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Involuntarily, she half turned from him, but he walked up to her, and spoke in a low voice, asking what the doctors said. Constance replied that she knew nothing. "Are they still in the library?" "No. Lady Ogram has been carried upstairs." "Then I'll go in and wait."
She wanted May Tomalin to be rich, very rich, to marry brilliantly. I have always suspected that Lady Ogram looked upon her life as a sort of revenge on the aristocratic class for the poverty and ignorance of her own people; did anything of the kind ever occur to you?" "Was her family really mean?" "Everyone says so. Mrs.
"Will you tell me its provisions?" asked Lashmar, deliberately. "In confidence. It won't be made public till the executors Sir William Amys and Mr. Kerchever have proved it. I never knew a more public-spirited will. Hollingford gets a hospital, to be called the Lady Ogram; very generously endowed. Rivenoak is to be sold, and the proceeds to form a fund for a lot of Lady Ogram Scholarships.
The revelation seemed merely to surprise her. She was smiling, as if at the amusingly unexpected. "Lady Ogram certainly knows," said Mrs. Toplady. "Then of course that's why he does nothing," May exclaimed. "Fancy!" Her provincialism was becoming very marked. "A lord with hardly enough to live upon! But I'm astonished that he seems so cheerful."
Lady Ogram was growing less amiable, and with much ado Constance restrained herself from a tart reply. Three minutes more, and the atmosphere of the room would have become dangerously electric. But before two minutes had elapsed, the door opened, and a colourless domestic voice announced: "Miss Tomalin."
"Can you tell me anything about Mrs. Toplady?" he inquired. "Only what I have heard from Lady Ogram." Constance sketched a biography.
After fifty years told, when ordinary mortals have long since given their measure in heart and brain, Lady Ogram steadily advanced. Solitary possessor of wealth, autocrat over a little world of her own, instead of fossilising in dull dignity, she proved herself receptive of many influences with which the time was fraught.
Did she mention that, instead of remaining loyal to me, as I was all through to her, she did her best to injure me with Lady Ogram by betraying a secret I had entrusted to her?" "I know what you refer to. Yes, she told me, of that unfortunate incident, and spoke of it with deep regret. The poor girl simply lost her head; for a moment she could think of nothing but self-preservation.
Their chaperon spoke with him; he learned that Lady Ogram did not feel quite equal to an occasion such as this, and had stayed at home. Miss Tomalin, eager to join in the talk, pressed before Constance. "Have you got your speech ready, Mr. Lashmar?" she asked, with sprightly condescension. "Quite. How sorry I am that you won't be able to enjoy that masterpiece of eloquence!"
Her anonymous letter pointed to a grave fault of breeding; it would always have been suggestive of disagreeable possibilities. May was thoroughly plebeian in origin, and her resemblance to Lady Ogram might develop in a way it made him shudder to think of.
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