“My dear kid, I suppose that I’ve asked for this by over-valuing your powers of discrimination! Just as a tip, though, I may pass on to you the information that even the clown in the circus is apt to draw the line at playing the giddy fool over his mother. I might add, moreover, that my fertile imagination would balk at inventing any one as delightful as the lady who did me the honour to be mine.”
Ledyard, flushed to the bone, met the ironic gaze with considerable dignity.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “As you imply, I’m a tasteless fool.”
“And so you’re in excellent company!” his host assured him. “I will now rapidly descend from the ancestral high-horse and prove to you, strictly as a matter of penance, that I am not invariably a liar. If you’ll wait just half a shake, I’ll present you to Biddy, ninth Duchess of Bolingham.”
He vanished into the room at the back with a reassuring gleam over his shoulder at young Ledyard’s startled countenance, and was back in rather less than half a shake with a shabby black case in his hands. He put it carefully on the table between them, touched a spring, and stepped with a low bow.
“There!” he announced. “Madame Biddy, the American kid with the freckles—you know the one. Mr. Bill Ledyard from Ohio, the Duchess of Bolingham—from Ireland.”
Out of the black velvet frame there smiled, wicked and joyful, a tiny vision of gold and ivory and sapphire. The head, with its froth of bright curls, lightly tilted—the nose tilted, too—and the lips tilted, too—there she sat laughing down the years, gay as a flower, reckless as a butterfly, lovely as a dream.
“Buffets and insults and three inimitable step-children and four incomparable sisters-in-law—and then some artist chap came along and painted her like this!” The Honourable Tony leaned over, touching the gauzy folds of the dress with a light and caressing finger. “She’s a bit incredible, after all, you know! They were going to crush all that life and laughter clear down into the earth, and away she went dancing through their fingers into the dust that was just a flower garden to her. She’s more alive this minute than they’ll ever be in all their everlasting stale lives. Ah, Biddy darlin’, look at you now after flirtin’ with the fine young man from America, and you with the blessed saints to teach you wisdom all these weary long years.”
Ledyard stared down at her, young and awed and tongue-tied.
“She’s—she’s the prettiest thing that I ever saw—honestly.”