“My wretched, wretched book!”
“Your—Oh, that! Well, what of it?”
“It is a success!” said Phoebe, in a voice of tragedy.
“Good God, you don’t mean it? I wouldn’t have believed it!” exclaimed Tom, adding still more infelicitously: “Though I must say it had a devilish handsome binding: Sibby showed it to me, you know.”
“It isn’t the binding people are talking about!” said Phoebe, with asperity. “They are talking about the characters in it, and the author! Everyone wants to know who wrote it! Now do you understand?”
Tom did understand. He pursed his lips in a silent whistle, and after a minute said: “Has Salford read it?”
“No—at least—no, he can’t have done so yet, surely! He went away almost immediately after it was published.”
“I wonder if he’ll guess?” said Tom slowly. “You needn’t be afraid I shall let it out, but it wouldn’t surprise me if—You know what I should do if I were you?” She shook her head, her eyes fixed on his face. “I’d make a clean breast of it,” said Tom.
“I did think of doing so, but when I remember what I wrote—” She broke off with a shudder.
“Devilish difficult thing to do,” he agreed. “All the same—”
“I don’t think I could,” she confessed. “If he were to be angry—! It makes me sick only to imagine it! And my grandmother says on no account must I tell him.”
“Well, I daresay she knows best,” responded Tom somewhat dubiously. “What will you do if he charges you with it? Deny it?”
“Oh, don’t, Tom!” begged Phoebe.
“Yes, but you’d best make up your mind,” he insisted. “I shouldn’t think, myself, that he’ll believe you: you never could tell a bouncer without looking guilty!”
“If he asks me,” said Phoebe despairingly, “I must tell the truth.”
“Well, perhaps he won’t ask you,” said Tom, perceiving that she was looking rather sickly already. “But take care you don’t mention it to anyone else, that’s all! Ten to one you’ll blurt it out to somebody! I know you!”
“Blurt it out! No, indeed!” she assured him.
She thought there could be little fear of it, but some severe trials had to be undergone, when she found herself obliged to endure in silence such discussions about her book as made her long to cry out: No! I never meant it so! For the one feature of The Lost Heir which aroused the curiosity of society was the character of Count Ugolino. The levelheaded might dismiss it as a piece of impertinence; Sylvester’s friends might be up in arms; but it seemed to Phoebe that the idiots who asserted there was never smoke without a fire were legion. She was speedily made to realize that she had not been Ianthe’s only confidante. Before ever The Lost Heir was written Ianthe had apparently blackened Sylvester’s character to as many persons as would listen to her grievances. “Oh, the circumstances have been changed, of course!” some avid-eyed female would say. “I don’t mean to say that Salford has done the same as Ugolino—well, he couldn’t, nowadays! But as soon as I read the book I remembered how poor Lady Henry told me once ...”
“Could it be true that Lady Henry’s son is the real Duke of Salford?” breathed the credulous. “They were twins, were they not, Salford and Lord Henry?”
That lurid fancy had almost proved to be Phoebe’s breaking-point. But for her grandmother’s quelling eye she believed she must have spoken. It caught hers in the very nick of time, and she remained silent. That eye was absent when she heard the same lurid fancy on Ianthe’s lips.
“Whoever it was who wrote the book,” said Ianthe impressively, “knows a great deal about the Raynes! That much is certain! Everyone says it is a female: do you think so, Miss Marlow?”
“Yes—and a shockingly silly female!” said Phoebe. “It is the most absurd thing I ever read!”
“But it isn’t!” insisted Ianthe. “Chance is not a castle, of course, and Sylvester couldn’t possibly keep poor little Edmund hidden, and Edmund hasn’t got a sister, but that’s nothing! I have read the book twice now, and I believe there is a warning in it!”
“A warning?” echoed Phoebe blankly.
“To me,” nodded Ianthe. “A warning that danger threatens my child. There can be no doubt that Matilda is meant to be me, after all.”
These naive words struck Phoebe dumb for several moments. It had not previously occurred to her that Ianthe might identify herself with The Lost Heir’s golden-haired sister. Having very little interest in mere heroes and heroines she had done no more than depict two staggeringly beautiful puppets, endow them with every known virtue, and cast them into a series of hair-raising adventures from which, she privately considered, it was extremely improbable they would ever have extricated themselves.
“Though Florian is not Fotherby, of course,” added Ianthe, unconsciously answering the startled question in Phoebe’s mind. “I think he is just a made-up character. Poor Nugent wouldn’t do for a hero. Besides, he is Baron Macaronio: everyone knows that!”
The unruffled complaisance in her face and voice provided Phoebe with the second shock of the day. This one was not of long duration, however, a bare minute’s reflection sufficing to inform her that the grossest of libels could be pardoned in an author who painted Lady Henry herself in roseate hues.
“And Harry was Sylvester’s twin-brother,” pursued Ianthe.
“Count Ugolino’s brother was not his twin!” Phoebe managed to say.
“No, but I daresay the author was afraid to make it all precisely the same. The thing is, Ugolino was a usurper.”
“Lady Henry!” said Phoebe, speaking in a voice of careful control. “You cannot seriously suppose that Salford is a usurper!”
“No, except that there have been such things, and he was a twin, and I have often thought, when he has encouraged Edmund to do dangerous things, like riding his pony all over the park, all by himself, and climbing trees, that he would be positively glad if the poor little fellow were to fall and break his neck!”
“Oh, hush!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Pray, pray do not say so, Lady Henry! You are funning, I know, but indeed you should not!”
An obstinate look came into Ianthe’s lovely face. “No, I am not. I don’t say it is so, for I can’t think Mama-Duchess would have changed the twins—for why should she? But Sylvester has never liked Edmund! He said himself he didn’t want him, and although he pretended afterwards that he hadn’t meant it I have always known it was the truth! Well, why does he hate Edmund?”
“Lady Henry, you must not indulge your fancy in this way!” Phoebe cried, quite appalled. “How can you suppose that a foolish romance bears the least relation to real life?”
“The Lost Heir is no more foolish than Glenarvon, and you can’t say that bore no relation to real life!” countered Ianthe instantly.
Phoebe said: “I know—I have reason to know—that the author of the book was wholly ignorant of any of the circumstances attaching to Salford, or to any member of his family!”
“Nonsense! How can you know anything of the sort?”
Phoebe moistened her lips, and said in a shaking voice: “It so happens that I am acquainted with the author. I mustn’t tell you, and you won’t ask me, I am persuaded, or—or mention it!”
“Acquainted with the author?” Ianthe gasped. “Oh, who is she? You can’t be so cruel as not to tell me! I won’t breathe a word, dear Miss Marlow!”
“No, I must not. I should not have spoken at all, only that I felt myself obliged, when I found you had taken such a fantastic notion into your head! Lady Henry, my friend had never seen Salford but once in her life: knew nothing more of him than his name! She was struck by his strange eyebrows, and when she came to write that tale she remembered them, and thought she would give Ugolino brows like that, never dreaming that anyone would think—”