The adventurous lady

by J. C. Snaith

“I had better give you a card.” It was almost the voice of a dreamer, yet the dry precision was really inimitable. “Pikey,”—she addressed the lady opposite—“you have some cards?”

The duenna opened the queer-shaped dressing bag with an air of stern disapproval. At the top was a small leather case which she handed to her mistress.

“Inspector, this is my mother’s card. My father is Lord Carabbas. That is my name”—a neatly gloved finger indicated the middle—“Lady Elfreda Catkin.” She pronounced the name very slowly and distinctly and with a care that seemed to give it really remarkable importance.

The Inspector glanced at the card. Then he glanced at Lady Elfreda. He made no comment. All the same a subtle change came over him. It was hard to define, but it seemed to soften, almost to humanize him. Finally it culminated in an abrupt withdrawal from the compartment with a slight raising of the hat.

Before the train started, which in the course of the next three minutes it reluctantly did, the guard came and locked the carriage door.

England ranks as a democratic country, but the fact that a daughter of the Marquis of Carabbas was sitting in the left-hand corner, with her back to the engine, lent somehow a quality to the atmosphere of the compartment which would hardly have been there had its locale been the rolling stock of the Tahiti Great Western or the Timbuctoo Grand Trunk. At any rate two diligent students of The Times newspaper peered solemnly at each other over the top of their favorite journal. Both lived in Eaton Place, they had belonged for years to the same clubs, they were known to each other perfectly well by sight but they jobbed in different markets; therefore they had yet to speak their first word to each other—for no better reason than that he who spoke first would have to make some little sacrifice of personal dignity in order to do so.

Now, of course, was not the moment to break the habit of years, but if their solemn eyes meant anything their minds held but a single thought. Carabbas himself did not cut much ice in the City, but if he was joining the board of the B. S. W. it meant that the astute Angora connection was coming into Home Rails, in which case purely as a matter of academic interest, there would be no harm in turning to page fifteen in order to look at the price of B. S. W. First Preferred Stock.

That was all the incident meant to these Olympians, just that and nothing more. But for the little lady of the green ulster it was of wholly different portent. When shortly after nine o’clock that morning she had left the home of her fathers in the modest suburb of Laxton she had not dreamt that before midday she would find herself under the personal protection of the daughter of a marquis. It was her good fortune to be living in the golden age of democracy, but...!

She stole a covert glance at the fur coat opposite. Such a garment in itself was no longer a mark of caste, but this was rather a special affair, a sealskin with a skunk collar, so simple, so unpretending that it needed almost the glance of an expert to tell that it had cost a great deal of money. Then she glanced at the hat above it, a plain black velour with a twist of skunk round it, then down at the neat—the adorably neat!—shoes, and then very shyly up again to their wearer. But their wearer was holding the Society Pictorial in front of her, and in the opinion of the third class passenger it was, perhaps, just as well that she was. Otherwise she could hardly have failed to read what was passing in the mind of the Lady of Laxton. She must have seen something of the envy and the awe, of the eager, the too-eager interest which all the care in the world could not veil.

Miss Gray Eyes knew and felt she was a little snob, a mean and rather vulgar little snob in the presence of Miss Puss-in-the-Corner, the tip of whose decisive chin was just visible between her paper and her rich fur collar.