CHAPTER XIX
Lady Alice takes Possession
What to the young would seem an age; what, even in the arithmetic of the old, counts for something, about seventeen years had glided into the eternal past since last Lady Alice had beheld the antique front and noble timber of Marlowe Manor; and memory was busy with her heart, and sweet and bitter fancies revisiting her old brain, as her saddened eyes gazed on that fair picture of the past. Old faces gone, old times changed, and she, too, but the shadow of her former self, soon, like those whom she remembered there, to vanish quite, and be missed by no one.
"Where is Miss Beatrix?" inquired the old lady, as she set her long slim foot upon the oak flooring of the hall. "I'll rest a moment here." And she sat down upon a carved bench, and looked with sad and dreaming eyes through the open door upon the autumnal landscape flushed with the setting sun, the season and the hour harmonising regretfully with her thoughts.
Her maid came at the summons of the footman. "Tell her that granny has come," said the old woman gently. "You are quite well, Jones?"
Jones made her smirk and courtesy, and was quite well; and so tripped up the great stair to apprise her young mistress.
"Tell the new housekeeper, please, that Lady Alice Redcliffe wishes very much to see her for a moment in the hexagon dressing-room at the end of the hatchment-gallery," said the old lady, names and localities coming back to her memory quite naturally in the familiar old hall.
And as she spoke, being an active-minded old lady, she rose, and before her first message had reached Beatrix, was ascending the well-known stairs, with its broad shining steps of oak, and her hand on its ponderous banister, feeling strangely, all in a moment, how much more she now needed that support, and that the sum of the seventeen years was something to her as to others.
On the lobby, just outside this dressing-room door, which stood open, letting the dusky sunset radiance, so pleasant and so sad, fall upon the floor and touch the edges of the distant banisters, she was met by smiling Beatrix.
"Darling!" cried the girl, softly, as she threw her young arms round the neck of the stately and thin old lady. "Darling, darling, I'm so glad!"
She had been living among strangers, and the sight and touch of her true old friend was reassuring.
Granny's thin hands held her fondly. It was pretty to see this embrace, in the glow of the evening sun, and the rich brown tresses of the girl close to the ashen locks of old Lady Alice, who, with unwonted tears in her eyes, was smiling on her very tenderly. She was softened that evening. Perhaps it was her real nature, disclosed for a few genial moments, generally hidden under films of reserve or pride – the veil of the flesh.
"I think she does like her old granny," said Lady Alice, with a gentle little laugh; one thin hand on her shoulder, the other smoothing back her thick girlish tresses.
"I do love you, granny; you were always so good to me, and you are so – so fond of me. Now, you are tired, darling; you must take a little wine – here is Mrs. Sinnott coming – Mrs. Sinnott."
"No, dear, no wine; I'm very well. I wish to see Mrs. Sinnott, though. She's your new housekeeper, is not she?"
"Yes; and I'm so glad poor, good old Donnie Gwynn is with you. You know she would not stay; but our new housekeeper is, I'm told, a very good creature too. Grandmamma wants to speak to you, Mrs. Sinnott."
Lady Alice by this time had entered the dressing-room, three sides of which, projecting like a truncated bastion, formed a great window, which made it, for its size, the best lighted in the house. In the wall at the right, close to this entrance, is the door which admits to the green chamber; in the opposite wall, but nearer the window, a door leading across the end of the hatchment-gallery, with its large high window, by a little passage, screened off by a low oak partition, and admitting to a bed-room on the opposite side of the gallery.
In the middle of the Window dressing-room stood Lady Alice, and looked round regretfully, and said to herself, with a little shake of the head —
"Yes, yes, poor thing!"
She was thinking of poor Lady Marlowe, whom, with her usual perversity, although a step-daughter, she had loved very tenderly, and who in her last illness had tenanted these rooms, in which, seventeen years ago, this old lady had sat beside her and soothed her sickness, and by her tenderness, no doubt, softened those untold troubles which gathered about her bed as death drew near.
"How do you do, Mrs. Sinnott?" said stately Lady Alice, recovering her dry and lofty manner.
"Lady Alice Redcliffe, my grandmamma," said Beatrix, in an undertoned introduction, in the housekeeper's ear.
Mrs. Sinnott made a fussy little courtesy.
"Your ladyship's apartments, which is at the other end of the gallery, please, is quite ready, my lady."
"I don't mean to have those rooms, though – that's the reason I sent for you – please read this note, it is from Sir Jekyl Marlowe. By-the-bye, is your master at home?"
