She tapped with her fingers upon the little table
by their side.
“He is rich,” she said, “and an
uncommon mixture of the student and the man of society.
He refuses many more invitations than he accepts,
he entertains very seldom but very magnificently.
He has never been known to pay marked attentions
to any woman, even the scandal of the clubs has passed
him by. What else can I say about him, I wonder?”
she continued reflectively. “Nothing, I
think, except this. He is a strong man.
You know that that counts for much.”
Mr. Sabin was silent. Perhaps he was measuring
his strength in some imagined encounter with this
man. Something in his face alarmed Helene.
She suddenly leaned forward and looked at him more
closely.
“Uncle,” she exclaimed in a low voice,
“there is something on your mind. Do not
tell me that once more you are in the maze, that again
you have schemes against this country.”
He smiled at her sadly enough, but she was reassured.
“You need have no fear,” he told her.
“With politics—I have finished.
Why I am here, what I am here for I will tell you
very soon. It is to find one whom I have lost—and
who is dear to me. Forgive me if for to-day I
say no more. Come, if you will you shall drive
me to my hotel.”
He offered his arm with the courtly grace which he
knew so well how to assume. Together they passed
out to her carriage.
“After all,” Lady Carey sighed, throwing
down a racing calendar and lighting a cigarette, “London
is the only thoroughly civilized Anglo-Saxon capital
in the world. Please don’t look at me like
that, Duchess. I know—this is your
holy of holies, but the Duke smokes here—I’ve
seen him. My cigarettes are very tiny and very
harmless.”
The Duchess, who wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and
was a person of weight in the councils of the Primrose
League, went calmly on with her knitting.
“My dear Muriel,” she said, “if
my approval or disapproval was of the slightest moment
to you, it is not your smoking of which I should first
complain. I know, however, that you consider
yourself a privileged person. Pray do exactly
as you like, but don’t drop the ashes upon the
carpet.”
Lady Carey laughed softly.
“I suppose I am rather a thorn in your side
as a relative,” she remarked. “You
must put it down to the roving blood of my ancestors.
I could no more live the life of you other women than
I could fly. I must have excitement, movement,
all the time.”
A tall, heavily built man, who had been reading some
letters at the other end of the room, came sauntering
up to them.
“Well,” he said, “you assuredly
live up to your principles, for you travel all over
the world as though it were one vast playground.”
“And sometimes,” she remarked, “my
journeys are not exactly successful. I know
that that is what you are dying to say.”
