"We have nowhere to take Miss Lethbridge," said she, "since Graylees Castle will be overrun with workmen for some time to come. I didn't know but you might feel it would be best, after all, for us to put her again in charge of her old schoolmistress for a few weeks."
If hair could really rise, mine would have instantly cast out every hairpin, as if they were so many evil spirits, and have stood out all around my head like Strumpelpeter's. Yet there was nothing I could say. If I were mistress of a dozen languages, I should have had to be speechless in every one. But I saw Sir Lionel looking at me, and I hastily gave him a silent treatment with my eyes. It had the most satisfactory effect.
"No, I don't think we will take her back to Madame de Maluet's," said he. "Madame may have made other plans for the holiday season. Perhaps she is going away."
"I'm sure she is," said I. "She is going to visit her mother-in-law's aunt."
Sir Lionel was still looking at me, lost in thought. (I forget if I mentioned that he has nice eyes? I haven't time to look back and see if I did, now. I'm scribbling as fast as I can. We shall soon land, and I want to post this at Dover, if I can get an English stamp "off" someone, as "Sissy" Williams, our only British neighbour, says.)
"How would you like a motor-car trip?" Sir Lionel asked abruptly.
The relief from suspense was almost too great, and I nearly jumped down his throat, so, after all, it would have been my own fault if the Dragon had eaten me. "I should _adore_ it!" I said.
"My dear!" protested Mrs. Norton, indulgently. "One adores Heavenly Beings."
"I'm not sure a motor-car isn't a heavenly being," said I, "though perhaps without capitals."
The Dragon smiled, but she looked awfully shocked, and no doubt blamed Madame de Maluet.
"I've a forty-horse Mercédès promised to be ready on my arrival," said Sir Lionel, still reflective. "You know, Emily, the little twelve-horse-power car I had sent out to East Bengal was a Mercédès. If I could drive her, I can drive a bigger car. Everybody says it's easier. And young Nick has learned to be a first-rate mechanic."
I suppose young Nick must be the Dragon's pet name for the bronze image. What fun that he should be a chauffeur! Fancy an Indian Idol squatted on the front seat of an up-to-date automobile. But when you come to think of it, there have been other gods in cars. I only hope, if I'm to be behind him, this one won't behave like Juggernaut. He wears almost too many clothes, for he is the type that would look over-dressed in a bangle.
"We might have an eight or ten weeks' run about England," the Dragon went on, "while things are being made straight at Graylees. It would be good to see something of the blessed old island again before settling down."
"One would think you were quite pleased at the fire, Lionel," remarked his sister, who evidently believes it wrong to look on the bright side of things, and right to expect the worst--like an undertaker calling for a client before he's dead.
"What is, is," returned he. "We may as well make the best of it. You wouldn't mind a motor tour, would you, Emily?"
"I would go if it were my duty, and you desired it," she said, looking as if she ought to be on stained glass, with half a halo, "only I am hardly young enough to consider motoring as a pleasure."
"There aren't many years between us," replied her brother, too polite to say whether he were in front or behind, "but I confess I do regard it as a pleasure."
"A man is different," she admitted.
Thank goodness, he is!
Then they talked more about the fire, which, it seems, happened through something being wrong with a flue, in a room where Mrs. N. had told a servant to build a fire on account of dampness. It must be a wonderful old place from what they both let drop. (I told you in another letter how Sir Lionel had inherited it, about the same time as his title, or a little later. The estate, though, comes from the mother's side, and her people were from Warwickshire.) His cool British way of saying and taking things is a good deal on the surface, I think. He would have hated us to see it, but I'm sure he worked himself up to quite a pitch of joyful excitement over the idea of the motor trip, as it developed in his mind. And it is splendid, isn't it, darling?
