The Evil Genius Part 17

she asked, "if I was obliged to go away, some day, and leave you?"

Kitty turned pale with terror at the dreadful prospect which those words presented. "There! there! I am only joking," Sydney said, shocked at the effect which her attempt to suggest the impending separation had produced. "You shall come with me, darling; we will walk in the park together."

Kitty's face brightened directly. She proposed extending their walk to the paddock, and feeding the cows. Sydney readily consented. Any amus.e.m.e.nt was welcome to her which diverted the child's attention from herself.

They had been nearly an hour in the park, and were returning to the house through a clump of trees, when Sydney's companion, running on before her, cried: "Here's papa!" Her first impulse was to draw back behind a tree, in the hope of escaping notice. Linley sent Kitty away to gather a nosegay of daisies, and joined Sydney under the trees.

"I have been looking for you everywhere," he said. "My wife--"

Sydney interrupted him. "Discovered!" she exclaimed.

"There is nothing that need alarm you," he replied. "Catherine is too good and too true herself to suspect others easily. She sees a change in you that she doesn't understand--she asks if I have noticed it--and that is all. But her mother has the cunning of the devil. There is a serious reason for controlling yourself."

He spoke so earnestly that he startled her. "Are you angry with me?" she asked.

"Angry! Does the man live who could be angry with you?"

"It might be better for both of us if you _were_ angry with me. I have to control myself; I will try again. Oh, if you only knew what I suffer when Mrs. Linley is kind to me!"

He persisted in trying to rouse her to a sense of the danger that threatened them, while the visitors remained in the house. "In a few days, Sydney, there will be no more need for the deceit that is now forced on us. Till that time comes, remember--Mrs. Presty suspects us."

Kitty ran back to them with her hands full of daisies before they could say more.

"There is your nosegay, papa. No; I don't want you to thank me--I want to know what present you are going to give me." Her father's mind was preoccupied; he looked at her absently. The child's sense of her own importance was wounded: she appealed to her governess. "Would you believe it?" she asked. "Papa has forgotten that next Tuesday is my birthday!"

"Very well, Kitty; I must pay the penalty of forgetting. What present would you like to have?"

"I want a doll's perambulator."

"Ha! In my time we were satisfied with a doll."

They all three looked round. Another person had suddenly joined in the talk. There was no mistaking the person's voice: Mrs. Presty appeared among the trees, taking a walk in the park. Had she heard what Linley and the governess had said to each other while Kitty was gathering daisies?

"Quite a domestic scene!" the sly old lady remarked. "Papa, looking like a saint in a picture, with flowers in his hand. Papa's spoiled child always wanting something, and always getting it. And papa's governess, so sweetly fresh and pretty that I should certainly fall in love with her, if I had the advantage of being a man. You have no doubt remarked Herbert--I think I hear the bell; shall we go to lunch?--you have no doubt, I say, remarked what curiously opposite styles Catherine and Miss Westerfield present; so charming, and yet such complete contrasts. I wonder whether they occasionally envy each other's good looks? Does my daughter ever regret that she is not Miss Westerfield? And do you, my dear, some times wish you were Mrs. Linley?"

"While we are about it, let me put a third question," Linley interposed.

"Are you ever aware of it yourself, Mrs. Presty, when you are talking nonsense?"

He was angry, and he showed it in that feeble reply. Sydney felt the implied insult offered to her in another way. It roused her to the exercise of self-control as nothing had roused her yet. She ignored Mrs.

Presty's irony with a composure worthy of Mrs. Presty herself. "Where is the woman," she said, "who would _not_ wish to be as beautiful as Mrs.

Linley--and as good?"

"Thank you, my dear, for a compliment to my daughter: a sincere compliment, no doubt. It comes in very neatly and nicely," Mrs. Presty acknowledged, "after my son-in-law's little outbreak of temper. My poor Herbert, when will you understand that I mean no harm? I am an essentially humorous person; my wonderful spirits are always carrying me away. I do a.s.sure you, Miss Westerfield, I don't know what worry is. My troubles--deaths in the family, and that sort of thing--seem to slip off me in a most remarkable manner. Poor Mr. Norman used to attribute it to my excellent digestion. My second husband would never hear of such an explanation as that. His high ideal of women shrank from allusions to stomachs. He used to speak so nicely (quoting some poet) of the sunshine of my breast. Vague, perhaps," said Mrs. Presty, modestly looking down at the ample prospect of a personal nature which presented itself below her throat, "but so flattering to one's feelings. There's the luncheon bell again, I declare! I'll run on before and tell them you are coming.

