CHAPTER XV.

"Rubbish!" cried my lady. "It's a trick. I know the Ancrams, and there isn't one of them, and never was one of them—of the Warwickshire Ancrams, that is—who would stick at a lie!"

Lady Seely was in a towering passion. She had met Algernon Errington on the stairs as he was leaving her husband's room for the second time that afternoon. Algernon had slipped past her with a silent bow, and had refused to return, although she screamed after him at the full pitch of her lungs. Upon this Lady Seely had gone to her husband's room, and in a few minutes had drawn from him the confession that he had promised Algernon to use his utmost endeavours to obtain a post for him on the Continent. And then, on her violent opposition to this scheme, Lord Seely had been led on to tell her pretty nearly what Algernon had told him; dwelling very strongly on the circumstance that Castalia was in a strange, excited state, and might not be deemed responsible for her actions. But neither did this terrible revelation make much impression on my lady.

"Rubbish!" she said again. "And if she is in this queer excited condition, what makes her so?"

"Belinda, you do not realise the full extent. This is a more serious, a more frightful matter than you seem to think."

"Oh no it isn't, my lord! You'll see! A young rascal, to come here with his cock-and-a-bull stories, and try to frighten you into getting a berth for him! Why, there's nothing to be had, if one was willing to try, except the consulate at what's-his-name, on the Mediterranean, that Mr. Buller mentioned when you spoke to him about my nephew."

"I thought that might be got for Ancram, Belinda."

"Got for Ancram! Fiddlestick's end! What next? If the consulate is to be had, Reginald shall have it, that's flat!"

Lord Seely lay back in his chair and groaned.

"Yes," cried his wife, her cheeks flaming with anger until the rouge she wore seemed but a pale pigment on the hot colour beneath, "there it is! He has made you ever so much worse; upset you completely; thrown you back a fortnight, as Dr. Nokes said. He couldn't think what was the matter when he came at one o'clock. No more could I. 'My lord appears to have been agitated!' said he. Agitated! Yes; I'd agitate that young villain with a vengeance if I could get hold of him!"

"But you agitate me—me, Belinda. And, let me tell you, that you are not showing a proper feeling in the case as regards Castalia; my niece Castalia; poor unhappy girl!"

My lady stood up—she had risen to her feet in her wrath against Algernon—big, florid, loud of voice, and vehement of will, and looked down upon her husband in his invalid's chair. And as she looked into his face she perceived, and acknowledged to herself, that it would not do to drive him to extremities; that on this occasion neither indolence, habit, and bodily weakness on the one hand, nor sheer force of tongue and temper on the other, would avail to make him succumb to her. She changed her tone, and began to give her view of the case. She gave it the more effectively in that she spoke the truth, as far as the representation of her genuine opinion went. She did not believe a word about Castalia's having stolen money-letters. (Lord Seely winced when she blurted out the accusation nakedly in so many words.) Not one word! As to the gossip in Whitford, that might be, or might not; they had but Ancram's word for it. If Castalia was in this nervous, miserable state of mind; if she did pry on her husband, and prowl about the post-office, and even open his letters (that might be; nothing more likely!); if all these statements were true, what conclusion did they point to? Not that Castalia was a thief (my lord put his hand up at the word, as if to ward off a stab), but that she was insanely jealous.

The suggestion brought a gleam of comfort to Lord Seely. And it approved itself to his reason. The one explanation was in harmony with all that he knew of his niece's character. The other was not.

"Jealous, eh, Belinda?"

"Of course! Insanely jealous, that always was her character, when she lived in our house. She was jealous of Lady Harriet Dormer; she was jealous of everybody and everything that Ancram looked at."

"Jealous!" repeated my lord musingly. "But to act so strangely—to expose herself to animadversion—to go the length of opening desks and letters!—She must have had some cause, some great provocation."

"Nothing more likely! Ancram is good-looking and young; and Castalia—isn't."

"But where did she procure that money without her husband's knowledge?"

"Don't know, I'm sure."

"And her extravagance, and running him into debt as she has done—it seems to point to some mental aberration, does it not, Belinda?"

"Oh, fiddle-faddle, my lord! Why this, and how that! How do we know what truth there is in the whole story?"

"Belinda?"

"Oh, bless you, I'm too old a bird to be caught by any chaff the Ancrams can offer me."

"But, good heavens, Belinda, it is utterly incredible——"

"Nothing's incredible of an Ancram in the way of lying," returned the great lady of that family with much coolness. "This young jackanapes has got into a scrape down at What-do-ye-call-it. Things have gone wrong in the office—(I'll be bound he don't mind his business a bit)—he and his wife have got into debt between them. He don't like the place; and after bothering your life out for money, he comes off here without 'with your leave' or 'by your leave,' and asks to be sent abroad. That's my notion of the matter. And any way, if I were you, Valentine, I should take no sort of action, nor commit myself in any way, until I'd had Castalia's version of the story."

Lord Seely pressed his hand to his forehead, and writhed on his chair. "I wish to God that I could go to the place and speak with Castalia myself!" he cried. "There are things that cannot be written. But here I am a prisoner. It is a dreadful misfortune."

"I can't undertake to go trapesing down there in this weather," exclaimed my lady. "And, besides, I wouldn't leave you just now."

Lord Seely by no means wished that his wife should interfere personally in the matter. He well knew that nothing but discord was likely to arise from any interview between Castalia and her aunt. "There is no one I could send," he murmured. "No one I could trust."

