a word, which Mrs. Shanks supplied her with by a movement of her lips behind Miss Mildmay’s back—“disciplined minds,” Stella said with an outburst of sudden utterance which was perilously near a laugh.
“And you had a mother, Ruth Mildmay?” said the plotter behind, in tender notes.
“Yes; I had a mother—an excellent mother, who would not have permitted any of the follies I see around me. Jane Shanks, you have conquered me with that word. Stella, my dear, count on us both to stand by you, should that insolent woman upstairs take anything upon her. Who is Lady Jane, I should like to know? The daughter of a new-made man—coals, or beer, or something! A creation of this reign! Stella, this will teach you, perhaps, who are your true friends.”
And Miss Mildmay extended her arms and took the girl to her bosom. Stella had got down on her knees for some reason of her own, which girls who are fond of throwing themselves about may understand, and therefore was within reach of this unexpected embrace, and I am afraid laughed rather than sobbed on Miss Mildmay’s lap; but the slight heaving of her shoulders in that position had the same effect, and sealed the bargain. The two ladies lingered a little after this, hoping that Lady Jane might come down. At least Miss Mildmay hoped so. Mrs. Shanks would have stolen humbly out to get into the midge at a little distance along the drive, not to disturb the big landau with the brown horses which stood large before the door. But Miss Mildmay would have none of that; she ordered the landau off with great majesty, and waved her hand indignantly for Perkins to “come round,” as if the midge had been a chariot, a manœuvre which Stella promoted eagerly, standing in the doorway to see her visitors off with the most affectionate interest, while the other carriage paced sullenly up and down.
In the meantime Lady Jane had nearly completed her interview with Katherine in the midst of the large assortment of trumpery set out in readiness for the bazaar. “Oh, yes, I suppose they’ll do well enough,” she said, turning over the many coloured articles into which the Sliplin ladies had worked so many hours of their lives with careless hands. “Mark them cheap; the people here like to have bargains, and I’m sure they’re not worth much. Of course, it was not the bazaar things I was thinking of. Tell me, Katherine, what is all this about Stella? I find the country ringing with it. What has she done to have her name mixed up with Charlie Somers and Algy Scott—two of the fastest men one knows? What has the child been doing? And how did she come to know these men?”
“She has been doing nothing, Lady Jane. It is the most wicked invention. I can tell you exactly how it happened. A little yacht was lying in the harbour, and they went up to papa’s observatory, as he calls it, to look at it through his telescope, and papa himself was there, and he said–”
“But this is going very far back, surely? I asked you what Stella was doing with these men.”
“And I am telling you,” cried Katherine, red with indignation. “Papa said it was his yacht, which he had just bought, and they began to argue and bet about who it was from whom he had bought it, and he would not tell them; and then Stella said–”
“My dear Katherine, this elaborate explanation begins to make me fear–”
“Stella cried: ‘Come down and look at it, while Kate orders tea.’ You know how careless she is, and how she orders me about. They ran down by our private gate. It was to settle their bet, and I had tea laid out for them—it was quite warm then—under the trees. Well,” said Katherine, pausing to take breath, “the first thing I saw was a white sail moving round under the cliff while I sat waiting for them to come back. And then papa came down screaming that it was the Stella, his yacht, and that a gale was blowing up. And then we spent the most dreadful evening, and darkness came on and we lost sight of the sail, and I thought I should have died and that it would kill papa.”
Her breath went from her with this rapid narrative, uttered at full speed to keep Lady Jane from interrupting. What with indignation and what with alarm, the quickening of her heart was such that Katherine could say no more. She stopped short and stood panting, with her hand upon her heart.
“And at what hour,” said Lady Jane icily, “did they come back?”
“Oh, I can’t tell what hour it was. It seemed years and years to me. I got her back in a faint and wet to the skin, half dead with sickness and misery and cold. Oh, my poor, poor little girl! And now here are wicked and cruel people saying it is her fault. Her fault to risk her life and make herself ill and drive us out of our senses, papa and me!”
“Oh, Stella would not care very much for her papa and you, so long as she got her fun. So it was as bad as that, was it—a whole night at sea along with these two men? I could not have imagined any girl would have been such a fool.”
“I will not hear my sister spoken of so. It was the men who were fools, or worse, taking her out when a gale was rising. What did she know about the signs of a gale? She thought of nothing but two minutes in the bay, just to see how the boat sailed. It was these men.”
“What is the use of saying anything about the men? I dare say they enjoyed it thoroughly. It doesn’t do them any harm. Why should they mind? It is the girl who ought to look out, for it is she who suffers. Good Heavens, to think that any girl should be such a reckless little fool!”