"No, he was out."
"Well, be so good as to read this."
And Lady Alice placed Beatrix's note of invitation in Mrs. Sinnott's hand, and pointed to a passage in the autograph of Sir Jekyl, which spoke thus: —
"P.S. – Do come, dearest little mamma, and you shall command everything. Choose your own apartments and hours, and, in short, rule us all. With all my worldly goods I thee endow, and place Mrs. Sinnott at your orders."
"Well, Mrs. Sinnott, I choose these apartments, if you please," said Lady Alice, sitting down stiffly, and thereby taking possession.
"Very well, my lady," said Mrs. Sinnott, dropping another courtesy; but her sharp red nose and little black eyes looked sceptical and uneasy; "and I suppose, Miss," here she paused, looking at Beatrix.
"You are to do whatever Lady Alice directs," said the young lady.
"This here room, you know, Miss, is the dressing-room properly of the green chamber."
"Lady Jane does not use it, though?" replied the new visitor.
"But the General, when he comes back," insinuated Mrs. Sinnott.
"Of course, he shall have it. I'll remove then; but in the meantime, liking these rooms, from old remembrances, best of any, I will occupy them, Beatrix; this as a dressing-room, and the apartment there as bed-room. I hope I don't give you a great deal of trouble," added Lady Alice, addressing the housekeeper, with an air that plainly said that she did not care a pin whether she did or not.
So this point was settled, and Lady Alice sent for her maid and her boxes; and rising, she approached the door of the green chamber, and pointing to it, said to Beatrix —
"And so Lady Jane has this room. Do you like her, Beatrix?"
"I can't say I know her, grandmamma."
"No, I dare say not. It is a large room – too large for my notion of a cheerful bed-room."
The old lady drew near, and knocked.
"She's not there?"
"No, she's in the terrace-garden."
Lady Alice pushed the door open, and looked in.
"A very long room. That room is longer than my drawing-room at Wardlock, and that is five and thirty feet long. Dismal, I say – though so much light, and that portrait – Sir Harry smirking there. What a look of duplicity in that face! He was an old man when I can remember him; an old beau; a wicked old man, rouged and whitened; he used to paint under his eyelashes, and had, they said, nine or ten sets of false teeth, and always wore a black curled wig that made his contracted countenance more narrow. There were such lines of cunning and meanness about his eyes, actually crossing one another. Jekyl hated him, I think. I don't think anybody but a fool could have really liked him; he was so curiously selfish, and so contemptible; he was attempting the life of a wicked young man at seventy!"
Lady Alice had been speaking as it were in soliloquy, staring drearily on the clever portrait in gold lace and ruffles, stricken by the spell of that painted canvas into a dream.
"Your grandpapa, my dear, was not a good man; and I believe he injured my poor son irreparably, and your father. Well – these things, though never forgotten, are best not spoken of when people happen to be connected. For the sake of others we bear our pain in silence; but the heart knoweth its own bitterness."
And so saying, the old lady drew back from the threshold of Lady Jane's apartment, and closed the door with a stern countenance.
CHAPTER XX
An Altercation
Almost at the same moment Sir Jekyl entered the hexagon, or, as it was more pleasantly called, the Window dressing-room, from the lobby. He was quite radiant, and, in that warm evening light, struck Lady Alice as looking quite marvellously youthful.
"Well, Jekyl Marlowe, you see you have brought me here at last," said the old lady, extending her hand stiffly, like a wooden marionette, her thin elbow making a right angle.
"So I have; and I shall always think the better of my eloquence for having prevailed. You're a thousand times welcome, and not tired, I hope; the journey is not much after all."
"Thanks; no, the distance is not much, the fatigue nothing," said Lady Alice, drawing her fingers horizontally back from his hospitable pressure. "But it is not always distance that separates people, or fatigue that depresses one."
"No, of course; fifty things; rheumatism, temper, hatred, affliction: and I am so delighted to see you! Trixie, dear, would not grandmamma like to see her room? Send for – "
"Thank you, I mean to stay here," said Lady Alice.
"Here!" echoed Sir Jekyl, with a rather bewildered smile.
"I avail myself of the privilege you give me; your postscript to Beatrix's note, you know. You tell me there to choose what rooms I like best," said the old lady, drily, at the same time drawing her bag toward her, that she might be ready to put the documents in evidence, in case he should dispute it.
"Oh! did I?" said the Baronet, with the same faint smile.
