A whirlwind of silks upon the stairs heralded Aspasia. She caught her uncle by the arm and dragged him into the drawing-room.
"Pray, pray, my dear Aspasia; you are really too impetuous!" cried he, disengaging himself testily. The familiarity which in India had added a piquancy to his sense of importance was here a want of tact. "The country has not improved your manners, my dear," he went on, taking up his place on the hearthrug and sweeping the room with contemptuous gaze. "It's high time to get you out of this."
Miss Aspasia's ready lips had already parted upon a smart retort when the sound of Lady Aspasia's voice, uplifted from without, prevented the imminent skirmish. Her ladyship was evidently addressing Dr. Châtelard, for those strident tones were conveying, in highly British accents, words of what she supposed to be French:
"Drôle petit trou, pensez-vous pas?"
"Ah, but extremely interesting," responded the globe trotteur, in his precise English. He always obstinately answered in English Lady Aspasia's less perfect but equally obstinate French.
The two entered together, she towering over him, as might a frigate over a sloop.
Lady Aspasia Melbury was a handsome woman of the "horsey" type. A favourite, even in royal circles, her praise ran in men's mouths expressively as "a real good sort." A woman kind to others, with the ease afforded her by splendid health, unlimited means, and an assured position. Modern to the very last minute, frank beyond the point of offence, she might be cited as one of those rare beings to whom life is almost an absolute success; the more safely, perhaps, because most of her ideals (if ideals they could be called) were of the most practical description. Yet life had failed Lady Aspasia upon one point—she had had one unsatisfied desire; her youth had held a brief romance, interrupted by a mariage de raison; and when her millionaire had left her free, she had looked, with the confidence of her nature, to the instant renewal of the broken idyll. But here it was that fate had played its single scurvy trick upon the woman.
Arthur Gerardine, the once handsome, penniless lad, the now still handsome, distinguished man, who had remained bachelor all these years (she had fondly hoped for her sake), had married—a year after her own widowhood—married, not the ready Lady Aspasia, but a poor unknown widow out in India. Lady Aspasia's solitary unrealised ideal, then, was Sir Arthur Gerardine. In what strange nests will not some ideals perch! And unattainable it seemed likely to remain.
As she now stood, her large, bold eyes roaming quizzically round the faded room—which seemed to hold her ultra-modern presence with amazement, to echo her loud laugh with a kind of protest, like a simple dame of olden times raising mittened hands of rebuke—no one would have guessed that she was inwardly eaten with impatience to behold her rival, to know at last the creature who had supplanted her.
"It is, indeed, a poor little place," said Sir Arthur, bustling forward to advance a chair. "I had no idea it was such a tumble-down old house. We must get rid of it as soon as possible."