“Stella has done nothing to be spoken of in that way.”
“Oh, don’t speak to me!” said Lady Jane. “Haven’t I taken you both up and done all I could to give you your chance, you two? And this is my reward. Stella has done nothing? Why, Stella has just compromised herself in the most dreadful way. You know what sort of a man Charlie Somers is? No, you don’t, of course. How should you, not living in a set where you were likely to hear? That’s the worst, you know, of going out a little in one monde and belonging to another all the time.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Lady Jane,” cried Katherine, on the edge of tears.
“No; there’s no need you should know what I mean. A girl, in another position, that got to know Charlie Somers would have known more or less what he was. You, of course, have the disadvantages of both—acquaintance and then ignorance. Who introduced Charlie Somers to your sister? The blame lies on her first of all.”
“It was—they were all—at the hotel, and Stella thought it would be kind to ask Mrs. Seton to a picnic we were giving–”
“Lottie Seton!” cried Lady Jane, sitting down in the weakness of her consternation. “Why, this is the most extraordinary thing of all!”
“I see nothing extraordinary in the whole business,” said Katherine, in a lofty tone.
“Oh, my dear Katherine, for goodness’ sake don’t let me have any more of your innocent little-girlishness. Of course you see nothing! You have no eyes, no sense, no– Lottie Seton!—she to give over two of her own men to a pretty, silly, reckless little thing like Stella, just the kind for them! Well, that is the last thing I should have expected. Why, Lottie Seton is nothing without her tail. If they abandon her she is lost. She is asked to places because she is always sure to be able to bring a few men. What they can see in her nobody knows, but there it is—that’s her faculty. And she actually gave over two of her very choicest–”
“You must excuse me, Lady Jane,” said Katherine, “if I don’t want to hear any more of Mrs. Seton and her men. They are exceedingly rude, stupid, disagreeable men. You may think it a fine thing for us to be elevated to the sphere in which we can meet men like Sir Charles Somers. I don’t think so. I think he is detestable. I think he believes women to exist only for the purpose of amusing him and making him laugh, like an idiot, as he is!”
Lady Jane sat in her easy-chair and looked sardonically at the passion of the girl, whose face was crimson, whose voice was breaking. She was, with that horrible weakness which a high-spirited girl so resents in herself, so near an outbreak of crying that she could scarcely keep the tears within her eyes. The elder lady looked at her for some time in silence. The sight troubled her a little, and amused her a little also. It occurred to her to say, “You are surely in love with him yourself,” which was her instinct, but for once forbore, out of a sort of awed sense that here was a creature who was outside of her common rules.
“He is not an idiot, however,” she said at last. “I don’t say he is intellectual. He does think, perhaps, that women exist, &c. So do most of them, my dear. You will soon find that out if you have anything to do with men. Still, for a good little girl, I have always thought you were nice, Katherine. It is for your sake more than hers that I feel inclined to do that silly little Stella a good turn. How could she be such a little fool? Has she lived on this cliff half her life and doesn’t know when a gale’s coming on? The more shame to her, then! And I don’t doubt that instead of being ashamed she is quite proud of her adventure. And I hear, to make things worse, that Algy Scott went and caught a bad cold over it. That will make his mother and all her set furious with the girl, and say everything about her. He’s not going to die—that’s a good thing. If he had, she need never have shown her impertinent little nose anywhere again. Lady Scott’s an inveterate woman. It will be bad enough as it is. How are we to get things set right again?”
“It is a pity you should take any trouble,” said Katherine; “things are quite right, thank you. We have quite enough in what you call our own monde.”
“Well, and what do you find to object to in the word? It is a very good word; the French understand that sort of thing better than we do. So you have quite enough to make you happy in your own monde? I don’t think so—and I know the world in general better than you do. And, what is more, I am very doubtful indeed whether Stella thinks so.”
“Oh, no,” cried a little voice, and Stella, running in, threw herself down at Lady Jane’s feet, in the caressing attitude which she had so lately held in spite of herself at Miss Mildmay’s. “Stella doesn’t think so at all. Stella will be miserable if you don’t take her up and put things right for her, dear Lady Jane. I have been a dreadful little fool. I know it, I know it; but I didn’t mean it. I meant nothing but a little—fun. And now there is nobody who can put everything right again but you, and only you.”
