The evening was a very unhappy one for Mr. Romaine—the more so that what the great specialist he had consulted had predicted was actually happening. Being disturbed in mind, he was becoming ill in body. How on earth had that cruel French woman found out about Dr. Chambers? So Mr. Romaine thought, sitting in his library chair, suffering acutely. Dr. Chessingham offered to come in and read to him, to play écarté with him—but it occurred to Mr. Romaine that perhaps a visit to the Chessinghams’ part of the house might divert his spirits and take his mind off the torturing subject of Madame de Fonblanque. He took Bridge’s arm and tottered off to the Chessinghams’ sitting-room. But the instant he entered the door his indomitable spirit asserted itself. He stood upright, walked steadily, and even forced a smile to his lips. Mrs. Chessingham and Ethel were at their everlasting fancy work, of which Mr. Romaine had never seen a completed specimen. Ethel rose and placed a chair for him—which, as he was old and infirm and needed it, nettled him extremely.
“Pray, my dear Miss Maywood, don’t trouble yourself. I do not yet require the kind coddling you would bestow upon me.”
Ethel, being an amiable and patient creature, took this with a smile.
“I am looking forward with great pleasure,” said Mr. Romaine, after having seated himself in a straight-backed chair, while he yearned for an easy one, “to the season in London. I have had my eye on that house in Prince’s Gate for several years, and, of course, feel pleased to have it. Being an old-fashioned man, I have kept pretty closely to the localities which were modish when I was a young attaché some years since—such as Belgravia, Grosvenor, and Lowndes Squares, and all those places. But there is something very attractive about the new Kensington—and I have intended for some years to take a house in that part of town for a season—and this one particularly struck my fancy.”
“It is very handsome—but very expensive,” said Mrs. Chessingham.
“Most handsome things are expensive, dear madam, but this house is reasonable, considering its charm, and I hope that you as well as your sister will enjoy some of its pleasures with me.”
Both young women smiled—it would be nice to have the run of the house at Prince’s Gate—and after going through with a winter in the country, and in Virginia, too, they thought they had earned it.
“Heretofore,” continued Mr. Romaine, stroking his white mustache with his delicate hand, “while I have been fond of entertaining, it has always been of a sedate kind—chiefly dinners. But last year I was beguiled into promising my young friend, Lady Gwendolen Beauclerc, a ball, if I could get a house with a ball-room—and a few days ago I received a very pretty reminder of my promise, in the shape of a photograph and a letter.”
“Better and better,” thought Ethel—“to be invited to a ball given to please Lady Gwendolen Beauclerc!” But Gladys spoke up with her usual simplicity and straightforwardness.
“I hardly think, being now married to a medical man with his way to make in the world, that I shall be asked to many swell balls—and perhaps it is better that I should not go.”