"But you told me that he had great prospects."

"No, my dear, you said _you_ had heard that he had. I remember it quite well."

"Don't be an idiot, Barmouth," exclaimed her ladyship. "Listen to me."

"Yes, my dear," he said, looking at her nervously, and then stooping to rub his leg, an act she stopped by giving his hand a smart slap.

"How can you be so offensive," she cried, in a low angry voice; "it is quite disgusting. Listen to me."

"Yes, my dear."

"I went to see Lady Merritty about this matter, and Lady Rigby."

"About my gout, my dear?"

"Do you wish to make me angry, Barmouth?"

"No, my dear."

"I went to see her about this young man--this Melton, and Lady Merritty told me she believed he had most brilliant expectations. But I'll be even with her for this. Oh, it was too bad!"

"What's the matter?" said Tom, joining them.

"Matter!" cried the irate woman. "Why, evidently to gratify some old spite, that wretched woman, Lady Merritty, has been palming off upon us this Mr Melton as a millionaire, and on the strength of it all I have encouraged him here, and only just now refused an offer made by Sir Grantley Wilters. A beggar! An upstart!"

"Bravo, mother!" cried Tom, enthusiastically. "So he is, a contemptible, weak-kneed, supercilious beggar. I hate him."

"Hate him?" said her ladyship. "Why, you always made him your greatest friend."

"What, old Wilters?" cried Tom.

"Stuff! This Melton," retorted her ladyship.

"Bah!" exclaimed Tom. "I meant that thin weedy humbug, Wilters."

"And I meant that wretched impostor, Melton," cried her ladyship, angrily.

"Look here, mother," cried Tom. "Charley Melton is my friend, and he is here at your invitation. Let me tell you this: if you insult him, if I don't go bang out on the croquet lawn and kick Wilters. Damme, that I will."

"He's a brave dashing young fellow, my son Tom," said his lordship to himself. "I wish I dared--"

"Barmouth," moaned her ladyship, "help me to the house. My son, to whom I should look for support, turns upon his own mother. Alas, that I should live to see such a day!"

"Yes, my dear," said Lord Barmouth, in a troubled way, as he offered the lady his arm. "Tom, my boy, don't speak so rudely to your mamma," he continued, looking back, and they moved slowly towards the open drawing-room window.

As her ladyship left the garden, Joby came slowly up from under the laurels, and laid his head on Tom's knee, for that gentleman had thrown himself on a garden seat.

"Hallo, Joby," he said "you here? I tell you what, old man, if you would go and stick your teeth into Wilters' calf--Bah! he hasn't got a calf!--into his leg, and give him hydrophobia, you'd be doing your master a good turn."

From that hour a gloom came over the scene. Lady Barmouth was scrupulously polite, but Charley Melton remarked a change. There were no more rides out with Maude; no more pleasant _tete-a-tetes_: all was smiles carefully iced, and he turned at last to Tom for an explanation.

"I can't understand it," he said; "a few days ago my suit seemed to find favour in her eyes; now her ladyship seems to ridicule the very idea of my pretentions."

"Yes," said Tom savagely; and he bit his cigar right in half.

"But why, in heaven's name?"

"Heard you were poor."

"Well, I never pretended otherwise."

"No," said Tom, snappishly; "but I suppose some one else did."

"Who?" cried Melton, angrily.

"Shan't tell," cried Tom; "but mind your eye, my boy, or she'll throw you over."

"She shall not," cried Melton, firmly, "for though there is no formal engagement, I hold to your sister, whom I love with all my heart."

That evening Charley Melton was called away to see his father, who had been taken seriously ill.

"So very sorry," said her ladyship, icily. "But these calls must be answered. Poor Mr Melton, I am so grieved. Maude, my darling, Sir Grantley is waiting to play that game of chess with you."

The consequence was, that Charley Melton's farewell to Maude was spoken with eyes alone, and he left the house feeling that he was doomed never to enter it again as a staying guest, while the enemy was in the field ready to sap and mine his dearest hopes.

CHAPTER FIVE.

BACK IN TOWN--THE DEMON.

Lady Maude Diphoos sat in her dressing-room in Portland Place with her long brown hair let down and spread all around her like some beautiful garment designed by nature to hide her soft white bust and arms, which were crossed before her as she gazed in the long dressing-gla.s.s draped with pink muslin.

For the time being that dressing-gla.s.s seemed to be a framed picture in which could be seen the sweet face of a beautiful woman, whose blue eyes were pensive and full of trouble. It was the picture of one greatly in deshabille; but then it was the lady's dressing-room, and there was no one present but the maid.

The chamber was charmingly furnished, enough showing in the gla.s.s to make an effective background to the picture; and to add to the charm there was a delicious odour of blended scents that seemed to be exhaled by the princ.i.p.al flower in the room--she whose picture shone in the muslin-draped frame.

There is nothing very new, it may be presumed, for a handsome woman to be seated before her gla.s.s with her long hair down, gazing straight before her into the reflector; but this was an exceptional case, for Maude Diphoos was looking right into her mirror and could not see herself. Sometimes what she saw was Charley Melton, but at the present moment the face of Dolly Preen, her maid, as that body stood half behind her chair, brushing away at her mistress' long tresses, which crackled and sparkled electrically, and dropping upon them certain moist pearls which she as rapidly brushed away.

Dolly Preen was a pretty, plump, dark girl, with a certain rustic beauty of her own such as was found sometimes in the sunny village by the Hurst, from which she had been taken to become young ladies' maid, a sort of moral pincushion, into which Mademoiselle Justine Framboise, her ladyship's attendant, stuck venomed verbal pins.

But Dolly did not look pretty in the gla.s.s just now, for her nose was very red, her eyes were swollen up, and as she sniffed, and choked, and uttered a low sob from time to time, she had more the air of a severely punished school-girl than a prim young ladies' maid in an aristocratic family.

Dolly wept and dropped tears on the beautiful soft tangled hair at which Sir Grantley Wilters had often cast longing glances. Then she brushed them off again, and took out her handkerchief to blow her nose--a nose which took a great deal of blowing, as it was becoming overcharged with tears.

"Oh, Dolly, Dolly," said her mistress at last, "this is very, very sad."

At this moment through the open window, faintly heard, there floated, softened by distance, that delicious, now forgotten, but once popular strain--"I'm a young man from the country, but you don't get over me."