"You will if you stay here long. You can't get away from him if you're in the same house. Don't tell anyone I said so; but he's the real master here. His lordship's secretary he calls himself; but he's really everything rolled into one--like the man in the play."

Ashe, searching in his dramatic memories for such a person in a play, inquired whether Miss Willoughby meant Pooh-Bah, in "The Mikado," of which there had been a revival in London recently.

Miss Willoughby did mean Pooh-Bah.

"But Nosy Parker is what I call him," she said. "He minds everybody's business as well as his own."

The last of the procession trickled into the steward's room.

Mr. Beach said grace somewhat patronizingly. The meal began.

"You've seen Miss Peters, of course, Mr. Marson?" said Miss Willoughby, resuming conversation with the soup.

"Just for a few minutes at Paddington."

"Oh! You haven't been with Mr. Peters long, then?"

Ashe began to wonder whether everybody he met was going to ask him this dangerous question.

"Only a day or so."

"Where were you before that?"

Ashe was conscious of a p.r.i.c.kly sensation. A little more of this and he might as well reveal his true mission at the castle and have done with it.

"Oh, I was--that is to say----"

"How are you feeling after the journey, Mr. Marson?" said a voice from the other side of the table; and Ashe, looking up gratefully, found Joan's eyes looking into his with a curiously amused expression.

He was too grateful for the interruption to try to account for this. He replied that he was feeling very well, which was not the case. Miss Willoughby's interest was diverted to a discussion of the defects of the various railroad systems of Great Britain.

At the head of the table Mr. Beach had started an intimate conversation with Mr. Ferris, the valet of Lord Stockheath, the Honorable Freddie's "poor old Percy"--a cousin, Ashe had gathered, of Aline Peters' husband-to-be. The butler spoke in more measured tones even than usual, for he was speaking of tragedy.

"We were all extremely sorry, Mr. Ferris, to read of your misfortune."

Ashe wondered what had been happening to Mr. Ferris.

"Yes, Mr. Beach," replied the valet, "it's a fact we made a pretty poor show." He took a sip from his gla.s.s. "There is no concealing the fact--I have never tried to conceal it--that poor Percy is not bright."

Miss Chester entered the conversation.

"I couldn't see where the girl--what's her name? was so very pretty. All the papers had pieces where it said she was attractive, and what not; but she didn't look anything special to me from her photograph in the Mirror. What his lordship could see in her I can't understand."

"The photo didn't quite do her justice, Miss Chester. I was present in court, and I must admit she was svelte--decidedly svelte. And you must recollect that Percy, from childhood up, has always been a highly susceptible young nut. I speak as one who knows him."

Mr. Beach turned to Joan.

"We are speaking of the Stockheath breach-of-promise case, Miss Simpson, of which you doubtless read in the newspapers. Lord Stockheath is a nephew of ours. I fancy his lordship was greatly shocked at the occurrence."

"He was," chimed in Mr. Judson from down the table. "I happened to overhear him speaking of it to young Freddie. It was in the library on the morning when the judge made his final summing up and slipped it into Lord Stockheath so proper. 'If ever anything of this sort happens to you, you young scalawag,' he says to Freddie--"

Mr. Beach coughed. "Mr. Judson!"

"Oh, it's all right, Mr. Beach; we're all in the family here, in a manner of speaking. It wasn't as though I was telling it to a lot of outsiders. I'm sure none of these ladies or gentlemen will let it go beyond this room?"

The company murmured virtuous acquiescence.

"He says to Freddie: 'You young scalawag, if ever anything of this sort happens to you, you can pack up and go off to Canada, for I'll have nothing more to do with you!'--or words to that effect. And Freddie says: 'Oh, dash it all, gov'nor, you know--what?'"

However short Mr. Judson's imitation of his master's voice may have fallen of histrionic perfection, it pleased the company. The room shook with mirth.

"Mr. Judson is clever, isn't he, Mr. Marson?" whispered Miss Willoughby, gazing with adoring eyes at the speaker.

Mr. Beach thought it expedient to deflect the conversation. By the unwritten law of the room every individual had the right to speak as freely as he wished about his own personal employer; but Judson, in his opinion, sometimes went a trifle too far.

"Tell me, Mr. Ferris," he said, "does his lordship seem to bear it well?"

"Oh, Percy is bearing it well enough."

