Set in Silver Part 11

"The next. Here he comes now. I see the top of his head, over the shoulder of that youth with the collar of a curate and the face of a convict."

The Dragon smiled benevolently at my wicked description of a comparatively inoffensive person, and whisked me off.

"Are you offended with me?" I asked, as we waltzed a weird but heavenly Hungarian waltz (made in Germany).

"Why do you ask that?" he wanted to know.

"Because you looked offended at dinner. What had I done? Eaten something with the wrong fork?"

"You had done nothing I oughtn't to have been prepared to see you do."

"What ought you to be prepared to see me do?"

"It doesn't matter now."

"It does. If you don't tell me, I shall scream 'Murder' at the top of my lungs, and then you'll have to speak."

"I certainly wouldn't. I'd bundle you home at once."

"I haven't got any home."

"My home is yours, till you marry."

"Or you do."

"Don't talk nonsense." (He was probably going to say "Tommy-rot" but considered such striking words unfit for the ear of a debutante. This _was_ my debut, I suppose? My very first ball.)

"Then tell me what you were unprepared for in me."

"I was prepared for it at first, before I saw you. But----"

"What?"

"Well, if you will have it, for your flirting."

Suddenly I felt impish, and said, innocently, that I supposed it was what girls came on board men-o'-war to do, so I had only done my best to please. By this time we'd stopped dancing, and were sitting down. I'd forgotten d.i.c.k Burden.

"It all depends upon the point of view," he answered, with rather a disgusted air.

"My point of view is," said I, gravely, "that soldiers as _well_ as sailors should approve of flirting, because flirtation is a warlike act; a short incursion into the enemy's country, with the full intention of getting back untouched."

"Ah, but what of the enemy?" suggested the Dragon.

"He can always take care of himself on such incursions."

"So that's the theory? And at nineteen you have enlisted in that army?"

"What army?"

"The great army of flirts."

I couldn't keep it up any longer, for I had really started in to explain, not to joke. And you know, dear, that flirting as a profession wouldn't be in my line at all.

"Do I look like a flirt?" I asked.

"No. You don't," said he. "And I was beginning to hope----"

"Please go on hoping, then," I said. "Because I didn't want to behave badly. If I did, it was because I don't quite know the game yet. And I wanted to tell you that I didn't really mean to be silly and schoolgirlish, and disgrace you and Mrs. Norton."

Then it was his turn to apologize, and he did it thoroughly. He said that I hadn't been silly, and so far from disgracing him, he was proud of me--"proud of his ward." It was only that I seemed so much more womanly and companionable than he'd expected, that he couldn't bear to see in me, or think he saw, any likeness whatever to inferior types of woman. Whereupon I had the impertinence to ask _why_ he'd expected me to be inferior; but the only explanation I could get him to make was that he didn't know much about girls. Which he had remarked before.

We'd sat out two dances before we--I mean I--knew it; and n.o.body had dared to come near us, because a middy can't very well s.n.a.t.c.h a partner out of a celebrity's pocket. And d.i.c.k, too, though he seems to have the courage of most of his convictions, drew the line at that. But suddenly I did remember. I smiled at a hovering laddie with the most smoothly polished hair you ever saw, just like a black helmet; and when the laddie had swung me away in the Merry Widow waltz Sir Lionel went back to Mrs. Senter. Rather an appropriate air for her to dance to, I thought. I do pray I'm not getting kitten-catty? Anyhow, I'm not in my _second_ kittenhood!

You will be wondering by this time why I'm sorry we stayed at Southsea, when it was all for me, and I seem to have been having the "time of my life." But I'm coming to the part you want to know about.

I thought perhaps d.i.c.k Burden would be vexed at my going off with Sir Lionel, under his nose, just as he was ready to say "my dance." However, he walked up to me as if nothing had happened, when it was time for the second, so I didn't apologize. I thought it best to let sleeping partners lie.

We danced a little, but d.i.c.k, who is one-and-twenty, doesn't waltz half as well as Sir Lionel, who is forty; and he saw that I thought so.

Presently he asked if I'd rather sit out the rest, and I answered, yes; so he said he would tell me the things he had to say. He found a quiet place, which must have looked as if deliberately selected for a desperate flirtation; and then he didn't do much beating about the bush.

He just told me that he _knew everything_. He'd partly "detected" it, and partly found out by chance; but of course he made the most of the detecting bit.

Don't be frightened and get a palpitation at the news, dearest; it isn't worth it. There's going to be no flare-up. Of course, if I were the heroine of a really nice melodrama, in such a scene as d.i.c.k and I went through, I should have been accompanied by slow music, with lime-light every time I turned my head, which would have heartened me up very much; while d.i.c.k would have had villain music--plink, plink, plunk! But I did as well as I could without an accompaniment, and I think, on the whole, managed the business very well.

