Ten o'clock rings out mysteriously from the handsome marble clock upon the chimney-piece, and precisely three minutes afterward the door is thrown open to admit an elderly lady, tall and fair, and still beautiful.
She walks with a slow, rather stately step, and in spite of her years carries her head high. Upon this head rests the daintiest of morning caps, all white lace and delicate ribbon bows, that match in color her trailing gown. Her hands, small and tapering, are covered with rings; otherwise she wears no adornment of any kind. There is a benignity about her that goes straight to all hearts. Children adore her, dogs fawn upon her, young men bring to her all their troubles—the evil behavior of their tailors and their mistresses are alike laid before her.
Now, finding the room empty, and knowing it to be four minutes after ten, she says to herself, "The first!" with a little surprise and much pardonable pride, and seats herself with something of an air before the militant urn. When we are old it is so sweet to us to be younger than the young, when we are young it is so sweet to us to be just vice versa. Oh, foolish youth!
An elderly butler, who has evidently seen service (in every sense of the word), and who is actually steeped in respectability up to his port-wine nose, hovers around the breakfast, adjusting this dish affectionately, and straightening that, until all is carefully awry, when he leaves the room with a sigh of satisfaction.
Perhaps Lady Chetwoode's self-admiration would have grown beyond bounds, but that just at this instant voices in the hall distract her thoughts. The sounds make her face brighten and bring a smile to her lips. "The boys" are coming. She draws the teacups a little nearer to her and makes a gentle fuss over the spoons. A light laugh echoes through the hall; it is answered and then the door once more opens, and her two sons enter, Cyril, being the youngest, naturally coming first.
On seeing his mother he is pleased to make a gesture indicative of the most exaggerated surprise.
"Now, who could have anticipated it?" he says. "Her gracious majesty already assembled, while her faithful subjects—— Well," with a sudden change of tone, "for my part I call it downright shabby of people to scramble down-stairs before other people merely for the sake of putting them to the blush."
"Lazy boy! no wonder you are ashamed of yourself when you look at the clock," says Lady Chetwoode, smiling fondly as she returns his greeting.
"Ashamed! Pray do not misunderstand me. I have arrived at my twenty-sixth year without ever having mastered the meaning of that word. I flatter myself I am a degree beyond that."
"Last night's headache quite gone, mother?" asks Sir Guy, bending over her chair to kiss her; an act he performs tenderly, and as though the doing of it is sweet to him.
"Quite, my dear," replies she; and there is perhaps the faintest, the very faintest, accession of warmth in her tone, an almost imperceptible increase of kindliness in her smile as she speaks to her eldest son.
"That's right," says he, patting her gently on the shoulder; after which he goes over to his own seat and takes up the letters lying before him.
"Positively I never thought of the post," says Lady Chetwoode. "And here I have been for quite five minutes with nothing to do. I might as well have been digesting my correspondence, if there is any for me."
"One letter for you; five, as usual, for Cyril; one for me," says Guy. "All Cyril's." Examining them critically at arm's length. "Written evidently by very young women."
"Yes, they will write to me," returns Cyril, receiving them with a sigh and regarding them with careful scrutiny. "It is nothing short of disgusting," he says presently, singling out one of the letters with his first finger. "This is the fourth she has written me this week, and as yet it is only Friday. I won't be able to bear it much longer; I shall certainly make a stand one of these days."
"I would if I were you," says Guy, laughing.
"I have just heard from Lilian Chesney," suddenly says Lady Chetwoode, speaking as though a bombshell had fallen in their midst. "And she is really coming here next week!"
"No!" says Guy, without meaning contradiction, which at the moment is far from him.
"Yes," replies his mother, somewhat faintly.
"Another!" murmurs Cyril, weakly—he being the only one of the three who finds any amusement in the situation. "Well, at all events, she can't write to me, as we shall be under the same roof; and I shall dismiss the very first servant who brings me a billet-doux. How pleased you do look, Guy! And no wonder;—a whole live ward, and all to yourself. Lucky you!"
"It is hard on you, mother," says Guy, "but it can't be helped. When I promised, I made sure her father would have lived for years to come."
"You did what was quite right," says Lady Chetwoode, who, if Guy were to commit a felony, would instantly say it was the only proper course to be pursued. "And it might have been much worse. Her mother's daughter cannot fail to be a lady in the best sense of the word."
"I'm sure I hope she won't, then," says Cyril, who all this time has been carefully laying in an uncommonly good breakfast. "If there is one thing I hate, it is a young lady. Give me a girl."
"But, my dear, what an extraordinary speech! Surely a girl may be a young lady."
"Yes, but unfortunately a young lady isn't always a girl. My experience of the former class is, that, no matter what their age, they are as old as the hills, and know considerably more than they ought to know."
"And just as we had got rid of one ward so successfully we must needs get another," says Lady Chetwoode, with a plaintive sigh. "Dear Mabel! she was certainly very sweet, and I was excessively fond of her, but I do hope this new-comer will not be so troublesome."
"I hope she will be as pleasant to talk to and as good to look at," says Cyril. "I confess I missed Mab awfully; I never felt so down in my life as when she declared her intention of marrying Tom Steyne."
"I never dreamed the marriage would have turned out so well," says Lady Chetwoode, in a pleased tone. "She was such an—an—unreasonable girl. But it is wonderful how well she gets on with a husband."
"Flirts always make the best wives. You forget that, mother."
"And what a coquette she was? If Lilian Chesney resembles her, I don't know what I shall do. I am getting too old to take care of pretty girls."
"Perhaps Miss Chesney is ugly."
"I hope not, my dear," says Lady Chetwoode, with a strong shudder. "Let her be anything but that. I can't bear ugly women. No, her mother was lovely. I used to think"—relapsing again into the plaintive style—"that one ward in a lifetime would be sufficient, and now we are going to have another."
"It is all Guy's fault," says Cyril. "He does get himself up so like the moral Pecksniff. There is a stern and dignified air about him would deceive a Machiavelli, and takes the hearts of parents by storm. Poor Mr. Chesney, who never even saw him, took him on hearsay as his only child's guardian. This solitary fact shows how grossly he has taken in society in general. He is every bit as immoral as the rest of us, only——"
"Immoral! My dear Cyril——" interrupts Lady Chetwoode, severely.
"Well, let us say frivolous. It has just the same meaning nowadays, and sounds nicer. But he looks a 'grave and reverend,' if ever there was one. Indeed, his whole appearance is enough to make any passer-by stop short and say, 'There goes a good young man.'"
"I'm sure I hope not," says Guy, half offended, wholly disgusted. "I should be inclined to shoot any one who told me I was a 'good young man.' I have no desire to pose as such: my ambition does not lie that way."
"I don't believe you know what you are saying, either of you," says Lady Chetwoode, who, though accustomed to them, can never entirely help showing surprise at their