This House to Let Part 16

There was a pathetic shadow in the beautiful brown eyes as she spoke.

Spencer's interest in her, a girl he had only known for a couple of hours, quickened. The glance he turned on her was full of sympathy, although he did not utter a word. It said as plainly as if he had spoken: "Tell me more about yourself, you will find an attentive listener."

"My father and mother were both desperate gamblers. They staked and lost everything they had at cards, on the race-course, at Monte Carlo.

My poor cousin, Mrs L'Estrange, has the same fever in her veins."

Now that he had invited her confidence, he was a little embarra.s.sed by it. He did not know her well enough to condole with her. By way of relieving the tension, he uttered a few trite remarks on the subject of gambling generally.

"Very sad when people are bitten by it to that extent. In my small experience, and I am only speaking of cards, I have found that, at the end of twelve months, you leave off pretty well where you started, good players or bad. You lose a hundred this week, you win a hundred the next, and so on, and so forth. If you are a good player, you get bad cards; if a duffer, you get good cards. And so the bad player has a pretty even chance with his more skilful opponent."

Miss Keane threw aside her momentary sadness, and laughed at his scientific exposition.

"You have evidently thought it all out," she said brightly. "But please don't inflict these cheerful theories on my cousin. She is a most tragic being when she loses. She thinks herself, and I believe is, one of the most scientific bridge-players in England, and she cannot be brought to understand why the duffers should have a look in."

At this juncture Tommy Esmond interposed. It may have occurred to him that they were wasting precious time. They had come here for the special purpose of gambling.

"What do you say to joining the others? We are in the very temple of gambling, and I know my young friend would like a little flutter."

"Certainly. When I last peeped in, Amy looked the spirit of despair. I think she must have been losing heavily."

She turned to lead the way, but at that instant the door bell rang, and she halted, in readiness to greet the visitor, whoever it might be; and there entered a florid-looking, stout man, who advanced towards her with effusion, and both hands outstretched.

"My dear Stella, I have been thinking of you ever since the raid began; I know how terribly you suffer when they are on. And I knew you were dining out to-night. I am rejoiced to see you safe and sound. I came round here the moment I could get away." Miss Keane flushed slightly as he took her hands and wrung them impressively to show his grat.i.tude at her escape from peril. Tommy Esmond had given him a cool nod. But she felt Spencer's calm, critical gaze upon this ebullient expression of young English manhood.

It was not so much what he said, as his manner of saying it. Bounder was written all over him, in his appearance, his manners, his gestures.

She answered him very briefly, almost curtly, as if she were administering a cold douche. Then the flush deepened as she turned to Spencer.

"May I introduce my cousin, Mr Dutton?" The florid man bowed with an exaggerated air of cordiality. Spencer, who had taken a violent dislike to him from the first second he saw him, acknowledged the salutation with chilling gravity; and Stella Keane could almost read his thoughts, as his gaze travelled from one to the other.

How could this imperial-looking girl have such an unmitigated bounder for a relative? What was the mystery about her that could make a creature like this claim kinship with her?

CHAPTER TEN.

Mrs L'Estrange was evidently a great believer in light: the electric bulbs glowed softly, but brilliantly, over the two rooms devoted to the service of the card-players.

On the sideboards were arranged decanters of whisky, and soda-water in bottles and syphons. Whether he lost or won, the gambler, triumphant or despairing, could quaff to his success, or solace his despair.

The elderly, youthfully-dressed woman advanced towards the new visitors, with a beaming expression of countenance.

"Mr Spencer, you will join us. What is your favourite game?"

"Bridge," said Spencer, shortly. He was already a bit in love with Stella Keane, but he was by no means favourably inclined to her gushing, elderly cousin.

He soon formed a party of four, and became absorbed, for the moment, in the game. Tommy Esmond was playing the same game, at a table some distance from him. Tommy was not supposed to be wealthy, but he evidently had money enough to indulge in a quiet gamble now and then.

He remembered every incident of that night. His partner was a subordinate member of the Government, and a good sound player, lacking a little perhaps in the qualities of initiative and rapid decision. His opponents were a young man in the Foreign Office, and a slender, hawk-nosed young woman of about thirty.

All through he held abominable cards, but, truth to tell, he was not very interested in the game. Whether he won or lost a hundred pounds did not interest him very greatly.

But what did interest him, to every fibre of his being, was that Stella Keane hovered about his table. His eyes continually sought hers, and she did not seem to avoid his glance. At times he was sure he could detect a slight smile of intimacy. After all, had he not rescued her, half dead with fright, in the dining-room of the "Excelsior?"

