“Nancy! I say, Nancy! Here’s Billy and this new man of his turned up hours before we expected them, and mother’s out calling somewhere, and Blanche is in the middle of washing her hair, and just look at the awful rip I’ve made in my frock; I can’t come!” announced Theo in a voice subdued almost to a stage whisper when I met her on the stairs this afternoon. “So you be a saint and go in and talk pretty to the visitor till tea, will you?”

“All right,” I laughed; and passed on to the drawing-room.

It was cool and dim in there after the sunshine of the garden, where I had been lazing over a book and forgetting this morning’s stress, and for a moment my eyes could scarcely make out the two figures that stood with their backs to the white-curtained French windows.

Then, beside the Governor’s tall bulk, I saw a small, dapper, masculine silhouette with a rather too abrupt “pinch-in” at the waist of its coat, and a perky, quick turn of the head; the general effect of Mr. Cyril Maude in some military part that I had once seen. Was it this that seemed so familiar, I wondered?

A monocle fell with a click against a waistcoat-button; then, as I came forward, a voice, also vaguely familiar, cried in amazement:

“Monica Trant! Little Monica! Well, I am blessed!”

Who in the world was this that knew my name? I looked harder at him. Surely it—Was it?—yes! it was one of father’s old friends, Major Montresor. So this was my employer’s “business acquaintance.” I felt myself trying not to stare. The Governor, I know, was staring undisguisedly at the pair of us.

“Why, bless my soul, Monica! Who’d have expected to see you coming in like this?”

“Or you, Major Montresor?” I retorted, obliged to smile at him as I held out my hand to his always tenacious clasp.

To be frank, I can’t say I was at all pleased that the Governor’s visitor had turned out to be someone who’d seen me so often in the old days. I don’t want those days to be mixed up with these. Already a ghost or so out of those days had seemed inclined to come and haunt the lovely garden and the big, comfortable rooms at The Lawn! And now I seemed to see a regular Richard-the-Third-like procession of those ghosts rising up behind the little Major’s trimly-waisted figure—people with whom I’d associated last time he’d seen me—standing in judgment, echoing his “Who’d have expected to see you?”—adding their phantom stares to those of the two men whose eyes were actually upon me. It was tiresome; might mean all sorts of adaptations; even the assumption of a “Manner C” for the benefit of Major Montresor! As for him, he’s a rather amusing, tactless, talkative, would-be-man-of-the-world sort of person, who’d been quite ready to get up what Kipling calls the “You’re-only-a-little-girl type of flirtation” with me when I was seventeen or so. I hadn’t met him since, nor had I wanted to; though I had been distinctly interested, five years ago, to find that someone who possessed medals and a moustache cared to talk to me while I was still in the school-room. He’d got to look ever so much older since then, balder, stiffer of movement in his slim boots and his stays—I beg his pardon, I expect he called it his belt—and, apparently, more flirtatious than ever!

Now, any woman over thirty-five has to be fairly attractive before she’s allowed to flirt on without fear of ridicule. But a man at fifty, or fifty-five, seems to claim the right to monopolize the prettiest and youngest girl he meets. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t a hair on his head or a tooth of his own in it. As long as he’s single and wears trousers, he’s an eligible bachelor—or so he thinks. A mercy he doesn’t hear the ideas of the favoured girl on this subject!

So, quite unsuspectingly, Major Montresor beamed upon me, and declared at least three times that this was a most delightful surprise, upon his word!—seeming almost to forget his host, who stood a little aside, looking utterly disconcerted, as far as I could see without turning my eyes, to discover that this “business acquaintance” knew his official fiancÉe better than her employer ever could!

Christian names, too!

“Monica—Bless my soul, what’s this?”

“This” was an interruption that precipitated itself through the unlatched French window; a small white dog that bore in his mouth a large bone, noisome-smelling and of the earth, earthy, which he dumped upon the Major’s japanned boot.

“Cariad!” growled the Governor, more angrily than I’d ever heard him speak except to me, “what do you mean? Here, sir.” He grabbed him by the collar, kicking the bone violently over the shallow sill in front of him. “Sorry, I shall have to get the little brute locked up.” And he dragged the cheerfully resigned Cariad out and along the gravel to the back of the house.

“Decent sort of young fellow, Waters; very clever business-man; useful to know; quite a nice chap, too,” commented the little Major, lowering his voice as he turned to me. “But, my dear child”—he always used the word “child” to excuse his gesture while he patted my shoulder, or smoothed my lace collar, or played with my silver chain—“my child, how did you come to be here?”

