"Thank you, Marquess, thank you," said Sir Joseph, with a natural embarra.s.sment.

Marie Louise noted the slight difference between the English "Thank you" and Sir Joseph's "Thang gyou."

Then Lady Webling's eyes went around the table, catching up the women's eyes and forms, and she led them in a troop from the embarra.s.sing scene. She brought the embarra.s.sment with her to the drawing-room, where the women sat about smoking miserably and waiting for the men to come forth and take them home.

CHAPTER III

There must have been embarra.s.sment enough left to go round the dining-table, too, for in an unusually brief while the men flocked into the drawing-room. And they began to plead engagements in offices or homes or Parliament.

It was not yet ten o'clock when the last of the guests had gone, except Nicholas Easton. And Sir Joseph took him into his own study.

Easton walked a trifle too solemnly straight, as if he had set himself an imaginary chalk-line to follow. He jostled against the door, and as he closed it, swung with it uncertainly.

Lady Webling asked almost at once, with a nod of the head in the direction of the study door:

"Well, my dear child, what do you think of Nicky?"

"Oh, I don't know. He's nice, but--"

"We're very fond of him, Sir Joseph and I--and we do hope you will be."

Marie Louise wondered if they were going to select a husband for her.

It was a dreadful situation, because there was no compulsion except the compulsion of obligation. They never gave her a chance to do anything for them; they were always doing things for her. What an ingrate she would be to rebuff their first real desire! And yet to marry a man she felt such antipathy for--surely there could be some less hateful way of obliging her benefactors. She felt like a castaway on a desert, and there was something of the wilderness in the immensity of the drawing-room with its crowds of untenanted divans and of empty chairs drawn into groups as the departed guests had left them.

Lady Webling stood close to Marie Louise and pressed for an answer.

"You don't really dislike Nicky, do you?"

"N-o-o. I've not known him long enough to dislike him very well."

She tried to soften the rebuff with a laugh, but Lady Webling sighed profoundly and smothered her disappointment in a fond "Good night."

She smothered the great child, too, in a hugely buxom embrace. When Marie emerged she was suddenly reminded that she had not yet spoken to Lady Webling of Fraulein Ernst's attack on the children's souls. She spoke now.

"There's one thing, mamma, I've been wanting to tell you all evening.

Please don't let it distress you, but really I'm afraid you'll have to get rid of Fraulein."

Lady Webling's voluminous yawn was stricken midway into a gasp. Marie Louise told her the story of the diabolical prayer. Lady Webling took the blow without reeling. She expressed shock, but again expressed it too perfectly.

She promised to "reprimand the foolish old soul."

"To reprimand her!" Marie Louise cried. "You won't send her away?"

"Send her away where, my child? Where should we send the poor thing?

But I'll speak to her very sharply. It was outrageous of her. What if the children should say such things before other people? It would be frightful! Thank you for telling me, my dear. And now I'm for bed! And you should be. You look quite worn out. Coming up?"

Lady Webling laughed and glanced at the study door, implying and rejoicing in the implication that Marie Louise was lingering for a last word with Easton.

Really she was trying to avoid climbing the long stairs with Lady Webling's arm about her. For the first time in her life she distrusted the perfection of the old soul's motives. She felt like a Judas when Lady Webling offered her cheek for another good-night kiss. Then she pretended to read a book while she listened for Lady Webling's last puff as she made the top step.

At once she poised for flight. But the study door opened and Easton came out. He was bending down to murmur into Sir Joseph's downcast countenance. Easton was saying, with a tremulous emotion, "This is the beginning of the end of England's control of the sea."

Marie Louise almost felt that there was a quiver of eagerness rather than of dread in his tone, or that the dread was the awe of a horrible hope.

Sir Joseph was brooding and shaking his head. He seemed to start as he saw Marie Louise. But he smiled on her dotingly and said:

"You are not gone to bed yet?"

