Miss Million's Maid Part 55

"Oh," I exclaimed involuntarily, "she ought not to walk. I don't believe she's well. She ought not to be alone, perhaps----"

And I turned to the young man to whom I suppose I have a right to turn, since he has asked me to marry him. At that moment I felt that it was such a comfort he was there; steady and reliable and conscientious.

"Mr. Brace!" I appealed to him a little shyly. "If you would be so kind!

I wonder if you would mind--I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to take my aunt home?"

"Oh--er--yes, I should be delighted," said Mr. Brace quickly, but flushing all over his blonde face and looking suddenly and acutely miserable.

It was a great astonishment to me that the young man wasn't off to carry out this wish of mine before it had finished leaving my lips. Still, it wasn't his fault at all. Oh, no; I see his point of view quite well.

"That is--Do you think, perhaps, that your aunt might not find it distasteful to be addressed by me? You see the last time she spoke to me, it was--er--not on the friendliest terms, and--er----"

"Aw, look here, Mr. Brace, don't you worry!" broke in the joyously, matter-of-fact voice of London's Love. "You stay with your young lady and come on to lunch. Her aunt's being attended to all right without you. Look at that!"

"That" was certainly an unexpected scene towards which Miss Vi Va.s.sity waved her tightly gloved hand.

I gazed in wonder in that direction.

There, on the pavement at the end of the turning into the Strand, stood the scraggy, erect, grey-clad, frumpily hatted figure of my Aunt Anastasia. And beside her, close beside her, was the Honourable James Burke! He must have broken away from the group almost at the moment that she did, and gone up to her.

What could he have said?

The "cheek" of that man! Is there anybody that he wouldn't mind tackling?

For he was leaning confidentially towards my so forbidding aunt. He was talking fluently to her about something. He was smiling down at her--I caught the curve of his cheek in profile.

And--could it be true?--my Aunt Anastasia actually didn't mind him!

I only saw her back; but you know how expressive backs can be. And the usually rigid, flat shoulders with the Victorian corset-ridge, and the lady-like waist and scarcely existent hips of my aunt were positively expressing mollification, friendliness, gratification!

"The old girl's all right with Jim to look after her," said Miss Vi Va.s.sity, cheerfully to me, adding, with a large wink: "What worked the trick with her was the cue 'Ballyneck Castle,' I bet you. Me and Nellie and the rest of us weren't quite cla.s.s enough for her ladyship. But you can't go wrong with these old Irish kings! So little known about 'em.

Eh, Hiram? There! Milord has got a taxi for Auntie Lovelace"--which was surprisingly true.

"Got off with her, hasn't he?" laughed London's Love. "S'prised at her at her time o' life. Still, there's no fool like an old fool. I ought to know; nothing at 85 can resist little Me. Now, then, lunch at last. I guess you're all fairly perishing."

We were.

But there was one picture that remained with me even after we all got to the Cecil and the whole party--including Miss Million's maid--were sitting greedily concentrating upon the menu at one of the round tables in the big dining-room.

This was the picture of my Aunt Anastasia whirling towards Putney in that taxi--she who never, never can afford the luxury of a cab!--accompanied by the Honourable James Burke!

What would that drive be like? What would that unscrupulous young Irishman say to her, and she to him?

Would she ask him into No. 45? And--would he go?

Would she ask questions about her niece, Miss Million's maid, and would he answer them?

Oh! How I long to know these things! My wish for that is so keen that it causes me to forget even the black fog of suspicion under which my mistress and I will have to move while we are still "on bail." How I wish the Honourable Jim would hurry up and come back, just so that I could hear all about his tete-a-tete with my aunt!

But as it is, there's plenty to occupy me. A delicious lunch before me to make up for no dinner the night before, and a prison breakfast this morning!

At the head of the table Miss Vi Va.s.sity, with her stream of comment as cheering and bright as the Bubbley in our gla.s.ses, which she insisted on standing all round! Beside me my very eligible and nice would-be fiance, Mr. Reginald Brace, a young man that any girl ought to be glad to be sitting next.

I don't mean "ought," of course. I mean "would." I was, I know.

Mr. Brace was so kind, and tried all the time to be so sympathetic and helpful. I shall never forget his goodness. And he was really most apologetic about not having rushed to help Aunt Anastasia the minute I said anything about it.

"You see, I really think she would have preferred not to speak to me,"

he said. Then anxiously: "You are not annoyed with me, Miss Lovelace?

You don't feel I could have done anything else?"

"Of course, you couldn't," I said.

"It seems too bad, the first time you asked me to do anything," he muttered over his plate. "I who want so to do things for you."

"Oh, please don't," I said quickly.

He said: "I am afraid you are a little annoyed with me, Beatrice----"

"Indeed I'm not," I protested through all the racket of Vi Va.s.sity's talk above the pretty flowery table, "only----"

"Only what?"

"Well, I don't think I said you might call me that," I said, colouring.

He lowered his voice and said earnestly: "Are you going to say I may? I know it's not yet quite a week since I asked you. But couldn't I have my answer before that? I want so to take you away from all these people."

There was an expression of the most ungrateful disgust on his fair, Puritan sort of face as he turned it for a moment from me to that of the bubbling-over music-hall artiste who was his hostess.

"None of these people are fit," he declared resentfully, "to a.s.sociate with you."

"You forget that plenty of people might not think I was fit to a.s.sociate with! A girl who is arrested for jewel robbery!"

"Your own fault, Miss Lovelace, if I may say so! If you hadn't been here with Miss Million"--another ungrateful glance--"this suspicion wouldn't have touched you."

"If I hadn't brought Miss Million here, it wouldn't have touched her!"

"That has nothing to do with it," he said quite fretfully. Men generally are fretful, I notice, when women score a point in common sense.

It's so unexpected.

"The question still is--Are you going to make me the happiest man in the world by marrying me?"

It's odd what a difference there is between one's first proposal of marriage--and one's second!

Yes! Even if they are from the same man, as mine were. The first time is much the better.

A girl is prouder, more touched by it. She is possessed by the feeling "Ah, I am really not worth all this! I don't deserve to have a really splendid young man thinking as much of me as d.i.c.k, or Tom, or Harry, or Reginald, or whoever it is does."