"Lady Ursula, would you have any objection to regarding me in the light of a straw?"
"A what!" said Lady Ursula, in a tone in which amazement seemed blended with alarm.
"A straw," I repeated; "I assure you you are drowning, and even an unworthy being like myself may be of use to you, if you would but believe it. Remember Chundango's conduct at Dickiefield—remember the view Lady Broadhem took of it, until I interposed, or as I should more accurately say, until the current swept me past her—remember that up to this moment she has never recurred to the subject of Mr Chundango, who, although he comes to the house constantly, now devotes himself entirely to Lady Broadhem herself; and, allow me to say it, you owe it all to a timely straw."
Lady Ursula seemed struck by the graphic way in which I put her position before her, and remained silent for a few moments. It had evidently never occurred to her, that I had indirectly been the means of securing her tranquillity. She little thought it possible that her mother could have talked her matrimonial prospects over with a comparative stranger in the mercantile terms which Lady Broadhem had used in our interview at Dickiefield. And I am well aware that society generally would consider such conduct on the part of her ladyship coarse and unladylike. It showed a disregard of les convenances which good society is the first to resent. Those who have never secretly harboured the designs which Lady Broadhem in the agony of a financial crisis avowed, might justly repudiate her conduct; but "conscience does make cowards of us all," and fashionable mothers will naturally be the first to censure in Lady Broadhem a practice to which, in a less glaring and obnoxious form, they are so strongly addicted. If in silvery accents she had confided her projects to Lady Mundane, the world would have considered it natural and ladylike enough; the coarseness consisted in her telling them to me. O generation of slave-owners! why persist in deluding yourselves into the belief, that so long as you buy and sell your own flesh and blood in a whisper there is no harm in it?
My gentle critics, I would strongly advise you not to place me on my defence in these matters; I have every disposition to let you down as gently as possible, but if you play tricks with the rope, I shall have to let you down by the run. Why, it was only last year that all the world went to Mrs Gorgon Tompkins's second ball. They no more cared than she did, that she had lost one of her daughters early in the season, just after she had given the first. I remember Spiffy Goldtip taking public opinion in the club about it, and asking whether an interval of four months was not enough to satisfy the requirements of society in the matter, as it would be so sad if, after having made such good social running before Easter, Mrs Gorgon Tompkins were to lose it all afterwards through an unfortunate domestic contretemps of this kind. Now I doubt whether Lady Broadhem could surpass that. However, she is capable of great feats, and I fully expect she will strike out a new line soon; there has been a lurking demon in her eye of late which alarms me. Fortunately I am not yet finally committed, financially. It is true it has cost me a few thousands, which I shall never see again, to tide the family over its difficulties thus far, but I can still let it down with a crash if it suits me.
"Lord Frank," said Lady Ursula, after a pause, "I have already alluded to the circumstance which has induced me to treat you with a forbearance which I could not have extended to one whom I regarded as responsible for conduct unwarrantable towards myself, and certainly not to be justified by any possible advantage which I might be supposed to derive from it. I consented to see you now, because I feel sure that when you know from my own lips that I wish you at once to deny the rumour you have been the means of originating, I may depend upon your doing so."
"May I ask," I said, with much contrition in my tone, "what explanation you gave Lady Broadhem on the subject?"
"If you mean," said Lady Ursula, "whether I accounted to mamma for your conduct as I do to myself—in other words, whether I betrayed your secret—I have carefully refrained from discussing the subject with her. Fortunately, after dinner at the Whitechapels' last night, Broadhem told me that he had seen you, and that you were coming here to-day, so I assured mamma that she would hear from you the true state of the case; though, of course, I felt myself bound to let her understand that, owing to a fact which I was unable to explain, she had been completely misled by you."
"And what did Lady Broadhem say?" I asked.
"She said that had it not been for a meeting she was obliged to attend this morning, she would have waited to see you to-day; but that she was sure I laboured under some strange delusion, and that a few words of explanation from you would smooth everything."