"I hardly know. Val does not make a confidant of me, and I can't get to the bottom of how he is situated. Debts I am sure he has; but whether—"
"Val always had plenty of those," interrupted Maude.
"True. When my father died, three parts of Val's inheritance went to pay off debts nobody knew he had contracted. The worst is, he glides into these difficulties unwittingly, led and swayed by others. We don't say Elster's sin, or Elster's crimes; we say Elster's folly. I don't believe Val ever in his life did a bad thing of deliberate intention. Designing people get hold of him—fast fellows who are going headlong down-hill themselves—and Val, unable to say 'No,' is drawn here and drawn there, and tumbles with them into a quagmire, and perhaps has to pay his friends' costs, as well as his own, before he can get out of it. Do you believe in luck, Maude?"
"In luck?" answered Maude, raising her eyes at the abrupt question. "I don't know."
"I believe in it. I believe that some are born under a lucky star, and others under an unlucky one. Val is one of the latter. He is always unlucky. Set him up, and down he comes again. I don't think I ever knew Val lucky in my life. Look at his nearly blowing his arm off that time in Scotland! You will laugh at me, I dare say; but a thought crosses me at odd moments that his ill-luck will prevail still, in the matter of Miss Ashton. Not if I can help it, however; I'll do my best, for Anne's sake."
"You seem to think very much of her yourself," cried Lady Maude, her cheeks crimsoning with an angry flush.
"I do—as Val's future wife. I love Anne Ashton better than any one else in the world. We all loved her. So would you if you knew her. In my mother's last illness Anne was a greater comfort to her than Laura."
"Should you ever think of a wife on your own score, she may not like this warm praise of Miss Anne Ashton," said Lady Maude, assiduously drawing, her hot face bent down to within an inch of the cardboard.
"Not like it? She wouldn't be such an idiot, I hope, as to dislike it. Is not Anne going to be my brother's wife? Did you suppose I spoke of Anne in that way?—you must have been dreaming, Maude."
Maude hoped she had been. The young man took his cigar from his mouth, ran a penknife through the end, and began smoking again.
"That time is far enough off, Maude. I am not going to tie myself up with a wife, or to think of one either, for many a long year to come."
Her heart beat with a painful throbbing. "Why not?"
"No danger. My wild oats are not sown yet, any more than Val's; only you don't hear of them, because I have money to back me, and he has not. I must find a girl I should like to make my wife before that event comes off, Maude; and I have not found her yet."
Lady Maude damaged her landscape. She sketched in a tree where a chimney ought to have been, and laid the fault upon her pencil.
"It has been real sport, Maude, ever since I came home from knocking about abroad, to hear and see the old ladies. They think I am to be caught with a bait; and that bait is each one's own enchanting daughter. Let them angle, an they please—it does no harm. They are amused, and I am none the worse. I enjoy a laugh sometimes, while I take care of myself; as I have need to do, or I might find myself the victim of some detestable breach-of-promise affair, and have to stand damages. But for Anne Ashton, Val would have had his head in that Westminster-noose a score of times; and the wonder is that he has kept out of it. No, thank you, my ladies; I am not a marrying man."
"Why do you tell me this?" asked Lady Maude, a sick faintness stealing over her face and heart.
"You are one of ourselves, and I tell you anything. It will be fun for you, Maude, if you'll open your eyes and look on. There are some in the house now who—" He stopped and laughed.
"I would rather not hear this!" she cried passionately. "Don't tell me."
Lord Hartledon looked at her, begged her pardon, and quitted the room with his cigar. Lady Maude, black as night, dashed her pencil on to the cardboard, and scored her sketch all over with ugly black lines. Her face itself looked ugly then.
"Why did he say this to me?" she asked of her fevered heart. "Was it said with a purpose? Has he found out that I love him? that my shallow old mother is one of the subtlest of the anglers? and that—"
"What on earth are you at with your drawing, Maude?"
"Oh, I have grown sick of the sketch. I am not in a drawing mood to-day, mamma."
"And how fierce you were looking," pursued the countess-dowager, who had darted in at rather an inopportune moment for Maude—darting in on people at such moments being her habit. "And that was the sketch Hartledon asked you to do for him from the old painting!"
"He may do it himself, if he wants it done."
"Where is Hartledon?"
"I don't know. Gone out somewhere."
"Has he offended you, or vexed you?"
"Well, he did vex me. He has just been assuring me with the coolest air that he should never marry; or, at least, not for years and years to come. He told me to notice what a heap of girls were after him—or their mothers for them—and the fun he had over it, not being a marrying man."
"Is that all? You need not have put yourself in a fatigue, and spoilt your drawing. Lord Hartledon shall be your husband before six months are over—or reproach me ever afterwards with being a false prophetess and a bungling manager."
Maude's brow cleared. She had almost childlike confidence in the tact of her unscrupulous mother.
But how the morning's conversation altogether rankled in her heart, none save herself could tell: ay, and in that of the dowager. Although Anne Ashton was the betrothed of Percival Elster, and Lord Hartledon's freely-avowed love for her was evidently that of a brother, and he had said he should do all he could to promote the marriage, the strongest jealousy had taken possession of Lady Maude's heart. She already hated Anne Ashton with a fierce and bitter hatred. She turned sick with envy when, in the morning visit that was that day paid by the Ashtons, she saw that Anne was really what Lord Hartledon had described her—one of the sweetest, most lovable, most charming of girls; almost without her equal in the world for grace and goodness and beauty. She turned more sick with envy when, at dinner afterwards, to which the Ashtons came, Lord Hartledon devoted himself to them, almost to the neglect of his other guests, lingering much with Anne.
The countess-dowager marked it also, and was furious. Nothing could be urged against them; they were unexceptionable. The doctor, a chatty, straightforward, energetic man, of great intellect and learning, and emphatically a gentleman; his wife attracting by her unobtrusive gentleness; his daughter by her grace and modest self-possession. Whatever Maude Kirton might do, she could never, for very shame, again attempt to disparage them. Surely there was no just reason for the hatred which took possession of Maude's heart; a hatred that could never be plucked out again.
But Maude knew how to dissemble. It pleased her to affect a sudden and violent friendship for Anne.
"Hartledon told me how much I should like you," she whispered, as they sat together on the sofa after dinner, to which Maude had drawn her. "He said I should find you the dearest girl I ever met; and I do so. May I call you 'Anne'?"
Not for a moment did Miss Ashton answer. Truth to say, far from reciprocating the sudden fancy boasted of by Maude, she had taken an unaccountable dislike to her. Something of falsity in the tone, of sudden hardiesse in the handsome black eyes, acted upon Anne as an instinctive warning.
"As you please, Lady Maude."
"Thank you so much. Hartledon whispered to me the secret about you and Val—Percival, I mean. Shall you accomplish the task, think you?"
"What task?"
"That of turning him from his evil ways."
"His evil ways?" repeated Anne, in a surprised indignation she