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From these neglected corners of the Morning Post Agatha Ingham-Baker had duly learnt that Henry FitzHenry had been appointed navigating- lieutenant to the Terrific, lying at Chatham, which would necessitate his leaving the Kittiwake at Gibraltar and returning to England at once.
Ingham-Baker, proceeding carefully, for she was well in hand "wonderfully so! Poor Fitz seems to stand a very good chance of being cut out." "Fitz will have to look after himself," opined the young lady. "Did she say anything to you after I came to bed? I came away on purpose." Mrs. Ingham-Baker glanced towards the door, and drew her dressing- gown more closely round her.
For him this ball was merely herself. There was not another woman in the room for him. He told her this and other things. Moreover, the sound of it was quite new to her. For the modern young man does not make serious love to such women as Agatha Ingham-Baker. La discretion d'un homme est d'autant plus grande qu'on lui demande davantage. "I want you to ask me to dinner!"
Luke himself in uniform looked sternly in earnest. They had been talking of Gibraltar, where the Croonah was to touch the next morning, and Luke had just told Agatha that he could not go ashore with her and Mrs. Ingham-Baker. "Don't I?" the girl reiterated with a little sigh. "Well, it does not sound like it."
Luke was biting his nails impatiently. His jealousy was patent to any woman. Fitz was talking to Mrs. Ingham-Baker. "I should advise you young men to secure your dances now," continued Mrs. Harrington, with her usual fatal persistence. "Once Agatha gets into the room she will be snapped up."
This might not come until the FitzHenrys should have grown to man's estate and man's privilege of quarrelling with his female relatives about the youthful female relative of some other person. But it would come, surely. Mrs. Ingham-Baker, the parasite, knew her victim, Mrs. Harrington, well enough to be sure of that.
"I shouldn't think any one would have him!" She was not of the campaigners who admit defeat. Mrs. Ingham-Baker sighed again, and put out the other slipper. "He must be very rich! a palace in Barcelona a palace!" "Other people have castles in Spain," replied Agatha, without any of that filial respect which our grandmothers were pleased to affect.
Whenever Luke's face clouded she swept away the gathering gloom with some small familiar attention some reference to him in her conversation with Fitz which somehow brought him nearer and set Fitz further off. Suddenly, on hearing that Fitz hoped to be in England within a week, Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell heavily into conversation. "I am afraid," she said, "that you will find our dear Mrs.
Ingham-Baker, in a low and feeling tone, "you always were the soul of generosity." The "soul of generosity" gave an exceedingly wise little smile almost as if she knew better and looked up sharply towards the door. At the same moment the butler appeared. "Mr. Pawson, ma'am," he said. The little nod with which this information was received seemed to indicate that Mr. Pawson had been expected.
Harrington had been marked in her attention to Fitz. It was quite obvious that he was for the moment, at all events the favoured nephew. And Mrs. Ingham-Baker noted these things. "My dear," she whispered to Agatha, when they were waiting in the hall for their hostess, "it is Fitz, of course. I can see that with half an eye."
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