That Girl in Black; and, Bronzie

“It was Mr Conrad Fforde, Lord Southwold’s nephew and heir – heir at least to the title, but to little else.”

“So I should suppose,” said Norreys indifferently.

“The Southwolds are very poor.”

“How queer that he knew your name if you have never met him before,” said Mrs Selby. “But I dare say it’s through the Flores-Carters; they’re such great friends of mine, you know, and they are staying at Laxter’s Hill as well as the Southwold party.”

“Yes,” Despard agreed, “he had evidently heard of you.”

“And of you too in that case. People do so chatter in the country. The Carters are dying to get you there. They have got the Southwolds to promise to go to them next week. They – the Carter girls – are perfectly wild about Lady Margaret. I think it would be better taste not to make up to her so much; it does look as if it was because she was what she is, though I know it isn’t really that. They get up these fits of enthusiasm. And she is very nice – not very pretty, you know, but wonderfully nice and unspoilt, considering.”

“Unspoilt,” repeated Despard. He was glad to keep his sister talking about indifferent matters. “I don’t see that poor Lord Southwold’s daughter has any reason to be spoilt.”

“Oh, dear yes – didn’t you know? I thought you knew everything of that kind. It appears that she is a tremendous heiress; I forget the figures. The fortune comes from her aunt’s husband. Her mother’s elder sister married an enormously wealthy man, and as they had no children or near relations on his side, he left all to this girl. Of course she and her father have always known it, but it has been kept very quiet. They have lived in the country six months of the year, and travelled the other six. She has been most carefully brought up and splendidly educated. But she has never been ‘out’ in society at all till this year.”

“I never remember hearing of them in town,” said Despard.

“Oh, Lord Southwold himself never goes out. He is dreadfully delicate – heart-disease, I think. But she – Lady Margaret – will be heard of now. It has all come out about her fortune now that he has come into the title. His cousin, the last earl, only died two months ago.”

“And,” said Despard, with a strange sensation, as if he were listening to some one else speaking rather than speaking himself, “till he came into the title, what was he called? He was the last man’s cousin, you say?”

“Yes, of course; he was Mr Fforde – Fforde with two ‘f’s’ and an ‘e,’ you know. It’s the family name of the Southwolds. That young man – the one you spoke to – is Mr Conrad Fforde, as I told you. They say that – ”

But a glance at her brother made her hesitate.

“Despard, is your head worse?” she asked anxiously.

“It comes on by fits and starts,” he replied. “But don’t mind; go on speaking. What were you going to say?”

“Oh, only about young Mr Fforde. They say he is to marry Lady Margaret; they are only second cousins. But I don’t think he looks good enough for her. She seems such a womanly, nice-feeling girl. We had just been introduced when Mr Fforde came up with your message, and she wanted him to go back to you at once. But he said you would be gone already, and I – well, I didn’t quite believe about your head being so bad, and perhaps I seemed very cool about it, for Lady Margaret really looked quite vexed. Wasn’t it nice of her? The Carters had been telling her about us evidently. I think she was rather disappointed not to see the famous Despard Norreys, do you know? I rather wonder you never met her this summer in town, though perhaps you would scarcely have remarked her just as Miss Fforde, for she isn’t – ”

But an exclamation from Despard startled her.

“Maddie,” he said, “don’t you understand? It must be she – she, this Lady Margaret – the great heiress! Good heavens!”

Mrs Selby almost screamed.

“Despard!” was all she could say. But she quickly recovered herself. “Well, after all,” she went on, “I don’t see that there’s any harm done. She will know that you were absolutely disinterested, and surely that will go a long way. But – just to think of it! Oh, Despard, fancy your saying that you half thought she was going to be a governess! Oh, dear, how extraordinary! And I that was so regretting that you had not met her! What a good thing you did not – I mean what a good thing that my letter showing your ignorance was written and sent before you knew who she was! Don’t you see how lucky it was?”

She turned round, her eyes sparkling with excitement and eagerness. But there was no response in Mr Norreys’ face; on the contrary, its expression was such that Mrs Selby’s own face grew pale with dread.

“Despard,” she said, “why do you look like that? You are not going to say that now, because she is an heiress – just because of money,” with a tone of supreme contempt, “that you will give it up? You surely – ”

But Mr Norreys interrupted her.