CHAPTER X
Lady Jane Thurston was a fine lady in due place and time; but on other occasions she was a robust countrywoman, ready to walk as sturdily as any man, or to undertake whatever athletic exercise was necessary. When she had gone downstairs again, and been served with a cup of warm tea (now those old cats were gone), she sent her carriage off that the horses might be put under shelter, not to speak of the men, and walked herself in the rain to the hotel, where the two young men were still staying, Captain Scott being as yet unable to be moved. It was one of those hotels which are so pretty in summer, all ivy and clematis, and balconies full of flowers. But on a wet day in October it looked squalid and damp, with its open doorway traversed by many muddy footsteps, and the wreaths of the withered creepers hanging limp about the windows. Lady Jane knew everybody about, and took in them all the interest which a member of the highest class—quite free from any doubt about her position—is able to take with so much more ease and naturalness than any other. The difference between the Tredgolds, for instance, and Mrs. Black of the hotel in comparison with herself was but slightly marked in her mind. She was impartially kind to both. The difference between them was but one of degree; she herself was of so different a species that the gradations did not count. In consequence of this she was more natural with the Blacks at the hotel than Katherine Tredgold, though in her way a Lady Bountiful, and universal friend, could ever have been. She was extremely interested to hear of Mrs. Black’s baby, which had come most inopportunely, with a sick gentleman in the house, at least a fortnight before it was expected, and went upstairs to see the mother and administer a word or two of rebuke to the precipitate infant before she proceeded on her own proper errand. “Silly little thing, to rush into this rain sooner than it could help,” she said, “but mind you don’t do the same, my dear woman. Never trouble your head about the sick gentleman. Don’t stir till you have got up your strength.” And then she marched along the passages to the room in which Algy and Charlie sat, glum and tired to death, looking out at the dull sky and the raindrops on the window. They had invented a sort of sport with those same raindrops, watching them as they ran down and backing one against the other. There had just been a close race, and Algy’s man had won to his great delight, when Lady Jane’s sharp knock came to the door; so that she went in to the sound of laughter pealing forth from the sick gentleman in such a manner as to reassure any anxious visitor as to the state of his lungs, at least.
“Well, you seem cheerful enough,” Lady Jane said.
“Making the best of it,” said Captain Scott.
“How do, Lady Jane? I say, Algy, there’s another starting. Beg pardon, too excitin’ to stop. Ten to one on the little fellow. By George, looks as if he knew it, don’t he now! Done this time, old man–”
“Never took it,” said Algy, with a kick directed at his friend. “Shut up! It’s awfully kind of you coming to see a fellow—in such weather—Lady Jane!”
“Yes,” she said composedly, placing herself in the easiest chair. “It would be kind if I had come without a motive—but I don’t claim that virtue. How are you, by the way? Better, I hope.”
“Awfully well—as fit as a–, but they won’t let me budge in this weather. I’ve got a nurse that lords it over me, and the doctor, don’t you know?—daren’t stir, not to save my life.”
“And occupying your leisure with elevating pastimes,” said Lady Jane.
“Don’t be hard on a man when he’s down—nothing to do,” said Sir Charles. “Desert island sort of thing—Algy educating mouse, and that sort of thing; hard lines upon me.”
“Does he know enough?” said Lady Jane with a polite air of inquiry. “I am glad to find you both,” she added, “and not too busy evidently to give me your attention. How did you manage, Algy, to catch such a bad cold?”
“Pneumonia, by Jove,” the young man cried, inspired by so inadequate a description.
“Well, pneumonia—so much the worse—and still more foolish for you who have a weak chest. How did you manage to do it? I wonder if your mother knows, and why is it I don’t find her here at your bedside?”
“I say, don’t tell her, Lady Jane; it’s bad enough being shut up here, without making more fuss, and the whole thing spread all over the place.”
“What is the whole thing?” said Lady Jane.
“Went out in a bit of a yacht,” said Sir Charles, “clear up a bet, that was why we did it. Caught in a gale—my fault, not Algy’s—says he saw it coming—I–”
“You were otherwise occupied, Charlie–”
“Shut up!” Sir Charles was the speaker this time, with a kick in the direction of his companion in trouble.
“I am glad to see you’ve got some grace left,” said Lady Jane. “Not you, Algy, you are beyond that—I know all about it, however. It was little Stella Tredgold who ran away with you—or you with her.”
Algy burst into a loud laugh. Sir Charles on his part said nothing, but pulled his long moustache.
“Which is it? And what were the rights of it? and was there any meaning in it? or merely fun, as you call it in your idiotic way?”
“By Jove!” was all the remark the chief culprit made. Algy on his sofa kicked up his feet and roared again.
“Please don’t think,” said Lady Jane, “that I am going to pick my words to please you. I never do it, and especially not to a couple of boys whom I have known since ever they were born, and before that. What do you mean by it, if it is you, Charlie Somers? I suppose, by Algy’s laugh, that he is not the chief offender this time. You know as well as I do that you’re not a man to take little girls about. I suppose you must have sense enough to know that, whatever good opinion you may have of yourself. Stella Tredgold may be a little fool, but she’s a girl I have taken up, and I don’t mean to let her be compromised. A girl that knew anything would have known better than to mix up her name with yours. Now what is the meaning of it? You will just be so good as to inform me.”
