LITMIR.BIZ

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Clifford’s fortune. When I want information on that point I’ll apply for it plainly. But meanwhile I don’t think any lady’s name should be dragged into conversation and bandied about like that, by an absolute stranger.”

      “Oh, now you needn’t be huffy,” Nevitt answered, with a still sweeter smile, showing all those pearly teeth of his to the greatest advantage. “I didn’t mean to put your back up, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I’ll heap coals of fire on your head, you ungrateful man. I’ll return good for evil. You shall have an invitation to Mrs. Holker’s garden party on Saturday week at Chetwood Court, and there you’ll be almost sure to meet the beautiful stranger.”

      But at that very moment, at Craighton, Tilgate, Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., a stiff little withered-up official Briton, half mummified by long exposure to tropical suns, was sitting in his drawing-room with Mrs. Clifford, his wife, and discussing—what subject of all others on earth but the personality of Cyril Waring?

      “Well, it was an awkward situation for Elma, of course, I admit,” he was chirping out cheerfully, with his back turned by pure force of habit to the empty grate, and his hands crossed behind him. “I don’t deny it was an awkward situation. Still, there’s no harm done, I hope and trust. Elma’s happily not a fanciful or foolishly susceptible sort of girl. She sees it’s a case for mere ordinary gratitude. And gratitude, in my opinion, towards a person in his position, is sufficiently expressed once for all by letter. There’s no reason on earth she should ever again see or hear any more of him.”

      “But girls are so romantic,” Mrs. Clifford put in doubtfully, with an anxious air. She herself was by no means romantic to look at, being, indeed, a person of a certain age, with a plump, matronly figure, and very staid of countenance; yet there was something in her eye, for all that, that recalled at times the vivid keenness of Elma’s, and her cheek had once been as delicate and creamy a brown as her pretty daughter’s. “Girls are so romantic,” Mrs. Clifford repeated once more, in a dreamy way, “and she was evidently impressed by him.”

      “Well, I’m glad I made inquiries at once about these two young men, anyhow,” the Companion of St. Michael and St. George responded with fervour, clasping his wizened little hands contentedly over his narrow waistcoat. “It’s a precious odd story, and a doubtful story, and not at all the sort of story one likes one’s girl to be any way mixed up with. For my part, I shall give them a very wide berth indeed in future; and there’s no reason why Elma should ever knock up against them.”

      “Who told you they were nobodies?” Mrs. Clifford inquired, drawing a wistful sigh.

      “Oh, Tom Clark was at school with them,” the ex-administrator continued, with a very cunning air, “and he knows all about them—has heard the whole circumstances. Very odd, very odd; never met anything so queer in all my life; most mysterious and uncanny. They never had a father; they never had a mother; they never had anybody on earth they could call their own; they dropped from the clouds, as it were, one rainy day, without a friend in the world, plump down into the Charterhouse. There they were well supplied with money, and spent their holidays with a person at Brighton, who wasn’t even supposed to be their lawful guardian. Looks fishy, doesn’t it? Their names are Cyril and Guy Waring—and that’s all they know of themselves. They were educated like gentlemen till they were twenty-one years old; and then they were turned loose upon the world, like a pair of young bears, with a couple of hundred pounds of capital apiece to shift for themselves with. Uncanny, very; I don’t like the look of it. Not at all the sort of people an impressionable girl like our Elma should ever be allowed to see too much of.”

      “I don’t think she was very much impressed by him,” Mrs. Clifford said with confidence. “I’ve watched her to see, and I don’t think she’s in love with him. But by to-morrow, Reginald, I shall be able, I’m sure, to tell you for certain.”

      The Companion of the Militant Saints glanced rather uneasily across the hearth-rug at his wife. “It’s a marvellous gift, to be sure, this intuition of yours, Louisa,” he said, shaking his head sagely, and swaying himself gently to and fro on the stone kerb of the fender. “I frankly confess, my dear, I don’t quite understand it. And Elma’s got it too, every bit as bad as you have. Runs in the family, I suppose—runs somehow in the family. After living with you now for twenty-two years—yes, twenty-two last April—in every part of the world and every grade of the service, I’m compelled to admit that your intuition in these matters is really remarkable—simply remarkable.”

      Mrs. Clifford coloured through her olive-brown skin, exactly like Elma, and rose with a somewhat embarrassed and half-guilty air, avoiding her husband’s eyes as if afraid to meet them.

      Elma had gone to bed early, wearied out as she was with her long agony in the tunnel. Mrs. Clifford crept up to her daughter’s room with a silent tread, like some noiseless Oriental, and, putting her ear to the keyhole, listened outside the door in profound suspense for several minutes.

      Not a sound from within; not a gentle footfall on the carpeted floor. For a moment she hesitated; then she turned the handle slowly, and, peering before her, peeped into the room. Thank Heaven! no snake signs. Elma lay asleep, with one arm above her head, as peacefully as a child, after her terrible adventure. Her bosom heaved, but slowly and regularly. The mother drew a deep breath, and crept down the stairs with a palpitating heart to the drawing-room again.

      “Reginald,” she said, with perfect confidence, relapsing once more at a bound into the ordinary every-day British matron, “there’s no harm done, I’m sure. She doesn’t think of this young man at all. You may dismiss him from your mind at once and for ever. She’s sleeping like a baby.”

      CHAPTER VI. — TWO STRANGE MEETINGS.

       Table of Contents

      “Mrs. Hugh Holker, at home, Saturday, May 29th, 3 to 6.30. Chetwood Court; tennis.”

      Cyril Waring read it out with a little thrill of triumph. To be sure, it was by no means certain that Elma would be there; but still, Chetwood Court was well within range of Tilgate town, and Montague Nevitt felt convinced, he said, the Holkers were friends of the Cliffords and the Kelmscotts.

      “For my part,” Guy remarked, balancing a fragment of fried sole on his fork as he spoke, “I’m not going all that way down to Chetwood merely to swell Mrs. Holker’s triumph.”

      “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Cyril answered, with quiet incisiveness. He hadn’t exactly fallen in love with Elma at first sight, but he was very much interested in her, and it struck him at once that what interested him was likely also to interest his twin brother. And this is just one of those rare cases in life where a man prefers that his interest in a subject should not be shared by any other person.

      Before Saturday, the 29th, arrived, however, Guy had so far changed his mind in the matter, that he presented himself duly with Nevitt at Waterloo to catch the same train to Chetwood station that Cyril went down by.

      “After all,” he said to Nevitt, as they walked together from the club in Piccadilly, “I may as well see what the girl’s like, anyhow. If she’s got to be my sister-in-law—which seems not unlikely now—I’d better have a look at her beforehand, so to speak, on approbation.”

      The Holkers’ grounds were large and well planted, with velvety lawns on the slope of a well-wooded hill overlooking the boundless blue weald of Surrey. Nevitt and the Warings were late to arrive, and found most of the guests already assembled before them.

      After a time Guy found himself, to his intense chagrin, told off by his hostess to do the honours to an amiable old lady of high tonnage and great conversational powers, who rattled on uninterruptedly in one silvery stream about everybody on the ground, their histories and their pedigrees. She took the talking so completely off his hands, however, that, after a very few minutes, Guy, who was by nature of a lazy and contemplative disposition, had almost ceased to trouble himself about what she said, interposing “indeeds” and “reallys” with

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