A Double Knot - George Manville Fenn

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are as bad as Renée! If I had not been firm, she would have certainly accepted him, and he is a man of most expensive habits. It was most absurd of Renée. But there: that’s over. But I do rather wonder at Frank making so much of a friend of him. Oh dear me, no, Gertrude! that would be impossible!”

      “Of course, mamma!”

      “Then why did you talk in that tone?”

      “Because I don’t like Major Malpas, and I am sure Renée does not, either.”

      “Of course she does not. She is a married lady. Surely she can be civil to people without always thinking of liking! It was a curious chance that Richard should be gazetted into the same regiment; and under the circumstances I have been bound to invite him and that other officer, Captain Glen, here, for they can help your brother, no doubt, a great deal. You see, I have to think of everything, for your poor father only thinks now of his dinners and his clubs.”

      Gertrude sighed and went on with her work, while Lady Millet yawned, got up, looked out of the window, and came back.

      “Quite time the carriage was round. Then I am to go alone?”

      “I promised Renée to be in this morning,” said Gertrude quietly.

      “Ah, well; then I suppose you must stop. I wonder whether Lady Littletown will take any notice of Richard now he is at Hampton Court?”

      “I should think she would, mamma. She is always most friendly.”

      “Friendly, but not trustworthy, my dear. A terribly scheming woman, Gertrude. Her sole idea seems to be match-making. But, there, Richard is too young to become her prey!”

      Gertrude’s brow wrinkled, and she looked wonderingly at her mother, whose face was averted.

      “I have been looking up the Glens. Not a bad family, but a younger branch. I suppose Richard will accompany his brother officer here one of these days. By the way, my dear, Lord Henry Moorpark seemed rather attentive to you at the Lindleys the other night.”

      “Yes, mamma,” said Gertrude quietly; “he took me in to supper, and sat and chatted with me a long time.”

      “Yes; I noticed that he did.”

      “I like Lord Henry, mamma; he is so kind and gentle and courteous.”

      “Very, my dear.”

      “One always feels as if one could confide in him—he is so fatherly, and—”

      “My dear Gertrude!”

      “What have I said, mamma?”

      “Something absurd. Fatherly! What nonsense! Lord Henry is in the prime of life, and you must not talk like that. You girls are so foolish! You think of no one but boys with pink and white faces and nothing to say for themselves. Lord Henry Moorpark is a most distingué gentle—I mean a nobleman; and judging from the attentions he began to pay you the other night, I—”

      “Oh, mamma! surely you cannot think that?”

      “And pray why not, Gertrude?” said Lady Millet austerely. “Why should not I think that? Do you suppose I wish to see my youngest daughter marry some penniless boy? Do, pray, for goodness’ sake, throw away all that bread-and-butter, schoolgirl, sentimental nonsense. It is quite on the cards that Lord Henry Moorpark may propose for you.”

      “Oh dear,” thought Gertrude; “and I was talking to him so warmly about John Huish!”

      Gertrude’s red lips parted, showing her white teeth, and the peachy pink faded out of her cheeks as she sat there with her face contracting, and a cloud seemed to come over her young life, in whose shadow she saw herself, and her future as joyless as that of the sister who had been married about a year earlier to a wealthy young north Yorkshire manufacturer, who was now neglecting her and making her look old before her time.

      “There, it must be nearly three,” said Lady Millet, rising; “I’ll go and put on my things. I shall not come in again, Gertrude. Give my love to Renée, and if Lord Henry Moorpark does come—but, there, I have perfect faith in your behaving like a sensible girl. By the way, Richard may run up. If he does, try and keep him to dinner. I don’t half like his being at that wretched Hampton Court; it is so terribly suggestive of holiday people and those dreadful vans.”

      With these words Lady Millet sailed out of the room, thinking to herself that a better managing mother never lived, and a quarter of an hour after she entered her carriage to go and distribute cards at the houses of her dearest friends.

       Table of Contents

      The Remains of a Fall.

      Gertrude Millet’s anxious look grew deeper as she sat with her work in her lap, thinking of John Huish and certain tender passages which had somehow passed between them; then of Lord Henry Moorpark, the pleasant, elderly nobleman whose attentions had been so pleasant and so innocently received; and as she thought of him a burning blush suffused her cheeks, and she tried to recall the words he had last spoken to her.

      The consequence was a fit of low spirits, which did not become high when later on Mrs. Frank Morrison called, dismissed her carriage, and sat chatting for some time with her sister, Lady Millet being, she said, in the park.

      “You need not tell me I look well,” said Gertrude, pouting slightly. “I declare you look miserable.”

      “Oh no, dear, only a little low-spirited to-day. Have you called on Uncle Robert lately?”

      “Without you? No.”

      “Then let’s go.”

      Gertrude jumped at the suggestion, and half an hour later the sisters were making their way along Wimpole Street the gloomy, to stop at last before the most wan-looking of all the dreary houses in that most dreary street. It was a house before which no organ-man ever stopped to play, no street vendor to shout his wares, nor passer-by to examine from top to bottom; the yellow shutters were closed, and the appearance of the place said distinctly “out of town.” The windows were very dirty, but that is rather a fashion in Wimpole Street, where the windows get very dirty in a month, very much dirtier in two months, and as dirty as possible in three. They, of course, never get any worse, for when once they have arrived a this pitch they may go for years, the weather rather improving them, what with the rain’s washing and the sun’s bleaching.

      The paint of the front door was the worst part about that house, for the sun had raised it in little blisters, which street boys could not bear to see without cracking and picking off in flakes; and the consequence was that the door looked as if it had had a bad attack of some skin disease, and a new cuticle of a paler hue was growing beneath the old.

      Wimpole Street was then famous for the knockers upon its doors. They were large and resounding. In fact, a clever manipulator could raise a noise that would go rolling on a still night from nearly one end of the street to the other. For, in their wisdom, our ancestors seized the idea of a knocker on that sounding-board, a front door, as a means to warn servants downstairs that someone was waiting, by a deafening noise that appealed to those in quite a different part of the place. But this was not allowed at the house with the blistered front door, for a great staple had been placed over one side for years, and when you had passed the two great iron extinguishers that were never used for links, and under the fantastic ironwork that had never held a lamp since the street had been lit with gas, and, ascending three steps, stood at the door, you could only contrive quite a diminutive kind of knock, such as was given upon that occasion by Renée, for Gertrude was carrying a large bouquet of flowers.

      The knock was hard enough to bring a little bleached, sparrow-like man, dressed in black, to the door, and his colourless face, made more pallid by a little black silk cap he wore,

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