"Oh," ejaculated Mrs. Laniston, fairly taken aback. She had had it vaguely in her mind that the manager was not really what he seemed, and was about to protest that she had had the discrimination to discern this from the first, inquiring who was "that distinguished-looking young gentleman."
Mr. Jardine had thrown himself into the rocking-chair on which he had been leaning, feeling that he had done all that he could, more than his unfounded suspicions justified, and seeking to recover himself of his excitement and nervous strain. At this disclosure of the showman's antecedents he raised his eyebrows in sarcastic disdain. After all the Lanistons were free agents, and if they deliberately chose association of this type—why, they were not for him nor he for them.
Mrs. Laniston vaguely lifted her eyes to the window opening on the verandah; to see Jardine not in attendance on Lucia gave her an unwonted sense of something awry, but the next moment the interest of the gossip annulled this impression, and she was listening to Mr. Dalton, who, having exhausted his relish of the survey of the flinching group, went on with animation.
"And she was as good as she was pretty—which is saying a very great deal! She provided for her aged parents permanently out of her prize money, sent a consumptive brother to a hospital where he was cured, to be drowned afterward on an ocean voyage. I fancy she bought much fine dry goods and frippery; in effect she distributed the sum in a year or so, contentedly relying on her slender salary as a dancer—they tell me that despite her beauty and grace she was an indifferent dancer—till she met this young fellow's father, who straightway married her."
Mr. Dalton had reached the limit of his capacity it would seem to sustain the public interest. So genteel a circle was not entertained by a biography of this sordid character. The bridge party, albeit with a civil effect of listening, had begun to play out the interrupted hand, though the owner of the dummy sat sideways in his chair and still turned an attentive face. Mrs. Laniston, fluttering the leaves of her magazine, was vaguely disconcerted. She could hardly be said to have her two charges in mind in this connection—she had no reason to think that the young showman would presume to speak to either of them. Jardine, a contemptuous satiric smile on his jaded face, sat languidly listening.
Mr. Dalton, perhaps, had already found a field at the Bar for his gift of marshalling facts, approaching with an ever-increasing velocity of significance the climax, but a chancellor, or a puisne judge, or even a jury was better fitted to resist the shock of sudden surprise than the idle summer birds in their relaxed mental attitude.
"Now," he continued, "the father was of a different sort; he was a young man of the very highest social connections. Moreover, he was talented, well-behaved, studious, very young—only in his junior year at college—heart-rending infatuation. His family investigated the facts and when they found that the marriage was really valid they cast him off without a moment's hesitation, absolutely, irretrievably. I never shall forget Judge Lloyd's dismay——"
"Judge Lloyd?" exclaimed several voices in different keys of sharp surprise.
"You surely don't mean Judge Clarence Jennico Lloyd of Glaston?" said the gentleman who had connections in that city, and was familiar with the status of its principal people.
"The noted jurist?—I do! He was considered a hard man, but he was a very just one. This happened in his palmy days, when he was very rich as well as esteemed far and wide an ornament to the judiciary. The family could trace a long and proud descent and they carried their heads very high. The judge could not tolerate such a mésalliance. He persisted in considering the woman a designing baggage and tried to buy her off. He bid very high—that was before his financial reverses."