CHAPTER XXI

A SNAKE IN THE GRASS

His studies were soon interrupted by the rustle of a dress on the staircase. With difficulty he forbore rushing out to meet its wearer, but managed to preserve the composure of an ordinary morning visitor, when the door opened, and--enter Mrs. Lushington! She must have read his disappointment in his face; for she looked half-amused, half-provoked, and there was no less malice than mirth in her eyes while she observed--

"Blanche will be down directly, General, and don't be afraid I shall interrupt your _tête-à-tête_, for I am going away as soon as I've written a note. You can rehearse all the charming things you have got to say in the meantime."

He had recovered his _savoir-faire_.

"Rehearse them to _you_?" he asked, laughing. "It would be pretty practice, no doubt. Shall I begin?"

"Not now," she answered, in the same tone. "There is hardly time; though Blanche wouldn't be very cross about it, I dare say. She is liberal enough, and knows she can trust _me_."

"I am sure you are a true friend," he returned gravely. "Miss Douglas--Blanche--has not too many. I hope you will always remain one of her staunchest and best."

She smiled sadly.

"Do you _really_ mean it?" said she, taking his hand. "You can't imagine how happy it makes me to hear you say so. I thought you considered me a vain, ignorant, frivolous little woman, like the rest."

Perhaps he did, but this was not the moment to confess it.

"What a strange world it would be," he answered, "if we knew the real opinions of our friends. In this case, Mrs. Lushington, you see how wrong you were about mine."

"I believe you, General!" she exclaimed. "I feel that you are truth itself. I am sure you never deceived a woman in your life, and I _cannot_ understand how any woman could find it in her heart to deceive _you_. One ought never to forgive such an offence, and I can believe that _you_ never would."

He thought her earnestness unaccountable, and wholly uncalled for; but his senses were on the alert to catch the first symptoms of Blanche's approach, and he answered rather absently--

"Quite right! Of course not. Double-dealing is _the_ thing I hate. You may cheat me once; that is _your_ fault. It is my own if you ever take me in again."

"No wonder Blanche values your good opinion," said Mrs. Lushington meaningly. "She has not spent her life amongst people whose standard is so high. Hush! here she comes. Ah! General, you won't care about talking to _me_ now!"

She gave him one reproachful glance in which there was a little merriment, a little pique, and a great deal of tender interest, ere she departed to write her note in the back drawing-room.

It was impossible not to contrast her kind and deferential manner with the cold, collected bearing of Miss Douglas, who entered the room, like a queen about to hold her court, rather than a loving maiden, hurrying to meet her lord.

She had always been remarkable for quiet dignity in motion or repose.

It was one of the many charms on which the General lavished his admiration, but he could have dispensed with this royal composure now. It seemed a little out of place in their relative positions. Also he would have liked to see the colour deepen in her proud impassive face, though his honest heart ached while he reflected how the bright tints had faded of late, how the glory of her beauty had departed, leaving her always pale and saddened now.

He would have asked a leading question, hazarded a gentle reproach, or in some way made allusion to the arrival of his _bête noir_, but her altered looks disarmed him; and it was Satanella herself who broached the subject, by quietly informing her visitor she had just returned from riding the black mare in the Park. "Do you _mind_?" she added, rising in some confusion to pull a blind down, while she spoke.

Here would have been an opportunity for a confession of jealousy, an appeal to her feelings, pleadings, promises, protestations,--to use the General's own metaphor,--"an attack along the whole line;" but how was he thus to offer decisive battle, with his flank exposed and threatened, with Mrs. Lushington's ears wide open and attentive, while her pen went scribble, scribble, almost in the same room?

"I _mind_ everything you do," said he gallantly, "and object to nothing! If I _did_ want to get up a grievance, I should quarrel with you for not ordering me to parade in attendance on you in the Park. My time, as you know, is always yours, and I am never so happy as with you. Blanche (dropping his voice), I am never _really_ happy when you are out of my sight."

She glanced towards the writing-table, and though the folding-doors, half-shut, concealed that lady's person, seemed glad to observe, by the continual scratching of a pen, that Mrs. Lushington had not yet finished her note.

"You are always good and kind," said Blanche, forcing a smile. "Far more than I deserve. Will you ride another day, early? Thanks; I knew you would. I should have asked you this morning but I had a headache, and thought I should only be a bore. Besides, I expected you in the afternoon. Then Clara came to luncheon, and we went upstairs, and now the carriage will be round in five minutes. That is the way the day goes by; yet it seems very long too, only not so bad as the night."

Again his face fell. It was uphill work, he thought. Surely women were not usually so difficult to woo, or his own memory played him false, and his friends romanced unpardonably in their narratives. But, nevertheless, in all the prizes of life that which seemed fairest and best hung highest out of reach, and he would persevere to the end. Aye! even if he should fail at last!

Miss Douglas seemed to possess some intuitive knowledge of his intention; and conscious of his determination to overcome them, was perhaps the more disposed to throw difficulties in his path. He should have remembered that in love as in war, a rapid flank movement and complete change of tactics will often prevail, when vigilance, endurance, and honest courage have been tried in vain.

