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All this time Billy was junketing abroad, where every year he painted masterpieces for the Salon, which on account of a nefarious conspiracy among certain artists, jealous of his superior merits were invariably refused. Now Billy is back again in America, and the Colonel has insisted that he come to Selwoode, and Margaret is waiting for him in the dog-cart.
For it was cut low in the neck; and Margaret's neck and shoulders would have drawn madrigals from a bench of bishops. And in consequence, Billy Woods ate absolutely no dinner that evening. It was an hour or two later when the moon, drifting tardily up from the south, found Miss Hugonin and Mr. Kennaston chatting amicably together in the court at Selwoode.
Kennaston's fault, she assured a pricking conscience, as she went out on the terrace before Selwoode. He had bothered her dreadfully. There she found Petheridge Jukesbury smoking placidly in the effulgence of the moonlight; and the rotund, pasty countenance he turned toward her was ludicrously like the moon's counterfeit in muddy water. I am sorry to admit it, but Mr.
Kennaston, in his laughing manner, was wont to jest at her varied enterprises and term her Lady Bountiful; but, then, Mr. Kennaston had no real conception of the proper uses of money. In fact, he never thought of money. He admitted this to Margaret with a whimsical sigh. Margaret grew very fond of Mr. Kennaston because he was not mercenary. Mr. Kennaston was much at Selwoode.
He stood in the vestibule of Selwoode, staring after Margaret Hugonin; but they stared at him, and over his curly head, sculptured above the door-way, they saw the Eagle the symbol of the crude, incalculable power of wealth. Mr. Woods stood in the vestibule of his own house. "By gad!" said Colonel Hugonin, very grimly, "anybody would think you'd just lost a fortune instead of inheriting one!
You must make allowances for the fact that, on this especial morning, he was still suffering from a recent twinge of the gout, and that his toast was somewhat dryer than he liked it; and, most potent of all, that the foreign mail, just in, had caused him to rebel anew against the proprieties and his daughter's inclinations, which chained him to Selwoode, in the height of the full London season, to preside over a house-party every member of which he cordially disliked.
The bird was perched in every available nook at Selwoode; it was carved in the woodwork, was set in the mosaics, was chased in the tableware, was woven in the napery, was glazed in the very china.
In the soft, rosy twilight of the room the study at Selwoode is panelled in very dark oak, and the doors and windows are screened with crimson hangings her parti-coloured red-and-yellow gown might have been a scrap of afterglow left over from an unusually fine sunset. In a word, Miss Hugonin was a very quaint and colourful and delectable figure as she came a little further into the room.
The folk who have just left Selwoode were honest enough as honesty goes nowadays; kindly as any of us dare be who have our own way to make among very stalwart and determined rivals; generous as any man may venture to be in a world where the first of every month finds the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker rapping at the door with their little bills: but they cringed to money.
"We're only a poor chuckle-headed moth who's been looking at a star too long. It's a bright star, Billy, but it isn't for you. So we're going to be sensible now. We're going to get a telegram to-morrow that will call us away from Selwoode. We aren't coming back any more, either.
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