“What has happened?” he said sharply.
“The fool tried to kiss me!” she said simply. “And I—I—let out at him—like mother!”
Nevertheless, she gave him one of those shy, timid glances he had noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers, with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent with her previous masculine independence.
“You might have killed him,” said Peter angrily.
“Perhaps I might! OUGHT I have killed him, Peter?” she said anxiously, yet with the same winning, timid smile. If she had not been his sister, he would have thought her quite handsome.
“As it is,” he said impetuously, “you have made a frightful scandal here.”
“HE won't say anything about it—will he?” she inquired shyly, still twisting the something around her finger.
Peter did not reply; perhaps the young lawyer really loved her and would keep her secret! But he was vexed, and there was something maniacal in her twisting fingers. “What have you got there?” he said sharply.
She shook the object in the air before her with a laugh. “Only a lock of his hair,” she said gayly; “but I didn't CUT it off!”
“Throw it away, and come here!” he said angrily.
But she only tucked the little blond curl into her waist belt and shook her head. He urged his horse forward, but she turned and fled, laughing as he pursued her. Being the better rider she could easily evade him whenever he got too near, and in this way they eventually reached the town and their house long before their companions. But she was far enough ahead of her brother to be able to dismount and hide her trophy with childish glee before he arrived.
She was right in believing that her unfortunate cavalier would make no revelation of her conduct, and his catastrophe passed as an accident. But Peter could not disguise the fact that much of his unpopularity was shared by his sister. The matrons of Atherly believed that she was “fast,” and remembered more distinctly than ever the evil habits of her mother. That she would, in the due course of time, “take to drink,” they never doubted. Her dancing was considered outrageous in its unfettered freedom, and her extraordinary powers of endurance were looked upon as “masculine” by the weaker girls whose partners she took from them. She reciprocally looked down upon them, and made no secret of her contempt for their small refinements and fancies. She affected only the society of men, and even treated them with a familiarity that was both fearless and scornful. Peter saw that it was useless to face the opposition; Miss Atherly did not seem to encourage the renewal of the young lawyer's attentions, although it was evident that he was still attracted by her, nor did she seem to invite advances from others. He must go away—and he would have to take her with him. It seemed ridiculous that a woman of thirty, of masculine character, should require a chaperon in a brother of equal age; but Peter knew the singular blending of childlike ignorance with this Amazonian quality. He had made his arrangements for an absence from Atherly of three or four years, and they departed together. The young fair-haired lawyer came to the stage-coach office to see them off. Peter could detect no sentiment in his sister's familiar farewell of her unfortunate suitor. At New York, however, it was arranged that “Jinny” should stay with some friends whom they had made en route, and that, if she wished, she could come to Europe later, and join him in London.
Thus relieved of one, Peter Atherly of Atherly started on his cherished quest of his other and more remote relations.
CHAPTER II
Peter Atherly had been four months in England, but knew little of the country until one summer afternoon when his carriage rolled along the well-ordered road between Nonningsby Station and Ashley Grange.
In that four months he had consulted authorities, examined records, visited the Heralds' College, written letters, and made a few friends. A rich American, tracing his genealogical tree, was not a new thing—even in that day—in London; but there was something original and simple in his methods, and so much that was grave, reserved, and un-American in his personality, that it awakened interest. A recognition that he was a foreigner, but a puzzled doubt, however, of his exact nationality, which he found everywhere, at first pained him, but he became reconciled to it at about the same time that his English acquaintances abandoned their own reserve and caution before the greater reticence of this melancholy American, and actually became the questioners! In this way his quest became known only as a disclosure of his own courtesy, and offers of assistance were pressed eagerly upon him. That was why Sir Edward Atherly found himself gravely puzzled, as he sat with his family solicitor one morning in the library of Ashley Grange.
“Humph!” said Sir Edward. “And you say he has absolutely no other purpose in making these inquiries?”
“Positively none,” returned the solicitor. “He is even willing to sign a renunciation of any claim which might arise out of this information. It is rather a singular case, but he seems to be a rich man and quite able to indulge his harmless caprices.”
“And you are quite sure he is Philip's son?”
“Quite, from the papers he brings me. Of course I informed him that even if he should be able to establish a legal marriage he could expect nothing as next of kin, as you had children of your own. He seemed to know that already, and avowed that his only wish was to satisfy his own mind.”
“I suppose he wants to claim kinship and all that sort of thing for society's sake?”
“I do not think so,” said the solicitor dryly. “I suggested an interview with you, but he seemed to think it quite unnecessary, if I could give him the information he required.”
“Ha!” said Sir Edward promptly, “we'll invite him here. Lady Atherly can bring in some people to see him. Is he—ahem—What is he like? The usual American, I suppose?”
“Not at all. Quite foreign-looking—dark, and rather like an Italian. There is no resemblance to Mr. Philip,” he said, glancing at the painting of a flaxen-haired child fondling a greyhound under the elms of Ashley Park.
“Ah! Yes, yes! Perhaps the mother was one of those Southern creoles, or mulattoes,” said Sir Edward with an Englishman's tolerant regard for the vagaries of people who were clearly not English; “they're rather attractive women, I hear.”
“I think you do quite well to be civil to him,” said the solicitor. “He seems to take an interest in the family, and being rich, and apparently only anxious to enhance the family prestige, you ought to know him. Now, in reference to those mortgages on Appleby Farm, if you could get”—
“Yes, yes!” said Sir Edward quickly; “we'll have him down here; and, I say! YOU'LL come too?”
The solicitor bowed. “And, by the way,” continued Sir Edward, “there was a girl too—wasn't there? He has a sister, I believe?”
“Yes, but he has left her in America.”
“Ah, yes!—very good—yes!—of course. We'll have Lord Greyshott and Sir Roger and old Lady Everton—she knows all about Sir Ashley and the family. And—er—is he young or old?”
“About thirty, I should say, Sir Edward.”
“Ah, well! We'll have Lady Elfrida over from the Towers.”
Had Peter known of these preparations he might have turned back to Nonningsby without even visiting the old church in Ashley Park, which he had been told held the ashes of his ancestors. For during these four months the conviction that he was a foreigner and that he had little or nothing in common with things here had been clearly