There are a certain number of people who go through life instinctively taking every chance of advancement or of useful friendship offered to them. Such a person was Katty Winslow.
Even in the midst of her real sorrow and distress, she did not lose sight of the fact that Lord St. Amant, with whom her acquaintance up to the present had been so slight as to be negligible, might prove a very useful friend in what now looked like her immediately dreary future. She was well aware that he was probably, nay, almost certainly, prejudiced against her, for she and Mrs. Tropenell had never been on cordial terms; but she set herself, even now, with this terrible thing which she feared, nay, felt almost sure, was true, filling up the whole background of her mind, to destroy that prejudice. To a certain extent she succeeded, during the few minutes, the precious ten minutes, she secured practically alone with her host, in compassing her wish.
Laura sat down, in the attractive, if rather dark, sitting-room into which Lord St. Amant had shown her, and, blind to everything about her, she was now staring into the fire, oppressed, stunned, by the terrible thing which perchance lay before her.
Lining the panelled walls, which were painted a deep yellow tint, hung a series of curious old colour-prints of London, and, on the writing-table—itself, as Katty's quick eyes had at once realised, a singularly fine piece of eighteenth-century English lacquer—were two portraits. The one was a miniature of a lady in the stiff yet becoming costume of early Victorian days—probably Lord St. Amant's mother; and the other was a spirited sketch of a girl in an old-fashioned riding habit—certainly Mrs. Tropenell forty years ago.
Katty had remained standing, and soon she wandered over to the open door of the room where, with noiseless celerity, the table was being laid for luncheon. It was from there that she almost imperceptibly beckoned to her host. With some prejudice and a good deal of curiosity, he followed her, and together they went over to the deep embrasured window overlooking the tiny square.
There, looking up earnestly into Lord St. Amant's shrewd, kindly face, she said in a low voice: "I want to ask you, Lord St. Amant, to do me a kindness—" she waited a moment, "a true kindness! I want you to arrange that I go to this place, to Duke House, with whoever goes there to find out if the news contained in that horrible letter is true!"
And as he looked extremely surprised, she hurried on, with a little catch in her voice, "Godfrey Pavely was my dear—my very dear, friend. When we were quite young people, when I was living with my father in Pewsbury——"
"I remember your father," said Lord St. Amant, in a softened, kindly tone, and his mind suddenly evoked the personality of the broken-down, not very reputable gentleman to whom the surrounding gentry had taken pains to be kind.
"In those days," went on Katty rather breathlessly, "Godfrey and I fell in love and became engaged. But his people were furious, and as a result—well, he was made to go to Paris for a year, and the whole thing came to an end. Later, after I had divorced my husband, when I was living at Rosedean, it—it——"