"No, no! It would never do to send anybody at all. This kind of family wash had better be done in private. I tell you what you do, Valentine—you just dictate a letter to me to be sent to Castalia. Send it off at once. When does Ancram return? To-morrow? Very well, then. Send it off at once, so that it shall reach Whitford before he does."

"Why so, Belinda?" asked my lord anxiously.

"Why so? Dear me, Valentine; how st——unsuspicious you are! If Ancram was there when the letter arrived, do you suppose she would ever get it?"

Lord Seely stared at the florid, fat, unfeeling face before him, with a sensation of oppression and dismay. How was it possible to attribute such actions and motives to persons of one's own family with an air of such matter-of-fact indifference? It was not the first time that his wife's coarseness of feeling had been thrust on his observation to the shocking of his own finer taste and sentiment—for my lord was a gentleman at heart—but this was an amount of phlegmatic cynicism which hurt him to the core. He could not forget that it was his wife who had promoted the marriage of Castalia with this young man. It was his wife who had declared that the Honourable Miss Kilfinane was not likely to make a better match. It was his wife who had urged him to put young Errington into the Whitford Post-office, declaring that the place was in every way a suitable one for him. And now it was his wife who coolly described Ancram as a wretch, full of the vilest duplicity!

The fact was, that my lady was by no means so indifferent on the subject as her words and manner would seem to imply. She was—not pained as Lord Seely was, but—angered excessively. She foresaw various troubles to herself and her husband—even the distant possibility of having Castalia "returned upon their hands," as she phrased it, and of having, sooner or later, to find money, or make interest, to get Ancram a berth which she would more willingly have bestowed on some of her nearer kith and kin. And her fashion of venting her anger was roundly to declare Ancram Errington capable of anything! And in her heart she believed him capable of a good deal of falsehood.

Lord Seely made no immediate reply to his wife's suggestion. He was ill and grieved, and he felt as if his final exit from this world of troubles might not be altogether undesirable. His interview with Algernon had agitated him terribly. His interview with his wife—although she had opened the door for a ray of hope that things might be not quite so terribly bad as he had feared—had certainly not soothed him. But before the departure of the evening mail that night, he had completed and despatched a letter to Castalia. He had insisted on writing it with his own hand, sitting up in bed to do so, although his fingers were scarcely able to guide the pen.

Meanwhile, Algernon was spending a very pleasant evening. He went to the club to which the Honourable Jack Price had introduced him during the brief butterfly period of his London existence. There he found the genial Jack, friendly, affectionate, expansive, as ever: a trifle balder, maybe, but otherwise unchanged. There, too, he found several of his former acquaintances ("old friends," he called them), who, after having his name recalled to their recollection by Jack Price, said, "Hulloa, Errington, where the dooce have you been hiding yourself?" and shook hands with the utmost cordiality. Then Jack Price insisted on adjourning to a favourite haunt of his, and ordering supper in celebration of Algernon's unexpected visit. And the "old friends" were flatteringly willing to do Algernon the honour of eating it. They were mostly unfledged lads, such as affected very often the society of Jack Price, who was really a kind companion, and gave the boys long lectures on steadiness of purpose and energy, illustrated by warning examples from his own career, and delivered amid such agreeable accompaniments to moral reflection as hot whisky-punch and first-rate Havanas. But there were one or two older men: a newspaper editor from Dublin, who had been at college with Jack; and a grey-whiskered major of cavalry, who had served with Jack during his brief military career; and a middle-aged attaché to His Majesty's legation at the Grand Duchy of Prundenhausen, who had been a contemporary of Jack in the Foreign Office. And all these gentlemen, being warmed by wine and meat, became excessively companionable and entertaining. The Dublin editor, a fat, short, rather humorous-looking individual, sang Irish sentimental ballads with a sweet tenor voice, and, at the whisky-punch stage of the entertainment, brought tears into the eyes of the cavalry major and Jack Price. The middle-aged attaché did not cry; he considered such a manifestation beneath the dignity of the diplomatic service. And although he affected a bitter tone, and secretly considered himself to be a mute inglorious Talleyrand, much injured and unappreciated by the blundering chiefs at the Foreign Office, yet to outsiders he maintained the dignity of the service, at the cost of a good deal of trouble and starch.

Algernon did not cry either. Indeed, the combination of sentimental ballad and stout Dublin editor struck him as being pleasantly comic. But he paid the singer so easy and well-turned a compliment as put to shame the clumsy "Thanks, O'Reilly!" "By Jove, that was delightful!" "What a sweet whistle you have of your own!" and the general shout of "Bravo!" by which the others expressed their approbation. And then he sang himself—one of the French romances for which he had gained a little reputation among a certain society in town. The romance was somewhat thread-bare, and the singer's voice out of practice; still, the performance was favourably received. But Algernon soon changed his ground, and, eschewing music altogether, began to entertain his hearers with stories about the eccentric worthies of Whitford, illustrated by admirable mimicry of their peculiarities of voice, face, and phraseology, so that he soon had the table in a roar of laughter, and achieved a genuine success. Jack Price was enchanted—partly with the consciousness that it was he who had provided his friends with this diverting entertainment, and explained to every one who would listen to him: "Oh, you know, it's great! What? Great, sir! Mathews isn't a patch on him. Inimitable, what? He is the dearest, brightest, most lovable fellow! What a burning shame that a thing of this sort should be hidden under a bushel—I mean, down in what-d'ye-call-it! By George! What?"

Yes; Algernon spent a very agreeable evening, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. He certainly had a wonderful share of what his mother called "the Ancram elasticity!"