Some people might say they wished to be punctual. I am truth itself, and I own I don't like to be helped to the underside of the fish. _Au revoir!_ Do you remember, Miss Westerfield, when I asked you to repeat _au revoir_ as a specimen of your French? I didn't think much of your accent. Oh, dear me, I didn't think much of your accent!"

Kitty looked after her affluent grandmother with eyes that stared respectfully in ignorant admiration. She pulled her father's coat-tail, and addressed herself gravely to his private ear. "Oh, papa, what n.o.ble words grandmamma has!"

Chapter XI.

Linley a.s.serts His Authority.

On the evening of Monday in the new week, the last of the visitors had left Mount Morven. Mrs. Linley dropped into a chair (in, what Randal called, "the heavenly tranquillity of the deserted drawing-room") and owned that the effort of entertaining her guests had completely worn her out. "It's too absurd, at my time of life," she said with a faint smile; "but I am really and truly so tired that I must go to bed before dark, as if I was a child again."

Mrs. Presty--maliciously observant of the governess, sitting silent and apart in a corner--approached her daughter in a hurry; to all appearance with a special object in view. Linley was at no loss to guess what that object might be. "Will you do me a favor, Catherine?" Mrs. Presty began.

"I wish to say a word to you in your own room."

"Oh, mamma, have some mercy on me, and put it off till to-morrow!"

Mrs. Presty reluctantly consented to this proposal, on one condition.

"It is understood," she stipulated "that I am to see you the first thing in the morning?"

Mrs. Linley was ready to accept that condition, or any condition, which promised her a night of uninterrupted repose. She crossed the room to her husband, and took his arm. "In my state of fatigue, Herbert, I shall never get up our steep stairs, unless you help me."

As they ascended the stairs together, Linley found that his wife had a reason of her own for leaving the drawing-room.

"I am quite weary enough to go to bed," she explained. "But I wanted to speak to you first. It's about Miss Westerfield. (No, no, we needn't stop on the landing.) Do you know, I think I have found out what has altered our little governess so strangely--I seem to startle you?"

"No."

"I am only astonished," Mrs. Linley resumed, "at my own stupidity in not having discovered it before. We must be kinder than ever to the poor girl now; can't you guess why? My dear, how dull you are! Must I remind you that we have had two single men among our visitors? One of them is old and doesn't matter. But the other--I mean Sir George, of course--is young, handsome, and agreeable. I am so sorry for Sydney Westerfield.

It's plain to me that she is hopelessly in love with a man who has run through his fortune, and must marry money if he marries at all. I shall speak to Sydney to-morrow; and I hope and trust I shall succeed in winning her confidence. Thank Heaven, here we are at my door at last! I can't say more now; I'm ready to drop. Good-night, dear; you look tired, too. It's a nice thing to have friends, I know; but, oh, what a relief it is sometimes to get rid of them!"

She kissed him, and let him go.

Left by himself, to compare his wife's innocent mistake with the terrible enlightenment that awaited her, Linley's courage failed him. He leaned on the quaintly-carved rail that protected the outer side of the landing, and looked down at the stone hall far below. If the old woodwork (he thought) would only give way under his weight, there would be an escape from the coming catastrophe, found in an instant.

A timely remembrance of Sydney recalled him to himself. For her sake, he was bound to prevent Mrs. Presty's contemplated interview with his wife on the next morning.

Descending the stairs, he met his brother in the corridor on the first floor.

"The very man I want to see," Randal said. "Tell me, Herbert, what is the matter with that curious old woman?"

"Do you mean Mrs. Presty?"

"Yes. She has just been telling me that our friend Mrs. MacEdwin has taken a fancy to Miss Westerfield, and would be only too glad to deprive us of our pretty governess."

"Did Mrs. Presty say that in Miss Westerfield's presence?"

"No. Soon after you and Catherine left the room, Miss Westerfield left it too. I daresay I am wrong, for I haven't had time to think of it; but Mrs. Presty's manner suggested to me that she would be glad to see the poor girl sent out of the house."

"I am going to speak to her, Randal, on that very subject. Is she still in the drawing-room?"

"Yes."