“Ah?” said Bertram, his head very much in the air. “Who are your friends?”
“Only two,” said Seton. “One is Lady Dor, a charming woman, sister of Harry Pontycroft, and the other is Pontycroft's Faithful John—a very amusing gel named Adgate.”
Faithful John? The phrase was novel to Bertram, and struck him as unpleasant. “Pontycroft's what?” he asked, rather brusquely.
“Yes,” drawled Seton, undisturbed. “It's quite the joke of the period, in England. She is one of those preposterously rich Americans, you know,—hundred and fifty thousand a year, and that sort of thing. Pooty too, and clever, with a sense of humour. But she's gone and fallen desperately in love with poor old Harry Pontycroft, and when he's present, upon my word, she eyes him exactly as a hungry dog eyes a bone. Which must make him feel a trifle queerish, seeing that he's twenty years her senior, and by no means a beauty, and not at all in the marrying line. If he were, you can trust the British mamma to have snapped him up long before this. So she worships him from afar with a hopeless, undying flame. Poor old Ponty! Most fellows, of course, would think themselves in luck, but Ponty has all the tin he knows what to do with, and a wife would suit his book about as well as a tame white elephant. He is dog-in-the-manger in spite of himself. No others need apply.”
Bertram passed his hands across his brow, asking the spirits of the air, I daresay, where is truth? He passed his hand across his brow, while his lips uttered a kind of guttural and enigmatic Mumph.
“There was Newhampton, for instance,” Seton complacently babbled on, “the little Duke. Of course, with her supplies, she's had more or less the whole unmarried peerage after her, to pick and choose from; but she never turned a hair till Newhampton offered himself. Then she regularly broke down, and blew the gaff. A Duke! Well, a Duke's a Duke, and human nature couldn't stand it. She told him with tears in her eyes that he'd given her the hardest day's work she'd ever had to do. For I'd marry you like a shot, she said, only I'm unlucky enough to be in love with another man. Pontycroft for a fiver, said Newhampton, who's not such a fool as he looks. And, by Jove, if she didn't coolly up and tell him he was right! But the fun of it is that meantime Ponty's sister comes in for the reversion. If not the rose, she's near the rose, and she gets the golden dew. A private portable millionaire, who loves you for your brother and never shies at a bill, is a jolly convenient addition to a Christian family.”
Bertram said nothing. He stood looking down the exiguous thoroughfare, over the heads of the passers-by, a cloud of preoccupation on his brow. Lewis Vincent, Mrs. Wilberton, and now this little cad of a Seton—three witnesses. But where was truth?
“Anyhow,” the little cad, never scenting danger, in a minute went blandly on, “I hope you'll give me an evening. Miss Adgate is sure to amuse you, and Lady Dor is a person you really ought to know.”
“Thank you,” said Bertram, deliberately weighting his rudeness with a ceremonious bow, “I don't think I should care to make their acquaintance under your auspices.”
And therewith he resumed his interrupted walk, leaving Seton, open-mouthed, roundeyed, to the enjoyment of a fine view of his back.