She felt that he had fully determined on two things: one, that he would be well paid; the other, that he would not be compromised. So when she went into the house she tore up the various infuriated telegrams she had written in answer to her correspondents, and wrote instead some prettily-worded intimations that, as she had counseled her brother to make this marriage when the lady was rich, she could not blame him for making it now the same lady was poor, and could only hope that the result would be as fortunate as she sincerely desired for them both, though circumstances had arisen which unhappily estranged her from Hurstmanceaux. This way of looking at the matter was at once so angelic, and so nice and temperate, that it suggested an idea, which gradually filtered down through her intimate correspondents and permeated society, the impression, vague but general, that William Massarene’s daughter had jockeyed her out of some portion of William Massarene’s fortune. No one could explain how, but everyone thought so. Daddy Gwyllian did indeed stoutly declare that the impression was preposterous and untenable, and that if Hurstmanceaux had broken all relations with his sister he had doubtless very sound reasons for doing so. But Daddy was waxing old and society was getting tired of him. When people live too long they outstay the welcome of the world.
With May Harrenden House was again open. The falconer of Clodion leaned and laughed in silent mirth as the throngs of society passed up the staircase under his gaze. The Massarenes were like Malbrouck, morts et enterrés, and an Australian wool-stapler reigned in their stead, worshipped where they had worshipped, and was guarded by their lares and pénates. Across the threshold, where William Massarene had been carried lifeless, the great world he had loved flocked, as the water-fowl on the ponds of the Green Park flock with equal avidity to be fed, no matter what hand it may be which scatters the bread.
Up that well-known staircase, under the eyes of the nude falconer, there came a beautiful and very fair woman, who had often been up those stairs before; a fair and slim and ever blandly-smiling youth was by her side, who had been told, as children are told in the nursery, to shut his eyes and open his mouth, and who had done so. He had been rewarded, for a great many good things had dropped into his mouth. England had become for him what it is for so many other German princelings, the Canaan overflowing with milk and honey where he could enjoy himself at other people’s expense, and lead the first flight on other people’s horses. She looked about her as she passed on through the reception-rooms: nothing was changed, nothing of any importance, and she herself not very much. There were still the same florid Pietro di Cortona high overhead in the effulgence of the electric lamps, still the same too dark and dubious Mantegna hanging above a pyramid of Calla lilies and damask roses. There were only no longer in the alcove where they had been enshrined the bust by Dalou and the portrait by Orchardson: they were at Faldon! Insupportable as this idea was to her, the outrage had its silver side; it meant silence, entire, absolute, on the part of her brother’s wife.
“Billy—you brute!—I have been stronger than you!” she thought as she passed the place where the gold vase of Leo the Tenth still filled the humble office of a samovàr. Life had once more become easy and agreeable to her. Death had been discriminating and Fortune on the whole not unkind.
“The poor Massarenes were such dear good friends of mine, but you have so much more taste than they had,” she said to the Australian wool-stapler.
And he, a big burly heavy man, who owned many millions of sheep on many thousands of pastures, and had as much taste as one of his wooly wethers, was flattered, and thrust out his big paunch, and thought to himself, under the sorcery of her smile, why should he not succeed wherever William Massarene had succeeded?
Why not indeed?
THE END.
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