“No, sir, never. She didn’t give a card. She was elderly, dressed in deep mourning. They waited best part of an hour for you, then drove away in her ladyship’s brougham.”
“I wonder who she could have been,” remarked Dudley Chisholm reflectively. “I haven’t the honour of knowing any lady named Muriel, and, what’s more, I have no desire to make her acquaintance. But how was it, Parsons, that if the door was closed, you overheard this very edifying conversation?”
“I listened at the keyhole, sir. Old men have long ears, you know.”
His master laughed.
“Slow at the telephone, quick at the keyhole, eh, Parsons?” he said. “Well, somehow, you don’t like her ladyship. Why is it?”
“I’ve already told you, Master Dudley. First, because you are too much with her. There’s no woman more dangerous to men like yourself than a wealthy young person of her attractions; secondly, because she has some extraordinary design upon you on behalf of this mysterious Muriel—whoever she is.”
What the old man had said was certainly puzzling. What possible object could Claudia have, he wondered, in bringing there a strange woman and suggesting to her that he should marry a third person? He would put the question point-blank to her to-morrow. Claudia Nevill and he were old friends—very old friends. Years ago, long before she had married his friend Dick Nevill, a noble lord who sat for Huntingdon, they had been close acquaintances, and now, Nevill having died two years after the marriage, leaving Claudia sole mistress of the huge estate, together with that princely house in Albert Gate, he had naturally become her confidant and adviser.
She was now only twenty-six, one of the smartest women in London, and one of the prettiest. After a brief period of mourning, she had again thrown herself into all the dissipations of the following season, and was seen everywhere. She had been so often in the company of Dudley Chisholm that their close friendship had for months past been remarked.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary had, of course, heard the gossip, and laughed at it. He naturally admired her, and once, long before her marriage, he thought he was in love with her; but after a rigid self-examination he came to the conclusion that he had not been really desperately in love with any woman in his life, and promised himself not to commit any such folly now. Therefore, he laughed heartily at his old servant’s ominous but well-meant warning.
“I’m not the sort of man to marry, Parsons,” he said. “Truth to tell, I’m too much of an old fogey for women to care for me. And as for this unknown Muriel, well, I don’t think you need have much fear that I shall commit any matrimonial indiscretion with her. I expect her ladyship was only joking, and you took her words seriously.”