"I protest, I should have said the same," the lady drawled. "I too had spirit once, child. That was before I suffered. I would I had known you earlier. And yet perhaps I may do something to save you even now."
"I cannot tell how, ma'am."
"Listen, if you please!" the lady said dramatically. "I was something of an heiress as you are and maybe something of a toast too. The worse for me. I choose to believe it was not only my money which brought Oliver Boyce upon me. He took all I could give him and very soon gave me nothing, not even common courtesy. When I began to be careful he began to be brutal. But for my family—I told you that Sir Gilbert Heathcote was my uncle—he would have stripped me of every penny. When they stepped in to save me some rag of my fortune, my good Mr. Boyce left me. I have never had a word from him since. Pray, child, take warning."
"If it is so, I am sorry for it," said Alison coldly, "I believe I hear company." She began to walk to the outer room.
Behind her, "As for your Harry Boyce," said the lady, "oh, I make no doubt he's Oliver's son, though certainly he is none of mine."
Alison made as if she did not hear, and she was spared more by the coming of some of her guests. The card tables filled. There was no more danger of being private with Mrs. Oliver Boyce. Indeed, the lady, as if she had done all she wanted, took her leave early. She was affectionate about it, for which Alison liked her none the better. Through most of that evening, amid the flutter of cards and the clatter—"Spadillio, on my life! What, it's Basto, is it? Did you hear of Mrs. Prue? She'll not show for a month. We win the Codille, ma'am. They say the Duchess and she pulled caps"—Alison was telling herself over and over that the creature was a detestable low thing who only wanted to make mischief. It should, you think, have needed no effort to believe that. But the obvious malice had power to annoy a mind already discontented. Alison could not stop wondering what the mystery was about Harry's birth and his father. Perhaps Harry knew more than the little he professed. Perhaps he was not the careless, indolent fellow he chose to seem, but something more cunning and less lofty. What if he were just such another as the woman painted his father—a fellow on the hunt for an heiress, who, once he had her and her money, cared no more about her? To be sure there was some evidence for that. Since they had come to town, he was always off by himself. If she wanted him with her, she had to plead and plague him. A proud office! Why, that very night monsieur did not please to appear at the card tables. He was too fine for her and her company. So she fretted and rubbed the poison in. And naturally, she fared ill at the card table. Her cards were bad and she made the worst of them. She was not a good loser and it was a wife much inflamed who, when her guests were gone, sought out her husband.
Harry sat with Mrs. Weston, who was at needlework and, if Alison had been able to see, looked very benign. But it was he who demanded all the wife's angry eyes. His wig was on the table beside him. He had a pipe in his mouth. He was lolling in the deeps of a chair and smiling to himself over a book. "You might be in an ale-house, you look so slovenly."
Harry grinned up at her. "Oh, madame wife hasn't been winning to-night.
Tell me all about it."
"Faugh! Your pipe," Alison coughed. "For God's sake keep it to the tavern. It's enough that you reek of it without making my house reek too."
Harry gave a great sigh and put the pipe down. "We were so comfortable till you came. I am glad to see you, dear."