This House to Let

She shot at him a swift glance from under the downcast eyes.

“You are a man out of a thousand, nay, out of ten thousand,” she said, and in her voice there was a note of great appreciation. If Stella Keane ever felt a good impulse in her life, it was towards this man who was doing his best to befriend her.

“Listen to me,” said Spencer persuasively, her delicate hand still lying in his. “I don’t know that I have done much good to other people in my life, but I do want to help you. I should like to get you out of this beastly hole. My proposal is, that I shall take for you a little furnished flat and supplement your income, or give you the five hundred pounds down, to do what you like with. It is for you to choose.”

“You would do this for me?” said Stella softly. “You must really like me, then! Men don’t do this sort of thing for women unless they like them.”

“I like you very much, Stella, and I want to help you.”

He knew that he could take her in his arms and kiss her at his will. But he forebore. He was not going to spoil this somewhat idyllic wooing.

“It cannot take place for a week or so,” she said presently. “I cannot quite leave my cousin in the lurch. I must give her some sort of notice. Of course, I can make the excuse that the events of last night have completely shattered my nerve.”

“I don’t wonder,” was Spencer’s comment. “Now, about this little matter we have been speaking of. I think it would be better if I paid this money into your bank, and left you to make your own arrangements. I suppose you have a bank?”

Yes, Miss Keane had a banking-account, a very small one. She smilingly remarked that it would give the manager a shock when such a large sum was paid into it.

“I will draw the money in cash to-morrow and bring it to you,” said Spencer. “Then nobody will be able to guess from whom it comes.”

He rose, he could not trust himself to stay very much longer. At any moment his reserve might break down. He might be impelled to change the rôle of the benevolent friend into that of the ardent lover.

And for a long time after he had left, Stella Keane sat absorbed in the most serious thoughts.

There was no doubt he was ardently in love with her. But he was not yet quite prepared to screw up his courage to the sticking place.

It was easy to understand. The obligations he owed his family were weighing on his mind. The woman he made his wife would one day be the Countess of Southleigh. He had to think of all this. And all he knew about her was learned from her own statement, and she had a cousin who was, from his point of view, certainly not a gentleman.

Above all things, Stella Keane was a very business-like young woman, and never shrank from looking facts squarely in the face. She must play a waiting game. Guy Spencer was very deeply in love, but he was not a hotheaded, impetuous boy, the sort of amorous youth who runs off with a chorus-girl, regardless of consequences. Lovers of this kind were very rarely met with.

If Guy Spencer did marry her, and she could not at the moment be sure he would, he would be fully conscious of the disadvantages to himself entailed by such a marriage. Would her fascination be strong enough to conquer his better judgment?

At any rate, for the present he was prepared to advance her five hundred pounds, and ask nothing but her friendship in return. It was an offer that she would have been a fool to refuse.

Presently she rose and went up to Mrs L’Estrange’s bedroom. That sorely perturbed lady had risen, flung on a dressing-gown, and was reclining on a sofa.

“I can’t sleep, I only fidget and fidget about,” was the explanation. “So I thought I might as well get up.”

“Very wise,” said Stella calmly. “You’re a little bit too hysterical, you know. You should keep your nerves in order as I do mine.”

“Not always,” was the sarcastic rejoinder. “They go to pieces in thunderstorms and air-raids, don’t they?”

“The exception proves the rule, my dear lady. Well, I haven’t come up here to indulge in a sparring match. I have some very great news for you. Mr Spencer called this afternoon; he hasn’t left me very long.” The elder woman became interested at once. “You don’t mean to say he has asked you to marry him?”

Stella laughed. “No, he hasn’t, although it will not be my fault if he doesn’t later on. It seems Tommy Esmond called on him last night, and made a clean breast of his whole history.”

Mrs L’Estrange frowned. “Then I think he was a great fool. Everybody, of course, will know what actually happened, that he was discovered cheating. But he need not go and tell him more than he would learn from general rumour.”

Stella’s face hardened a little. “You must make some allowances for him. He must have been in a terrible state of tension when he felt that his career was ended. He was so very proud, you know, of the position in society that he had won for himself. He must have felt like a man on the eve of execution. He was hardly responsible for his thoughts or actions. He is very highly-strung.”

Mrs L’Estrange spoke more gently. “Yes, of course. I am sorry I said that, my dear. And after all, it doesn’t make any difference how much he told or how little. The result to him is the same. And now for your great news, what are they? You say Spencer has not asked you to marry him.”

Stella told her of Guy’s suggestion, and her acceptance of it. “It is too good a chance to refuse. So, my dear, I shall have to leave you at the earliest possible moment.”

