Sir Lionel, who (it's useless to spare your motherly vanity!) has no very warm appreciation of Dick's qualities, is disgusted with his ward for encouraging D.'s advances, and is inclined to turn to me for sympathy. In that branch I am a great success, and altogether am getting on like a house afire. What if I do have to pump up an intelligent interest in politics in general, and affairs in the Far East in particular? I am fortunately so constituted that fifteen minutes' study of the _Times_, washed down by early tea (taken strong), enables me to discourse brilliantly on the deepest subjects during the day; and, thank goodness, virtue is rewarded in the evening with a little bridge. If I am ever Lady Pendragon (sounds well, doesn't it?) it shall be all bridge and skittles, for me--and devil take politics, military science, history, the classics, Herbert Spencer, Robert Browning, Shakespeare, and all other boring or out-of-date things and writers (if he hasn't already taken them) on which I am now obliged to keep up a sort of Maxim-fire of conversation.
As to Dick's affairs, however, if the girl really is the heiress we thought her, I shall be only too glad to use my influence in every direction at once, to make the temporary arrangement a permanent one. But the worst of it is, I'm not at all sure that she is any sort of an heiress.
Sir Lionel intimated to me the other night, when I was tactfully tickling him with hints, that she has little except what he may choose to give her. If that be true, I fear as Mrs. Dick her _dot_ will not be large; but it strikes me as very probable that he was only trying to put me off--or rather, to put Dick off, if Dick were fortune-hunting. I don't know whether to believe his version or not, therefore; but I did get at one fact which may help us to find out for ourselves. Dear Ellaline is a daughter of _Frederic_ Lethbridge. It was rather a shock to hear this, for I have a vague impression that there was once a scandal, quite a ripe, juicy scandal, about a Frederic Lethbridge. Can it have been this Frederic Lethbridge, and if so, had it anything to do with money matters?
I haven't mentioned my doubts to Dick, because he really is idiotically in love with the girl, and is capable of foolishness. I intend to let him go on as he is going for the present, as he can do himself no harm, and can do me a great deal of good, by keeping his darling out of my way and Sir Lionel's thoughts. But of course, he mustn't be allowed to marry her if she has nothing of her own. Sir Lionel is rich, but not rich enough to make his ward rich enough for Dick, and keep plenty for his wife--when he gets one--if she be anything like _me_.
Your dear hostess, who would by this time be my hostess if I weren't otherwise engaged, knows everything and everybody. Not only that, she has done both for a considerable term of years. You remember the joke about her being torn between the desire not to exceed the age of forty-five and yet to boast a friendship with Lord Beaconsfield? Well, she can have known Frederic Lethbridge, and all about him, without being a day over forty, as that is Sir Lionel's age, and Mrs. Lethbridge was a distant relative of his.
Tell Lady MacRae that. Say that the Frederic Lethbridge you are inquiring about married a Miss de Nesville, and that there is a daughter in existence, a girl of nineteen. If Lady Mac doesn't know anything, get her to ask her friends; but do hurry up for Dick's sake, there's a dear, otherwise I shan't be able to pull the strings as you would like me to; and already my sweet nerves are jangled, out of tune. Dear Lady Mac is so adorably frank, when she has something disagreeable to say, that you'll have no difficulty in ferreting out the truth--if it's anything nasty. For most reasons I hope it isn't, as a rich girl would be a valuable bird in the hand for Dick; and I am on the spot to see his affairs as well as my own through, whatever happens.
For my part, if Sir Lionel weren't up to such a fatiguingly high level of intelligence, I believe I could fall in love with him. He may be descended from King Arthur, but he looks more like Lancelot, and I fancy might make love rather nicely, once he let himself go. Although it's long since he did any soldiering, he shows that he _was_ a soldier, born, not made. He has improved, if anything, since we knew him in India, but I remember you used to be quite afraid of having to talk to him then, and preferred Colonel O'Hagan, whom you thought jolly and good-natured, though, somehow, I never got on with him very well. I always had the feeling he was trying to read me, and I do dislike that sort of thing in a man. It ruins human intercourse, and takes away all natural desire to flirt.
