The young people contented themselves with a simple bow, after which they each drew back a little way. Then said Sir Gilbert aside to her ladyship: “Of course you have heard that only quite recently was I made aware of the existence of my grandson.”
“It would have been impossible for me not to have heard of it. It is the talk of the county—in everybody’s mouth.”
“And more than one pretty version of the affair has got into circulation, I do not doubt. Some people have more imagination than they are aware of. Give them but the merest thread of fact, and they will weave out of it a tissue of romance which does credit to their inventive powers, if to nothing else.”
“But is not that your own fault in some measure? The central fact of the affair, that you had found your long-lost grandson and had installed him at the Chase, was one which you had evidently no wish to conceal, even had it been in your power to do so. Why, then—— But, really, I have no right to question you in the matter.”
“Don’t say that. Why, then, you were about to add, throw any cloak of concealment round the subordinate facts of the case? I will tell you why, my dear Louisa. Simply because, although I have chosen to acknowledge my grandson and to instal him in that position which the world—very mistakenly—regards as his by inalienable right, it by no means follows that there are not circumstances connected with the antecedents and personal history both of himself and his mother which I have no intention, if I can anyhow avoid it, of allowing to become public property. You, however, are in an altogether different position; from you I desire to have no concealments in the affair, and after dinner I will tell you all there is to tell.”
It was with a curious mixture of sulkiness and gratification that Luigi took Miss Thursby in to dinner. His sulkiness arose from the fact that in the company of this beautiful girl he felt strangely bashful and out of his element; for once he was possessed by a vivid consciousness of being the very inferior creature that he really was, and it was one of those unsought conclusions which we prefer not to have forced upon us. His gratification arose from the fact that for the first time in his life he found himself in a position to treat a being in every other way so much above him, not merely as his social equal but as his inferior; for one of the parlour-maids who was deeply smitten with Luigi’s good looks, and acted as a sort of house spy for him, had already whispered in his ear that the extremely pretty girl whom Lady Pell had brought with her was nothing more than her ladyship’s companion.
Only a paid companion, and, as such, one who ought to feel herself honoured by whatever attentions the grandson of Sir Gilbert Clare might choose to pay her (for by this time Luigi had got into the way of taking himself and his position quite seriously), and yet, try as he might, he could not feel himself at home in her company. He felt altogether different when in the society of Miss Jennings, the barmaid at the King’s Head, who, in her way, was a very pretty girl, and also a good girl. When with Miss J., as she was generally called by the young men of the billiard-room, he never felt in the slightest degree bashful, or ill at ease, and certainly never at a loss for words. Why, they two would go on “chaffing” each other for half an hour at a stretch when Miss J. happened to be in the humour and to have no other customers to claim her attention. And yet for all that, although he could not have told himself why, in his secret heart he did not wish Miss Thursby to be a bit different from what she was, for she was a revelation to him.
What on earth was he to talk to her about? he asked himself. His grandfather and Lady Pell were immersed in their recollections, and to go on sitting by Miss Thursby like a dummy was fast becoming intolerable. Evidently he must make a plunge of some kind.
“I suppose—er—that you and Lady Pell have knocked about a good deal together,” at length he ventured to observe. Then seeing Ethel’s look of surprise, he added hastily: “I mean that you have been great travellers, you know. I heard her ladyship say just now that something—er—put her in mind of—of something else she had seen abroad.”
“I have only had the pleasure of knowing Lady Pell for about a couple of months,” answered Ethel. “I believe she has been a considerable traveller in her time; indeed, she was to have gone to France this autumn had not sickness broken out in the house of the friend whom she was about to visit.” It was a relief to Luigi to find that Miss Thursby was not a travelled person, as, in that case, she might have chosen to talk about things of which he knew next to nothing, and so have made his ignorance more patent than was desirable.