“Eleanour!”
As she came towards him he took her hands in his and looked intently down at her. Her eyes were very, very tired. She said: “I am very tired. I will go to bed now.”
Old Sir Guy held her hands very tenderly. “But what is on your mind, Eleanour? Why did you laugh in that dreadful way?”
She opened those tired eyes very wide. “Oh, surely, dear, I am allowed that—to laugh at your having called Beau Maturin the ace of cads!”
Old Sir Guy said sternly: “Yes, you are tired, Eleanour. You are not yourself.”
“Poor old gentleman!” she tenderly, bitterly, smiled up at him. “Poor old gentleman! Dear, like all your generation you have been wrong about everything in ours, but everything! Oh, you have been so wrong about what was good and what was rotten in young people! Wrong about your son, about me, about Beau Maturin——”
Sir Guy snapped with savage impatience: “You will kindly explain, Eleanour, what all this fantastic nonsense is about.”
“Of course,” she said thoughtfully, “there was a certain amount of excuse for your son Basil. I made it rather easy for him. You see, dear, Capel Maturin lied. As usual, you might say. Well, yes. He just told the story the wrong way round. You know, I was once engaged to be married to Mr. Maturin. And he introduced me to his best friend, Basil de Gramercy. Oh, dear, why did you give your son such a very small allowance? Whereas to be able to seduce his best friend’s fiancée he needed money. But Capel Maturin had done very well on the Derby that year, and Basil easily managed to borrow a thousand from him, for no one, let’s face it, could ever call Beau Maturin mean with money. And one day Mr. Maturin, who used to whistle the Spring Song to himself because he and I both loved it, suddenly found that I preferred Basil’s prospects to his good looks. I don’t suppose you can even yet realise, dear, the exquisite revenge that Mr. Maturin has had of me and of your house to-night. He intended, obviously, to marry my daughter: how, you might say, could I have borne that? But I tell you I could have borne it infinitely better than the memory of this night. Here I have sat, a faded woman, while Capel Maturin, fresher and more handsome in bankruptcy than ever I have been in success, having won my daughter’s love, killed it out of pity for you—Oh, not for me!—with a tale which, however he had told it, does me very little honour. And, for pity’s sake, for your sake, he spared you your son. I should not have told you now; I have done wrong, but I had to. Even the old, dear, cannot be allowed to be wrong about everything all the time! But don’t look so sad! Why do you, why should you, look so sad? After all, the de Gramercys have had everything they ever wanted from me and my daughter—and the ace of cads certainly hasn’t! Good-night, dear.”