You know how sorry you were we hadn't been more economical, and made our money last long enough to travel in England, instead of having to stop short after a splash in London. Now I'm going to see bits in spite of all, until I'm "called away," and I'll try my best, in letters, to make you see what I do. Ellaline wouldn't have enjoyed such a tour, for she hates the country, or any place where it isn't suitable to wear high heels and picture hats. But I--oh, I! Twenty dragons on the same seat of the car with me couldn't prevent my revelling in it--though it may be cut short for me at any minute. As for Mrs. Norton----
But the stewardess has just said we shall be in, in five minutes. I had to come down to the ladies' cabin with Mrs. N. Now I haven't time to tell you any more, except that they both (Sir L. and his sister, I mean) wanted to get to England as soon as possible. I know _she_ was disappointed not to fling her brother's ward back to Madame de Maluet, and probably wouldn't have come over to Paris if she hadn't hoped to bring it off; but she resigns herself to things easily when a man says they're best. It was Sir Lionel who wanted particularly to cross to-night, though he didn't urge it; but she said, "Very well, dear. I think you're right."
So here we are. A large bell is ringing, and so is my heart. I mean it's beating. Good-bye, dearest. I'll write again to-morrow--or rather to-day, for it's a lovely sunrise, like a good omen--when we get settled somewhere. I believe we're going to a London hotel. Yes, stewardess. Oh, I ought to have said that to her, instead of writing it to you. She interrupted.
Love--love.
_Your_ Audrie,
_Their_ Ellaline.
V
AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER
_Ritz Hotel, London_, _July 8th_
Angel: May your wings never moult! I hope you didn't think me extravagant wiring yesterday, instead of writing. I was too busy baking the yeasty dough of my impressions to write a letter worth reading; and when one has practically _no_ money, what's the good of being economical? You know the sole point of sympathy I ever touched with "Sissy" Williams was his famous speech: "If I can't earn five hundred a year, it's not worth while worrying to earn anything"; which excused his settling down as a "remittance man," in the top flat, at forty francs a month.
Dearest, the Dragon hasn't drag-ged once, yet! And, by the way, till he does so, I think I won't call him Dragon again. It's rather gratuitous, as I'm eating his bread--or rather, his perfectly gorgeous _à la cartes_, and am literally smeared with luxury, from my rising up until my lying down, at his expense.
I know, and you know, because I repeated it word for word, that Ellaline said she thought he must have been well paid for undertaking to "guardian" her, as his hard, selfish type does nothing for nothing; and she has always seemed so very rich (quite _the_ heiress of the school, envied for her dresses and privileges) that there might be temptations for an unscrupulous man to pick up a few plums here and there. But--well, of course Ellaline ought to know, after being his ward ever since she was four, and hearing things on the best authority about the horrid way he treated her mother, as well as suffering from his cruel heartlessness all these years. Never a letter written to herself; never the least little present; never a wish to hear from her, or see her photograph; all business carried on between himself and Madame de Maluet, who is too discreet to prejudice a ward against a guardian. And I--I saw him only day before yesterday for the first time. What _can_ I know about him? I've no experience in reading characters of men. The dear old Abbé and a few masters in the school are the only ones I have a bowing acquaintance with--except "Sissy" Williams, who doesn't count. It's dangerous to trust to one's instincts, no doubt, for it's so difficult to be sure a wish isn't disguising itself as instinct, in rouge and a golden wig.
But then, there's the man's profile, which is of the knight-of-old, Crusader pattern, a regular hook to hang respect upon, though I'd be doing it injustice if I let you imagine it's _shaped_ like a hook. It isn't; it's quite beautiful; and you find yourself furtively, semi-consciously sketching it in air with your forefinger as you look at it. It suggests race, and _noblesse oblige_, and a long line of soldier ancestors, and that sort of thing, such as you used to say survived visibly among the English aristocracy and English peasantry (not in the mixed-up middle classes) more markedly than anywhere else. That must mean some correspondence in character, mustn't it? Or can it be a mask, handed down by noble ancestry to cover up moral defects in a degenerate descendant?