With this letter in her pocket, Lisa put herself into one of her favourite omnibuses, which took her to Albert Gate, and from Albert Gate she found her way across the Park to Hill Street. She remembered the number, though she would hardly have known the house in its morning brightness of yellow marguerites and pale blue silk blinds.
The haughtiest of footmen opened the door, and looked at her from head to foot with the deliberate eye of scorn. Her beauty made not the faintest impression upon his rhinoceros hide. She was on foot, and shabbily clad, and he took her for a workgirl.
“I have a letter for Mr. Vansittart,” she began timidly.
The footman interrupted her with stern decisiveness. “This is not Mr. Vansittart’s ’ouse. This is Lady ’Artley’s.”
“I want to know where Mr. Vansittart lives.”
“Charles Street. Number 99a.”
“Please tell me the way.”
The magnificent creature stalked slowly to the doorstep, moving with the languid hauteur which befitted one whose noble height and well-grown legs gave him first rank in the army of London footmen. He was not ill-natured, but he took what he called a proper pride in himself, conscious that his livery was made by one of the most expensive tailors in the West End, and that his shoes came from Bond Street.
Lifting his arm with a haughty grace, he indicated the turning which would be Lisa’s nearest way to Charles Street.
She thanked him and tripped lightly away, he watching her with a languid gaze, too obtuse to recognize the brilliant Venetian prima donna—whose eyes, and shoulders, and diamonds he had approved the other night, when he hung over her with peaches and champagne—in the young person in rusty black.
Lisa found 99a, again a house with flowers in all the windows, and dainty silken blinds—a house of brighter and fresher aspect than the houses of Venice, where the effects of form and colour are broader, bolder, and more paintable, but lack that finish and neatness which distinguish a well-kept house at the West End of London: a house where no expenditure is spared in the struggle between the love of beauty and colour, and the curse of coal fires and gloomy skies. Another footman looked at Lisa with the cold eye of indifference, less haughty than Lady Hartley’s superb menial only because Vansittart’s smaller means did not afford prize specimens of the footman genus.
“Any answer?” asked the youth, as Lisa delivered her letter.
No, there was no answer required—but would he be sure to give the letter to Mr. Vansittart?
There was a rustle of silken skirts on the stairs as she spoke, and two ladies came tripping down, talking as they came.
“The carriage is not there yet,” cried Sophy, glancing at the open doorway. “I’m afraid we shall be late for luncheon.”
Eve followed her, and was in the hall in time to see Lisa as she turned from the door—to see her and to recognize her as the woman who had brought perplexity and apprehension into the clear heaven of her life.
The victoria came to the door. The footman stood ready to hand his mistress to her carriage and to take his place beside the coachman.
“What did that person want?” asked Eve, sharply.
“She brought a letter for my master, ma’am.”
“Where is it? Give it to me.”
She took the letter, and looked at it frowningly.
“Mr. Vansetart!” The woman could not even spell his name, and yet was able to darken his wife’s existence.
“What a shabby letter!” cried Sophy, struggling with the top button of a tight glove. “It must be a begging letter, I should think. But what a pretty dark-eyed woman that was. I seem to remember her face. Really, really, Eve, we shall be late! Mrs. Montford told us her luncheons are always punctual. She wouldn’t wait for a Bishop.”
Eve was staring at the letter. Vansittart was out, or she would have gone to him with it. She wanted to put it into his hands, and to see how he took its contents; but she did not even venture to keep the letter in her possession till they met. She ran into her husband’s study, and put the odious letter on the mantelpiece, in a spot where he might overlook it. If it were overlooked until the afternoon she might be with him when he opened it.
She went into society with her heart aching. Whatever her husband’s feelings might be, this shameless Italian was running after him. What insolence! What consummate audacity! To come to his house, to pursue him with letters, even in his wife’s presence! And Sefton had introduced this brazen creature to her; and she—Vansittart’s wife—had been weak enough to be civil.
Sophy’s perpetual prattle agonized her all the way to Grosvenor Gardens; nor was the smart luncheon which awaited them there less agonizing. She had to brace herself for the ordeal, to smile and talk, and laugh at good stories, pretending to see the point of them; laughing when other people laughed; pretending to enjoy that happy mixture of society to be met at some hospitable tables—a dash of literature and art, a fashionable priest and a fashionable actor, an archaeological Dean from a grave old Midland city, a young married beauty, a Primrose League enthusiast, a foreign diplomatist, and a sporting peer owning a handsome slice of the shires.
Mr. Sefton came in after they were seated, and dropped into the one vacant chair beside Sophy.
“You are always late,” Mrs. Montford said reproachfully. “I suppose that is because you are the idlest man I know.”
He was a favourite of Mrs. Montford’s—l’ami de la maison—and allowed to come and go as he pleased. When he gave a tea-party it was generally Mrs. Montford who invited half the
