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Lady Dargan could make no effort of memory, but she replied without hesitation or conscience: "Yellow and brown." "There," said Mrs. Gasgoyne, "we are both wrong, Captain Maudsley. Sophie never makes a mistake." Maudsley assented politely, but, stealing a look at Lady Dargan, wondered what the little by-play meant. Gaston was between Sir William and Mrs. Gasgoyne.
He was thinking of that afternoon in Gaston's bedroom, when his grandson had acted, before Lady Dargan and Cluny Vosse, Sir Gaston's scene with Buckingham. "Really, most mysterious, most unaccountable. But it's one of the virtues of having a descent. When it is most needed, it counts, it counts." "Against the half-breed mother!" Lady Belward added. "Quite so, against the was it Cree or Blackfoot?
Besides, as she said to herself, to what good now? But she asked him to tell her something about his father. He did so quietly, picking out main incidents, and setting them forth, as he had the ability, with quiet dramatic strength. He had just finished when Delia Gasgoyne came up with Lord Dargan.
Presently Lord Dargan asked Gaston if he would bring Lady Dargan to the other end of the room, where Miss Gasgoyne was to join her mother. As they went, Lady Dargan said a little breathlessly: "Will you do something for me?" "I would do much for you," was his reply, for he understood! "If ever you need a friend, if ever you are in trouble, will you let me know? I wish to take an interest in you.
I have learned, too, that the police-constable Dargan is one of their most trusted agents; and the only thing now to find out is, who is the writer of the letter, for up to this all we know is, the hand is a woman's. Now it chanced that when Mr. Hartigan who had taken great pains and bestowed much time to learn the story of the night attack on Kilgobbin, and wished to make the presence of Mr.
But the nephew persisted: "I say, Belward, Aunt Sophie was cut up no end when she heard of it. She wouldn't go out to dinner that night at Lord Dunfolly's, and, of course, I didn't go. And I wanted to; for Delia Gasgoyne was to be there, and she's ripping." Lady Dargan, in spite of herself, blushed, but without confusion, and Gaston adroitly led the conversation otherwhere.
Lady Dargan came softly to him, smiled more with her eyes than her lips, and told him how sorry she had been to hear of his illness. Some months before Gaston had met Cluny Vosse, who at once was his admirer. Gaston liked the youth. He was fresh, high- minded, extravagant, idle; but he had no vices, and no particular vanity save for his personal appearance.
He saw that she wished to say something. "Yes, Lady Dargan?" he asked. She spoke with fluttering seriousness. "I asked you once to come to me if you ever needed a friend. I do not wait for that. I ask you not to go to your uncle." "Why?" He was thinking that, despite social artifice and worldliness, she was sentimental. "Because there will be trouble. I can see it.
Here Gaston, who had in a kind of dream acted the whole scene, swayed with faintness, and Cluny caught him, saving him from a fall. Cluny's colour was all gone. Lady Dargan had sat dazed, and Sir William's face was anxious, puzzled. A few hours later Sir William was alone with Gaston, who was recovered and cool.
The lad's greeting was a little shy until he saw that Gaston was cool and composed as usual in effect, nothing had happened. Cluny was delighted, and opened his mind: "They'd kicked up a deuce of a row in the papers, and there'd been no end of talk; but he didn't see what all the babble was about, and he'd said so again and again to Lady Dargan." "And Lady Dargan, Cluny?" asked Gaston quietly.
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