Aunt Rosamond is in a high state of fermentation now. Her lips compress as she finishes speaking, her aquiline nose rises higher and higher, and one foot commences beating a rapid tattoo on the footstool.
Aunt Judith, who has an immense belief in her sister’s superior wisdom, and an intense love for her, interposed now.
“Owen,” she exclaimed, in her usual high-pitched, sharp tones, “I am quite sure Rosamond will be ill if you continue to excite her in this way.”
“I really don’t see anything to excite her in the subject we are discussing,” replied Owen in mild astonishment. “I have not the slightest wish to hurry my little girl into a marriage of any sort, and I am quite willing she should spend a year, or two if you wish it, with you both in London, and see as many men as you please. Honestly speaking, if I must have a son-in-law I prefer John Herron to any man I have ever known, but I’m not at all sure that Lettice’s mind is made up one way or another.”
Thus it was all settled eventually according to Aunt Rosamond’s wishes, and, with many injunctions to papa not to be dull while she was away, and to the doctor and the doctor’s sister, Mary Herron, to come up every day to the house to “keep papa cheerful,” Lettice started for London and plunged headlong into the gaieties and dissipation which opened before her dazzled eyes.
“Everything is lovely here,” she wrote to her father about two months after her arrival in London, after she had been to her first drawing-room, danced at a royal duchess’s ball, and been by common consent pronounced the débutante of the season. “It is quite too delicious, and it you would only leave your pictures and books for a few weeks and come here to go out with me I should have nothing in the world to wish for. Everyone is so nice, and I do nothing but enjoy myself from morning till night. I get a glorious canter in the parks every morning. Then there are pictures to be seen or shopping to be done (such wonderful shops too, papa). Always two or three nice people come in to lunch. Then there are calls innumerable to be made afterwards; then a dinner, to be followed by two, or sometimes three, dances. And that is where my troubles begin. Aunt Rosamond will insist on dragging me home by midnight. Isn’t it too bad of her? Just when everything is at the very best, and I have thoroughly entered into the fun of the thing, she puts on that funny frown of hers and looks at the door, and then I know that unless I throw up all the rest of my partners and smile sweetly and say, ‘I’m quite ready, Aunt Rosamond,’ I shall be well scolded all the way home, and Aunt Judy will chime in every other minute with ‘It’s quite true, Rosamond. Lettice, how can you persist in exciting and worrying your aunt in this way?’ and poor little me shrinks into the corner of the carriage and doesn’t dare open her mouth.”
Then followed a long list of inquiries about the dumb pets and favourites, among which Brownie and the lame barndoor fowl reigned supreme, and a wonder whether Dr. Herron came in for his nightly game of chess, and whether Mary ever played to papa some of those dear old fugues in the twilight. Finally came a short postscript:—
“Among other nice people I have met frequently a Captain Ivie McCormack and his sister Lilla (Elizabeth really). He (Captain Ivie that is) says he was at Rugby with Dr. Herron, and remembers him perfectly. Also there is a most irreproachable earl, a great agriculturist, a splendid cattle-breeder, and an enthusiast on all matters connected with trades-unions and strikes. Can you guess whom I mean?”
This postscript was read out in the pleasant twilight evening at “The Eyrie” in a pause after a hard-fought game of chess between Mr. Tremarten and Dr. Herron, and with Mary Herron, tall, sedate, and womanly, seated in Lettice’s place at the organ.
“You see my little girl says nothing about coming home just yet, doctor,” said Mr. Tremarten, folding up his letter.
The doctor was knitting his brows furiously. “Ivie McCormack—Ivie McCormack,” he was saying half to himself, “yes, I remember him perfectly also, and unless he has altered immensely since I knew him, he’s not a fit person for your daughter or any woman living to associate with.”
On that selfsame evening, but a little further on towards midnight, or rather day-dawn, the personages under discussion—Captain Ivie McCormack and his sister Lilla—were seated in a daintily-furnished boudoir in their house in Mayfair, a few doors from the quiet old family mansion of the Misses Tremarten. There is a soft reading-lamp on a side table which suffices to light the somewhat small room, itself a bijou in delicate rose pink and turquoise blue. Miss Lilla and her brother have just returned from a reception “small and early,” at which they have encountered Lettice and her aunts, and have retired to the lady’s sanctum sanctorum to discuss the events of the evening, which seem somehow to be of unusual interest and importance to them.
Miss McCormack has thrown off her swansdown opera-cloak, and is leaning back in a low chair fanning herself with
