“Mr Conolly is coming on business then.”
“Of course he is coming to pay a visit and make a holiday. But he will incidentally take notes of how the place can be most inconveniently upset with his machinery.”
“You are not glad that he is coming.”
“I am indifferent. So many people come here in the autumn whom I don’t care for that I have become hardened to the labor of entertaining them. I like to have young people about me. Sir John, of course, has to do with men of business and politicians; and he invites them all to run down for a fortnight it in the off season. So they run down; and it is seldom by any means possible to wind them up for conversational purposes until they go away again.”
“Mr. Conolly never seems to require winding up. Don’t you like him?”
“He never seems to require anything, and it is partly for that reason that I don’t like him. I have no fault to find with him — that is another reason, I think. Since I met him I have become ever so much more tolerant of human frailty. I respect the brute; but I don’t like him.
This Mr Conolly was known to Mary as a man who, having been an obscure workman, had suddenly become famous as the inventor of something called an electro-motor, by which he had made much money. He had then married a highly born young lady, celebrated in society for her beauty. Not long afterwards she had eloped with a gentleman of her own rank, whom she had known all her life. Conolly had thereupon divorced her, and resumed his bachelor life, displaying so little concern, that many who knew her had since regarded him with mistrust and dislike, feeling that he was not the man to make a home for a young woman accustomed to the tenderest consideration and most chivalrous courtesy in her father’s set. Even women, whose sympathy he would not keep in countenance by any pretense of brokenheartedness, had taken his wife’s part so far as to say that he ought never to have married her. Mary had heard this much of his history in the course of gossip, and had met him a few times in society in London.
“I don’t dislike him,” she said, in reply to Lady Geraldine’s last remark; “but he is an unanswerable sort of person; and I doubt if it would make the slightest difference to him whether the whole world hated or loved him.”
“Just so. Can anything be more unamiable? Such a man ought to be a judge, or an executioner.”
“After all, he is only a man; and he must have some feeling,” said Mary.
“If he has he ought to show it,” said Lady Geraldine. A servant just then entered with letters which had come by the evening mail. There were some for Mary; among them one addressed in a rapid business hand which she did not recognize. She opened them absently, thinking that a little experience of Herbert and Jack would soon remove Lady Geraldine’s objection to Conolly’s power of selfcontrol. Then she read the letters. One was from Miss Cairns, who was at a hydropathic establishment in Derbyshire. Another was from her father, who was glad she had arrived safely in Devonshire and hoped she would enjoy herself, was sure that the country air would benefit her health, and had nothing more to say at present but would write soon again. The third letter, a long one in a strange hand, roused her attention.
Langham Hotel, London,
W., 10th August
Dear Miss Sutherland — I have returned for a few days from Trouville, where I left Nanny and the children comfortably settled. I was recalled by a telegram from our head office and now that my business there is transacted, I have nothing to do except lounge around this great barrack of a hotel until I take it into my head to go back to Trouville. I miss Cavendish Square greatly. Three or four time day I find myself preparing to go there, forgetting that there is nobody in the house, unless Nanny has left the cat to starve, as she did two years ago. You cannot imagine how lonely I find London. The hotel is full of Americans; and I have scraped acquaintance with most of them; but I am none the livelier for that: somebody or something has left a hole in this metropolis that all the Americans alive cannot fill. Tonight after dinner I felt especially dull. There are no plays worth seeing at this season; and even if there were, it is no pleasure to me to go to the theatre by myself. I have got out of the way of doing so lately; and I don’t feel as if I could ever get into it again. So I thought that writing to you would pass the time as pleasantly as anything.
You remember, I hope, a certain conversation we had on the 2nd inst. I agreed not to return to the subject until you came back from Lady Porter’s; but I was so flurried by having to speak to you sooner than I intended, that I have been doubtful ever since whether I put it to you in the right way. I am afraid I was rather vague; and though it does not do to be too businesslike on such occasions, still, you have a right to know to a fraction what my proposal means. I know you are too sensible to suppose that I am going into particulars from want of the good oldfashioned sentiment which ought to be the main point in all such matters, or by way of offering you an additional inducement. If you had only yourself to look to, I think I should have pluck enough to ask you to shut your eyes and open your mouth so far as money is concerned; but when other interested parties who may come on the scene hereafter are to be considered, it is not only allowable but right to go into figures.
There are just four points, as I reckon it: 1, I am thirty-five years of age, and have no person depending on me for support. 2, I can arrange matters so that if anything happens to me you shall have a permanent income of five hundred pounds per annum. 3, I can afford to spend a thousand a year at present, without crippling myself. 4, These figures are calculated at a percentage off the minimum, and far understate what I may reasonably expect my resources to be in the course of a few years.
I won’t go any closer into money matters with you, because I feel that bargaining would be out of place between as. You may trust me that you shall want for nothing, if — !!! I wish you would help me over that if. We got along very well together in July — at least I thought so and you seemed to think so too. Our tastes fit in together to a T. You have genius and I admire it. If I had it myself, I should be jealous of you, don’t you see? As it is, the more you sing and paint and play, the more pleased am I, though I don’t say that I would not be writing this letter all the same if you didn’t know B-flat from a bull’s foot. If you will just for this once screw up your courage and say yes, I undertake on my on my part that you shall never regret it.
An early answer will shorten my suspense. Not that I want you to write without taking plenty of time for consideration; but just remember that it will appear cent per cent longer to me than to you. Hoping you will excuse me if I have been unreasonable in following up my wishes, — I am, dear Miss Sutherland,
Sincerely yours,
John Hoskyn.
Mary thrust the letter into its envelope, and knit her brows. Lady Geraldine watched her, pretending meanwhile to be occupied with her own correspondence. “Do you know any of Mrs. Phipson’s family?” said Mary slowly, after some minutes.
“No,” replied Lady Geraldine, somewhat contemptuously. Then, recollecting that Mr Phipson’s daughter was Mary’s sister-in-law, she added, “There are brothers in Australia and Columbia who are very rich; and the youngest is a friend of Sir John’s. He’s in the Conolly Company, and is said to be a shrewd man of business. They all were, I believe. Then there were two sisters, Sarah and Lizzie Hoskyn. I can remember Lizzie when she was exactly like your brother Dick’s wife. She married a great Cornhill goldsmith in her first season. Altogether, they are a wonderful family: making money, marrying money, putting each other in the way of making and marrying more, and falling on their feet everywhere.”
“Are they the sort of people you like?”
“What do you mean by that, my dear?”
“I think I mean what I say,” said Mary laughing. “But do you think, for example, that Mrs. Phipson’s brothers and sisters are ladies and gentlemen?”
“Whether Dick’s wife’s aunts or uncles are ladies and gentlemen, eh?”
“Never