"I am obliged to go to Pontresina before the end of July," said a ponderous middle-aged matron to Miss Courtenay. "I can't breathe any where else in August and September."

"I think you would find plenty of air at Boscastle," said Christabel, smiling at her earnestness; "but I dare say the Engadine is very nice!"

"Five thousand feet above the level of the sea," said the matron proudly.

"I like to be a little nearer the sea--to see it--and smell it--and feel its spray upon my face," answered Christabel. "Do you take your children with you?"

"Oh, no, they all go to Ramsgate with the governess and a maid."

"Poor little things! And how sad for you to know that there are all those mountain pa.s.ses--a three days' journey--between you and your children."

"Yes, it is very trying!" sighed the mother; "but they are so fond of Ramsgate; and the Engadine is the only place that suits me."

"You have never been to Chagford?"

"Chagford! No; what is Chagford?"

"A village upon the edge of Dartmoor--all among the Devonshire hills.

People go there for the fine bracing air. I can't help thinking it must do them almost as much good as the Engadine."

"Indeed! I have heard that Devonshire is quite too lovely," said the matron, who would have despised herself had she been familiar with her native land. "But what have you done with Mr. Hamleigh? I am quite disappointed at not seeing him this afternoon."

"He is in Scotland," said Christabel, and then went on to tell as much as was necessary about her lover's journey to the North.

"How dreadfully dull you must be without him!" said the lady, sympathetically, and several other ladies--notably a baronet's widow, who had been a friend of Mrs. Tregonell's girlhood--a woman who never said a kind word of anybody, yet was invited everywhere, and who had the reputation of giving a better dinner, on a small scale, than any other lonely woman in London. The rest were young women, mostly of the gushing type, who were prepared to worship Christabel because she was pretty, an heiress, and engaged to a man of some distinction in their particular world. They had all cl.u.s.tered round Mrs. Tregonell and her niece, in the airy front drawing-room, while Miss Bridgeman poured out tea at a j.a.panese table in the middle room, waited upon sedulously by Major Bree, Mr. FitzPelham, and another youth, a Somerset House young man, who wrote for the Society papers--or believed that he did, on the strength of having had an essay on "Tame Cats" accepted in the big gooseberry season--and gave himself to the world as a person familiar with the undercurrents of literary and dramatic life. The ladies made a circle round Mrs. Tregonell, and these three gentlemen, circulating with tea-cups, sugar-basins, and cream-pots, joined spasmodically in the conversation.

Christabel owned to finding a certain emptiness in life without her lover. She did not parade her devotion to him, but was much too unaffected to pretend indifference.

"We went to the theatre on Tuesday night," she said.

"Oh, how could you!" cried the oldest and most gushing of the three young ladies. "Without Mr. Hamleigh?"

"That was our chief reason for going. We knew we should be dull without him. We went to the Kaleidoscope, and were delighted with Psyche."

All three young ladies gushed in chorus. Stella Mayne was quite too lovely--a poem, a revelation, and so on, and so on. Lady c.u.mberbridge, the baronet's widow, pursed her lips and elevated her eyebrows, which, on a somewhat modified form, resembled Lord Thurlow's, but said nothing.

The Somerset House young man stole a glance at FitzPelham, and smiled meaningly; but the amiable FitzPelham was only vacuous.

"Of course you have seen this play," said Mrs. Tregonell, turning to Lady c.u.mberbridge. "You see everything, I know?"

"Yes; I make it my business to see everything--good, bad, and indifferent," answered the strong-minded dowager, in a voice which would hardly have shamed the Lord Chancellor's wig, which those Thurlow-like eyebrows so curiously suggested. "It is the sole condition upon which London life is worth living. If one only saw the good things, one would spend most of one's evening at home, and we don't leave our country places for _that_. I see a good deal that bores me, an immense deal that disgusts me, and a little--a very little--that I can honestly admire."

"Then I am sure you must admire 'Cupid and Psyche,'" said Christabel.

"My dear, that piece, which I am told has brought a fortune to the management, is just one of the things that I don't care to talk about before young people. I look upon it as the triumph of vice: and I wonder--yes, _very_ much wonder--that _you_ were allowed to see it."

There was an awfulness about the dowager's tone as she uttered these final sentences, which out-Thurlowed Thurlow. Christabel shivered, hardly knowing why, but heartily wishing there had been no such person as Lady c.u.mberbridge among her aunt's London acquaintance.

