A smile flickered on his mouth, but that was the only sign vouchsafed her that he was attending to her. He took a pinch of snuff, and said, as he shut his box: “I’ll accept the relationship between us — cousin! — but it’s not enough. You suggested that I should pose as your guardian: very well! let us say that your father commended you to my care. Now, why should he have done so?”
“Well, he did say that you were the best of his family,” offered Frederica.
“That won’t fadge! My sisters, I’ll go bail, know as well as I do how remote is the connection between us! Some better reason must be found to satisfy their curiosity.”
Entering into the spirit of this, Frederica said: “Papa once did you a — a signal service, which you have never till now been able to repay!”
“What service?” asked his lordship sceptically.
“That,” returned Frederica, with aplomb, “is something you prefer not to divulge — particularly to your sisters!”
“Oh, very good!” he approved, the disquieting glint in his eyes yielding to genuine amusement. “I feel myself to be under an obligation to him, and for that reason have assumed the guardianship of his children.” He caught the speculative gleam in her eyes, and his brows rose. “Well?”
“I was merely thinking — cousin! — that if you mean to become our guardian it will be more proper for you to find a suitable tutor for Jessamy and for Felix than for me to do so!”
“I know nothing about such matters — and my guardianship will be quite unofficial!”
“You may depend upon that!” said Frederica. “But I see no reason why you shouldn’t be useful!”
“May I remind you that I have consented to introduce you to the ton? There my usefulness will stop!”
“No, how can it? If you mean to set it about that you think yourself in honour bound to protect us, you must do something besides inviting Charis and me to a ball in your house! To be sure, I am very grateful to you for that — though you wouldn’t have done it if Charis hadn’t bowled you out! — but — ”
“Charis,” he interrupted, “is a very beautiful girl — possibly the most beautiful girl I have yet encountered — but if you imagine that I shall invite her to the ball because I lost my heart to her you are wide of the mark, Cousin Frederica!”
“I must say I hope you won’t do that,” she replied, looking a little troubled. “You are much too old for her, you know!”
“Very true!” he retorted. “She being much too young for me!”
“Of course she is!” Frederica agreed. “So why did you decide suddenly to invite us?”
“That, cousin, I do not propose to tell you.”
She considered him, a gathering frown on her brow, her unwavering gaze searching his face. She was puzzled by him. She had not, at the outset, been favourably impressed: his figure was good, his tailoring exquisite, and his countenance, though not handsome, distinguished; but she had thought that his manner held too much height, and that his eyes were cold, and unpleasantly cynical. Even his smile had seemed to be contemptuous, curling his lips, but leaving his eyes as hard as steel. Then she had said something that had appealed to his sense of humour, and the metallic gleam had vanished in a smile of real amusement. Not only did it warm his eyes, but it transformed him in a flash from the aristocrat of haughty composure to an easy-mannered gentleman, with a strong sense of the ridiculous, and considerable charm of manner. Within minutes he had pokered up again; yet there was not a grain of starch in him when Felix had bounced into the room; he had answered all his and Jessamy’s questions with patience and good-humour; and had looked upon both boys with kindness. He had borne the cavalier treatment meted out to him by Miss Winsham with indifference; and the gaze which he had fixed on Charis had been deeply appreciative. Frederica entertained no doubt that it was admiration for Charis that had caused him to change his mind, but what it was that had brought the malicious glint back into his eyes she could not guess.
She looked doubtfully at him. His brows rose; he said: “Well?”
“I ought to have been a widow!” she exclaimed in a vexed tone. “Yes, and if I had a particle of sense I would have been!”
The expression she mistrusted vanished; his eyes held only laughter. “You will be!” he assured her.
“That’s of no use!” she answered impatiently. “If I were a widow now — ” She broke off, quick merriment in her face. “Well, of all the abominable things to say —! I do have the family in charge — that’s because I’m the eldest — but I’m not tyrannical, or — or vixenish! At least, I don’t think I am!”
“No, no!” he said soothingly. “I am persuaded you handle the reins in excellent form. I wish you will tell me how, if you had had a particle of sense, you could have become a widow? Or why you should wish to: have you a husband concealed about you?”
“Of course I haven’t! I meant only that I ought to have pretended I was a widow. Then I might have chaperoned Charis myself, and you need not have dragged your sister into it.”
“Oh, I haven’t the least objection to doing that!” he said.
“Yes, but she may object very much! After all, she isn’t even acquainted with us!”
“That shall be rectified.” He held out his hand. “I must go now, but you shall hear from me within a day or two. Oh, pray don’t pull the bell! Recollect that I’ve become a member of the family, and don’t stand on points with me! I’ll usher myself out.”
This, however, he was not obliged to do, since Felix was lying in wait for him in the hall, and escorted him out to his carriage in a very civil manner which had its root in his determination to wring from him the promise of a visit to the foundry in Soho.
“Have no fear!” said his lordship. “The matter shall be attended to.”
“Yes, sir — thank you! But you’ll go with me yourself, won’t you? Not your secretary?”
“My dear boy, why should I? I daresay Mr Trevor knows far more about these mysteries than I do.”
“Yes, but — Oh, do come yourself, sir! It would make it first-rate!”
The Marquis believed himself to be hardened against flattery. He thought that he had experienced every variety, but he discovered that he was mistaken: the blatantly worshipful look in the eyes of a twelve-year-old, anxiously raised to his, was new to him, and it pierced his defences. He was capable of giving the coolest of set-downs to any gushing female; and the advances of toadeaters he met with the most blistering of snubs; but even as he realized how intolerably bored he would be in Soho he found himself quite unable to snub his latest and most youthful admirer. It would be like kicking a confiding puppy.
So Master Felix Merriville, presently racing up the stairs again to the drawing-room, was able to inform Frederica triumphantly that all was right: “Cousin Alverstoke” was going to take him to see the pneumatic lift himself, and, further, that he was a regular trump.
V
Upon the following day Mr Charles Trevor sustained a shock. Not twenty minutes after the Marquis’s agent-in-chief had deposited on his desk a mass of reports and accounts which it was Mr Trevor’s enviable duty to reduce to such proportions as would be tolerable to their noble employer, the Marquis strolled into his office, saying: “Good morning, Charles. Do you know of any foundries in Soho?”
“Foundries, sir?” said Mr Trevor, stunned by so unprecedented an enquiry.
“Something to do with the casting of metals, I fancy,” explained the Marquis, levelling his glass at the litter of papers on the desk. “Good God, Charles, why have you never told me how overworked you are? What, in the name of abomination, is all this?”