"I never goad, it would be too fatiguing! Besides, Kathleen, as my daughter and a Stanwys, you are not a fool—the Stanwys——"
"Oh, please do not tell me about the Stanwys, father," she said bitterly.
"Would you rather that I spoke about the Homewoods? There is the father, Sir Josiah——"
"Common and vulgar!" the girl said with a note of contempt in her voice.
"But the son—he at least is presentable, have we not agreed that the son is not so bad, and the position——"
"I know of the position; do you think I can forget it for even a moment?"
She rose and went to the window and stared out into the dull London Square.
She was twenty-eight. It is not a great age, yet at twenty-eight the first sweet freshness of youth is on the wane—a woman of twenty-eight realises that she is no longer a girl, her girlhood is behind her. Sometimes she is terribly conscious of it. It is a little tragedy to be eight and twenty, unmarried and unsought. Kathleen Stanwys at twenty-eight was unmarried, nor was she engaged. Society was a little puzzled by the fact, for she was unusually and exceedingly handsome. She had been a very lovely girl and she was now a radiantly beautiful woman.
Seven years ago she had outshone all rival beauties in the great world of Fashion, but she had made no bid for popularity. She shrank from anything of the nature of publicity and cheap advertisement; rarely if ever had her photograph appeared in the press. She wrapped herself in a mantle of reserve. Ever conscious of the poverty which she was never permitted to forget she had earned the reputation of being cold and haughty and proud. Admirers she had never lacked, but suitors had been few and shy! Young men, well provided with money, had a wholesome fear of Lord Gowerhurst, her father, for he was a very finished specimen of his type.
Smooth tongued, with a charming and plausible manner, cynical, handsome as all the Stanwys are and have been, an accomplished gambler, too accomplished, perhaps his enemies, and he had many, whispered. He was utterly selfish, utterly pitiless. He had never been known to spare a man or a woman either. Woe to him or to her who fell into his toils. With what fine courtesy, with what charm of manner would he relieve some luckless victim, of his last shilling! How sweetly and sympathetically he would speak of his victims' ill fortune, would suggest some future "revenge," and then pocket his winnings with a grace that could have brought but little comfort to the poor wretch whose possessions had passed out of his own into the keeping of this courtly, delightful, aristocratic gentleman.