A Barren Title: A Novel

by T. W. Speight

Never was a simple-minded woman more puzzled what to do with a legacy. Her tastes were so inexpensive, and her mode of life so quiet and sedate, that she could find no use for the money. All she could do was to place the amount in the hands of her nephew, begging him to allow her a hundred a year out of it, and invest the remainder for her in any way he might think best.

Miss Tebbuts had never been handsome, but no one who studied her face could doubt her amiability and good-temper. There was nothing fashionable, nothing modish, about her. Her gown was after a style that had been in vogue some dozen years previously. She wore elaborate caps, and little sausage-like curls, now beginning to turn gray. She was of a retiring disposition, and her greatest trouble was having to fill the position of hostess at Bourbon House to the numerous strangers her nephew took there. Mr. Wellclose was wrong when he surmised that she might possibly be the victim of some early disappointment. Miss Tebbuts had never had an offer in her life, and if she had ever entertained any hopes in that direction she had trampled them under foot long ago, so that nothing was now left of them save a faint, sweet memory, like the sweetness of crushed flowers exhaled from a pot pourri. And this was the lady to whom John Marmaduke Lorrimore began to pay very marked attention.

He sat next her at the dinner-table, he made his way to her side in the drawing-room, and he favored her with more of his conversation than any one else. After a little while he began to call two or three times a week and take her for drives in the basket-carriage, with little Mabel Larkins to play propriety. He was seen with her at the Brimley spring flower-show, and at the garden-party, of which mention has already been made, his attentions to her were the theme of public comment. In short, people began to talk in all directions, and before long everybody knew for a fact, or thought they did, that the earl and Miss Tebbuts were going to make a match of it. This notoriety was just what the earl wanted. On one point he was particularly careful: he never spoke a word of love to Miss Tebbuts, nor gave utterance to any sentiments that could possibly be construed into the faintest shadow of a declaration.

One day Orlando said, smilingly, "If you play your cards properly, aunt, you may yet be Countess of Loughton."

Miss Tebbuts colored up. "But I don't want to be Countess of Loughton," she said, "and you don't know what you are talking about. Make your mind easy on one point: Lord Loughton and I will never be more than friends."

"Such attentions as his can have but one meaning."

"You talk like a very young man, Orlando. According to your theory, no gentleman can pay a lady a few simple attentions without having certain designs imputed to him."

"A few simple attentions, aunt! Pardon me, but they seem to me most marked attentions."

"Well, whatever they may seem, they won't end in matrimony; on that point you may make yourself quite sure."

Orlando was terribly disappointed, but did not dare to show it. What a splendid thing it would have been to have an aunt who was a countess and an uncle who was an earl! Such a dream was almost too blissful to contemplate. And yet he firmly believed it might become a glorious reality if only his aunt were not so foolishly weak-minded. If she did not care greatly for such a marriage on her own account, she ought to remember what was due to her nephew and nieces. Never could they hope that such an opportunity would offer itself again.