But it was all the wildest conjecture, and no definite conclusion could be arrived at.
“Well,” said Captain Culvers, “all I can say is, whoever has arranged or connived at this piece of absurdity, shall not have the pleasure of seeing me raising a hue and cry over it.”
His face was very white. He set his teeth over his last words.
“That’s right, Sefton, that’s right,” said Lord Culvers, eagerly, “there must be no hubbub, and a hundred thousand tongues set going over this affair. No, no, it mustn’t get into the papers, and my little girl be made the talk of the town.”
In a flash of fancy the unlucky father saw a long string of carriages outside his house in Belgrave Square, and heard an uninterrupted succession of knocks, rings, and enquiries for the missing bride.
“It would be terrible! We should all have to take flight somewhere,” he went on, answering as it were his own thoughts. “It’s disturbing, very. I’m altogether bewildered. I can’t see what I ought to do.” Then he turned suddenly to Sefton. “Tell me, what do you intend doing?” he asked, with great energy.
Sefton’s reply was one word.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Lord Culvers stared at him a moment, and then began slowly to walk up and down the room with his hands behind his back.
“After all, perhaps that will be the wisest course,” he said, at one end of the room; “things must come right if we let them alone. She is with friends; she will write, she says. Yes, yes, better be patient, and let things alone to take their course,” he finished, at the other end of the room.
It had ever been the habit of his life thus to attempt a compromise between himself and life’s difficulties.
“You won’t even make an effort to find out where she is staying?” asked Juliet.
“My dear, she says she is with friends. I wish certainly she had chosen another time for her visit; but—but don’t you remember once before she did something of the sort—started off to stay with the Murrays at Deeside without saying a word to anybody?”
“And don’t you remember, dear love, how she and Juliet once packed up their boxes, and said they were going to keep house together in the village, and sent off the gardener’s boy to look out for a cottage for them?” said Lady Culvers, sweetly and sadly.
“Ah, yes, yes, and they both went off to town alone, one day, and arranged for a week’s lessons in elocution and acting so that they might both go on the stage the week after!” said Lord Culvers, his memory, jogged by his wife, suddenly becoming lively.
Captain Culvers cut the reminiscences short by a sudden question.
“Had Ida much money with her, do you know?—on that will very much depend the length of time her whim will last,” he asked, curtly.
“I paid her her three months’ dividends in notes last night,” answered Lord Culvers, “and told her to put them away carefully. I dare say, however, she stuffed them into her pocket after the manner of girls, and pulled them out with her pocket-handkerchief five minutes after.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Juliet, feeling herself called upon to take up the cudgels on Ida’s behalf, “I saw her put the whole of the notes most carefully into a letter-case which I gave her last week, and then put that also most carefully—into her pocket when she changed her dress.”
“That means,” said Sefton, “that Ida, if she is so disposed, can carry on her whim, or whatever you please to call it, for another six months.”
Juliet narrowed her eyes and looked at him. It seemed to her that the deserted bridegroom was scarcely exhibiting the alternate fury and despair that might have been expected of a bridegroom in the circumstances.
He certainly had a white, beaten, crestfallen look on his face; but otherwise he was clearheaded and prosaic to a degree.
“No, no, my boy,” interposed Lord Culvers, “don’t take such a gloomy view of things. She isn’t likely to do that. Take my word for it, she’ll write tomorrow, and come back the day after. Yes, depend upon it she will.”
He recommenced his slow walk up and down the room, then suddenly paused in front of Sefton.
“An idea has come to me,” he said, in a tone that might almost be called cheerful. “I’m sure you’ll fall in with it, every one of you.” And then he stated his idea in as few words as possible.
It was that Sefton should start at once for “anywhere”—that is to say, some place where he could live quietly and unnoticed for a time, and thus give the impression to “society” that he and his bride were on their wedding tour. So soon as news was received from Ida, Lord Culvers would himself go to her, and at once insist on her joining her husband.
The scheme approved itself to the family party, who grew prosaic in the discussion of its details.
“The ‘anywhere’ will be Paris; it is easier to hide in a crowd than in a wilderness,” said Sefton, readily.
And once more Juliet narrowed her eyes and looked at him.
Outside the twilight was rapidly changing to night. A servant coming in to light the lamps was peremptorily dismissed. It seemed to the disturbed family conclave easier to discuss their difficulties in the semi-gloom than with the glare of lamps lighting up their troubled faces.
But the entrance of the servant turned their thoughts to a necessary detail of Lord Culvers’s scheme—what reason should be circulated in the household to account for Captain Culvers’s sudden return to the house without his bride.
Here Lady Culvers came to the rescue, and proved herself a mistress of the art of glib fibbing to an extent that surprised even Juliet, who had been in the habit of saying to her girl friends what a mercy it was that apostles no longer walked the earth, or “Peggy” would assuredly have been wound
