“What!” cried George, jumping up.
“Yes. You see, when you deposited me on the floor of the corridor outside here last night, neither you nor I took the matter in the quiet and gentlemanly manner we ought to have done. In fact, we made such a row that rumours of it came to the Colonel’s ears, and hearing your name and mine mixed up in it, he sent for me and asked me about it. And—and you see, Laurie, old chap, I didn’t know all you have just told me, and—”
“By Heaven!” said George in a low voice, “you made him think—”
“I give you my word, old man, I didn’t make him think anything. But I couldn’t help what he did think. When he heard there was a girl mixed up in it—a sort of creole, I think I said—he went off like soda-water in hot weather, and there was no getting a word in edgeways after that. He asked me finally what the d— I was standing there for like a moonstruck idiot, or a stuck pig, or a something I didn’t exactly catch. For as soon as he showed by his first words that my presence was no longer soothing, I saluted and scuttled away, as one express journey through the air in the course of an evening is enough for anybody. I believe he sent up to your rooms, but you had gone out by that time.”
George listened to this account very gloomily, as the Colonel was the very last person he wished to know anything about his marriage until it was an accomplished fact. He dreaded a summons from Lord Florencecourt; for the next three days he felt a nervous quaking of the heart whenever he was in the neighbourhood of the autocratic little officer. But for some unexplained reason he was not called upon to give an account of himself, and instead, the Colonel seemed to mark his displeasure by the much more welcome means of cold reserve towards him.
In the meantime George had a busy day of it. He dismissed Massey pledged to secrecy on the subject of the marriage and likewise to eternal friendship with himself, called on Nouna, whom he found reconciled to her new abode by means of a kitten and a preliminary lesson in the art of shelling peas. He then went up to the City, saw Mr. Angelo, told him enough of the occurrences of the preceding evening to show him how needful it was that the young girl should find immediately some more efficient protector than the somnolent and stolid Mrs. Ellis, and declared his wish to marry her at once. Mr. Angelo concurred perfectly in all that he said, and only made one stipulation, namely, that George should wait until Madame di Valdestillas’s consent could be got to this decisive step.
“I have not the least doubt of her consent, Mr. Lauriston,” said he. “And as I learnt yesterday, by telegraphing to her last address, that she and her husband are now in Paris, on their way to Spa, you will not have long to wait for her answer. She is accustomed to act a good deal by my advice, and I will say about you enough to turn the scale. She has great faith in my judgment, as she may well have where she is concerned, for, although some of her actions may seem eccentric to us methodical Europeans, she has a most generous and noble nature, and she can always command whatever knowledge and service my partner and I can put at her disposal. But I could not allow this hasty marriage to take place without her full consent. To begin with, it would not be legal, as her daughter is not yet sixteen.”
There was nothing for George Lauriston to do therefore, but to wait, and in the meantime to write a long and earnest letter to the Countess, which he entrusted to her lawyers, without troubling further for her address. During the next two days he spent a great deal of his time with Nouna, whom he took to the South Kensington Museum and to the Zoological Gardens, first stopping with her at different shops in Regent Street, where he provided her with boots, gloves and a hat. She gave a great deal of trouble in all the shops, being quite unable to fix her attention on the subject in hand in her delight at being able to run about and examine all the pretty things; but she charmed the attendants, both men and girls, who allowed her to try on every scarf and bonnet and wrap that suited her fancy, and brought her a cup of tea, when, on hearing two of the girls speak about going to tea, she made a request for one. When, however, her exuberance of spirits had calmed down a little, she chose without an instant’s hesitation the bonnet which suited her best, a puckered ivory-silk hood-like headgear, meant for a child, a pair of long silk gloves of the same shade, which she gathered up in wrinkles on her arms, and a china crape shawl that matched exactly with them, which she arranged most picturesquely about her shoulders, after flinging down on the ground the beaded mantle she had previously worn.
This proceeding, which caused George some consternation, she accomplished with a series of delighted chuckles.
“Ah, ah! That’s the thing Mammy Ellis got for me! I wish she could see it now,” she murmured, casting a look of scorn and hatred at the rejected garment, which was of the kind middle-aged ladies call “handsome” and “lady-like.” And when one of the smiling assistants picked it up and asked for her address that she might send it home, she shook her head disdainfully and said they could keep it, she did not want it sent home. But George, with a serious face, mindful of the expense of ladies’ dress, which began to seem unsuspectedly appalling, said she might be cold presently, and insisted on carrying the prickly bristling mantle, which he regarded with all reverence as having been worn by her, over his arm.