Lady Alice nodded, and then threw back her head, challenging contradiction by a supercilious stare, her hand firmly upon the bag as before.
"But this room, you know; it's anything but a comfortable one – don't you think?" said Sir Jekyl.
"I like it," said the inflexible old lady, sitting down.
"And I'm afraid there's a little difficulty," he continued, not minding. "For this is General Lennox's dressing-room. Don't you think it might be awkward?" and he chuckled agreeably.
"General Lennox is absent in London, on business," said Lady Alice, grim as an old Diana; "and Jane does not use it, and there can be no intelligible objection to my having it in his absence."
There was a little smile, that yet was not a smile, and a slight play about Sir Jekyl's nostrils, as he listened to this speech. They came when he was vicious; but with a flush, he commanded himself, and only laughed slightly, and said —
"It is really hardly a concern of mine, provided my guests are happy. You don't mean to have your bed into this room, do you?"
"I mean to sleep there," she replied drily, stabbing with her long forefinger toward the door on the opposite side of the room.
"Well, I can only say I'd have fancied, for other reasons, these the very last rooms in the house you would have chosen – particularly as this really belongs to the green chamber. However, you and Lady Jane can arrange that between you. You'd have been very comfortable where we would have put you, and you'll be very uncomfortable here, I'm afraid; but perhaps I'm not making allowance for the affection you have for Lady Jane, the length of time that has passed since you've seen her, and the pleasure of being so near her."
There was an agreeable irony in this; for the Baronet knew that they had never agreed very well together, and that neither spoke very handsomely of the other behind her back. At the same time, this was no conclusive proof of unkindness on Lady Alice's part, for her goodwill sometimes showed itself under strange and uncomfortable disguises.
"Beatrix, dear, I hope they are seeing to your grandmamma's room; and you'll want candles, it is growing dark. Altogether I'm afraid you're very uncomfortable, little mother; but if you prefer it, you know, of course I'm silent."
With these words he kissed the old lady's chilly cheek, and vanished.
As he ran down the darkening stairs the Baronet was smiling mischievously; and when, having made his long straight journey to the foot of the back stairs, he re-ascended, and passing through the two little ante-rooms, entered his own homely bedchamber, and looked at his handsome and wonderfully preserved face in the glass, he laughed outright two or three comfortable explosions at intervals, and was evidently enjoying some fun in anticipation.
When, a few minutes later, that proud sad beauty, Lady Jane, followed by her maid, sailed rustling into the Window dressing-room – I call it so in preference – and there saw, by the light of a pair of wax candles, a stately figure seated on the sofa at the further end in grey silk draperies, with its feet on a boss, she paused in an attitude of sublime surprise, with just a gleam of defiance in it.
"How d' y' do, Jenny, my dear?" said a voice, on which, as on the tones of an old piano, a few years had told a good deal, but which she recognised with some little surprise, for notwithstanding Lady Alice's note accepting the Baronet's invitation, he had talked and thought of her actually coming to Marlowe as a very unlikely occurrence indeed.
"Oh! oh! Lady Alice Redcliffe!" exclaimed the young wife, setting down her bed-room candle, and advancing with a transitory smile to her old kinswoman, who half rose from her throne and kissed her on the cheek as she stooped to meet her salutation. "You have only arrived a few minutes; I saw your carriage going round from the door."
"About forty minutes – hardly an hour. How you have filled up, Jane; you're quite an imposing figure since I saw you. I don't think it unbecoming; your embonpoint does very well; and you're quite well?"
"Very well – and you?"
"I'm pretty well, dear, a good deal fatigued; and so you're a wife, Jennie, and very happy, I hope."
"I can't say I have anything to trouble me. I am quite happy, that is, as happy as other people, I suppose."
"I hear nothing but praises of your husband. I shall be so happy to make his acquaintance," continued Lady Alice.
"He has had to go up to town about business this morning, but he's to return very soon."
"How soon, dear?"
"In a day or two," answered the young wife.
"To-morrow?" inquired Lady Alice, drily.
"Or next day," rejoined Lady Jane, with a little stare.
"Do you really, my dear Jane, expect him here the day after to-morrow?"
"He said he should be detained only a day or two in town."
Old Lady Alice shook her incredulous head, looking straight before her.
"I don't think he can have said that, Jane, for he wrote to a friend of mine, the day before yesterday, mentioning that he should be detained by business at least a week."
"Oh! did he?"
"Yes, and Jekyl Marlowe, I dare say, thinks he will be kept there longer."
