"Evelyn—that would do for the world. To me she must always be Eve, the first woman."
He drew a long breath, and set to work. The rough draft of accounts in connection with a native industry he was opening out in Taorna had to be checked and examined before dawn.
CHAPTER VI
"Those who want to lead must never hesitate about sacrificing their friends."—LORD BEACONSFIELD.
Miss Beadon returned from the Wereminsters' dinner party even more than usually self-satisfied. The Prime Minister himself had had a chat with her, while as for Farquharson, he was constantly at her side. Another conquest, she supposed—one worth considering this time, for Farquharson was in his way a parti.
After all, as nominal housekeeper to her father, life had little more to offer her. Even the best servants like a change of place occasionally! The wife of an important man gets more attention than his daughter. And some important post would doubtless fall to Farquharson's share ere long. Dora had only to mention the matter to her father, to let fall a few of those ready tears which so quickly subjugate a man's will and reason, to get her way later, when there was a change of Government. Her father was notoriously—she flattered herself most men were—indulgent where her wishes were concerned.
Miss Beadon blissfully believed that all her acquaintances who had done well in life, owed the position to her patronage. "So and so would never have got that post by himself. Why, I had to beard the Prime Minister in his den and do my poor little best to get round him before he consented," she would say, in reference to some coveted appointment which obvious merit, or a signed note from Beadon, had procured. Outsiders, recognizing her vanity and her father's weakness, played up to both because the game paid so well. If to make Miss Beadon believe she was the deus ex machina of all social and political events was to secure her father as ally, it was worth while to frame a few extravagant compliments, and spend half-an-hour or so, which might have been more amusingly employed, in her company.
Miss Beadon fell a very easy prey to the schemes of intriguing mothers. She was besieged with requests for recommendations by indolent young men who had no qualifications for any opening which demanded work. At public meetings she was invariably pursued by wives of provincial town-clerks eager to advance their husbands' opportunities; she plaintively complained that at bazaars her stall was the rest-house of nervous mothers with marriageable daughters, who reckoned on Miss Beadon's philanthropy to procure them coveted invitations. Bred in the atmosphere of favour, and herself totally unable to tell good from bad, Dora distributed smilingly innumerable small acts of favour, of which either her father, or some minister anxious to please him, ultimately paid the cost. Miss Beadon had the credit of a good action, which was all that mattered so far as she was concerned. One questions if the Holy Father grants his indulgences with as much inward satisfaction as did Dora.
The night after the Wereminsters' dinner party, the Beadons and some others had been invited by Hare to meet at his rooms and hear a famous scientist lecture on radium. Functions like these bored Dora inexpressibly, but to-night her maid was closeted with her for over two hours before she succeeded in pleasing her dictatorial mistress. For Farquharson was to be present, and Miss Beadon had always laid to heart the adage that attractive clothes complete a man's subjugation.
So Felice, who had been kept up until the small hours of the previous morning, was made to arrange and unpick, to drape and re-drape, to alter and exchange article upon article of Dora's attire.