“I am staying with Mrs. Waters”—demurely.

“Well, well! So you knew them! Your poor father didn’t, did he? You were at school with the girls of the house, perhaps?”

“No. I met Mr. Waters”—still more demurely—“in business.”

“Business? Upon my word! Glad you’ve got such a business-adviser. Glad you’re in the position to need one, Monica. I heard rumours of your poor father having left you not very well off. Odd how these untrue bits of gossip get about!”—with an experienced eye upon the expensive new afternoon frock of my preferred pink, with its creamy ruffle, black velvet bow, and small paste buckle. “You look the picture of prosperity and health and good looks, if you’ll allow an old friend to say so?”

Well, one simply has to “allow” things to people who call themselves “old.” But for that, how many “old friends” would have received the order of “Paws off!” or “No patting, please,” or a more politely expressed equivalent from the girls who can’t be rude to their father’s contemporaries?

I was only just about to draw my hand away from another long and tender squeeze of Major Montresor’s, when his host came back to us. Through the French window, as the Governor pushed it open, a ray of sunlight caught and blazed on the magnificent diamonds of the ring which had been bought at Gemmer’s for me to wear.

Instantly Major Montresor pounced on that other hand.

“Hal-lo! What’s this? It isn’t——?”

“Yes,” said I, sedately.

“Little Monica engaged?”

“Yes.”

“Come, not really, what? No! You don’t say so, really?”

“I am afraid I must, Major Montresor.”

“By—Jove! And I never heard! Here’s a blow!” He sighed tempestuously. “Well! Youth will be served! Fortunate youth!” he prattled on without a break. “I’m sure he’s to be congratulated, the dog. Always hanging round you in the old days, I remember. Yes! Cultured sort of young Johnny with a beard—what was his name, now? Ah, I have it—Vandeleur, of course, young Sydney Vandeleur!”

Pleasant for me, wasn’t it? To have this voice from the Past blurting out—less tactful even than Cicely!—the name of the lover I had lost. In a flash I saw my employer’s slight movement—saw by the passing look on his face that his “business-man’s memory,” which never forgets a name, had instantly associated that of “Vandeleur” with those people at the Carlton to whom I’d first introduced my “fiancÉ.” What must he imagine? Still, that wasn’t the point. The point was that he should explain to this gossiping little Major, as quickly as possible, how things really—I mean officially, stood! To my horror he didn’t speak. There was an agonizing pause. I shot a glance at the Governor.... Heavens! He, of all people, seemed utterly at a loss—fidgeting like a schoolboy; he who could “break the news” to his staff at the office without turning a hair, was leaving it all, here, apparently to me!

Well!

Hurriedly I was beginning:

“But, Major Montresor——” when the drawing-room door opened to the entrance of Mrs. Waters, in her soft grey satin wrap and black picture hat; Cariad, liberated and tail-wagging, in her wake.

Greetings were exchanged—what talk followed I scarcely heard, until the gentle voice of the Governor’s mother exclaimed:

“Oh! Then you had met my son’s fiancÉe?”

“FiancÉe?” echoed Major Montresor. His monocle dropped again, so did his jaw. I never saw a man so utterly, so comically taken aback. He wheeled abruptly, to stare from me to the Governor, then back to his hostess again. “Your son’s? Am I to understand that it is he who is engaged to Miss Trant?”

Here at last the Governor did find his tongue.

“I have that honour,” he said, clearing his throat, taking a step forward, and looking down at the little Major just as some tawny Great Dane might have looked at Cariad—but no! No big dog can ever look as utterly silly—there’s no other word for it—as a man who doesn’t know what to say next. And he who had, it appeared, particularly wished to avoid being made to look a fool on this occasion—Well! He must admit that it was none of my doing that he stood there looking like that!

“Well, well, well! I suppose I shall have to grin and bear it and congratulate you, Waters,” rattled off Major Montresor. “I certainly do congratulate you!”

“Doesn’t feel sorry for you,” I added mentally, hoping the unspoken comment showed in the one glance I allowed myself to steal at my employer as I crossed over to sit on the low chintz couch beside his mother, while the visitor talked on.