You see, I had to think of Ellaline. I dared not let her out of my mind for a single instant, for if I should fail her now, at the crucial time, it would be my fault if her love story burst and went up the spout. If I'd stopped thinking of her, and saying in my mind while d.i.c.k talked, "I must save Ellaline, no matter what happens to me!" I should certainly have boxed his ears and told him to go to limbo.

He began by telling me that he'd met a friend of mine, a Miss Bennett--Kathy Bennett. Oh, mother, just for a minute my heart beat under my pretty frock like a bird caught in a child's hand! You remember my writing you what a friendship Ellaline and Kathy struck up, before Kathy left school to go back to England, and how she sent Ellaline cuttings from the London Radical papers about Sir Lionel Pendragon in Bengal? I do think it's almost ungentlemanly of so many coincidences to happen in connection with what I'm trying to do for Ellaline. But Kathy's such a lump, it's too great a compliment to call her a coincidence. Anyhow, d.i.c.k met her in town, at a tea party (a "bun worry," he called it) where he went with his dear Aunt Gwen; and when Kathy mentioned being at school at Madame de Maluet's, he asked if she knew Miss Lethbridge. She said of course she did, and she thought Ellaline was a "very naughty little thing" not to write or come and see her. She had read in the papers about the arrival of Sir Lionel with his sister and ward, you see.

d.i.c.k remarked that he'd hardly call Miss Lethbridge a "little thing,"

whereupon Kathy defended her adjective by saying Ellaline was only about up to her ear.

Of course that set Mr. d.i.c.k's detective b.u.mp to throbbing furiously. He rea.s.sured me by announcing that he hadn't said any more to Kathy, but that he'd thought a lot. In fact, he thought so much that he asked if she'd give him a line of introduction to Madame, as he had a cousin who wanted to go to a French school, and next time he "ran across to Paris,"

he might have a look at Versailles. Kathy gave the note, and that same night, if you'll believe it, the horrid little boy did "run across." At the earliest hour possible in the morning he called at the school, only to find Madame already away for her holidays. But you know she always leaves her sister, Mademoiselle Prado, to look after things, and when Mademoiselle heard what d.i.c.k wanted, she showed him all over the place.

He said he would like to see photographs of the young ladies in groups, if any such existed, because he could write his Australian cousin what nice, happy-looking girls they were. Promptly that poor, unsuspecting female produced the big picture Madame had done of the tea-party on the lawn, a year ago in June, and there was I in it. But d.i.c.k was too foxy to begin by asking questions about me. Kathy adorned the photograph also, with Ellaline on her right and me in the perspective of her left ear, which must have seemed to point at me accusingly. d.i.c.k could claim Kathy quite naturally, as he'd come with her letter, and presently he led up to me, saying he seemed to have seen me somewhere. Was I a great friend of Miss Bennett's, and was it probable that she had my portrait?

Mademoiselle innocently said no, Miss Bennett was much more likely to have Mees Lethbridge's portrait than Mees Brendon's, as Mees Brendon was not a pupil of the school, only a teacher of singing, and Mees Kathy was not musical. But Mees Lethbridge, _la pet.i.te jeune fille_ on the right, was a friend of Mees Bennett.

Now you'll admit that d.i.c.k was rather smart to have chopped all these branches off the tree of knowledge with his little hatchet. I think his cleverness worthy of a better cause.

The next thing he did was to ask, navely, if _that_ Miss Lethbridge was _the_ Miss Lethbridge--the ward of Sir Lionel Pendragon, so much talked of in the papers just now? Proud that her sister's school had moulded a celebrity, Mademoiselle chatted away about Ellaline, saying what a dear child she was, how sorry Madame was to part from her, and how Madame de Blanchemain, Ellaline's _chere marraine_, at St. Cloud, must be missing her _mignonne_ at this very moment.

It goes without saying that Mr. d.i.c.k's next step took him at a single stride to St. Cloud. He didn't call on Madame de Blanchemain, not wishing to stir up a tempest in a teapot, but simply pryed and peered, and did all sorts of sneaky things, only excusable in a professional detective, who must (or thinks he must) live.

He found out about Madame de Blanchemain's nephew, Ellaline's Honore, and put this and that together, until he'd patched up the theory of a love affair. But further he dared not go, on that track, so he pranced back to Versailles, and found out things about Audrie Brendon.

The way he did that was through noticing the name of the Versailles photographer who took the group in the garden. d.i.c.k called on him, and said he wanted a copy of the picture, because his "cousin" was in it.

The man had several on hand, as parents occasionally wrote for them, and when d.i.c.k got his he inquired who I was. The obliging photographer, perhaps scenting a romance, told him I lived in the Rue Chapeau de Marie Antoinette with my mother. Then the wretch actually had the impudence to describe to me a visit he paid our apartment, ringing at the door, and asking dear Philomene for Madame Brendon!

In five minutes, he had heard all our family affairs, as far as that dear, simple, talkative soul could tell him. That you were in Switzerland, and I had gone to England to visit a friend.