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After five minutes' question and answer the Maxwells understood something of the situation. A servant of Ancoats's had been induced to disclose what he knew. There could be no question that the young fellow had gone off to Normandy, where he possessed a chalet close to Trouville, in the expectation that his fair lady would immediately join him there. She had not yet started.
In another moment he was making his way slowly back to her. "Ah, there's Tressady! Now for news." The remark was Naseby's. He and Lady Madeleine were, as it happened, inspecting the very French pictures that the girl had just refused to look at in Ancoats's company. But now they hurried back to the main drawing-room where the Tressadys were already surrounded by an eager crowd.
So much Fontenoy had already ascertained. But she had thrown up a recent engagement within the last few days, and before Ancoats's flight all Fontenoy's information had pointed to the likelihood of a coup of some sort. "The call of the heart that drives me from you," wrote this incredible young man, "is something independent of myself. I wring my hands, but I follow where it leads.
"I ought to say," said Tressady, pausing once more as they moved together towards the door, "that I have not ultimately much hope for Mrs. Allison. If this entanglement is put aside, there will be something else. Trouville itself, in August, I should imagine, is a place of bonnes fortunes for the man who wants them, and Ancoats's mind runs to such things."
The door opened silently, and there came in a figure that for a moment was hardly recognised by either Maxwell or his wife. Shrunken, pale, and grief-stricken, Ancoats's poor mother entered, her eye seeking eagerly for Maxwell, perceiving nothing else. She was in black, her veil hurriedly thrown back, and the features beneath it were all blurred by distress and fatigue. Marcella hurried to her.
Miss Paston, the sister of Lord Ancoats's agent, was a pleasant-looking spinster of thirty-five in a Quakerish dress of grey silk. Her face bore witness that she was capable and refined. But Letty felt no desire whatever to explore capability and refinement. She had not come to Castle Luton to make herself agreeable to Miss Paston. So the conversation languished.
They talked first of the Ancoats incident, George supplementing his letters by some little verbal pictures of Ancoats's life and surroundings that made Maxwell laugh grimly from time to time. As to Mrs. Allison, Maxwell reported that Ancoats seemed to have gained his point. There was talk of the marriage coming off some time in the winter. "Well, Fontenoy has earned his prize," said George.
He knocked the end off his cigarette, and returned it to his mouth with a rather unsteady hand. "Knows? knows what?" said Betty. There was a pink flush, perhaps of alarm, on her pretty cheek, but her eyes said plainly that if there were risks she must run them. Naseby hesitated. The natural reticence of one young man about another held him back and he was Ancoats's friend.
And my husband was Ancoats's guardian." "Dear me!" said Letty. "I should think it wasn't easy to be guardian to fifty thousand a year." Marcella did not answer did not, indeed, hear. Her look had stolen across to Mrs. Allison a sad, affectionate look, in no way meant for Lady Tressady. But Letty noticed it. "I suppose she adores him," she said. Marcella sighed. "There was never anything like it.
But about a fortnight before Whitsuntide some tales of young Ancoats had suddenly reached Maxwell's ears, with such effect that on his next meeting with Ancoats's mother he practically invited himself and Marcella greatly to Mrs. Allison's surprise to Castle Luton for Whitsuntide. For the boy had been Maxwell's ward, and Henry Allison had been the intimate friend and comrade of Maxwell's father.
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