"I should fancy I am a better opinion, rather, upon that point, than Sir Jekyl Marlowe," said Lady Jane, loftily, and perhaps a little angrily.
The old lady, with closed lips, at this made a little nod, which might mean anything.
"And I can't conceive how it can concern Sir Jekyl, or even you, Lady Alice, what business my husband may have in town."
It was odd how sharp they were growing upon this point.
"Well, Sir Jekyl's another thing; but me, of course, it does concern, because I shall have to give him up his room again when he returns."
"What room?" inquired Lady Jane, honestly puzzled.
"This room," answered the old lady, like one conscious that she drops, with the word, a gage of battle.
"But this is my room."
"You don't use it, Lady Jane. I wish to occupy it. I shall, of course, give it up on your husband's return; in the meantime I deprive you of nothing by taking it. Do I?"
"That's not the question, Lady Alice. It is my room – it is my dressing-room – and I don't mean to give it up to any one. You are the last person on earth who would allow me to take such a liberty with you. I don't understand it."
"Don't be excited, my dear Jenny," said Lady Alice – an exhortation sometimes a little inconsistently administered by members of her admirable sex when they are themselves most exciting.
"I'm not in the least excited, Lady Alice; but I've had a note from you," said Lady Jane, in rather a choking key.
"You have," acquiesced her senior.
"And I connect your extraordinary intrusion here, with it."
Lady Alice nodded.
"I do, and – and I'm right. You mean to insult me. It is a shame – an outrage. What do you mean, madam?"
"I'd have you to remember, Jane Chetwynd (the altercation obliterated her newly-acquired name of Lennox), that I am your relation and your senior."
"Yes, you're my cousin, and my senior by fifty years; but an old woman may be very impertinent to a young one."
"Compose yourself, if you please, compose yourself," said Lady Alice, in the same philosophic vein, but with colour a little heightened.
"I don't know what you mean – you're a disgraceful old woman. I'll complain to my husband, and I'll tell Sir Jekyl Marlowe. Either you or I must leave this house to-night," declaimed Lady Jane, with a most beautiful blush, and eyes flashing lurid lightnings.
"You forget yourself, my dear," said the old lady, rising grimly and confronting her.
"No, I don't, but you do. It's perfectly disgusting and intolerable," cried Lady Jane, with a stamp.
"One moment, if you please – you can afford to listen for one moment, I suppose," said the old lady, in a very low, dry tone, laying two of her lean fingers upon the snowy arm of the beautiful young lady, who, with a haughty contraction and an uplifted head, withdrew it fiercely from her touch. "You forget your maid, I think. You had better tell her to withdraw, hadn't you?"
"I don't care; why should I?" said Lady Jane, in a high key.
"Beatrix, dear, run into my bed-room for a moment," said "Granny" to that distressed and perplexed young lady, who, accustomed to obey, instantly withdrew.
CHAPTER XXI
Lady Alice in Bed
"We may be alone together, if you choose it; if not, I can't help it," said Lady Alice, in a very low and impressive key.
"Well, it's nothing to me," said Lady Jane, more calmly and sullenly – "nothing at all – but as you insist – Cecile, you may go for a few minutes."
This permission was communicated sulkily, in French.
"Now, Jane, you shall hear me," said the old lady, so soon as the maid had disappeared and the doors were shut; "you must hear me with patience, if not with respect —that I don't expect – but remember you have no mother, and I am an old woman and your kinswoman, and it is my duty to speak – "
"I'm rather tired standing," interrupted Lady Jane, in a suppressed passion. "Besides, you say you don't want to be overheard, and you can't know who may be on the lobby there," and she pointed with her jewelled fingers at the door. "I'll go into my bed-room, if you please; and I have not the slightest objection to hear everything you can possibly say. Don't fancy I'm the least afraid of you."
Saying which Lady Jane, taking up her bed-room candle, rustled out of the room, without so much as looking over her shoulder to see whether the prophetess was following.
She did follow, and I dare say her lecture was not mitigated by Lady Jane's rudeness. That young lady was lighting her candles on her dressing-table when her kinswoman entered and shut the door, without an invitation. She then seated herself serenely, and cleared her voice.
"I live very much out of the world – in fact, quite to myself; but I learn occasionally what my relations are doing; and I was grieved, Jane, to hear a great deal that was very unpleasant, to say the least, about you."
Something between a smile and a laugh was her only answer.
