In great surprise, Lady Alice bowed her head. "I want to tell you," he said gruffly, "that you're wasting your time and your money. These men in the ward are not really grateful to you one bit. They speculate before you come as to how much you are likely to give them, and when you are gone they compare notes and grumble if you have not given them enough."

"I do not wish to hear this," said Lady Alice, with dignity.

"I know you do not; but I think it is only right to tell you. Try them: give them nothing for a visit or two, and see whether they won't sulk and look gloomy, although you may talk to them as kindly as ever----"

"And if they did," said Lady Alice, with a sudden flash of energy and insight which amazed herself, "who could blame them, considering the pain they have suffered, and the brutal lives they lead? Why should they listen to my poor words, if I go to them without a gift in my hand?"

She spoke as she would have spoken to an equal--an unconscious tribute to the refinement which stamped this man as of a higher calibre than his fellows.

"It is a convenient doctrine for them," said John Smith, and buried his head in the bedclothes as if he wanted to hear nothing more.

For Lady Alice's next two visits he would not look up, or respond when she came near him, which she never failed to do; but on the third occasion he lifted his head.

"Well, madam," he said, "you have after all been trying my plan, I hear.

Do you find that it works well?"

Lady Alice hesitated. The averted faces and puzzled, downcast--sometimes sullen--looks of the sick men and boys to whom she had of late given nothing but kind words, had grieved her sorely.

"I suppose it proves the truth, in part, of what you say," she answered gently, "but on the other hand I find that my gifts have been judged excessive and unwise. It seems that I have a great deal to learn in the art of giving: it does not come by nature, as some suppose. I have consulted the doctors and nurses--and I have to thank you for giving me a warning."

A look of surprise pa.s.sed across the man's face.

"You're better than some of them," he said, curtly. "I thought you'd never look at me again. I don't know why I should have interfered. But I did not like to see you cheated and laughed at."

Lady Alice colored, but she felt no resentment against the man, although he had shown her that she had made herself ridiculous when she was bent on playing Lady Bountiful, and posing as an angel of light. She said after a moment's pause--

"I believe you meant kindly. Is there nothing that I can do for you?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so--I can't remember very well. The doctors say I shall remember by and by. Then I shall know."

"And if I can, you will let me help you?"

"I suppose I ought to be only too glad," said the patient, with a sort of sullenness, which Lady Alice felt that she could but dimly understand. "I suppose I'm the sort of man to _be_ helped; and yet I can't help fancying there's a--Past--a Past behind me--a life in which I once was proud of my independence. But it strikes me that this was very long ago."

He drew the bedclothes over his head again, and made no further reply.

Lady Alice came to see him after this conversation as often as the rules of the hospital would allow her; and, although she seemed to get little response from him, the fact really remained that she was establishing an ascendancy over the man such as no nurse or doctor in the place had yet maintained. Others noticed it beside herself; but she, disheartened a little by her disappointment in some of the other patients, did not recognize the reality of his attachment to her. And an event occurred about the time which put John Smith and hospital matters out of her head for a considerable time to come.

Old Lord Courtleroy died suddenly. He was an old man, but so hale and hearty that his death had not been expected in the least; but he was found dead in his bed one morning, and the doctors p.r.o.nounced that his complaint had been heart disease. The heir to the t.i.tle and estate was a distant cousin whom Lady Alice and her father had never liked; and when he entered upon his possessions, Lady Alice knew that the time had come for her to seek a home elsewhere. She had sufficient to live upon; indeed, for a single woman, she was almost rich; but the loneliness of her position once more forced itself upon her, especially as Lesley was not by her side to cheer her gradually darkening life.

She wrote the main facts concerning Lord Courtleroy's death and the change in her circ.u.mstances in short, rather disjointed letters to Lesley, and received very tender replies; but even then she felt a vague dissatisfaction with the girl's letters. They were full of a wistfulness which she could not understand: she felt that something remote had crept into them, some aloofness for which she could not account. And as Captain Harry d.u.c.h.esne happened to come across her one day, and inquired very particularly after Miss Brooke, she induced him to promise to call on Lesley when he was in London, and to report to her all that Lesley did or said. If it was a somewhat underhand proceeding, she told herself that she was justified by her anxiety as a mother.

Lord Courtleroy had left a considerable sum to Lesley, and when mother and daughter were reunited, as Lady Alice hoped that they would shortly be, there was no question as to their having means enough and to spare.

Lady Alice began to dream of a dear little country house in Suss.e.x, with an occasional season in London, or a winter at Bagneres. She was recalled from her dreams to the realities of life by a letter from her husband. Caspar Brooke wrote to ask whether, under present circ.u.mstances, she would not return to him.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CAPTAIN d.u.c.h.eSNE.

