Mrs. Waddington stood and paced the floor, and presently the door opened.
“Lord Hunstanton,” announced Ferris, the butler.
The standard of male looks presented up to the present in this story has not been high: but the man who now entered did much to raise the average. He was tall and slight and elegant, with frank blue eyes—one of them preceded by an eyeglass—and one of those clipped moustaches. His clothes had been cut by an inspired tailor and pressed by a genius. His tie was simply an ethereal white butterfly, straight from heaven, that hovered over the collar-stud as if it were sipping pollen from some exotic flower. (George Finch, now working away at number eight and having just got it creased in four places, would have screamed hoarsely with envy at the sight of that tie.)
“Well, here I am,” said Lord Hunstanton. He paused for a moment, then added, “What, what!” as if he felt that it was expected of him.
“It was so kind of you to come,” said Mrs. Waddington, pivoting on her axis and panting like a hart after the water-brooks.
“Not at all.”
“I knew I could rely on you.”
“You have only to command.”
“You’re such a true friend, though I have known you only such a short time.”
“Is anything wrong?” asked Lord Hunstanton.
He was more than a little surprised to find himself at seven-forty in a house where he had been invited to dine at half-past eight. His dressing had been interrupted by a telephone-call from Mrs. Waddington’s butler, begging him to come round at once: and, noting his hostess’s agitation, he hoped that nothing had gone wonky with the dinner.
“Everything is wrong!”
Lord Hunstanton sighed inaudibly. Did this mean cold meat and a pickle?
“Sigsbee is having one of his spells!”
“You mean he has been taken ill?”
“Not ill. Fractious.” Mrs. Waddington gulped. “It’s so awful that this should have occurred on the night of an important dinner-party, after you have taken such trouble with his education. I have said a hundred times that, since you came, Sigsbee has been a different man. He knows all the forks now, and can even talk intelligently about soufflés.”
“I am only too glad if any little pointers I have been able to. …”
“And when I take him out for a run he always walks on the outside of the pavement. And here he must go, on the night of my biggest dinner-party, and have one of his spells.”
“What is the trouble? Is he violent?”
“No. Sullen.”
“What about?”
Mrs. Waddington’s mouth set in a hard line.
“Sigsbee is pining for the West again!”
“You don’t say so?”
“Yes, sir, he’s pining for the great wide open spaces of the West. He says the East is effete and he wants to be out there among the silent canyons where men are men. If you want to know what I think, somebody’s been feeding him Zane Grey.”
“Can nothing be done?”
“Yes—in time, I can get him right if I’m given time, by stopping his pocket-money. But I need time, and here he is, an hour before my important dinner, with some of the most wealthy and exclusive people in New York expected at any moment, refusing to put on his dress clothes and saying that all a man that is a man needs is to shoot his bison and cut off a steak and cook it by the light of the western stars. And what I want to know is, what am I to do?”
Lord Hunstanton twisted his moustache thoughtfully.
“Very perplexing.”
“I thought if you went and had a word with him. …”
“I doubt if it would do any good. I suppose you couldn’t dine without him?”
“It would make us thirteen.”
“I see.” His Lordship’s face brightened. “I’ve got it! Send Miss Waddington to reason with him.”
“Molly? You think he would listen to her?”
“He is very fond of her.”
Mrs. Waddington reflected.
“It’s worth trying. I’ll go up and see if she is dressed. She is a dear girl, isn’t she, Lord Hunstanton?”
“Charming, charming.”
“I’m sure I’m as fond of her as if she were my own daughter.”
“No doubt.”
“Though, of course, dearly as I love her, I am never foolishly indulgent. So many girls today are spoiled by foolish indulgence.”
“True.”
“My great wish, Lord Hunstanton, is one day to see her happily married to some good man.”
His lordship closed the door behind Mrs. Waddington and stood for some moments in profound thought. He may have been wondering what was the earliest he could expect a cocktail, or he may have been musing on some deeper subject—if there is a deeper subject.
II
Mrs. Waddington navigated upstairs, and paused before a door near the second landing.
“Molly!”
“Yes, mother?”
Mrs. Waddington was frowning as she entered the room. How often she had told this girl to call her “mater”!
But this was a small point, and not worth mentioning at a time like the present. She sank into a chair with a creaking groan. Strong woman though she was, Mrs. Sigsbee Waddington, like the chair, was near to breaking down.
“Good heavens, mother! What’s the matter?”
“Send her away,” muttered Mrs. Waddington, nodding at her stepdaughter’s maid.
“All right, mother. I shan’t want you any more, Julie. I can manage now. Shall I get you a glass of water, mother?”
Molly looked at her suffering stepparent with gentle concern, wishing that she had something stronger than water to offer. But her late mother had brought her up in that silly, stuffy way in which old-fashioned mothers used to bring up their daughters: and, incredible as it may seem in these enlightened days, Molly Waddington had reached the age of twenty without forming even a nodding acquaintance with alcohol. Now, no doubt, as she watched her stepmother
