“Excuse me, sir, but do you know the lady now? I should like to know all is well with her. I was so afraid what her fate might be with that careless father.”

Sellars explained glibly that she had married well and seemed quite happy. Fortunately Dobbs was too well-mannered to ask for further information, to inquire her name and station, for instance. But, if he had, there is no doubt the young man would have proved himself equal to the occasion. He certainly would not have let him know that Lettice Larchester, the handsome daughter of an evidently disreputable father, was the wife of a financier of great eminence.

Sellars took deep pulls at his pipe, as the old man proceeded with his reminiscences. He felt very pleased with the turn things had taken. Nobody had ever seemed to know anything about Mrs. Morrice except, of course, Sir George, who kept that knowledge in his own breast, imitating, in that respect, the reticence of the lady herself. Sellars was now going to learn a good deal from the lips of this garrulous waiter, with his old-world air and respectable side-whiskers.

CHAPTER VIII
MRS. MORRICE’S GIRLHOOD

This was the history of a part of the lives of Lettice Larchester and her father as set forth by old Dobbs, the head-waiter and general utility man of the Brinkstone Arms, extending over a period of some four years.

The daughter he had already described as a bonnie, handsome girl. When she arrived at Vine Cottage, a very modest residence the rental of which was only a few pounds a year, she was about eighteen, a tall, slender girl with a wealth of beautiful brown hair, soft grey eyes and a charming figure.

The father was a fine, good-looking man with the long hair and the rather dreamy expression of the artist, and his profession was emphasized by the regulation velvet coat. There was a look of dissipation about the pleasant features which told of late hours and heavy drinking both at home and abroad.

He arrived at Vine Cottage about midday, and The Brinkstone Arms made his acquaintance a few hours later. He seemed a very genial, affable sort of person, hail-fellow-well-met at once with the proprietor and his factotum, Dobbs, and ready to be friendly with everybody, no matter what his station—the farmer himself, the farmer’s labourer, the carrier, the postman, the village blacksmith. Very soon it was discovered that when he took a drop too much, a not infrequent occurrence, his geniality disappeared and he developed an ugly and aggressive temper, and was inclined sometimes to resort to personal violence against those who happened to offend him at the particular moment.

In his normal mood there was no pride about the man. Five minutes after he had ordered his first drink in the place he had told them all about himself. By profession he was an artist, a painter of landscapes. He hardly ever exhibited at the public galleries, working almost exclusively for dealers, who gave him what he described—in his loud, breezy voice, more like that of a robust mariner than a man practising a refined art—as a “cut-throat price.” But they always paid on delivery, sometimes a bit on account, and that was a great consideration to a poor devil who was always hard-up. These statements he made without any false shame or shrinking modesty.

An artist, but evidently not a very successful one! The reasons for this were not far to seek. Drink had been the ruin of the man’s life; if he had possessed twice the talent he had, the fatal impulse to alcohol would have set his feet travelling swiftly on the downward path. He drank steadily at all times, but several times a year his propensities assumed alarming proportions. When one of these fits took him, his brushes were laid aside, he shut himself up in the house and devoted himself to his favourite vice till it passed. Then he would pull himself together and work with feverish energy to make up for the time he had lost.