It was some time before the elder woman seemed quite able to grasp it. When she did, her astonishment seemed unbounded.

“Of all the strange things I have ever heard,” she began, but Stella cut her short with a little mocking laugh.

“Not quite so strange when you think it quietly out,” she said. “If he really knew anything about me, if I could produce a few respectable relatives, if I had some of your blue blood in my veins, he would have proposed this afternoon.”

Mrs L’Estrange nodded her rather dishevelled head. “I think I see.”

“He is very much in love with me,” went on Stella quietly. “Anyway, so much so that he doesn’t want to lose sight of me, while he is making up his mind. Hence his offer.”

“But he could see you here.”

Stella shook her head. “He would loathe this house after what occurred last night, and he thinks I am in an unholy set. He really is an awful dear, you know, so high-minded and upright. His great aim is to get me away from the environment.”

Mrs L’Estrange settled herself comfortably amongst her sofa cushions. She was an excitable and fussy person about trifles, but she took the great things of life with a calm and equal mind.

“Well, my dear, go as soon as it suits yourself. You have been a good pal to me, and I shall be sorry to lose you. But if you have got a decent chance you would be a fool not to take it.”

Miss Keane was strongly of the same opinion. Anyway she was glad the interview was over, that Mrs L’Estrange had taken everything in such good part. She might have turned nasty if the mood had seized her.

Later on, Miss Keane wrote a long letter to Tommy Esmond to an address which he had communicated to her in his note of the morning.

The same evening, she held a long conversation with her cousin and trustee, Mr Dutton, who came to Elsinore Gardens in obedience to an urgent summons on the telephone.

Chapter Fourteen

Lady Nina Spencer sat in the drawing-room of the big house in Carlton House Terrace, awaiting the few guests who had been invited to a small, informal dinner-party. Her father, very infirm for his years, sat opposite to her in a big easy-chair.

The Earl spoke in his low, quavering voice: “I have nothing to say against the woman herself, judging from what little we have seen of her. She has very perfect manners, just a trifle too perfect. I can quite understand that for the average man she possesses considerable charm, and she has great good looks. Many people would call her beautiful. But I can only repeat what I said on the day I received Guy’s letter announcing his clandestine marriage: ‘The pity of it.’”

Lady Nina was a quiet, robust and practical young person, fond of looking facts in the face, and looking at them very squarely.

She had been as much shocked at her cousin’s rash marriage as the Earl himself, but it was an accomplished fact. Only two courses were open: the first to have nothing more to do with Guy and his wife, the second to admit the wife to a guarded intimacy.

Lord Southleigh had declared warmly, in his first disgust, that he would never look upon his young kinsman’s face again. But Nina had prevailed with milder counsels. Guy was his heir, and in the course of Nature would succeed to the family honours. They would not cut themselves adrift from him, and they must make up their minds to tolerate this wife, of whose antecedents he could give no satisfactory account. The one fact he did mention, that she was a cousin of Mrs L’Estrange, did not weigh much with them.

Mrs L’Estrange came of a fairly good family, so far as birth counted, but it was both impecunious and addicted to making unfortunate alliances. One of her sisters had run away with a good-looking young fellow who had been her father’s valet. She was a woman who would have a good many undesirable relatives knocking about. Miss Stella Keane, the daughter of an impoverished Irishman, might well belong to this band of undesirables. More especially as Guy’s statements about her antecedents were of the most bald and unsatisfactory nature.

It was all very sad and regrettable from every point of view, but, as Nina calmly pointed out, several young heirs to peerages had been running amok lately, in the matrimonial sense, and taking their wives from very questionable quarters. Guy might have married some coarse and common creature from the music-halls. It was unfortunate, in a way, that he had a considerable fortune of his own, and could snap his fingers at the displeasure of his relatives, if they presumed to show it.

But, somehow, knowing Guy as well as she did, Nina did not believe that the future Countess of Southleigh, who would, in due course, wear the family jewels, was likely to be coarse or common. Guy was too fastidious, too innately a gentleman, to be snared by a creature of that kind.

And, on her first introduction, the young wife made a much more favourable impression than might have been anticipated, considering the prejudices arrayed against her.

She was not in the least servile or obsequious in the presence of these two very aristocratic persons, but she bore herself with a certain kind of shrinking modesty, as if asking pardon for having intruded into the family. Her attitude to her husband appeared to be one of shy adoration, tempered with perfect good taste. Her deep affection for him, while not obtrusive or ostentatious, seemed to express itself in her tender glances, the soft cadences of her voice when she addressed him.