Chapter Eleven.

The Head of the Family arrived next day. He was a very stolid and bucolic-looking person, a breeder of prize oxen and fat sheep. He commiserated with poor Isobel in a heavy fashion.

“Strange thing going off like that,” he commented. “We are a very long-lived family. But your father was always a little bit different from the rest of us when he was a boy.”

Isobel said nothing in reply. She had seen several members of her father’s family at rare intervals, and she had not been greatly impressed by them. The only one she had really liked was Mrs Farquhar, the mother of her Cousin Maurice. She was a sweet, charming woman, the favourite sister of her dead father.

Mr Clandon fingered his moustache a little nervously. “I suppose you know all about his affairs, my dear? He has left you comfortably off, eh? He came into quite a tidy little bit when my father died.”

Isobel smiled faintly. Mr Clandon wanted to be assured that he was not going to have a penniless niece thrust upon his hands. She knew all about her father’s affairs. Had not the dear old General spent hours in instructing her as to the careful management of her small patrimony, when anything happened to him?

“Quite comfortably off, uncle, thanks to his loving care. With my simple wants, I shall be rich.”

“Very relieved to hear it,” said the bucolic Mr Clandon. “And, of course, you are going to marry a rich man. Lord Saxham, I understand, is one of the wealthiest peers in England.”

“Reported to be,” corrected Isobel gently. “The estates are very heavily encumbered, and there are living three dowagers, and other pensioners who draw their portions.”

“God bless me,” said Mr Clandon, who was a very thrifty person. “What a frightful incubus! Then I take it your fiancé won’t get very much from that quarter?”

“Very little, I expect. But he will inherit a large fortune from his great-aunt, Lady Henrietta, a very old lady, over eighty.”

The Head of the Family looked relieved. He gazed with a certain respectful admiration at his good-looking niece. He had always recognised that she was a very pretty girl. At the present moment, grief had made great inroads on her good looks. But he thought somewhat sorrowfully of his own large family of girls, who were rather of the dumpling-faced order. They would have to seek their mates amongst the small squirearchy.

“I suppose my poor brother made a will?” was Mr Clandon’s next question.

“Oh, yes, he made his will years ago, after my mother’s death,” was Isobel’s answer. “He left her everything. When she died, he left me everything.”

“Quite right and proper,” observed Mr Clandon. He was very dull, but quite an upright and just person. He was relieved to find that his brother was more business-like than he thought. “And he has appointed executors, I suppose?”

“Yes, two—a very old friend, and my cousin, Maurice Farquhar.”

“Ah, Maurice Farquhar, Anne’s son! Yes, of course, your father and Anne were always great comrades. Maurice is getting on very well at the bar, I hear. You have seen a lot of him, I suppose. Somehow, we seemed to lose sight of Anne. We were such a big family, you know; and big families get scattered.”

Uncle Clandon had not the delicacy of Maurice or Lady Mary. He cordially accepted Isobel’s invitation to put him up. He was a very thrifty and careful person, and had no fancy to waste his money in expensive hotels, now that he knew his niece was left comfortably off.

The General was buried amongst his forbears in the family vault. When the sad business was over, Lady Mary took Isobel away to Ticehurst Park.

Guy Rossett had rushed over for the funeral, but he was so engrossed in diplomatic affairs that he had to leave immediately after.

The lovers had little time to say anything to each other. But Isobel was very much touched with Guy’s delicate feeling.

“Wasn’t he a darling to come over?” she said to Lady Mary. “I should have forgiven him if he hadn’t, but I love him ever so much more because he did.”

To which somewhat incoherent declaration Mary had replied with her usual air of experience and worldly wisdom.

“All men have something bad in them, and most women. But I think dear old Guy has the least bad in him that a man can have.”

Lord Saxham was very kind, very gentle, very paternal to his son’s betrothed. He had only seen General Clandon once, and he could not pretend to feel any great interest in him. But that sudden death reminded him that he also was nearing the goal. The remembrance of that fact softened, at least temporarily, his asperities, curbed his explosive temper.

The two girls were sitting in Mary’s cosy little boudoir. It was a very charming room, reflecting in every detail the delicate and discriminating taste of the young chatelaine.

“Mary, I can never go back to Eastbourne. I loved that little home so much while he was there. But now it would be torture. I should see him in every room, and I should want to cry out to him and he could not speak to me. Oh, I don’t think you can guess what we were to each other.”

“Have you thought of anything, dear?” asked Mary in her kind, gentle voice. She knew the girl was half hysterical with her sorrow.

“I should so love to go to Spain to be near Guy. Did I tell you dear father wanted to take me himself, only a few days before he died, and the doctor forbade him. Oh, Mary, if you could only come too?”

“I would love to,” said Mary slowly. “But you know as well as I do that my duty lies here. My father is old, I dare not leave him, and, in spite of his little faults of temper, he has been a dear, kind parent.”

“I understand perfectly,” was Isobel’s answer. “But, you see, nothing now ties me to England. All the world meant to me only two people, my father and Guy. Now, only Guy is left. I would love to be near him, even if he did not know.” Mary pondered a little. “I wonder if that nice cousin of yours could help in the matter?”

Isobel caught at the suggestion at once. “Yes, he is very clever. I will go up and see him to-morrow.”