"Yes, extremely foolish. I don't, of course, say there was anything wicked, but very foolish and reckless. I know perfectly how you were talked of; and I know also why you married that excellent but old man, General Lennox."
"I don't think anyone talked about me. Everybody is talked about. There has been enough of this rubbish. I burnt your odious letter," broke in Lady Jane, incoherently.
"And would, no doubt, burn the writer, if you could."
As there was no disclaimer, Lady Alice resumed.
"Now, Jane, you have married a most respectable old gentleman; I dare say you have nothing on earth to conceal from him – remember I've said all along I don't suppose there is – but as the young wife of an old man, you ought to remember how very delicate your position is."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, generally," answered the old lady, oracularly.
"I do declare this is perfectly insufferable! What's the meaning of this lecture? I'm as little likely, madam, as you are to disgrace myself. You'll please to walk out of my room."
"And how dare you talk to me in that way, young lady; how dare you attempt to hector me like your maid there?" broke out old Lady Alice, suddenly losing her self-command. "You know what I mean, and what's more, I do, too. We both know it – you a young bride – what does Jekyl Marlowe invite you down here for? Do you think I imagine he cares twopence about your stupid old husband, and that I don't know he was once making love to you? Of course I do; and I'll have nothing of the sort here – and that's the reason I've come, and that's why I'm in that dressing-room, and that's why I'll write to your husband, so sure as you give me the slightest uneasiness; and you had better think well what you do."
The old lady, in a towering passion, with a fierce lustre in her cheeks, and eyes flashing lightning over the face of her opponent, vanished from the room.
Lady Alice had crossed the disputed territory of the Window dressing-room, and found herself in her elected bed-room before she had come to herself. She saw Lady Jane's face still before her, with the lurid astonishment and fear, white and sharp, on it, as when she had threatened a letter to General Lennox.
She sat down a little stunned and confused about the whole thing, incensed and disgusted with Lady Jane, and confirmed in her suspicion by a look she did not like in that young lady's face, and which her peroration had called up. She did not hear the shrilly rejoinder that pursued her through the shut door. She had given way to a burst of passion, and felt a little hot and deaf and giddy.
When the party assembled at dinner Lady Jane exerted herself more than usual. She was agreeable, and even talkative, and her colour had not been so brilliant since her arrival. She sat next to Guy Strangways, and old Lady Alice at the other side of the table did not look triumphant, but sick and sad; and to look at the two ladies you would have set her down as the defeated and broken-spirited, and Lady Jane as the victrix in the late encounter.
The conversation at this end of the table resembled a dance, in which sometimes each man sets to his partner and turns her round, so that the whole company is frisking and spinning together; sometimes two perform; sometimes a cavalier seul. Thus was it with the talk of this section of the dinner-table, above the salt, at which the chief people were seated.
"I've just been asked by Lady Blunket how many miles it is to Wardlock, and I'm ashamed to say I can't answer her," cried Sir Jekyl diagonally to Lady Alice, so as to cut off four people at his left hand, whose conversation being at the moment in a precarious way, forthwith expired, and the Baronet and his mother-in-law were left in possession of this part of the stage.
The old lady, as I have said, looked ill and very tired, and as if she had grown all at once very old; and instead of answering, she only nodded once or twice, and signed across the table to Lady Jane.
"Oh! I forgot," said Sir Jekyl; "you know Wardlock and all our distances, don't you, Lady Jane – can you tell me?"
"I don't remember," said Lady Jane, hardly turning toward him; "ten or twelve miles – is not it? it may be a good deal more. I don't really recollect;" and this was uttered with an air which plainly said, "I don't really care."
"I generally ride my visits, and a mile or two more or less does not signify; but one ought to know all the distances for thirty miles round; you don't know otherwise who's your neighbour."
"Do you think it an advantage to know that any particular person is your neighbour?" inquired impertinent Drayton, with his light moustache, leaning back and looking drowsily into his glasses after his wont.
"Oh! Mr. Drayton, the country without neighbours – how dreadful!" exclaimed Miss Blunket. "Existence without friends."
"Friends – bosh!" said Drayton, confidentially, to his wine.
"There's Drayton scouting friendship, the young cynic!" cried Sir Jekyl. "Do call him to order, Lady Jane."
"I rather incline to agree with Mr. Drayton," said Lady Jane, coldly.
"Do you mean to say you have no friends?" said Sir Jekyl, in well-bred amazement.
"Quite the contrary – I have too many."
"Come – that's a new complaint. Perhaps they are very new friends?" inquired the Baronet.
