"'Mercy,' if you please, not Joan. And I've found out exactly what I wanted to know. Your reception of my brutal frankness has shown me that you like him. So far, so good."
"I may like him, but that won't help your plan. Oh, Jo--Mercy, I mean, I do feel such a wretch! That man looks so honest and frank and nice, and he could hardly take his eyes off you in church. If he knew what frauds we are!"
"You are not a fraud, and it is you with whom he is concerned, or it will be, as I'll soon show him, if necessary. Your name is Fitzpatrick; you are a widow; we are sisters--in affection. You haven't a fib to tell; you've only got to be charming."
"But it's you he admires. I told you it would be so. If one of us is to be Lady----"
"'Sh!" said Joan; and the gong boomed musically for lunch.
Had it not been for the existence of innocent little Minnie, the county might not have accepted the lovely sisters as readily as it did. Joan had thought of that, as she thought of most things; and Minnie, the protégée of charity, was distinctly an asset. "A very good prop," as Joan mentally called her, in theatrical slang which she had learned, perhaps, from her long-vanished mother.
The presence of Minnie in the feminine household gave a kind of pathetic, domestic grace, which appealed even to tradespeople; and tradespeople were extremely important in Joan's calculations.
She had obtained credentials, upon starting on her new career, in a characteristic way. Miss Jenny Mordaunt wrote to Lady John Bevan, asking for a letter of introduction for a great friend of hers, the Honourable Mrs. Fitzpatrick, to the solicitors who had charge of Lord Trelinnen's affairs, as Mrs. Fitzpatrick wanted to take Roseneath Park. Jenny Mordaunt's late chaperon gladly managed this. Mrs. Fitzpatrick called upon her, and Lady John was charmed. She had known the "Dishonourable Dick" slightly, years ago, had heard that he had married an heiress, and marvelled now that he had been tolerated by so sweet a creature as this. Lady John offered one or two letters of introduction to old friends in Cornwall, and they were gratefully accepted. As the friends were not intimate, and as Lady John detested the country, except when hunting or shooting was in question, there was little danger that she would inopportunely appear on the scene and recognise the saintly Mercy Milton as the late Miss Mordaunt.
Everybody called on the fair, lilylike young widow and her very modest, retiring, unmarried sister--everybody, that is, with the exception of Miss Pendered, who pleaded, when her brother urged, that she was too much of an invalid to call on new people. Soon, however, he boldly went by himself, excusing his sister with some tale of rheumatism which she would have indignantly resented. Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Mercy Milton were surrounded with other visitors when Sir Anthony Pendered was announced, and he was just in time to hear a glowing account of the orphaned sisters' "dear old California home," which Joan had learned by heart, partly from Marian's reminiscences, partly from a book.