Lesley's life seemed to her now much less lonely than it had been at first. The consciousness of having made friends was pleasant to her, although her affection for Ethel had been for a time overshadowed by the recollection of Oliver's unfaithfulness. But when this impression pa.s.sed away, as it gradually did, after the scene that had been so painful to her, she consoled herself with the belief that Oliver's words and actions had proceeded from a temporary derangement of judgment, for which he was not altogether responsible, and that he had returned to his allegiance; therefore she might continue to be friendly with Ethel without any sensation of treachery or shame. An older woman than Lesley would not, perhaps, have argued in this way: she would have suspected the permanence of Oliver's feelings more than Lesley did. But, being only an inexperienced girl, Lesley comforted herself by the fact that Oliver now avoided her; and said that it could not be possible for her to have attracted him away from Ethel, who was so winning, so sweet, so altogether delightful.

Then, apart from the Kenyons, she began to make pleasant acquaintances amongst her father's friends. Caspar Brooke's house was a centre of interest and entertainment for a large number of intellectual men and women; and Lesley had as many opportunities for wearing her pretty evening gowns as she could have desired. There were "at homes" to which her charming presence and her beautiful voice attracted Caspar's friends in greater numbers than ever: there were dinner-parties where her interest in the new world around her made everything else interesting; and there was a constant coming and going of people who had work to do in the world, and who did it with more or less success, which made the house in Woburn Place anything but a dull abode.

The death of her grandfather distressed her less from regret for himself than from anxiety for her mother's future. Lady Alice's notes to her were very short and somewhat vaguely worded. It was, therefore, with positive joy that, one afternoon in spring, she was informed by her maid that Captain d.u.c.h.esne was in the drawing-room, for she felt sure that he would be able to tell her many details that she did not know. She made haste to go down, and yet, before she went, she paused to say a word to Kingston, who had brought her the welcome news.

"I wish you would go out, Kingston; you don't look at all well, and this spring air might do you good."

It was certainly easy to see that Kingston was not well. During the past few weeks her face had become positively emaciated, her eyes were sunken, and her lips were white. She looked like a person who had recently pa.s.sed through some illness or misfortune. Lesley had tried, delicately and with reserve, to question her; but Kingston had never replied to any of her inquiries. She would shut up her lips, and turn away with the look of one who could keep a secret to the grave.

"Nothing will do me good, ma'am," she answered dryly.

"Oh, Kingston, I am so sorry!"

"Go down to your visitor, ma'am, and don't mind me," said Kingston, turning her back on the girl with unusual abruptness. "It isn't much that I've got to be sorry for, after all."

"If there is anything I can do to help you, you will let me know, will you not?" said Lesley.

But Kingston's "Yes, ma'am," fell with a despairing cadence on her ear.

Kingston had been to her husband's lodgings only to find that he had disappeared. He had left some of his clothes, and the few articles of furniture that belonged to his wife, and had never said that he was going away. The accident that had made Francis Trent a patient at the hospital where Lady Alice visited was of course unknown to his landlady, as also to his wife. And as his memory did not return to him speedily, poor Mary Trent had been left to suffer all the tortures of anxiety for some weeks. At first she thought that some injury had happened to him--perhaps that he was dead: then a harder spirit took possession of her, and she made up her mind that he had finally abandoned her--had got money from Oliver and departed to America without her. She might have asked Oliver whether this were so, but she was too proud to ask. She preferred to eat out her heart in solitude. She believed herself deserted forever, and the only grain of consolation that remained to her was the hope of making herself so useful and acceptable to Lesley Brooke, that when Lesley married she would ask Mary Kingston to go with her to her new home.

Kingston had made up her mind about the man that Lesley was to marry.

She had seen him come and go: she had seen him look at her dear Miss Lesley with ardently admiring eyes: she believed that he would be a true and faithful husband to her. But she knew more than Lesley was aware of yet.

Lesley went slowly down into the drawing-room. She remembered Captain d.u.c.h.esne very well, and she was glad to think of seeing him again. And yet there was an indefinable shrinking--she did not know how or why.

Harry d.u.c.h.esne was connected with her old life--with the Paris lights, the Paris drawing-rooms, the stately old grandfather, the graceful mother--the whole a.s.sembly of things that seemed so far away. She did not understand her whole feeling, but it suddenly appeared to her as if Captain d.u.c.h.esne's visit was a mistake, and she had better get it over as soon as possible.

It must be confessed that this sensation vanished as soon as she came into the actual presence of Captain d.u.c.h.esne. The young man, with his grave, handsome features, his drooping, black moustache, his soldierly bearing, had an attraction for her after all. He reminded her of the mother whom she loved.

It was not very easy to get into conversation with him at first. He seemed as ill at ease as Lesley herself had been. But when she fell to questioning him about Lady Alice, his tongue became unloosed.

"She does not know exactly what to do. She talks of taking a house in London--if you would like it."

"Would mamma care to live in London?"

"Not for her own sake: for yours."

"But I--I do not think I like London so much," said Lesley, with a swift blush and some hesitation. Captain d.u.c.h.esne looked at her searchingly.

"Indeed? I understood that you had become much attached to it. I am sure Lady Alice thinks so."

"I do love it--yes, but it is on account of the people who live in London," said Lesley.

"Ah, you have made friends?"

"There is my father, you know."