"Some of them very old, indeed; but I've found that an old friend means only an old person privileged to be impertinent."
Lady Jane uttered a musical little laugh that was very icy as she spoke, and her eye flashed a single insolent glance at old Lady Alice.
At another time perhaps a retort would not have been wanting, but now the old woman's eye returned but a wandering look, and her face expressed nothing but apathy and sadness.
"Grandmamma, dear, I'm afraid you are very much tired," whispered Beatrix when they reached the drawing-room, sitting beside her after she had made her comfortable on a sofa, with cushions to her back; "you would be better lying down, I think."
"No, dear – no, darling. I think in a few minutes I'll go to my room. I'm not very well. I'm tired —very tired."
And poor old granny, who was speaking very gently, and looking very pale and sunken, sighed deeply – it was almost a moan.
Beatrix was growing very much alarmed, and accompanied, or rather assisted, the old lady up to the room, where, aided by her and her maid, she got to her bed in silence, sighing deeply now and then.
She had not been long there when she burst into tears; and after a violent paroxysm she beckoned to Beatrix, and threw her lean old arms about her neck, saying —
"I'm sorry I came, child; I don't know what to think. I'm too old to bear this agitation – it will kill me."
Then she wept more quietly, and kissed Beatrix, and whispered – "Send her out of the room – let her wait in the dressing-room."
The maid was sitting at the further end of the apartment, and the old lady was too feeble to raise her voice so as to be heard there. So soon as her maid had withdrawn Lady Alice said —
"Sit by me, Beatrix, darling. I am very nervous, and tell me who is that young man who sat beside Jane Lennox at dinner."
As she ended her little speech Lady Alice, who, though I dare say actually ill enough, yet did not want to lose credit for all the exhaustion she fancied beside, closed her eyelids, and leaned a little back on her pillow motionless. This prevented her seeing that if she were nervous Beatrix was so also, though in another way, for her colour was heightened very prettily as she answered.
"You mean the tall, slight young man at Lady Jane's right?" inquired Beatrix.
"That beautiful but melancholy-looking young man whom we saw at Wardlock Church," said Lady Alice, forgetting for the moment that she had never divulged the result of her observations from the gallery to any mortal but Sir Jekyl. Beatrix, who forgot nothing, and knew that her brief walk at Wardlock with that young gentleman had not been confessed to anyone, was confounded on hearing herself thus, as she imagined, taxed with her secret.
She was not more secret than young ladies generally are; but whom could she have told at Wardlock? which of the old women of that time-honoured sisterhood was she to have invited to talk romance with her? and now she felt very guilty, and was blushing in silent confusion at the pearl ring on her pretty, slender finger, not knowing what to answer, or how to begin the confession which she fancied her grandmamma was about to extort.
Her grandmamma, however, relieved her on a sudden by saying —
"I forgot, dear, I told you nothing of that dreadful day at Wardlock Church, the day I was so ill. I told your papa only; but the young man is here, and I may as well tell you now that he bears a supernatural likeness to my poor lost darling. Jekyl knew how it affected me, and he never told me. It was so like Jekyl. I think, dear, I should not have come here at all had I known that dreadful young man was here."
"Dreadful! How is he dreadful?" exclaimed Beatrix.
"From his likeness to my lost darling – my dear boy – my poor, precious, murdered Guy," answered the old lady, lying back, and looking straight toward the ceiling with upturned eyes and clasped hands. She repeated – "Oh! Guy – Guy – Guy – my poor child!"
She looked like a dying nun praying to her patron saint.
"His name is Strangways – Mr. Guy Strangways," said Beatrix.
"Ah, yes, darling! Guy was the name of my dear boy, and Strangways was the name of his companion – an evil companion, I dare say."
Beatrix knew that the young man whom her grandmamma mourned had fallen in a duel, and that, reasonably or unreasonably, her father was blamed in the matter. More than this she had never heard. Lady Alice had made her acquainted with thus much; but with preambles so awful that she had never dared to open the subject herself, or to question her "Granny" beyond the point at which her disclosure had stopped.
That somehow it reflected on Sir Jekyl prevented her from inquiring of any servant, except old Donica, who met her curiosity with a sound jobation, and told her if ever she plagued her with questions about family misfortunes like that, she would speak to Sir Jekyl about it. Thus Beatrix only knew how Guy Deverell had died – that her grandmamma chose to believe he had been murdered, and insisted beside in blaming her father, Sir Jekyl, somehow for the catastrophe.