“Oh, how clever you are!” she gasped.
“Thank you,” he said, with a bow. “But all my cleverness, if I possess any, will be of no avail unless you and the family back me up. It will not be difficult. Just repeat what I have said, and repeat it with a cheerful countenance, and all will be well. Married life, my dear Lady Wyndover—I speak of it with authority, because, being a bachelor, I play the part of spectator, and, as you are aware, the spectator sees more of the game than the actual player—married life does not run even as smoothly as true love. Very soon after the nuptial knot has been tied, some little trouble is sure to occur; sometimes it smooths itself away; sometimes, when one or both of the married couple are foolish, the little trouble grows into a big one, and there is—scandal. Now, I am resolved that this trouble of Trafford’s and Esmeralda’s shall not wreck their lives. I happen to know that they are both ridiculously in love with each other, and I shrewdly suspect that our friend, the demon Jealousy, is at the bottom of this mischief; to give him his due, he generally is. When Lilias arrives, tell her what I have told you; give her a loving message from Esmeralda, and then go up to London and see all her friends, and break the news of Trafford’s and Esmeralda’s departure for the delightful Antipodes.”
He himself went back by the next train, and sauntering into his club, remarked casually to the greatest gossip he could find:
“What a delightful trip the duke and duchess will have, and what a good thing it is that they should both be obliged to go at this particular time!”
He made this remark at several houses at which he called, and at a great reception that night, and had the satisfaction of reaping the reward of his astuteness in the shape of a paragraph in the next morning’s paper to the effect that the Duke and Duchess of Belfayre had started for Australia on important business connected with the vast estates which the duchess possessed there; and the society journals, making haste to copy, inferred that nearly all Australia belonged to her grace.
Lord Selvaine’s good offices did not stop at this. He went down to Belfayre and undertook the management of the estate, and any doubts which the curious and suspicious might have entertained were dispelled by his suave and perfectly easeful and contented manner. He did not trouble Trafford with any letters, and he “ran the show” as long as he was able. But there came a time when he could do without Trafford’s presence no longer. Then he wrote his single-line but significant missive, and shortly afterward came into the breakfast-room to Lilias with a cablegram in his hand.
“Trafford and Esmeralda are coming home, my dear,” he said, composedly.
Lilias uttered an exclamation of joy.
“Oh, Selvaine, I am so glad! I can’t tell you how anxious I have been—how their absence and silence has worried me!” and the tears rose to her eyes. “I have had a dread that something was wrong, that something had happened; and though you are very clever, I have sometimes thought that you, too, were anxious about them.”
“I am never anxious about any one, my dear Lilias,” he said—“least of all about married people—and if I were you, I would not be anxious any longer. Trafford and Esmeralda are quite capable of managing their own affairs, and that we have not received any letters from them only proves that they are sensible people and not given to letter-writing. The facilities for epistolary correspondence constitute one of the curses of the age, and I trust we are arriving at a period when the writing of an unnecessary letter will be a capital offense. Will you give me another cup of coffee? By the way, did I mention that Norman was with them and would accompany them home? No sugar, please.”