Once she bent over him and whispered, her cool, fragrant breath fanning his cheek: "You are having shocking bad luck. You haven't held a single decent card."

He whispered back: "What did I tell you a little time ago? I flatter myself I am a fairly good bridge-player, but what could one do with those cards of mine?"

She fluttered away, with still the shadow of that intimate smile upon her beautiful mouth, the smile that seemed to say they had only known each other for a few hours, under romantic and dramatic circ.u.mstances, but there was between them an affinity of spirit.

He played on steadily for over an hour, and then a halt was cried. The young gentleman from the Foreign Office and the hawk-nosed young woman had scored. Guy Spencer rose from the table, the poorer by a hundred and fifty pounds. He wrote his cheque with a light heart. A hundred and fifty pounds was not a great price to pay for the introduction to Stella Keane.

Mrs L'Estrange came impressively towards him.

"Oh, Mr Spencer, I hope you have not lost. If so, I fear you will never come near me again." His glance roved in the direction of Stella, talking, as it appeared earnestly, to that bounder of a cousin. There came a steely look into his clear, resolute eyes.

"If you will allow me, I shall be delighted to come here often to see you and Miss Keane. I suppose I had better pick up my old friend Tommy Esmond, if he is not too engrossed." But when he approached Esmond, that little rotund gentleman waved him away, in most genial fashion.

"Run away, dear boy. It is Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere. I am winning hands down." Certainly he bore the mien of a conqueror. And there, behind his chair, stood Stella Keane.

She welcomed Spencer with that faint, intimate smile which had already stirred his pulses.

"I fear I brought you bad luck," she said, in her low, caressing voice.

"But to Mr Esmond I have been the harbinger of good fortune. Are you really going?"

"I always go when I have won enough, or lost enough. You remember I gave you a little homily on gambling generally, not so long ago."

She took her hand off Esmond's chair. "Well, I will leave my good influence behind, and look after the parting guest."

She walked leisurely with him in the direction of the hall. It was deserted, but the light was brilliant, as it was in every other corner of the flat.

She held out her hand impulsively. "Mr Spencer, I have not thanked you properly for your kindness to me to-night. Terror-stricken, paralysed with fear, I should have been clinging to that chair now, if you had not rescued me in time. How can I thank you?"

Spencer laughed lightly. "One would think from your excessive grat.i.tude that you had not experienced a great deal of kindness in your life. And yet that would be impossible." She flushed a little; his gaze was perhaps more full of admiration, of frank and open compliment than could be justified by the briefness of their acquaintance. And yet it only expressed what he was inwardly thinking.

Here was a girl who had only to look at her mirror to learn she was endowed with singular beauty. She must also know that she combined with her more than ordinary fairness an unusual charm of manner.

How had it come about that one with such striking qualifications should exhibit a certain underlying sadness, as if the world had already proved a very disappointing place? Youth and good looks usually secure for their owner a good time. Girls with half her attractions could find plenty of admirers. What evil fate dogged her that she had to regard a perfectly common act of kindness as something to be exceptionally grateful for?

"I have never been petted nor spoiled, even as a child," she answered gravely. "My father and mother were ignorant of the duties, as they were of the instincts, of parenthood. And since my poor pretence of a home was broken up, I have been a derelict and a wanderer, sometimes a tolerated guest, rarely, I fear, a very welcome one in the houses of other people."

"But you are happy here, surely?" he suggested. After saying so much, she could hardly regard the question as an impertinent one. He longed to hear her history. Well, if he came and cultivated her, and let her see how sympathetic he could be, one day she would tell him.

She shrugged her shoulders with an air of indifference.

"My cousin is peculiar in many ways, and her devotion to play is an obsession. We have very little in common; still, it would not be fair to say she was difficult to get on with. I have been with her now for more than eighteen months, and although we have often held totally different opinions, I cannot remember that we have ever had a real quarrel. And, anyway, it is a home and a shelter, and that is something."

Not much enthusiasm here, certainly. Mrs L'Estrange had been dismissed with a very negative kind of faint praise. Her excellence seemed to lie rather in the absence of bad qualities than the possession of good ones.

And yet, he could not bring himself to believe that Miss Keane was an ill-natured girl, or of an unresponsive temperament. He had to admit that his impressions of his hostess were not too favourable.

She was outwardly genial, and at times gushing. Yet he fancied he could read behind this plausible exterior the signs of a hard, worldly nature.