The Spider and the Fly. Garvice Charles
it with my presence."
"I thought you'd die if I didn't keep you company, and so, as I like to borrow your money, and don't want you to die, I'll go. I say, Leicester, haven't the Lacklands a small place in Herefordshire near you? What do they call it – Coombe Lodge?"
"Perhaps they have," said Mr. Leicester. "I believe that there are few counties which are not honored by the Lacklands in that way. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, merely for idle curiosity."
"H'm! you promised to come and spend a week or two with me," said Mr. Leicester. "Will you come?"
"Oh, chaff away," said Bertie Fairfax, good-temperedly. "But I'll take you seriously; I will come."
"Done," said Leicester, still chaffing as his light-hearted friend called it. "I'm going down next week. Come with me?"
"Thanks," said Bertie, "I'll think it over. I'll come and cut you out with the Mildmay heiress! Hah! hah!"
He laughed as Leicester turned to him with a look of mild surprise.
"You didn't know that I was posted up in that intelligence! I've a dozen little birds who bring me news night and morning, and I've heard – "
"Pshaw!" interrupted Leicester. "I've dined with mamma and papa at Mildmay Park, and that – that's positively all. My dear Bertie. I am not a marrying man; now you are, but, mark me, Lady Ethel Boisdale is not meant for you."
"Thank you," said Bertie, "I'm very much obliged, but who said that she was?"
And with a light laugh the subject was dropped.
That night when Lady Ethel Boisdale entered the magnificent saloons of Lady Darefield's mansion in Park Place she looked round the room with calm, yet expectant eyes, and dropped them very suddenly as they met the also searching and expectant gaze of Mr. Bertie Fairfax.
It is one thing to exchange glances and smiles with a belle in a ballroom, but quite another matter to get a dance with her.
The saloons were crowded by the best of the land, eligible parties were in abundance, and Mr. Bertie Fairfax, handsome, sweet-natured and lovable though he was, found himself somewhat out in the cold.
It was not an unusual position for him, and on other occasions he had laughed good-naturedly in the smoking-room of his club, saying that there had been too many iron pitchers going down the stream for such a fragile, unsatisfactory delf affair as himself to hope for success.
But to-night it was different.
He wanted to dance with Lady Ethel Boisdale; why he could scarcely have told.
She was very beautiful; but he had seen faces far more lovely even than hers; she was very graceful, tall and full of a sweet, proud dignity, but Bertie Fairfax had seen some of the ladies of the Papal court, and remembered their faces.
She was, as it happened, just the realization of the young fellow's ideal, and – yet it must be written – he was already half in love with her.
Round her, forming a sort of bodyguard or watchdog, continually hovered in majestic grace the Countess of Lackland, her mamma.
Bertie was aware that her ladyship knew all about him, and that it was utterly vain to hope that he might be allowed to fill a vacant line in the Lady Ethel's little dancing programme.
He watched her dancing for some time, watched her as she spun round in two waltzes with Leicester Dodson for her partner, then the disappointed Bertie made his way out on to the corridor and leaned against the balustrade, gnawing his tawny mustache and trying to make up his mind to go to his club.
Just then, as he had almost decided, Leicester Dodson came out, hot and flushed, but with his usual grave reserve about his mouth and eyes.
"Ah! Bert!" he said. "Taking a cooler; you're wise in your generation. They ought to keep a weighing machine outside in the lobbies, so that a man could see how much he'd fined down after each dance. I've lost pounds since the Lancers. It's hotter than a siesta hour in Madrid. You look cool."
"I don't feel particularly hot. I haven't been dancing. I feel like the skeleton at the feast; I think I shall carry my bones to the club. Will you come?"
"I'm engaged for another turn with Lady Ethel Boisdale," said Leicester Dodson, leaning over the balustrade and skillfully concealing a yawn.
"Lucky dog," said Bertie, enviously.
"Eh?" said Leicester. "By the way, you said she'd half promised you a dance; you don't mean to say you haven't called for payment, Bert; she's the best-looking woman in the room, and the most sensible – "
"Too sensible to dance with Mr. Fairfax, or her mamma has had all her training trouble for nothing," said Bertie.
"Nonsense! She's looking this way; go and ask her, man. I'll wait until the waltz is over, then we'll go on to the club, for, between you and me and that hideous statue, which is all out of drawing, by the way, I have had pretty well enough; and you seem, to judge by your face, to have had a great deal too much."
Bertie, without a word left his friend, fought his way through the crowd, and, after some maneuvering, gained Lady Ethel's side.
"Have you saved me that dance which you half promised me this morning?" he said.
Lady Ethel turned – she did not know that he was so near – and a smile, bright, but transient, passed across her face.
"There is one dance – it is only a quadrille," she said; "all the waltzes are gone."
"I am grateful for the quadrille only, and do not deserve that," he said.
"I thought you had gone," said Ethel. "My brother was looking for you just now, and I told him that I had seen you go out."
"I was in the corridor cooling," said Bertie Fairfax.
"Is it cool there?" she asked; "I thought it could not be cool anywhere to-night."
Then Lord Fitz came up, his simple face all flushed with the heat and the last dance.
"Hello, Bert, I've been looking for you. I say – "
"You must tell me when the dance is over," said Bertie, "there is no time."
And he led his partner to her place in a set.
A quadrille has the advantage over its more popular sister, the waltz; it allows of conversation.
Bertie could talk well; he had always something light and pleasant to say, and he had a musical voice in which to say it.
He was generally too indolent to talk much, but neither his natural laziness nor the heat seemed to weigh upon him to-night, and he talked about this matter and on that until Ethel, who was not only beautiful but cultivated, was delighted.
Too delighted, perhaps, for my Lady Lackland, from her place of espionage in a corner, put up her eyeglass and scanned her daughter's rapt and sometimes smiling face with something that was not altogether a pleased expression.
"Who is that good-looking young fellow with whom Ethel's dancing?" she asked of the dowager Lady Barnwell, a noted scandalmonger, and an authority on every one's position and eligibilities.
"That is young Fairfax. Handsome, is he not? Pity he's so poor."
"Poor, is he?" said the countess, grimly.
"Oh, yes, dreadfully. Works for his living – a writer, artist, or something of that sort. Really, I don't know exactly. He is in the Temple. Very amusing companion, evidently. Lady Ethel looks charmed with her partner."
"Yes," said Lady Lackland, coldly, in her heart of hearts she determined that her daughter should receive a lecture upon the imprudence of wasting a dance upon such doubtful and dangerous men as Bertie Fairfax.
Meanwhile, Ethel was enjoying herself, and when Bertie, whose handsome face was beaming with quiet satisfaction and pleasure, softly suggested that they should try the corridor, Lady Ethel, after a moment's hesitation, on the score of prudence, replied with an affirmative, and they sought the lobby.
Here there were a seat for the lady and a leaning-post for Mr. Fairfax, and the conversation which