“Why, Cousin Jane, it was all the little thing herself.”
“Shut up!” said Sir Charles again, with another kick at Algy’s foot.
“Well!” said Lady Jane, very magisterially. No judge upon the bench could look more alarming than she. It is true that her short skirts, her strong walking shoes, her very severest hat and stiff feather that would bear the rain, were not so impressive as flowing wigs and robes. She had not any of the awe-inspiring trappings of the Law; but she was law all the same, the law of society, which tolerates a great many things, and is not very nice about motives nor forbidding as to details, but yet draws the line—if capriciously—sometimes, yet very definitely, between what can and what cannot be done.
“Well,” came at length hesitatingly through the culprit’s big moustache. “Don’t know, really—have got anything to say—no meaning at all. Bet to clear up—him and me; then sudden thought—just ten minutes—try the sails. No harm in that, Lady Jane,” he said, more briskly, recovering courage, “afterwards gale came on; no responsibility,” he cried, throwing up his hands.
“Fact it was she that was the keenest. I shan’t shut up,” cried Algy; “up to anything, that little thing is. Never minded a bit till it got very bad, and then gave in, but never said a word. No fault of anybody, that is the truth. But turned out badly—for me–”
“And worse for her,” said Lady Jane—“that is, without me; all the old cats will be down upon the girl” (which was not true, the reader knows). “She is a pretty girl, Charlie.”
Sir Charles, though he was so experienced a person, coloured faintly and gave a nod of his head.
“Stunner, by Jove!” said Algy, “though I like the little plain one better,” he added in a parenthesis.
“And a very rich girl, Sir Charles,” Lady Jane said.
This time a faint “O—Oh” came from under the big moustache.
“A very rich girl. The father is an old curmudgeon, but he is made of money, and he adores his little girl. I believe he would buy a title for her high and think it cheap.”
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Sir Charles, with a colour more pronounced upon his cheek.
“Yours is not anything very great in that way,” said the remorseless person on the bench, “but still it’s what he would call a title, you know; and I haven’t the least doubt he would come down very handsomely. Old Tredgold knows very well what he is about.”
“Unexpected,” said Sir Charles, “sort of serious jaw like this. Put it off, if you don’t mind, till another time.”
“No time like the present,” said Lady Jane. “Your father was a great friend of mine, Charlie Somers. He once proposed to me—very much left to himself on that occasion, you will say—but still it’s true. So I might have been your mother, don’t you see. I know your age, therefore, to a day. You are a good bit past thirty, and you have been up to nothing but mischief all your life.”
“Oh, I say now!” exclaimed Sir Charles again.
“Well, now here is a chance for you. Perhaps I began without thinking, but now I’m in great earnest. Here is really a chance for you. Stella’s not so nice as her sister, as Algy there (I did not expect it of him) has the sense to see: but she’s much more in your way. She is just your kind, a reckless little hot-headed—all for pleasure and never a thought of to-morrow. But that sort of thing is not so risky when you have a good fortune behind you, well tied down. Now, Charlie, listen to me. Here is a capital chance for you; a man at your age, if he is ever going to do anything, should stop playing the fool. These boys even will soon begin to think you an old fellow. Oh, you needn’t cry out! I know generations of them, and I understand their ways. A man should stop taking his fling before he gets to thirty-five. Why, Algy there would tell you that, if he had the spirit to speak up.”
“I’m out of it,” said Algy. “Say whatever you like, it has nothing to do with me.”
“You see,” said Lady Jane, with a little flourish of her hand, “the boy doesn’t contradict me; he daren’t contradict me, for it’s truth. Now, as I say, here’s a chance for you. Abundance of money, and a very pretty girl, whom you like.” She made a pause here to emphasise her words. “Whom—you—like. Oh, I know very well what I’m saying. I am going to ask her over to Steephill and you can come too if you please; and if you don’t take advantage of your opportunities, Sir Charles, why you have less sense than even I have given you credit for, and that is a great deal to say.”
“Rather public, don’t you think, for this sort of thing? Go in and win, before admiring audience. Don’t relish exhibition. Prefer own way.”
This Sir Charles said, standing at the window, gazing out, apparently insensible even of the raindrops, and turning his back upon his adviser.
“Well, take your own way. I don’t mind what way you take, so long as you take my advice, which is given in your very best interests, I can tell you. Isn’t the regiment ordered out to India, Algy?” she said, turning quickly upon the other. “And what do you mean to do?”
