"How well you are looking, dear!" said Aunt Constance, holding her honorary niece at arms' length to visualise her robustness. She was not a real Aunt at all, only an old friend of the family.
"I'm not," said Gwendolen. "Norbury, is breakfast ready? Shall we go in?... Oh no, nothing! Please don't talk to me about it. I mean I'm all right. Ask Sir Coupland to tell you." For the great surgeon had come into the room, and was talking in an undertone to the old butler. Lady Gwendolen added an apology which she kept in stereotype for the non-appearance of her mother at breakfast. The Earl's absence was a usage, taken for granted. Some said he had a cup of coffee in his own room at eight, and starved till lunch.
Other guests appeared, and the usual English country-house breakfast followed: a haphazard banquet, a decorous scrimmage for a surfeit of eggs, and fish, and bacon, and tongue, and tea, and coffee, and porridge, and even Heaven itself hardly knows what. Less than usual vanished to become a vested interest of digestion; more than usual went back to the kitchen for appreciation elsewhere. For Sir Coupland, appealed to, had given a brief intelligent report of the occurrence of the morning. Then followed undertones of conversation apart between him and the Hon. Percival, who had not the heart for a pleasantry, and groups of two or three aside. Lady Gwen alone was silent, leaving the narration entirely to her medical friend, to whom she had told the incident of last evening—her interview with the man now lying between life and death, and the way his body was found by following the dog. She left the room as early as courtesy allowed, and Sir Coupland did not remain long. He had to go and tell the matter to the Earl, he said. Gwendolen, no doubt, had to do the same to her mother the Countess. It was an awful business.
Said Miss Smith-Dickenson to the Hon. Percival, on the shady terrace, a quarter of an hour afterwards, "He did tell you who the man is, though? Or perhaps I oughtn't to ask?" Other guests were scattered otherwhere, talking of the tragedy. Not a smile to be seen; still, the victim of the mishap was a stranger. It was a cloud under which a man might enjoy a cigar, quand même.
The Hon. Percival knocked an instalment of caput mortuum off his; an inch of ash which had begun on the terrace; so the interview was some minutes old. "Yes," said he. "Yes, he knows who it is. That's the worst of it."
"The worst of it?"
"I don't know of any reason myself why I should not tell you his name. Sir Coupland only said he wanted it kept quiet till he could see his father, whom he knows, of course. I understand that the family belongs to this county—lives about twenty miles off." The lady felt so confident that she would be told the name that she seized the opportunity to show how discreet she was, and kept silence. She was quite incapable of mere vulgar inquisitiveness, you see. Her inmost core had the satisfaction of feeling that its visible outer husk, Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson, was killing two birds with one stone. The way in which the gentleman continued justified it. "Besides, I know I may rely upon you to say nothing about it." Clearly the effect of her visible, almost palpable, discretion! For really—said the core—this good gentleman never set eyes on my husk till yesterday evening. And he is a Man of the World and all that sort of thing.
Miss Smith-Dickenson knew perfectly well how her sister Lilian—the one with the rolling, liquid eyes, now Baroness Porchammer—would have responded. But she herself mistrusting her powers of gushing right, did not feel equal to "Oh, but how nice of you to say so, dear Mr. Pellew!" And she felt that she was not cut out for a satirical puss neither, like her sister Georgie, now Mrs. Amphlett Starfax, to whom a mental review of possible responses assigned, "Oh dear, how complimentary we are, all of a sudden!"—with possibly a heavy blow on the gentleman's fore-arm with a fan, if she had one. So she decided on "Pray go on. You may rely on my discretion." It was simple, and made her feel like Elizabeth in "Pride and Prejudice"—a safe model, if a little old-fashioned.
The gentleman pulled at his cigar in a considerative way, and said in a perfunctory one:—"I am sure I may." Nevertheless, he postponed his answer through a mouthful of smoke, dismissing it into the atmosphere finally, to allow of speech determined on during its detention: "I'm afraid it's Adrian Torrens—there can't be two of the name who write poetry. Besides—the dog!"
The lady said "Good Heavens!" in a frightened underbreath, and was visibly shocked. For it is usually someone of whom one knows nothing at all that gets shot accidentally. Now, Adrian Torrens was the name of a man recently distinguished as the author of some remarkable verse. A man of very good family too. So—altogether!... This was the expression used by Miss Smith-Dickenson's core, almost unrebuked. "Of course, I remember the poem about the collie-dog," she added aloud.