“Has the letter gone, Maddie?”

She nodded her head.

“Then I must write again at once – myself – to Gertrude Englewood to make her promise on her honour never to tell what you wrote. Even if I thought she would believe it – and I am not sure that she would – I could never allow myself to be cleared in her eyes now.”

Madeline stared at him. Had the sunstroke affected his brain?

“Despard,” she said, “what do you mean?”

He turned his haggard face towards her.

“I don’t know how to tell you,” he said. “I wish I need not, but as you know so much I must. I did see her, Madeline. I met her when I was strolling about the shrubbery over there. She was quite alone and no one near. It seemed to have happened on purpose, and – I told her all.”

“You proposed to her?”

He nodded.

“As – as Miss Fforde, or as – ” began Mrs

Selby.

“As Miss Ford, of course, without the two ‘f’s’ and the ‘e’ at the end,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t know till this moment either that her father was an earl, or, which is much worse, that she was a great heiress.”

“And what is wrong, then?”

“Just that she refused me – refused me with the most biting contempt – the – the bitterest scorn – no, I cannot speak of it. She thought I knew, had found out about her – and now I see that my misplaced honesty, the way I spoke, must have given colour to it. She taunted me with my insolence at the first – good God! what an instrument of torture a woman’s tongue can be! There is only one thing to do – to stop Gertrude’s ever telling of that letter.”

“Oh, Despard!” exclaimed Mrs Selby, and her eyes filled with tears. “What a horrid girl she must be! And I thought she looked so sweet and nice. She seemed so sorry when her cousin told me about you. Tell me, was that after? Oh, yes, of course, it must have been. Despard, I believe she was already repenting her cruelty.”

“Hush, Madeline,” said Mr Norreys sternly. “You mean it well, but – you must promise me never to allude to all this again. You will show me Mrs Englewood’s letter when it comes – that you must do, and I will write to her. But there is no more to be said. Let to-day be between us as if it had never been. Promise me, dear.”

He laid his hand on her arm. Madeline turned her tearful eyes towards him.

“Very well,” she said. “I must, I suppose. But, oh, what a dreadful pity it all seems. You to have fallen in love with her for herself – you that have never really cared for any one before – when you thought her only a governess; and now for it to have all gone wrong! It would have been so nice and delightful.”

“A sort of Lord Burleigh business, with the characters reversed – yes, quite idyllic,” said Despard sneeringly.

“Despard, don’t. It does so pain me,” Mrs Selby said with real feeling. “There is one person I am furious with,” she went on in a very different tone, “and that is Mrs Englewood. She had no business to play that sort of trick.”

“Perhaps she could not help herself. You say the father – Mr Fforde as he then was – did not wish her to be known as an heiress,” said Mr Norreys.

“She might have made an exception for you,” said Madeline.

Despard’s brows contracted. Mrs Selby thought it was from the pain in his head, but it was more than that. A vision rose before him of a sweet flushed girlish face, with gentle pleasure and appeal in the eyes – and of Gertrude’s voice, “If you don’t dance, will you talk to her? Anything to please her a little, you know.”

“I think Gertrude did all she could. I believe she is a perfectly loyal and faithful friend,” he said; “but for heaven’s sake, Maddie, let us drop it for ever. I will write this evening to Gertrude myself, and that will be the last act in the drama.”

No letter, however, was written to Mrs Englewood that evening – nor the next day, nor for that matter during the rest of the time that saw Despard Norreys a guest at Markerslea Rectory.

And several days passed after the morning that brought her reply to Mrs Selby’s letter of inquiry, before the person it chiefly concerned was able to see it. For the pain in his head, the result of slight sunstroke in the first place, aggravated by unusual excitement, had culminated in a sharp attack which at one time was not many degrees removed from brain fever. The risk was tided over, however, and at no time was the young man in very serious danger. But Mrs Selby suffered quite as much as if he had been dying. She made up her mind that he would not recover, and as her special friends received direct information to that effect, it is not to be wondered at that the bad news flew fast.

It reached Laxter’s Hill one morning in the week following Lady Denster’s garden-party. It was the day which was to see the breaking-up of the party assembled there to meet Lord Southwold and his daughter, and it came in a letter to Edith Flores-Carter from Mrs Selby herself.