"But, surely there is nothing improper in the play, dear Lady c.u.mberbridge," exclaimed the eldest gusher, too long in society to shrink from sifting any question of that kind.

"There is a great deal that is improper," replied the dowager, sternly.

"Surely not in the language: that is too lovely?" urged the gusher. "I must be very dense, I'm afraid, for I really did not see anything objectionable."

"You must be very blind, as well as dense, if you didn't see Stella Mayne's diamonds," retorted the dowager.

"Oh, of course I saw the diamonds. One could not help seeing them."

"And do you think there is nothing improper in those diamonds, or their history?" demanded Lady c.u.mberbridge, glaring at the damsel from under those terrific eyebrows. "If so, you must be less experienced in the ways of the world than I gave you credit for being. But I think I said before that this is a question which I do _not_ care to discuss before young people--even advanced as young people are in their ways and opinions now-a-days."

The maiden blushed at this reproof; and the conversation, steered judiciously by Mrs. Tregonell, glided on to safer topics. Yet calmly as that lady bore herself, and carefully as she managed to keep the talk among pleasant ways for the next half-hour, her mind was troubled not a little by the things that had been said about Stella Mayne. There had been a curious significance in the dowager's tone when she expressed surprise at Christabel having been allowed to see this play. That significant tone, in conjunction with Major Bree's marked opposition to Belle's wish upon this one matter, argued that there was some special reason why Belle should not see this actress. Mrs. Tregonell, like all quiet people, very observant, had seen the Somerset House young man's meaning smile as the play was mentioned. What was this peculiar something which all these people had in their minds? and of which she, Christabel's aunt, to whom the girl's welfare and happiness were vital, knew nothing.

She determined to take the most immediate and direct way of knowing all that was to be known, by questioning that peripatetic chronicle of fashionable scandal, Lady c.u.mberbridge. This popular personage knew a great deal more than the Society papers, and was not constrained like those prints to disguise her knowledge in Delphic hints and dark sayings. Lady c.u.mberbridge, like John Knox, never feared the face of man, and could be as plain-spoken and as coa.r.s.e as she pleased.

"I should so like to have a few words with you by-and-by, if you don't mind waiting till these girls are gone," murmured Mrs. Tregonell.

"Very well, my dear; get rid of them as soon as you can, for I've some people coming to dinner, and I want an hour's sleep before I put on my gown."

The little a.s.sembly dispersed within the next quarter of an hour, and Christabel joined Jessie in the smaller drawing-room.

"You can shut the folding-doors, Belle," said Mrs. Tregonell, carelessly. "You and Jessie are sure to be chattering; and I want a quiet talk with Lady c.u.mberbridge."

Christabel obeyed, wondering a little what the quiet talk would be about, and whether by any chance it would touch upon the play last night. She, too, had been struck by the significance of the dowager's tone; and then it was so rarely that she found herself excluded from any conversation in which her aunt had part.

"Now," said Mrs. Tregonell, directly the doors were shut, "I want to know why Christabel should not have been allowed to see that play the other night?"

"What!" cried Lady c.u.mberbridge, "don't you know why?"

"Indeed no. I did not go with them, so I had no opportunity of judging as to the play."

"My dear soul," exclaimed the deep voice of the dowager, "it is not the play--the play is well enough--it is the woman! And do you really mean to tell me that you don't know?"

"That I don't know what?"

"Stella Mayne's history?"

"What should I know of her more than of any other actress? They are all the same to me, like pictures, which I admire or not, from the outside.

I am told that some are women of fashion who go everywhere, and that it is a privilege to know them; and that some one ought hardly to speak about, though one may go to see them; while there are others----"

"Who hover like stars between two worlds," said Lady c.u.mberbridge. "Yes, that's all true. And n.o.body has told you anything about Stella Mayne?"

"No one!"

"Then I'm very sorry I mentioned her name to you. I dare say you will hate me if I tell you the truth: people always do; because, in point of fact, truth is generally hateful. We can't afford to live up to it."

"I shall be grateful to you if you will tell me all that there is to be told about this actress, who seems in some way to be concerned----"

"In your niece's happiness? Well, no, my dear, we will hope not. It is all a thing of the past. Your friends have been remarkably discreet. It is really extraordinary that you should have heard nothing about it; but, on reflection, I think it is really better you should know the fact. Stella Mayne is the young woman for whom Mr. Hamleigh nearly ruined himself three years ago."

Mrs. Tregonell turned white as death.