Lady Pebworth undoubtedly was the victim of a great passion. Fortunately, she was possessed of a lord and master who was of an unsuspicious nature, otherwise I am afraid that in spite of all my discretion she would have landed me in the Divorce Court. The Peeress and the stockbroker’s clerk would have made a meal for many a prurient appetite.
My income was three hundred pounds a year, more or less, and with the instincts of my race I had begun to speculate in a safe, quiet sort of way.
I made no boast of the nearness of my relation to the Gascoyne family in such society as I obtained entrance to. I was anxious for the matter to remain unknown.
I woke one morning to read in the social intelligence that Lady Gascoyne had been safely delivered of a son. The news was not the shock it might have been, as I had known for some time that she was in an interesting condition. The child would have to be removed as well as his father.
It was a task that might well tax the ingenuity of any man. I thought the matter over carefully, day after day. I knew their house, which overlooked the Green Park, and sat for hours gazing at the windows as if they might be expected to furnish inspiration.
Lord Gascoyne was now twenty-six years of age. Without being in any way a prig—in fact, he was a man of some gallantry—he had a great sense of his responsibilities, and was leaving the Guards in order to manage his huge estates the better. He and his wife were little heard of. Despite the fact of her American birth, she was the genuine great lady as opposed to the pinchbeck imposition. Her happiness was not measured by the amount of social noise she could make. Everything about her and her husband was correct, and with the exception of the extreme good looks of both probably somewhat dull.
They belonged to the inner sanctuary of English aristocracy, and I could not at the moment see how I was to scale the fortress of their exclusiveness. I knew that they had been perfectly ready to entertain and make much of the young Gascoynes. Harry Gascoyne had told me as much, but this was a very different thing from welcoming the son of the Hebrew commercial traveller. They might not be so easy to conciliate as Miss Gascoyne.
Lord and Lady Gascoyne’s entertainments were not made a feature of in the newspapers. It was a privilege to attend them, and the entrée to Lady Gascoyne’s drawing-room was a passport to any society.
Lady Pebworth, I knew, visited them, and had been a guest at Hammerton, but I did not think it very probable she would be able to introduce me, and I was not quite sure that I cared about owing my introduction to her.