CHAPTER XVII.
The Inmates of the Grange House.
Philip walked on roses during those glorious days. He had found his mate. His life was complete. How bright the world, and how fair the future.
The only disagreeable incident marring the utter joy of existence, and that only for an instant, was his encounter with Langdon at Mrs. Atherley's pretty flat in Mount Street.
Grenier, endowed by nature with an occasional retrospective glimpse of a nobler character, read him correctly, when he said that Anson would never condescend to name the intruder in the presence of the woman he loved.
But he did ask a servant who it was with whom he had just been conversing in the entrance hall, and the girl said the gentleman was a Mr. Langdon. No; Mrs. Atherley did not know him well. He was brought to her "At Home" on a previous Wednesday by a friend.
Obviously Evelyn could not have more than a passing acquaintance with the man, or she would have recognized him herself. Her agitation that night in the park, the terror of a difficult situation, was enough to account for her failure in this respect, nor was Philip then aware that at her previous meeting with Lady Morland's son she entertained a curious suspicion, instantly dispelled by his glib manner, that Langdon was the man who sought to thrust his unwelcome attentions upon her.
Mount Street—how came Mrs. Atherley and her daughter to return to the precincts of Mayfair? That was a little secret between Philip and Lord Vanstone.
When Evelyn slyly endeavored to make her new admirer understand that there could be no intimacy between a millionaire and a young lady who was embarking on a professional career—she thought so, be it recorded; this is no canon of art—he seemingly disregarded the hint, but interviewed Lord Vanstone next morning.
The conversation was stormy on one side and emphatic on the other. Philip had heard sufficient of Mrs. Atherley's history by judicious inquiry to enable him to place some unpleasant facts before his lordship.