“But you will want it yourself,” said Lucy, very grateful. Bertie bore the aspect of an old friend, and the people at Farafield, though she had lived in Farafield all her life, were comparative strangers to her. She was moved to laugh when Jock appeared in the coat, which was so much too large for him, a funny little figure, his big eyes looking out from the collar that came over his ears, but comfortable, easy, and dry. “He has been wrapped in my coat before now,” Bertie said. “Don’t you remember, Jock, on the heath when I had to carry you home? Mary expects to have him back, Miss Trevor, when you return to town. I have not told you,” continued Bertie, raising his voice, “how Mrs. Berry-Montagu has taken me up, she who nearly made an end of me by that review; and even old Lady Betsinda has smiled upon me; oh, I must tell you about your old friends.”
Their dry corner was by this time shared by a number of the other guests, who were watching the sky through the great hole of a ruined window, and had nothing to talk about except the chances of the weather, whether “it would leave off,” whether there was any chance of getting home without a wetting, and sundry doubts and questions of the same kind. In the midst of these depressed and shivering people who had nothing to amuse them, it was fine to talk of Lady Betsinda and other names known in the higher society of Mayfair; and Bertie was not indifferent to this, whatever Lucy’s sentiments might be.
“I ran over to Homburg for a few weeks,” Bertie said. “Everybody was there. I saw Lady Randolph, who was very kind to me of course. She is always kind. We talked of you constantly, I need not tell you. But you should have seen Lady Betsinda in the morning taking the waters, without her lace, without her satin, a wonderful little old mummy swathed in folds of flannel. Can you imagine Lady Betsinda without her lace?” said Bertie, delighted with the effect he was producing. Mrs. Price and the rest had been caught in the full vacancy of their discussion about the rain. To hear of a Lady Betsinda was always interesting. They edged half consciously a little nearer, and stopped their conjectures in respect to the storm.
“I hear it is worth more than all the rest of her ladyship’s little property,” Bertie said. “I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur, but I am told she has some very fine point d’Alençon which has never been equaled. Poor old Lady Betsinda! her lace is what she stands upon. The duchess, they say, declares everywhere that the point d’Alençon is an heirloom, and that Lady Betsinda has no right to it; but if she were separated from her lace I think she would die.”
“It is very dirty,” said Lucy, with simplicity. She was not sure that she liked him to call the attention of the others by this talk which everybody could hear, but she was glad to escape from the troublesome circumstances of the moment.
“Dirty!” he said, repeating her word in his higher tones. “What is lace if it is not dirty? you might say the same of the poor old woman herself, perhaps; but a duke’s daughter is always a duke’s daughter, Miss Trevor, and point is always point. And the more blood you have, and the more lace you have, the more candid you feel yourself entitled to be about your flannel. A fine lady can always make a fright of herself with composure. She used to hold out a grimy finger to me, and ask after you.”
“After me?” said Lucy, shrinking. If he would but speak lower, or if she could but steal away! Everybody was listening now, even Mrs. Rushton, who had just come in, shaking the rain off her bonnet. She had found Lucy out the moment she entered with that keen gaze of displeasure which is keener than anything but love.
“Yes,” said Bertie, still raising his voice. Then he bent toward her, and continued the conversation in a not inaudible whisper. “This is not for everybody’s ears,” he said. “She asked me always, ‘How is little Miss Angel—the Angel of Hope’?”
A vivid color covered Lucy’s face. She was looking toward Mrs. Rushton, and who could doubt that Raymond’s mother saw the flush and put her own interpretation upon it? Of this Lucy did not think, but she was annoyed and disconcerted beyond measure. She drew away as far as possible among the little group around them. Had she not forgotten all this, put it out of her mind? Was there nobody whom she could trust? She shrunk from the old friend with whom she had been so glad to take refuge; after all he was not an old friend; and was there not, far or near, any one person whom she could trust?
When, however, the carriages came, and the big break, into which Lucy and Emmie and little Jock had to be crowded, since the weather was too broken to make it possible that they could ride home, Bertie managed to get the place next her there, and engrossed her the whole way. He held an umbrella over her head when the rain came down again, he busied himself officiously in putting her cloak round her, he addressed all his conversation to her, talking of Lady Randolph, and of the people whom they two alone knew. Sometimes she was interested, sometimes amused by his talk, but always disturbed and troubled by its exclusiveness and absorbing character; and she did not know how to free herself from it. The rest of the party grew tired, and cross, and silent, but Bertie never failed. It was he who jumped down at the gate of the Terrace, and handed her down from amid all the limp and draggled figures of the disappointed merry-makers. They were all too wet to make anything possible but the speediest return to their homes, notwithstanding the pretty supper-table all shining with flowers and lights which awaited them in the big house in the market-place, and at which the Rushtons, tired and disappointed, and drenched, had to sit down alone. Bertie’s was the only cheerful voice which said good-night. He attended her to her door with unwearying devotion. Raymond, who had insisted upon riding after the carriages, passed by all wet and dismal, as the door opened. He put his hand to his hat with a morose and stiff salutation. With the water streaming from the brim of that soaked hat he passed by stiffly like a figure of despair. And Bertie laughed. “It has been a dismal expedition, but a most delightful day. There is nothing I love like the rain,” he said.