"You are wise to go, Barbara," says Joyce, now in a livelier way, as if that last quick, unexpected feeling of amus.e.m.e.nt has roused her to a sharper sense of life. "If once they see you!--No, you mustn't put up your shoulder like that--I tell you, if once they looked at you, they would feel the measure of their folly."

"I shall end by fancying myself," says Mrs. Monkton, impatiently, "and then you will all have fresh work cut out for you; the bringing of me back to my proper senses. Well," with a sigh, "as I have to see them, I wish----"

"What?"

"That I could be a heartier believer in your and Joyce's flattery, or else, that they, your people, were not so prejudiced against me. It will be an ordeal."

"When you are about it wish them a few grains of common sense," says her husband wrathfully. "Just fancy the folly of an impertinence that condemned a fellow being on no evidence whatsoever; neither eye nor ear were brought in as witnesses."

"Oh, well," says she, considerably mollified by his defamation of his people, "I dare say they are not so much to be blamed after all. And,"

with a little, quick laugh at her sister, "as Joyce says, my beauties are still unknown to them; they will be delighted when they see me."

"They will, indeed," returns Joyce stolidly. "And so you are really going to take me with you. Oh, I am glad. I haven't spent any of my money this winter, Barbara; I have some, therefore, and I have always wanted to see London."

"It will be a change for the children, too," says Barbara, with a troubled sigh. "I suppose," to her husband, "they will think them very countrified."

"Who?"

"Your mother--"

"What do you think of them?"

"Oh, that has got nothing to do with it."

"Everything rather. You are a.n.a.lyzing them. You are exalting an old woman who has been unkind to you at the expense of the children who love you!"

"Ah, she a.n.a.lyzes them because she too loves them," says Joyce. "It is easy to pick faults in those who have a real hold upon our hearts. For the rest--it doesn't concern us how the world regards them."

"It sounds as if it ought to read the other way round," says Monkton.

"No, no. To love is to see faults, not to be blind to them. The old reading is wrong," says Joyce.

"You are unfair, Freddy," declares his wife with dignity; "I would not decry the children. I am only a little nervous as to their reception.

When I know that your father and mother are prepared to receive them as my children, I know they will get but little mercy at their hands."

"That speech isn't like you," says Monkton, "but it is impossible to blame you for it."

"They are the dearest children in the world," says Joyce. "Don't think of them. They must succeed. Let them alone to fight their own battles."

"You may certainly depend upon Tommy," says his father. "For any emergency that calls for fists and heels, where battle, murder and sudden death are to be looked for, Tommy will be all there."

"Oh! I do hope he will be good," says his mother, half amused, but plainly half terrified as well.

Two weeks later sees them settled in town, in the Harley street house, that seems enormous and unfriendly to Mrs. Monkton, but delightful to Joyce and the children, who wander from room to room and, under her guidance, pretend to find bears and lions and bogies in every corner.

The meeting between Barbara and Lady Monkton had not been satisfactory.

There had been very little said on either side, but the chill that lay on the whole interview had never thawed for a moment.

Barbara had been stiff and cold, if entirely polite, but not at all the Barbara to whom her husband had been up to this accustomed. He did not blame her for the change of front under the circ.u.mstances, but he could hardly fail to regret it, and it puzzled him a great deal to know how she did it.

He was dreadfully sorry about it secretly, and would have given very much more than the whole thing was worth to let his father and mother see his wife as she really is--the true Barbara.

Lady Monkton had been stiff, too; unpardonably so--as it was certainly her place to make amends--to soften and smooth down the preliminary embarra.s.sment. But then she had never been framed for suavity of any sort; and an old aunt of Monkton's, a sister of hers, had been present during the interview, and had helped considerably to keep up the frigidity of the atmosphere.

She was not a bad old woman at heart, this aunt. She had indeed from time to time given up all her own small patrimony to help her sister to get the eldest son out of his many disreputable difficulties. She had done this, partly for the sake of the good old family names on both sides, and partly because the younger George Monkton was very dear to her.

From his early boyhood the scapegrace of the family had been her admiration, and still remained so, in imagination. For years she had not seen him, and perhaps this (that she considered a grievance) was a kindness vouchsafed to her by Providence. Had she seen the pretty boy of twenty years ago as he now is she would not have recognized him. The change from the merry, blue-eyed, daring lad of the past to the bloated, blear-eyed, reckless-looking man of to-day would have been a shock too cruel for her to bear. But this she was not allowed to realize, and so remained true to her belief in him, as she remembered him.

