Great Porter Square: A Mystery. v. 2

by B. L. Farjeon

This was the substance of our conversation, which lasted for about half an hour, and at the end of it we entered the ballroom. During our absence a change had taken place in the aspect of affairs. I was not the only person who had seen the portrait of Sydney’s sister, and who failed to recognise its living presentment in the lady he had introduced. Grace was dancing, and certain dowagers were watching her with suspicious eyes. Sydney observed this, and laughingly ascribed it to jealousy.

“If Grace were an ugly woman,” he said, “they would not be up in arms against her. Grace is no match for these experienced tacticians; I will soon change their frowns into smiles.”

It was no vain boast; the charm of his manner was very great, and few persons could resist it. Perhaps he recognised, with all his daring, the danger of an open scandal, and saw, further, that the lady whose champion he was would be made to suffer in the unequal contest. To avert such a catastrophe he brought to bear all his tact and all his grace of manner with the leaders of fashion. He flattered and fooled them; he parried their artful questions; he danced and flirted with their daughters; and the consequence was that at four o’clock in the morning he escorted his beautiful companion in triumph from the ball.

The following evening Sydney came uninvited to my rooms, and asked me to accompany him to Grace’s house.

“She intends to be angry with you,” he said, “because you did not ask her to dance last night.”

“She was well supplied with partners,” I replied; “she could have had three for every dance, it appeared to me.”

I was curious to ascertain the real position of affairs, and Sydney and I rode to a pretty little cottage in the suburbs, which Grace occupied, with a duenna in the place of a mother.

Now let me describe, as well as I can, in what relation Grace and my friend, Sydney Campbell, stood to each other. And before doing so it is necessary, for the proper understanding of what will be presently narrated, that I should inform you that, as I knew this woman by no other name than Grace, she knew me by no other name than Frederick.

I never understood exactly how their acquaintanceship commenced. Grace, Sydney told me, was companion to a lady in moderate circumstances, who treated the girl more like an animal than a human being. Some quixotic adventure took Sydney to the house of this lady, and shortly afterwards Grace left her situation, and found herself, friendless, upon the world. Sydney stepped in, and out of the chivalry of his nature proposed that he should take a house for her in the suburbs, where, with an elderly lady for a companion, she could live in comfort. She accepted his offer, and at the time of the ball they had known each other for between three and four months. In the eyes of the world, therefore, Grace was living under Sydney Campbell’s protection. But, as surely as I am now writing plain truths in plain words, so surely am I convinced that the intimacy between the two was perfectly innocent, and that Sydney treated and regarded Grace with such love and respect as he would have bestowed on a beloved sister. It was not as a sister he loved her, but there was no guilt in their association. To believe this of most men would have been difficult—to believe it of Sydney Campbell was easy enough to one who knew him as I knew him. None the less, however, would the verdict of the world have been condemnatory of them. I pointed this out to Sydney.