“Still, you might have prepared me for this, my dear fellow. You might have given your heart-broken rival some warning. Let me down a bit gently, eh? about how you were robbing me of the one girl I’d hoped might solace my declining years. Met Miss Trant, Mrs. Waters? Bless my life, rather! Used to billet myself for months at Colonel Trant’s house in the old days—ripping old place it was, too; gorgeous beech avenue; lawn something like your own here, but sweeping away down to the river—oh, ripping! What’s become of the place now, Miss Monica; let, I suppose?”

“Sold,” I said, shortly.

Without looking up from the patch of carpet on which Missis’s little dog slumbered with his muzzle resting against my shoe, I could feel the change that came into my employer’s grey glance—the half-disconcerted “M’m. News to me, all this!” expression that just flicked across his face. His mother’s hand made a little movement towards mine—and for some reason I felt that she was a little sorry.... I was furious! Why on earth couldn’t this little he-gossip—though why they should understand by the word “gossip” an old woman, I never shall know—why couldn’t he allow these people to go on thinking that the typist her employer had chosen to honour had never been before inside any sort of house but one of a row of seventy or eighty, all with the same sort of pot-plants hiding what lay beyond the Nottingham lace curtained windows, with the same neat front door, and the same metaphorical wolf crouched grimly in front of it! Desperately I wished that something might suddenly deprive Major Montresor of the power of speech, only I suppose nothing ever could do that!

Evidently he wasn’t going to spare me anything. I was to stand full in the limelight of other days.

“Hope the new tenants will keep it up as they should, then, that’s all”—genially. “They took on the fishing with it, I suppose? ‘Everything went together.’ What? I see. Hope they’ll take as much pride as your poor father did in those magnificent hot-houses of his. Ah, I’ve never tasted peaches like those, anywhere else! Remember how you used to race me down to get the finest peach before breakfast, Monica? Yes, hang it all, I think I shall have to ask your leave to go on calling her that, Waters. Loved her from childhood’s hour, y’see. Her childhood’s, not mine, of course!”

“Oh,” murmured the Governor.

Miss Robinson would have been kept in high spirits for the next week by that “Oh.”

It didn’t amuse me much as I sat there, carrying out to the letter my promise to say nothing and look shy. I was feeling at least as embarrassed as I looked by the time tea was brought in and the girls made their appearance; Blanche with her fair hair unmanageably soft from its washing; Theo, as usual, all eyes for the visitor. I hoped they might distract his attention from me—they’re quite young enough!—but no! All the time he was sipping his tea and munching slice after slice of cake, the little Major continued to pour out comment after embarrassing comment upon my affairs, addressing himself chiefly now to the Governor.

He sat looking still more hopelessly uncomfortable and bigger than ever in contrast to the frail china tea-cup and the slice of wafer-like bread-and-butter in his clutch. Why do people allow men in at drawing-room teas? Why couldn’t those two have been having theirs in the billiard-room—the garage—anywhere—where I could have been saved from Major Montresor’s relentless flow of conversation?

“And to think I should have known you all these months without suspecting that your gain was to be my loss—no, no, I don’t mean the business part of it, my boy. I mean this engagement of yours, ha, ha! And then—funny thing! to be congratulating the wrong man.”

“Oh, were you?” burst suddenly, irrepressibly, from Theo, unable to check the following “Who?”

“Theo-dora, dear!”

“Ah, never mind, never mind!” took up the little Major, turning quickly to the child and smiling from her to me. “I don’t tell tales out of school, young lady. But brown eyes”—with another monocled glance at those wide search-lights under the yellow curls—“brown eyes always stand for fickleness! There must have been a dozen at least of us that you treated disgracefully, Monica, eh? One comfort is I’m not the only sufferer!”

He was not!

My heart sank lower and lower at the thought that this garrulous little blunderer was to stay for dinner. And the other expected guest, the outspoken uncle, was to be here for the whole week-end! What would he be like? Not worse than Major Montresor—that was the single ray of comfort. Nothing could be worse! Still, the two together—what a prospect!

Even as I was shuddering over it, the sound of some confused commotion was borne in to us from the hall; and then a loud, bluff, breezy voice positively shouted:

“Name? My good woman, you’re pretty new to this house, or you’d know my name. Same as your master’s. No! Don’t announce me. I’ll announce myself.” (As if this were necessary!) “Where are they all? Tea? Good! Young lady there too? Excellent!”

The door, this time, burst open, and in avalanched (it’s the only word) Uncle Albert Waters.