“In other words—the game is up!” said Alaric Osmond-Orme mildly. “Come down, my dear fellow, and resume your own rôle of hereditary legislator. Allow me to replace the ladder.” He did so.
“So that fellow’s done me! I guessed as much when that little—when Susanna took away the ladder,” said the Duke, preparing to descend. “And then when I saw him kiss her—there’s a remarkably good view of the gardens through the end window. I——” He pointed to some remarkable effects of color splashed upon the ground so carefully prepared by the painter. “I took it out of the beggar in the only way I could, don’t you know.”
“Take it out of him still more,” suggested Alaric, his tinted eyeglass concealing a fiendish twinkle, “by playing in the County Cricket Match. He’s entered in your name, you know!”
“You’re very obligin’,” said the Duke, “but I don’t think I’m taking any.” He gracefully slithered to the floor as Susanna and Halcyon Wopse entered the ballroom, radiant and hand in hand.
“Papa,” said Susanna, taking the bull by the horns, “Mr. Wopse and I are engaged. We mean to be married as soon as possible after the County Cricket Match.” She kissed the perturbed countenance of Lord Beaumaris, nodded to the Duke, and walked over to Alaric. “Your plan has succeeded beautifully,” she said. “Ain’t you pleased—and won’t you congratulate us?”
“I am delighted,” said the imperturbable Alaric. He dropped his eyeglass and before the preternatural intelligence of his left eye even Susanna quailed. “And I congratulate you both most heartily.” He smiled, and pressed the hands of Susanna and her lover, and, moving away, stepped into the garden. There, unseen, he rubbed his hands, twinkling with mourning rings.
“I loved that boy’s mother very dearly, boy as I was then ...” said Alaric. “As for Susanna, if she knew that I knew she was listening at the library door....” He replaced his eyeglass, and his expression became, as usual, a blank.
LADY CLANBEVAN’S BABY
There was a gray, woolly October fog over Hyde Park. The railings wept grimy tears, and the damp yellow leaves dropped soddenly from the soaked trees. Pedestrians looked chilled and sulky; camphor chests and cedar-presses had yielded up their treasures of sables and sealskin, chinchilla and silver fox. A double stream of fashionable traffic rolled west and east, and the rich clarets and vivid crimsons of the automobiles burned through the fog like genial, warming fires.
A Baby-Bunting six horse-power petrol-car, in color a chrysanthemum yellow, came jiggeting by. The driver stopped. He was a technical chemist and biologist of note and standing, and I had last heard him speak from the platform of the Royal Institution.