Nevertheless he shuffled out of everything, unless it were the correspondence with Fontenoy. As to the notion that all the languor could be due merely to an unsatisfied craving for Letty Sewell's society, when it presented itself he still fought with it. The Indian climate might have somehow affected him. An English winter is soon forgotten, and has to be re-learnt like a distasteful lesson.
About a week after their arrival at Ferth George was sitting at his solitary breakfast when his mother came floating into the room, preceded by a rattle of bangles, a flutter of streamers, and the barking of little dogs.
She held various newly opened letters, and, running up to him, she laid her hands on his shoulders.
"Now"—thought George to himself with annoyance, "she is going to be arch!"
"Oh! you silly boy!" she said, holding him, with her head on one side. "Who's been cross and nasty to his poor old mammy? Who wants cheering up a bit before he settles down to his horrid work? Who would take his mammy to a nice party at a nice house, if he were prettily asked—eh? who would?"
She pinched his cheek before he could escape.
"Well, mother, of course you will do what you like," said George, walking off to supply himself with ham. "I shall not leave home again, just yet."
Lady Tressady smiled.
"Well, anyhow, you can read Aspasia Corfield's letter," she said, holding it out to him. "You know, really, that house isn't bad. They took over the Dryburghs' chef, and Aspasia knows how to pick her people."
"Aspasia!" The tone of patronising intimacy! George blushed, if his mother did not.
Yet he took the letter. He read it, then put it down, and walked to the window to look at a crowd of birds that had been collecting round a plate of food he had just put out upon the snow.
"Well, will you go?" said his mother.
"If you particularly wish it," he said, after a pause, in an embarrassed voice.
Lady Tressady's dimples were in full play as she settled herself into her seat and began to gather a supply of provisions. But as he returned to his place, and she glanced at him, she saw that he was not in a mood to be bantered, and understood that he was not going to let her force his confidence, however shrewdly she might guess at his affairs. So she controlled herself, and began to chatter about the Corfields and their party. He responded, and by the end of breakfast they were on much better terms than they had been for some weeks.
That morning also he wrote a cheque for her immediate necessities, which made her—for the time—a happy woman; and she overwhelmed him with grateful tears and embraces, which he did his best to bear.
Early in December he and she became the Corfields' guests. They found a large party collected, and Letty Sewell happily established as the spoilt child of the house. At the first touch of her hand, the first glance of her eyes, George's cloud dispersed.
"Why did you run away?" George asked her on the first possible occasion.
Letty laughed, fenced with the question for four days, during which George was never dull for a single instant, and then capitulated. She allowed him to propose to her, and was graciously pleased to accept him.
The following week Tressady went down with Letty to her home at Helbeck. He found an invalid father, a remarkably foolish, inconsequent mother, and a younger sister, Elsie, on whom, as it seemed to him, the burdens of the house mainly rested.
The father, who was suffering from a slow but incurable disease, had the remains of much natural ability and acuteness. He was well content with Tressady as a son-in-law; though in the few interviews that Tressady was able to have with him on the question of settlements the young man took pains to state his money affairs as carefully and modestly as possible. Letty was not often in her father's room, and Mr. Sewell treated her, when she did come, rather like an agreeable guest than a daughter. But he was evidently extremely proud of her—as also was the mother—and he would talk much to George, when his health allowed it, of her good looks and her social success.
With the younger sister Tressady did not find it easy to make friends.
She was plain, sickly, and rather silent. She seemed to have scientific tastes and to be a great reader. And, so far as he could judge, the two sisters were not intimate.
"Don't hate me for taking her away!" he said, as he was bidding good-bye to Elsie, and glancing over her shoulder at Letty on the stairs.
The girl's quiet eyes were crossed by a momentary look of amusement. Then she controlled herself, and said gently:
"We didn't expect to keep her! Good-bye."
CHAPTER IV
"Oh, Tully, look at my cloak! You've let it fall! Hold my fan, please, and give me the opera-glasses."
The speaker was Miss Sewell. She and an elderly lady were sitting side by side in the stalls, about halfway down St. James's Hall. The occasion was a popular concert, and, as Joachim was to play, every seat in the hall was rapidly filling up.
Letty rose as she asked for the opera-glasses, and scanned the crowds streaming in through the side-doors.
"No—no signs of him! He must have been kept at the House, after all," she said, with annoyance. "Really, Tully, I do think you might have got a programme all this time! Why do you leave everything to me?"
"My dear!" said her companion, protesting, "you didn't tell me to."
"Well, I don't see why I should tell you everything. Of course I want a programme. Is that he? No! What a nuisance!"
"Sir George must have been detained," murmured her companion, timidly.
"What a very original thing to say, wasn't it, Tully?" remarked Miss Sewell, with sarcasm, as she sat down again.
The lady addressed was silent, instinctively waiting till Letty's nerves should have quieted down. She was a Miss Tulloch, a former governess of the Sewells, and now often employed by Letty, when she was in town, as a convenient chaperon. Letty was accustomed to stay with an aunt in Cavendish Square, an old lady who did not go out in the evenings. A chaperon therefore was indispensable, and Maria Tulloch could always be had. She existed somewhere in West Kensington, on an income of seventy pounds a year. Letty took her freely to the opera and the theatre, to concerts and galleries, and occasionally gave her a dress she did not want. Miss Tulloch clung to the connection as her only chance of relief from the boarding-house routine she detested, and was always abjectly ready to do as she was told. She saw nothing she was not meant to see, and she could be shaken off at a moment's notice. For the rest, she came of a stock of gentlefolk; and her invariable black dress, her bits of carefully treasured lace, the weak refinement of her face, and her timid manner did no discredit to the brilliant creature beside her.
When the first number of the programme was over, Letty got up once more, opera-glass in hand, to search among the late-comers for her missing lover. She nodded to many acquaintances, but George Tressady was not to be seen; and she sat down finally in no mood either to listen or to enjoy, though the magician of the evening was already at work.
"There's something very special, isn't there, you want to see Sir George about to-night?" Tully inquired humbly when the next pause occurred.
"Of course there is!" said Letty, crossly. "You do ask such foolish questions, Tully. If I don't see him to-night, he may let that house in Brook Street slip. There are several people after it—the agents told me."
"And he thinks it too expensive?"
"Only