In spite of her many good qualities, she was, nevertheless, a dreadful woman; the more dreadful to the ordinary visitor because of the false front she wore, and the flashing purchased teeth that shone in her upper jaw. She lived entirely with Sir George and Lady Monkton, having indeed given them every penny that would have enabled her to live elsewhere.

Perhaps of all the many spites they owed their elder son, the fact that his iniquities had inflicted upon them his maternal aunt for the rest of her natural days, was the one that rankled keenest.

She disliked Frederic, not only intensely, but with an openness that had its disadvantages--not for any greater reason than that he had behaved himself so far in his journey through life more creditably than his brother. She had always made a point against him of his undutiful marriage, and never failed, to add fuel to the fire of his father's and mother's resentment about it, whenever that fire seemed to burn low.

Altogether, she was by no means an amiable old lady, and, being very hideous into the bargain, was not much run after by society generally.

She wasn't of the least consequence in any way, being not only old but very poor; yet people dreaded her, and would slip away round doors and corners to avoid her tongue. She succeeded, in spite of all drawbacks, in making herself felt; and it was only one or two impervious beings, such is d.i.c.ky Browne for example (who knew the Monktons well, and was indeed distantly connected with them through his mother), who could endure her manners with any attempt at equanimity.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

"Strength wanting judgment and policy to rule overturneth itself."

It was quite impossible, of course, that a first visit to Lady Monkton should be a last from Barbara. Lady Monkton had called on her the very day after her arrival in town, but Barbara had been out then. On the occasion of the latter's return visit the old woman had explained that going out was a trial to her, and Barbara, in spite of her unconquerable dislike to her, had felt it to be her duty to go and see her now and then. The children, too, had been a great resource. Sir George, especially, had taken to Tommy, who was quite unabashed by the grandeur of the stately, if faded, old rooms in the Belgravian mansion, but was full of curiosity, and spent his visits to his grandfather cross-examining him about divers matters--questionable and otherwise--that tickled the old man and kept him laughing.

It had struck Barbara that Sir George had left off laughing for some time. He looked haggard--uneasy--miserably expectant. She liked him better than she liked Lady Monkton, and, though reserved with both, relaxed more to him than to her mother-in-law. For one thing, Sir George had been unmistakably appreciative of her beauty, and her soft voice and pretty manners. He liked them all. Lady Monkton had probably noticed them quite as keenly, but they had not pleased her. They were indeed an offence. They had placed her in the wrong. As for old Miss L'Estrange, the aunt, she regarded the young wife from the first with a dislike she took no pains to conceal.

This afternoon, one of many that Barbara has given up to duty, finds her as usual in Lady Monkton's drawing room listening to her mother-in-law's comments on this and that, and trying to keep up her temper, for Frederic's sake, when the old lady finds fault with her management of the children.

The latter (that is, Tommy and Mabel) have been sent to the pantomime by Sir George, and Barbara with her husband have dropped in towards the close of the day to see Lady Monkton, with a view to recovering the children there, and taking them home with them, Sir George having expressed a wish to see the little ones after the play, and hear Tommy's criticisms on it, which he promised himself would be lively. He had already a great belief in the powers of Tommy's descriptions.

In the meantime the children have not returned, and conversation, it must be confessed, languishes. Miss L'Estrange, who is present in a cap of enormous dimensions and a temper calculated to make life hideous to her neighbors, scarcely helps to render more bearable the dullness of everything. Sir George in a corner is b.u.t.tonholing Frederic and saddening him with last accounts of the Scapegrace.

Barbara has come to her final pretty speech--silence seems imminent--when suddenly Lady Monkton flings into it a bombsh.e.l.l that explodes, and carries away with it all fear of commonplace dullness at all events.

"You have a sister, I believe," says she to Barbara in a tone she fondly but erroneously imagines gracious.

"Yes," says Barbara, softly but curtly. The fact that Joyce's existence has never hitherto been alluded to by Lady Monkton renders her manner even colder than usual, which is saying everything.

"She lives with you?"

"Yes," says Barbara again.

Lady Monkton, as if a little put out by the determined taciturnity of her manner, moves forward on her seat, and pulls the lace lappets of her dove-gray cap more over to the front impatiently. Long, soft lappets they are, falling from a gem of a little cap, made of priceless lace, and with a beautiful old face beneath to frame. A face like an old miniature; and as stern as most of them, but charming for all that and perfect in every line.

"Makes herself useful, no doubt," growls Miss L'Estrange from the opposite lounge, her evil old countenance glowing with the desire to offend. "That's why one harbors one's poor relations--to get something out of them."