As the girl was too handsome not to arouse envy among her own sex, she was often made to feel uncomfortably conscious that people believed she was pining for love of a man who did not care for her. Lord St. Austell, among others, tried to take advantage of this supposition. He had always been a great admirer of Deborah’s rich and massive beauty, and as he belonged to that class of men who consider all women, in the position of dependents, fair game for their attentions, he now lost no opportunity of trying to ingratiate himself with her.
It was early in October of the year following Rees Pennant’s departure from his home. Lord St. Austell, who was down for the cub-hunting, called upon Mrs. Pennant, and used all the genial charm of manner for which he was well known, in the endeavor to break down an instinctive shyness which the beautiful Miss Audaer had always left with him. But Deborah left him a good deal to Mrs. Pennant, who prided herself on being a brilliant talker and a woman of enduring fascination, and had had in her time ideas of becoming an Anglicised version of Madame Récamier. Not to be daunted, the earl called one morning before the old lady was prepared to receive visitors. She sent Deborah to the drawing-room with elaborate messages of regret, which Lord St. Austell quickly cut short.
“Well, Miss Audaer, it really doesn’t matter, I only came to leave these papers for the old lady, and to ask” (and he dropped his voice confidentially), “whether you had any news of our old friend, Rees. I knew,” he went on, “that if anybody had heard from him, it would be you.”
Deborah blushed and looked very unhappy.
“No,” she said. “For the last six weeks we have heard nothing. He hardly ever writes to me, only to mamma, and his notes are never very long. He travels about a great deal, he says, for the firm of lawyers he is with, and doesn’t have much time for writing.”
“Does he ever write to you, though, except from London?”
“No.”
“Ah! And he is with a firm of lawyers, travels about, and was able from the first to send home two pounds a week?”
“Oh, he doesn’t now. He hasn’t sent any money for a long time.”
“I wonder what the young beggar’s up to?”