Ashe noted as a curious fact that, though the actual valet of any person under discussion spoke of him almost affectionately by his Christian name, the rest of the company used the greatest ceremony and gave him his t.i.tle with all respect. Lord Stockheath was Percy to Mr. Ferris, and the Honorable Frederick Threepwood was Freddie to Mr. Judson; but to Ferris, Mr. Judson's Freddie was the Honorable Frederick, and to Judson Mr. Ferris' Percy was Lord Stockheath. It was rather a pleasant form of etiquette, and struck Ashe as somehow vaguely feudal.

"Percy," went on Mr. Ferris, "is bearing it like a little Briton--the damages not having come out of his pocket! It's his old father--who had to pay them--that's taking it to heart. You might say he's doing himself proud. He says it's brought on his gout again, and that's why he's gone to Droitwich instead of coming here. I dare say Percy isn't sorry."

"It has been," said Mr. Beach, summing up, "a most unfortunate occurrence. The modern tendency of the lower cla.s.ses to get above themselves is becoming more marked every day. The young female in this case was, I understand, a barmaid. It is deplorable that our young men should allow themselves to get into such entanglements."

"The wonder to me," said the irrepressible Mr. Judson, "is that more of these young chaps don't get put through it. His lordship wasn't so wide of the mark when he spoke like that to Freddie in the library that time. I give you my word, it's a mercy young Freddie hasn't been up against it! When we were in London, Freddie and I," he went on, cutting through Mr. Beach's disapproving cough, "before what you might call the crash, when his lordship cut off supplies and had him come back and live here, Freddie was asking for it--believe me! Fell in love with a girl in the chorus of one of the theaters. Used to send me to the stage door with notes and flowers every night for weeks, as regular as clockwork.

"What was her name? It's on the tip of my tongue. Funny how you forget these things! Freddie was pretty far gone. I recollect once, happening to be looking round his room in his absence, coming on a poem he had written to her. It was hot stuff--very hot! If that girl has kept those letters it's my belief we shall see Freddie following in Lord Stockheath's footsteps."

There was a hush of delighted horror round the table.

"Goo'," said Miss Chester's escort with unction. "You don't say so, Mr. Judson! It wouldn't half make them look silly if the Honorable Frederick was sued for breach just now, with the wedding coming on!"

"There is no danger of that."

It was Joan's voice, and she had spoken with such decision that she had the ear of the table immediately. All eyes looked in her direction. Ashe was struck with her expression. Her eyes were shining as though she were angry; and there was a flush on her face. A phrase he had used in the train came back to him. She looked like a princess in disguise.

"What makes you say that, Miss Simpson?" inquired Judson, annoyed. He had been at pains to make the company's flesh creep, and it appeared to be Joan's aim to undo his work.

It seemed to Ashe that Joan made an effort of some sort as though she were pulling herself together and remembering where she was.

"Well," she said, almost lamely, "I don't think it at all likely that he proposed marriage to this girl."

"You never can tell," said Judson. "My impression is that Freddie did. It's my belief that there's something on his mind these days. Before he went to London with his lordship the other day he was behaving very strange. And since he came back it's my belief that he has been brooding. And I happen to know he followed the affair of Lord Stockheath pretty closely, for he clipped the clippings out of the paper. I found them myself one day when I happened to be going through his things."

Beach cleared his throat--his mode of indicating that he was about to monopolize the conversation.

"And in any case, Miss Simpson," he said solemnly, "with things come to the pa.s.s they have come to, and the juries--drawn from the lower cla.s.ses--in the nasty mood they're in, it don't seem hardly necessary in these affairs for there to have been any definite promise of marriage. What with all this socialism rampant, they seem so happy at the idea of being able to do one of us an injury that they give heavy damages without it. A few ardent expressions, and that's enough for them. You recollect the Havant case, and when young Lord Mount Anville was sued? What it comes to is that anarchy is getting the upper hand, and the lower cla.s.ses are getting above themselves. It's all these here cheap newspapers that does it. They tempt the lower cla.s.ses to get above themselves.

"Only this morning I had to speak severe to that young fellow, James, the footman. He was a good young fellow once and did his work well, and had a proper respect for people; but now he's gone all to pieces. And why? Because six months ago he had the rheumatism, and had the audacity to send his picture and a testimonial, saying that it had cured him of awful agonies, to Walkinshaw's Supreme Ointment, and they printed it in half a dozen papers; and it has been the ruin of James. He has got above himself and don't care for n.o.body."