“No need for that, dear. I will send him a wire at once, asking him to come down to-morrow to see you.”

“But he is always so frightfully busy,” cried Isobel.

“Bah!” said the more practical Lady Mary. “I know he is going to do wonderful things in the future, but he has plenty of time. When I send him that wire, he will come.”

Lady Mary sent off the telegram. It was quite a little excitement in her usually placid life. Farquhar came down as quickly as he could. He had handed over his briefs to a friend.

Lord Saxham greeted him kindly, being apprised by his daughter of his arrival. The poor old Earl was very subdued by now; he was quite prepared to make any amount of new acquaintances. His daughter had affairs well in hand.

Lady Mary plunged into matters at once.

“Isobel doesn’t want to go back to Eastbourne—that is quite natural. She is eager to go to Spain, to be near Guy. Of course nothing binds her to this country now.”

Mr Farquhar was not to be hurried. His judicial mind, if it worked a little slowly, also worked very surely.

“I should not say that, at the present moment, Spain was a very desirable country for anybody, still less so for a young and unprotected woman.” He looked rather disapprovingly at Isobel for having harboured such daring thoughts.

“I shall take a maid, one of the servants we had at Eastbourne,” said Isobel, in a rather quaking voice. She had sense enough to see that, at the best, it was a wild venture.

Lady Mary shot at him an appealing glance. “Don’t you think you had better let Isobel have her way? And I expect she will have it whether you approve or not.”

There was also a little something more in that glance than Mary was quite conscious of. And the little something was this: Why was Maurice Farquhar so foolishly in love with Isobel, while Isobel was so devoted to Guy Rossett?

Farquhar looked from the younger to the elder girl. Lady Mary was very comely, she had behind her a long line of illustrious ancestry. She had been very sweet and gracious to him.

“Do you approve this rather daring scheme, Lady Mary?”

“On the whole, I think I do. Of course, I recognise the objections to it. But Isobel cannot go back to Eastbourne. If she stays in England she will be eating her heart out.”

Farquhar was, perhaps unconsciously, swayed by Lady Mary. He made up his mind to regard the suggestion with some degree of favour.

“I will do all I can to help. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing of Spain. But I have a friend who knows it from A to Z. I will write to him and see how I can get her planted there.”

Of course, Lady Mary knew that Moreno was the friend. Isobel thanked him warmly.

“How sweet and dear of you,” she said. “Of course you understand, now my dear father is gone, there is nothing left but Guy.”

Farquhar understood. His cousin had spoken with the unconscious cruelty of the self-centred lover. She had not considered Maurice’s feelings at all.

Farquhar rose. “I will write the letter at once, if you will permit me.” He turned to Lady Mary, who led him to a small morning-room, and spread paper and envelopes before him.

“You are very fond of Isobel?” he asked, before he began his letter, a rather long one, to Moreno.

“I love her like a younger sister, Mr Farquhar,” replied Mary enthusiastically. “And, of course, she very soon will be my sister. And, moreover, being a woman, I love all true lovers. She and Guy are so absorbed in each other.”

“Ah!” said the youthful barrister shortly. “And you love your brother too?”

“Dear old Guy! I simply adore him. He is one of the most lovable of men.”

Farquhar looked at her a little quizzically. “You have, I should say, a most beautiful nature; you see good in everything and everybody, don’t you?” Lady Mary shook her head. “No. I am more discriminating than you think. I fancy I can always tell the false from the true.”

“I wonder how you would reckon me up?”

“I will tell you, if you really wish,” was Mary’s candid answer.

“Yes, I do wish, honestly.”

“You are frightfully, painfully just. You are terribly cautious. And—” She paused, and a faint blush spread over her cheek.

“Don’t spoil it, please. Finish what you were going to say. I can see you are a very discerning critic.”

Mary was a long time before she would answer. Then she turned away, and her blush deepened.

“I should say loyalty and honesty were your greatest characteristics. That you would be a sincere friend and a very generous enemy.”

She was leaving the room, but Farquhar darted up and detained her.

“I say, you know, that is the very greatest compliment I have ever had paid me,” he said, roused from his usual impassivity. “Will you think I am taking a liberty if I suggest that we shake hands on it?”

“Oh, not at all,” said Mary, in a rather fluttering way, as she put her hand in his.

She left the room, and he set about to write his letter to Moreno. But the disturbing vision of Lady Mary, with that faint flush on her cheek, appeared several times between the sentences of the rather lengthy epistle. That letter went out by the evening post.

About the same time that these events were happening at the Park, Ferdinand Contraras was taking farewell of his family. He explained to them that he was going to Spain, he could not say how long he would be away. It might be a few days, it might be weeks. He had left plenty of money in the bank for their needs.

His wife and daughter watched him out of the house without any signs of emotion. To these two, who should have been his nearest and dearest, he had long appeared as a man out of touch with realities.

When the car rolled out of sight, Madame Contraras turned to her daughter.

“I have a presentiment, Inez, he will never come back. He is going to give his life as well as his fortune to this insane cause.”

Inez, who was rather callous, shrugged her shapely shoulders. “Why did you marry him, mother? He must have been mad then.”

“The madness of strong, impetuous youth, my child. I never thought it would last through middle and old age.”