A Secret of the Sea: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

"For the present she will stay with us, as usual. It is too early yet to legislate for her future."

Her ladyship said this with an air that seemed to forbid further discussion. Her husband took the hint, and remarking that he had several important letters to write, he trotted back to the library.

"I am going to have a cup of chocolate in my dressing-room," said her ladyship to Olive. "Unless you are in a hurry to get back home, you may come and keep me company."

Olive was in no hurry to get back; in fact, she had something for her ladyship's private ear, and was glad of such an opportunity for telling it.

Lady Dudgeon, on her side, was actuated by a very natural desire to elicit from Miss Deane some further particulars of the strange story which she had just heard. She felt sure that there must be several interesting details, which it might not be advisable that Eleanor should be made acquainted with, but which Miss Deane could have no object in keeping from her. It was certainly not her intention to cross-question Olive--she was above doing that--a delicate hint to Miss Deane that her ladyship was willing to listen to anything she might feel disposed to tell her, ought to be sufficient to elicit any details that might hitherto have been kept in the background.

Notwithstanding the kind way in which she had spoken to Eleanor, Lady Dudgeon felt very considerably annoyed in her own mind at the thought that her pet protégée, whom she had taken everywhere and introduced to everybody, lauding her to the skies as everything that was good and beautiful, and who had, in a certain sense, as the presumed heiress of twenty thousand pounds, shed a reflected lustre on her chaperon, should turn out to be nobody knew whom, and without a sixpence to call her own. Nothing could have been more mortifying. She had liked the girl from a child, and would no doubt have continued to like her just as much had Jacob Lloyd died a bankrupt, and would probably have made a sort of humble companion of her, or would, in any case, have seen that she was properly provided for; but to have introduced the girl to all her fine friends and acquaintances on a footing of equality, and now to discover that she had no claim to the status so given her--that was indeed a bitter pill for her ladyship to swallow.

She knew well--no one better--how censorious is that Society of which she herself formed a component atom; how one of the chief conditions of its existence is that it shall revenge itself without mercy on every faux pas of its votaries in which they may be found out. She knew quite well the sort of remarks that people would make. They would say that she had wilfully allowed herself to become a party to a fraud. They would say that she had done her best to pass off a portionless girl as an heiress, and, in the eyes of Society, what crime could well be more heinous than that?

It was very, very mortifying, and she could not help, in her secret heart, visiting upon Eleanor some portion of blame for what had happened. It seemed well-nigh incredible to her that the girl could have lived all these years in utter ignorance that she was not Jacob Lloyd's daughter. Of course, all these minor points would have to be inquired into and thoroughly sifted later on. Much bitterness was yet to come, but the foretaste she had of it already was very far from being to her liking.

Not a shadow of all this was discernible in her ladyship's manner as Miss Deane followed her upstairs; but Olive had a poisoned arrow in her quiver of which Lady Dudgeon knew nothing.

A cup of chocolate was brought for each of them, and Lady Dudgeon, as she sipped at hers, chatted away to her companion about Sophy and Carry, and what girls they were for wearing out their boots; about the late flower show; about Mrs. Diplock's last baby, and the state of Mr. Kelvin's health--while waiting for an opportunity to work the conversation round to the desired point. But Olive was in no mood for such manœuvring. She had something to say, and she was determined to say it. A break in the flow of her ladyship's small-talk was caused by the intrusion of a servant to ask a question, and Olive seized the opportunity.