The Wicked Marquis Part 22

"I may marry."

"Come, this gets more interesting! Any lady in your mind yet?"

"None whatever," he a.s.sured her, with almost exaggerated firmness.

"You'd better give yourself a few years first and then let me choose for you," she suggested. "I know just the type--unless you change."

"And why should I change?"

"Because," she said, eying him penetratively, "there is at present something bottled up in you. I do not know what it is, and if I asked you wouldn't tell me, but you're not quite your natural self, whatever that may be. Is it, I wonder, the result of that twenty years'

struggle of yours? Perhaps you have really lost the capacity for generous life, Mr. Thain."

"You are a very observant person."

"Trust me, then, and tell me your secret sorrow?" she suggested. "I could be a very good friend, Mr. Thain, if friends amuse you."

"I have lived under a shadow," he confessed. "I am sorry, but I cannot tell you much about it. But in a sense you are right. Life for me will begin after the accomplishment of a certain purpose."

"You have a rival to ruin, eh?"

"No, it isn't that," he a.s.sured her. "It happens to be something of which I could not give you even the smallest hint."

"Well, I don't see how you are going to get on with it down at Broomleys," she observed. "What a horrid person you are to go there at all! You might as well bury yourself. You have the wealth of a Monte Cristo and you take a furnished villa--for that's all it is! Perhaps you are waiting till the mortgages fall in, to buy Mandeleys? Or did my warning come too late and is Let.i.tia the attraction?"

He was conscious of her close observation, but he gave no sign.

"I have seen nothing of Lady Let.i.tia," he said, "but even if she were content to accept my four millions as a compensation for my other disadvantages, it would make no difference."

"Any entanglements on the other side?" she asked airily.

"None!"

The d.u.c.h.ess finished her lobster and leaned back in her chair. Through her tiny platinum lorgnette she looked around the room for several moments. Then a little abruptly she turned again to him.

"Really," she said, "people are doing such mad things, now-a-days, that I am not at all sure that I am right in putting you off Let.i.tia. It would be frightfully useful to have four millions in the family. And yet, do you know," she went on, "it's queer, isn't it, but I don't want you to marry my niece."

"Why not?"

"How crude!" she sighed. "I really shall have to take a lot of trouble with you, Mr. David Thain. However, if you persist--because Let.i.tia is my niece."

"And you don't like me well enough," he asked, "to accept me as a husband for your niece?"

She laughed at him very quietly.

"Are you very ingenuous," she demanded, "or just a little subtle?

Hadn't it occurred to you, for instance, that I might prefer to keep you to myself?"

"You must forgive me if I seem stupid," he begged, "or unresponsive. I don't wish to be either. I can understand that in America I might be a person of some interest. Over here--well, the whole thing is different, isn't it? Apart from my money, I know and realise how ignorant I am of your ways, of the things to do here and how to do them. I feel utterly at a disadvantage with every one, unless they happen to want my money."

"You are too modest, Mr. Thain," she declared, leaning a little towards him and dropping her voice. "I will tell you one reason why you interest me. It is because I am quite certain that there is something in your life, some purpose or some secret, which you have not confided to any living person in this country. I want to know what it is. It isn't exactly vulgar inquisitiveness, believe me. I am perfectly certain that there is something more of you than you show to people generally."

David was conscious of an odd sense of relief. After all, the woman was only curious--and it was most improbable that her curiosity would lead her in the right direction.

"You are very discerning, d.u.c.h.ess," he said. "Unfortunately, I have no confidence to offer you. The one secret in my life is some one else's and not my own."

"And you never betray a confidence?" she asked, looking at him steadfastly. "You could be trusted?"

"I hope so," he a.s.sured her.

Their lunch pa.s.sed on to its final stages. The d.u.c.h.ess smoked a Russian cigarette with her coffee, and it seemed to him that imperceptibly she had moved a little nearer to him. Her elbows were upon the table and her hands clasped. She seemed for a moment to study one or two quaint rings upon her fingers.

"A few more questions, and I shall feel that we know one another," she said. "Just why have you left America and this wonderful pursuit of wealth?"

"Because there were no more railways in which I was interested," he answered, "nor any particular speculation or enterprise that appealed to me. I have more money than I can ever spend, and I know very well that if I remained in America I should have no peace. I should be a target for years for every man who has land to sell near railways, or shares to sell, or an invention to perfect. As soon as I decided to wind up, I decided also that it was necessary for me to clear right away. Apart from that, England and English life attracts me."

"And this purpose?" she enquired. "This secret--which is somebody else's secret?"

"Such as it is," he replied, "it belongs to this country."

"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.

"I am thirty-seven," he told her.

She sighed. Her slightly tired blue eyes seemed to be looking through the little cloud of cigarette smoke to the confines of the room.

"A magnificent age for a man," she murmured, "but a little ghastly for a woman. I was thirty-nine last birthday. Never mind, one has the present. So here are you, in the prime of life, with an immense fortune and no responsibilities. If Disraeli had been alive, he would have written a novel about you. There is so much which you could do, so much in which you could fail. Will you become just a man about town here, make friends partly in Bohemia and partly amongst some of us, endow a theatre and marry the first chorus girl who is too clever for you? Or--"

"I am more interested in the 'or,'" he declared rashly.

She turned her eyes slightly without moving her head, and knocked the ash from her cigarette into her plate.

"Let us go," she said, a little abruptly. "I am tired of talking here.

If you really wish to know, you can accept the invitation which I shall send you presently, and come to Scotland."

CHAPTER XVI

Let.i.tia and her escort pulled up their horses at the top of Rotten Row.

Let.i.tia was a little out of breath, but her colour was delightful, and the slight disarrangement of her tightly coiled brown hair most becoming.

"It was dear of you, Charlie, to think of lending me a hack," she declared. "I haven't enjoyed a gallop so much for ages. When we get down to Mandeleys I am going to raid Bailey's stables. He always has some young horses."

"Want schooling a bit before they're fit to ride," Grantham observed.

"If I had been born in another walk of life," Let.i.tia said, "I am sure horse-breaking would have been my profession. You haven't been in to see us for ages, Charles."

"You weren't particularly gracious the last time I did come," he reminded her gloomily.