Satanella could not but appreciate a delicacy that forbade further inquiry about the black mare. No sooner had she given vent to her feelings, in the little explosion recorded above, than she bitterly regretted their expression, comparing her wayward petulant disposition with the temper and constancy displayed by her admirer. Sorrowful, softened, filled with self-reproach, she gave him one of her winning smiles, and bade him forgive her display of ill-humour, or bear with it, as one of many evil qualities, the result of her morbid temperament and isolated lot.

"Then I slept badly, and went out tired. The Ride was crowded, the sun broiling, the mare disagreeable. Altogether, I came back as cross as two sticks. General, are _you_ never out of humour? And how do you get rid of your ill-tempers? You certainly don't visit them on _me_!"

"How _could_ I?" he asked in return. "How can I ever be anything but your servant, your slave? Oh! Blanche, you must believe me _now_. How much longer is my probation to last? Is the time to be always put off from day to day, and must I----"

"Clara! Clara!" exclaimed Miss Douglas to her friend in the back drawing-room, "shall you never have done with those tiresome letters? Have you any idea what o'clock it is? And the carriage was ordered at five!"

The General smothered a curse. It was invariably so. No sooner did he think he had gained a secure footing, wrested a position of advantage, than she cut the ground from under him, pushed him down the hill, and his labour was lost, his task all to begin again! It seemed as if she could not bear to face her real position, glancing off at a tangent, without the slightest compunction, from the one important topic he was constantly watching an opportunity to broach.

"Just done! and a good day's work too!" replied Mrs. Lushington's silver tones from the writing-table, and it must have been a quicker ear than either Satanella's or the General's to detect in that playful sentence the spirit of mischievous triumph it conveyed.

Mrs. Lushington was delighted. She felt sure she had fathomed a secret, discovered the clue to an intrigue, and by such means as seemed perfectly fair and justifiable to her warped sense of right and wrong.

Finding herself a third person in a small party that should have been limited to two, she made urgent correspondence her excuse for withdrawing to such a distance as might admit of overhearing their conversation, while the lovers, if lovers indeed they were, should think themselves unobserved.

So she opened Satanella's blotting-book, and spread a sheet of note-paper on its folds.

Mrs. Lushington had a quick eye, no less than a ready wit. Blanche's blotting-paper was of the best quality, soft, thin, and absorbent. Where the writing-book opened, so shrewd an observer did not fail to detect the words "Roscommon, Ireland," traced clear and distinct as a lithograph, though reversed. Looking through the page, against the light, she read Daisy's address in his hiding-place with his humble friend Denis plainly enough, and the one word "Registered" underlined at the corner.

"_Enfin je te pince!_" she muttered below her breath. It was evident Satanella was in Daisy's confidence, that she knew his address,--which had been extorted indeed with infinite trouble from a lad whom he had sent to England in charge of the precious mare,--and had written to him within the last day or two. It was a great discovery! Her hand shook from sheer excitement, while she considered how best it could be turned to account, how it might serve to wean the General of his infatuation, to detach him from her friend, perhaps at last to secure him for herself. But she must proceed cautiously; make every step good, as she went on; prove each link of the chain, while she forged it; and when Blanche was fairly in the toils, show her the usual mercy extended by one woman to another.

Of course, she wrote her notes on a fresh page of the blotting-book. Of course, she rose from her employment frank, smiling, unsuspicious. Of course, she was more than usually affectionate to Blanche, and that young lady, well-skilled in the wiles of her own sex, wondering what had happened, watched her friend's conduct with some anxiety and yet more contempt.

"Good-bye, Blanche."

"Good-bye, Clara."

"Come again soon, dear!"

"You may depend upon me, love!"

And they kissed each other with a warmth of affection in no way damped or modified because Blanche suspected, and Clara resolved, henceforth it must be war to the knife!

In taking her leave of the General, however, Mrs. Lushington could not resist an allusion to their previous conversation, putting into her manner so much of tender regard and respectful interest as was pleasing enough to him and inexpressibly galling to her friend.

"Have you said your say?" she asked, looking very pretty and good-humoured as she gave him both hands. "I'm sure you had lots of time, and the best of opportunities. Don't you think I'm very considerate?"

"More--very generous!"

"Come and see me soon. Whenever you like. With or without dear Blanche. She won't mind; I'm always at home, to either of you--or both."

Then she made a funny little curtsey, gave him one more smile, one sidelong sorrowful glance, with her hand on the door, and was gone.

Blanche's spirit rose to arms; every instinct of her sex urged her to resist this unconscionable freebooter, this lawless professor of piracy and annexation. After all, whether she cared for him or not, the General was her own property. And what right had this woman to come between mistress and servant, with her becks and leers, her smiles and wiles, and meretricious ways? She had never valued her lover higher than at the moment Mrs. Lushington left the room; but he destroyed his advantage, kicked down all his good fortune, by looking in Miss Douglas's face with an expression of slavish devotion, while he exclaimed--

"How different that woman is from you, Blanche. Surely, my queen, there is nobody like you in the world!"