It was twilight, the hour her ladyship loved the best. She was reclining in an easy-chair near the window, with her hands loosely folded, and her eyes watching the dying glory of the sunset. There was a vague something in her attitude which indicated peace—peace and contentment. It was as if she had been through all the storm and stress of life, and found a haven at the end. There were traces of suffering on her forehead, surmounted by its coronal of white hair; but the curves of her lips, and the indefinable sweetness of their expression, showed that she was neither embittered by sorrow nor hardened by experience. As wife and mother, as hostess and poor man’s friend, her interests had ever been concentrated outside herself.
The tinkling bells of a clock in the adjoining room disturbed her reverie, and at the same moment the door opened to admit a girl. Pausing a moment to switch on the electric light, she advanced towards Lady Montella’s chair. Her step, elastic yet firm, indicated the exuberance of youth.
“A penny for your thoughts, auntie. You look like Patience on a monument,” she said merrily, sinking on to a little chair at her ladyship’s side. “Are you still lamenting your sins, or have you, like myself, put them away for another year? I am so glad Dr. Ford allowed me to fast for half the day. My appetite is keener than it has been for weeks.”
Lady Montella looked at the girl and smiled. Raie Emanuel was her niece only by adoption, but there was as deep an affection on both sides as if a blood relationship had existed between the two. Raie, in keeping with her name, constituted a ray of brightness in a somewhat silent household, and to its mistress was a source of comfort and delight. The eldest daughter of a large but impecunious family, her nature was a combination of practicality with romance. She could cook a dinner or compose a poem with equal facility, and although in Lady Montella’s menage the former accomplishment was never required, it was to the girl’s credit that the ability was there.
“Lionel ought to be here soon,” she ran on, scarcely waiting for an answer, “unless he calls at Grosvenor Square on the way. I wonder which he wants most: the Lady Patricia or his breakfast?”
“He must be tired and hungry after his long day’s fast,” her foster-aunt returned. “I hope he will come straight home. You are joking, Raie, in saying that. Have you any grounds for supposing that Lady Patricia is the special object of my son’s interest?”
“Yes.” The girl nodded vivaciously. “One has only to see them together to be sure of it. Patricia Byrne is Lionel’s ideal woman—fair to look upon, fair at heart. And Lionel is Lady Patricia’s hero, as indeed he deserves to be. Haven’t you noticed the change which has come over him lately—the change in his opinions about women, I mean? Until a few weeks ago he was absorbed in his politics and his poor Jews. Now there is a counter attraction.”
Lady Montella looked distressed.
“You are more observant than I am, Raie,” she rejoined. “I have noticed nothing; perhaps I did not wish to notice—this.”
She leant back in her chair, her hands interlocked. For some unaccountable reason she had not thought that her boy would go the usual way of youth, and entangle himself in a love-affair; he had always seemed much too serious and reserved for anything of the kind. Of course, she wanted him to marry some day—a girl of his own faith whom she would choose. To allow himself to fall in love with Lady Patricia Byrne was the height of folly, and could only bring trouble on all concerned.