You ask me how I endure Emily Norton. Well, as I sit beside Sir Lionel in the car, I don't need to bother with her much in the daytime. She hates bridge, and thinks playing for money wrong in most circumstances, but considers it her duty to please her brother's guests; and as she never wins, anyhow, it needn't affect her conscience. I tell her that _I_ always give my winnings to charity, and didn't think it necessary to add that, to my idea, charity should not only begin at home, but end there, unless its resources were unlimited. The poor, dull thing has that kind of self-conscious religion that sends her soul trotting every other minute to look in the glass, and see that it hasn't smudged itself. So trying! Once she asked me what I did for _my_ soul? I longed to tell her I took cod-liver oil, or Somebody's Fruit Salt, but didn't dare, on account of Sir Lionel. And she has such a conceited way of saying, when speaking of the future: "If the Lord spares me till next year, I will do so and so." As if He were in immediate need of her, but might be induced to get on without her for a short time!
One would know, by the way she screws up her hair, that she could never have felt a temptation. But I shall not let myself be troubled much with her if I marry Sir Lionel. She can go back to her doctor and her curates, and be invited for Christmas to Graylees, which, by the way, I hope to inspect when we have finished this tour.
I am looking quite lovely in my motoring things, and enjoying myself very much, on the whole.
Devonshire I found too hot for this time of the year, but the scenery is pretty. I had no idea what a jolly little river the Dart is; and Dartmouth is rather quaint. For those who are keen on old things, I suppose the Butter Market would be interesting; but I can't really see why, because things happened in certain places hundreds of years ago, one should stand and stare at walls or windows, or fireplaces. The things _must_ have happened somewhere! Although Charles the Second, for instance, may have been great fun to know, and one would have enjoyed flirting with him, now that he's been dead and out of reach for ages, he's of no importance to me.
We left Torquay yesterday, and arrived here in the evening, after a hilly but nice run, and lunching at Plymouth. Of course, a lot of nonsense was talked about Sir Francis Drake. One almost forgets _what_ the old boy did, except to play bowls or something; but I have a way of seeming to know things, for which I deserve more credit than anyone (save you) would guess. When they were not jabbering about him at lunch, it was about the _Mayflower_, which apparently sailed from Plymouth for the purpose of supplying Americans with ancestors. I never met any Americans yet, except the kind who boast of having begun as shoeblacks, whose great-great-grand-parents didn't cross in the _Mayflower_. It must have been a huge ship, or else a lot of the ancestors went in the steerage, or were stewards or stowaways.
There was a ferry, getting from Devonshire into Cornwall, so of course we just missed a boat and had to wait half an hour. I was dying to go to sleep, but the others were as chirpy as possible, gabbling Cornish legends. When I say the "others," I mean Sir Lionel and Ellaline Lethbridge. I didn't know any legends, but I made up several on the spur of the moment, much more exciting than theirs, and that pleased Sir Lionel, as he is a Cornishman. Heavens, how I did take it out of myself admiring his native land when we'd got across that ferry! Said the scenery was quite different from that of Devonshire, at the first go off; and I'm not sure there _weren't_ differences. The road coming toward Launceston really was romantic; rock-walled part of the way, with a lot of pink and yellow lichen; and again, fine open spaces with distant blue downs against a sky which looked, as I remarked to Sir Lionel, as if the gods had poured a libation of golden wine over it. Not bad, that, was it? I believe we passed an Arthurian battle-field, which naturally interested him immensely, therefore _had_ to interest poor me! He seems to think there actually _was_ an Arthur, and was quite pleased with me for saying that all the Cornish names of places rang with romance like fairy bells sounding from under the sea--perhaps from Atlantis. Anyhow, they're a relief after such Devonshire horrors as Meavy and Hoo Meavy, which are like the lisping of babies. Sir Lionel thought the "derivations" of such names an absorbing subject! But living in the East so long has made him quixotically patriotic.