"Oh! a woman's reason. I think him so, because I think him so. No; but without joking, all sorts of queer things have happened in that family—dark mysteries, and I fancy even crimes; but John never told me details. Sir Arthur is a most unspeakably conventional person, but I believe some of his relations were quite the reverse. Come and help me entertain him," she added, when a housemaid had entered the nursery; "he will probably disapprove of you, and tell me later on that your presence in the house is damaging to my reputation," she added as they went down the stairs together.
The elderly gentleman who stood on the drawing-room hearthrug, surveying the room with an air of disapproval, was, Rupert thought, one of the handsomest men he had ever seen. White-haired, with a heavy white moustache, his complexion was clear and healthy as a girl's, and his refined, well-cut features were almost cameo-like in their perfect chiselling His eyes were dark, and very bright, and they fixed themselves at once upon Rupert with a glance of suspicion.
"My dear Cicely," he said, shaking her stiffly by the hand, "urgent business, tiresome family business, brought me to this city of dreadful night for a few hours, and I thought I must call and enquire after your health, and the health of Veronica."
"Thank you, Cousin Arthur; do sit down; I am very flourishing, and Baba is in rude health. We don't call her Veronica yet, you know; she is really only quite a baby still."
"I strongly deprecate the calling of children by fancy names," Sir Arthur answered pompously. "Veronica is a name in our family; a name about which, alas! cling many sad associations. But still, I am convinced that if her poor father had lived, your poor daughter——"
"I haven't introduced you to my cousin," Cicely cut in unceremoniously, feeling that any comments upon her husband's possible conduct would be unendurable from Sir Arthur's lips. "I believe you have never met him. Mr. Mernside, Sir Arthur Congreve."
Sir Arthur bowed stiffly. Rupert's greeting was pleasant and friendly; the older man's rigid attitude merely amused him.
"No; I have certainly never met Mr. Mernside," Sir Arthur said coldly; "as you know, my dear Cicely, I never come to this terrible Babylon, unless absolutely driven to do so by irresistible circumstances. And in your husband's lifetime, I do not ever remember to have seen your cousin," he added, with a severe glance at Mernside.
"If you had been much in town in John's lifetime you would often have met Rupert," Cicely answered quickly. "Rupert was one of John's greatest friends, and is Baba's trustee and guardian. But you," she tried to speak more lightly, "you and Cousin Ellen bury yourselves so completely in your country fastness, that you know nothing of the troublesome world in which we live."
"Troublesome world, indeed," answered Sir Arthur, wagging his head and looking at her solemnly. The saving grace of humour had been omitted from his composition, and he took himself, and the whole world, with a seriousness that could not be shaken; "in this dreadful city, you frolic like children on the edge of a volcano, but one day the eruption will come, and——"