She shook her head and sorrowed over him with a sudden rush of grat.i.tude to his defense. She did not reward Easton's smile with any favor, though he widened his eyes in admiration.

Sir Joseph said: "Good night, Nicky. It is long before I see you some more."

Nicholas nodded. "But I shall see Miss Marie Louise quite soon now."

This puzzled Marie Louise. She pondered it while Nicky bent and kissed her hand, heaved a guttural, gluttonous "Ah!" and went his way.

It was nearly a week later before she had a clue to the riddle. Then Sir Joseph came home to luncheon unexpectedly. He had an envelope with him, sealed with great red b.u.t.tons of wax. He asked Marie Louise into his office and said, with an almost stealthy importance:

"My darling, I have a little favor to ask of you. Sometimes, you see, when I am having a big dealing on the Stock Exchange I do not like that everybody knows my business. Too many people wish to know all I do, so they can be doing the same. What everybody knows helps n.o.body.

It is my wish to get this envelope to a man without somebody finding out something. Understand?"

"Yes, papa!" Marie Louise answered with the utmost confidence that what he did was good and wise and straight. She experienced a qualm when Sir Joseph explained that Nicky was the man. She wondered why he did not come to the house. Then she rebuked herself for presuming to question Sir Joseph's motives. He had never been anything but good to her, and he had been so whole-heartedly good that for her to give thought-room to a suspicion of him was heinous.

He had business secrets and stratagems of tremendous financial moment.

She had known him to work up great drives on the market and to use all sorts of people to prepare his attacks. She did not understand big business methods. She regarded them all with childlike bewilderment.

When, then, Sir Joseph asked her to meet Nicky, as if casually, in Regent's Park, and convey the envelope from her hand to Nicky's without any one's witnessing the transfer, she felt the elation of a child intrusted with an important errand. So she walked all the way to Regent's Park with the long strides of a young woman out for a const.i.tutional. She found a bench where she was told to, and sat down to bask in the spring air, and wait.

By and by Easton sauntered along, lifted his hat to Marie Louise, and made a great show of surprise. She rose and gave him her hand. She had taken the precaution to wear gloves--also she had the envelope in her hand. She left it in Nicky's. He smuggled it into his coat pocket, and murmuring, "So sorry I can't stop," lifted his hat and hurried off.

Marie Louise sat down again and after a time resumed her const.i.tutional.

Sir Joseph was full of thanks when she saw him at night.

Some days later he asked Marie Louise to meet Nicky outside a Bond Street shop. She was to have a small parcel and drop it. Nicky would stoop and pick it up and hand her in its stead another of similar wrapper. She was to thank him and come home.

Another day Marie Louise received from Sir Joseph a letter and a request to take the children with her for a long walk, ending at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. The children carried their private navies with them and squatted at the brim of the huge basin, poking their reluctant yachts to sea. The boy Victor perfected a wonderful scheme for using a long stick as a submarine. He thrust his arm under water and from a distance knocked his sister's sailboat about till its canvas was afloat and it filled and sank. All the while he wore the most distant of expressions, but canny little Bettina soon realized who had caused this catastrophe and how, and she went for Victor of the U-stick with finger-nails and feet and nearly rounded him into the toy ocean. It evidently made a difference whose ship was gored.

Marie Louise darted forward to save Victor from a ducking as well as a trouncing, and nearly ran over a man who was pa.s.sing.

It was Ross Davidge, whiling away an hour between appointments. He thought he recognized Marie Louise, but he was not sure. Women in the morning look so unlike their evening selves. He dared not speak.

Davidge lingered around trying to get up the courage to speak, but Marie Louise was too distraught with the feud even to see him when she looked at him. She would not have known him, anyway.

Davidge was confirmed in his guess at her ident.i.ty by the appearance of the man he had seen at her side at the dinner. But the confirmation was Davidge's exile, for the fellow lifted his hat with a look of great surprise and said to Marie Louise, "Fancy finding you heah!"

"Blah!" said Davidge to himself, and went on about his business.