"It is all wrong in principle," replied Lady Carlyon, making a pretty little grimace--she retained for Sir Percy's benefit alone all the little roguish tricks and airs which made Lucy Armytage so charming, but would scarcely have been becoming in Lady Carlyon--"I never thought that anything would induce me to marry any man outside of Kentucky. I have often been shocked by your want of knowledge of horses."
Sir Percy tweaked her ear. The form and ceremony with which horses were treated in England had been a revelation to Lady Carlyon, and Sir Percy himself was no mean judge of a horse. Nevertheless, Lady Carlyon, when she chose to be once more Lucy Armytage, would give herself supercilious airs to Sir Percy upon all equine subjects.
"You hardly know a horse from a cow, my Lady Lucy," he said.
This was the name by which he called his wife when they were alone. He had explained to her at the beginning of their married life, when instructing her in titles, that she could not really be Lady Lucy Carlyon unless she were an earl's daughter, to which Lucy replied demurely that she had always supposed every gentleman in Kentucky to be the equal of the biggest earl in England. The small joke amused Sir Percy, and from that on she became to him "Lady Lucy." In some way Lord Baudesert had also caught the name, which so pleased his fancy that "Lady Lucy" became applied in tenderness to Lady Carlyon. It recalled Lord Baudesert, and Lady Carlyon said, as she gave Sir Percy his second cup of tea:
"I don't think your uncle will be able to keep away long from Washington. He will be sure to come back here as a visitor. He declares that he finds London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin dull after Washington."
"Perhaps it is because he is no longer an Ambassador, or else that the English, French, German and Austrian sense of humour is not so acute as he found the American, and my uncle can't have the ambassadorial joke as he did here."
"And Mrs. Chantrey is still unmarried," said Lady Carlyon, and then they both laughed.
Lady Carlyon kept away from the hateful subject of Mrs. March, but Sir Percy understood well that his wife would shoulder the burden and carry it bravely and quietly. The idea of Alicia March being under his roof was odious and humiliating to Sir Percy Carlyon, but he saw no way out of it. His immediate departure for England after his marriage, and thence to his Continental post, had kept Lady Carlyon and Alicia March apart. The Carlyons had not been to America but once since, and then only for a few weeks, within a year of their marriage. Colonel Armytage had been stricken with paralysis, and Lady Carlyon, with Sir Percy, had hastened to him, arriving in time to find him conscious, but dying. Mrs. Armytage had followed her husband within a fortnight, her last days tended by Lady Carlyon, to whom she had been a mother. Within a month all was over and Lady Carlyon returned to Europe without going near Washington. The chapter of accidents which Senator March mentioned as having kept him and his wife from meeting the Carlyons in Europe had been really a series of clever stratagems on the part of the latter. When the Marches were on the Continent, especially at the Capitol, where Sir Percy Carlyon took his preliminary canter as Minister before winning the blue ribbon of an Embassy, he and Lady Carlyon had found it convenient to be absent at those times. Then when the Marches went to London the Carlyons managed to be on the Continent. Sir Percy could not possibly put himself in the position of avoiding General Talbott, who had visited him at his Continental post, and had been made an honoured guest. Only one person suspected why the Marches and the Carlyons had never met, and that was Alicia March. Nor were the Carlyons the only persons who avoided her, but of this her husband remained entirely ignorant.
The stories of Senator March's wealth made a sensation in the sphere of General Talbott's and Mrs. March's acquaintances. Mrs. March herself gave evidence of it in the splendour of her jewels and the cost and exquisiteness of her costumes. She spent with a lavish hand, and the world knew it. Sir Percy Carlyon, hearing rumours of this, thought to himself: "It is the same Alicia, whose passion for spending has grown by what it feeds on." Sir Percy Carlyon turned these things over in his mind while drinking tea on this December afternoon, but he said nothing of them.
Then when tea was over, following the custom established after the birth of their first boy, the Carlyons went upstairs to pay a visit to the nursery. In saying good-night to the two beautiful little children, Lady Carlyon knelt down by their cribs and made a silent prayer, and Sir Percy, standing near her, did likewise, and thought himself the happiest of men, but for one thing--that which had happened in the far-away hill-country of India long years ago.