"Very well then, if I must I must--but she shall be younger than I am; or, at anyrate, not much older."

Mrs Stacey looked as if the suggestion had rendered her temporarily speechless.

"My dear," she finally gasped, "that would be worse than ever. Two young girls alone together in such a house--what a scandal there would be!"

"Why should there be any scandal?"

Miss Arnott's manner was a little defiant.

"If you cannot see for yourself I would rather you did not force me to explain. I can only a.s.sure you that if you are not extremely careful your innocence of evil will lead you into very great difficulties. What you want is a woman of mature age, of wide knowledge of the world; above all, of impregnable respectability. One who will, in a sense, fill the place of a mother, officiate--nominally--as the head of your household, who will help you in entertaining visitors--"

"There will be no visitors to entertain."

The elder lady indulged in what she intended for an enigmatic smile.

"When you have been at Exham Park for six months you will blush at the recollection of your own simplicity. At present I can only ask you to take my word for it that there will be shoals of visitors."

"Then that companion of mine will have to entertain them, that's all.

One thing I stipulate: you will have to discover her, I sha'n't."

To this Mrs Stacey willingly acceded. The companion was discovered. She was a Mrs Plummer; of whom her discoverer spoke in tones of chastened solemnity.

"Mrs Plummer is a distant connection of Mr Stacey. As such, he has known her all his life; and can therefore vouch for her in every respect. She has known trouble; and, as trouble always does, it has left its impress upon her. But she is a true woman, with a great heart and a beautiful nature. She is devoted to young people. You will find in her a firm friend, one who will make your interests her own, and who will be able and willing to give you sound advice on all occasions in which you find yourself in difficulty. I am convinced that you will become greatly attached to her; you will find her such a very present help in all times of trouble."

When, a few days before they went down together to Exham Park, Miss Arnott was introduced to Mrs Plummer in Mrs Stacey's drawing-room, in some way, which the young lady would have found it hard to define, she did not accord with her patroness's description. As her custom sometimes was, Miss Arnott plunged headforemost into the midst of things.

"I am told that you are to be my companion. I am very sorry for you, because I am not at all a companionable sort of creature."

"You need not be sorry. I think you will find that I understand the situation. Convention declines to allow a young woman to live alone in her own house; I shall be the necessary figurehead which the proprieties require. I shall never intrude myself. I shall be always in the background--except on occasions when I perceive that you would sooner occupy that place yourself. I shall be quick to see when those occasions arise; and, believe me, they will be more frequent than you may at this moment suspect. As for freedom--you will have more freedom under the aegis of my wing, which will be purely an affair of the imagination, than without it; since, under its imaginary shelter, you will be able to do all manner of things which, otherwise, you would hardly be able to do unchallenged. In fact, with me as cover, you will be able to do exactly as you please; and still remain in the inner sanctuary of Mrs Grundy."

Mrs Plummer spoke with a degree of frankness for which Miss Arnott was unprepared. She looked at her more closely, to find that she was a little woman, apparently younger than she had expected. Her dark brown hair was just beginning to turn grey. She was by no means ugly; the prominent characteristic of her face being the smallness of the features. She had a small mouth, thinly lipped, which, when it was closed, was tightly closed. She had a small, slenderly-fashioned aquiline nose, the nostrils of which were very fine and delicate. Her eyes were small and somewhat prominent, of a curious shade in blue, having about them a quality which suggested that, while they saw everything which was taking place around her, they served as masks which prevented you seeing anything which was transpiring at the back of them. She was dressed like a lady; she spoke like a lady; she looked a lady. Miss Arnott had not been long in her society before she perceived, though perhaps a little dimly, what Mrs Stacey had meant by saying that trouble had left its impress on her. There was in her voice, her face, her bearing, her manner, a something which spoke of habitual self-repression, which was quite possibly the outcome of some season of disaster which, for her, had changed the whole aspect of the world.

The day arrived, at last, when the heiress made her first appearance at Exham Park. The house had been shut up, and practically dismantled, for so long, that the task of putting it in order, collecting an adequate staff of servants, and getting it generally ready for its new mistress, occupied some time. Miss Arnott journeyed with Mrs Plummer; it was the first occasion on which they had been companions. The young lady's sensations, as the train bore her through the sunlit country, were of a very singular nature; the little woman in the opposite corner of the compartment had not the faintest notion how singular.

Mr Stacey met the travellers at the station, ushering them into a landau, the door of which was held open by a gigantic footman in powdered hair and silk stockings. Soon after they had started, Miss Arnott asked a question,--

"Is this my carriage?"

The gentleman replied, with some show of pomposity,--

"It is one of them, Miss Arnott, one of them. You will find, in your coach-houses, a variety of vehicles; but, of course, I do not for a moment pretend that you will find there every kind of conveyance you require. Indeed, the idea has rather been that you should fill the inevitable vacancies in accordance with the dictates of your own taste."

"Whose idea is the flour and the silk stockings?"

She was looking up at the coachman and footman on the box.

"The--eh?--oh, I perceive; you allude to the men's liveries. The liveries, Miss Arnott, were chosen by your late uncle; I think you will admit that they are very handsome ones. It has been felt that, in deference to him, they should be continued, until you thought proper to rule otherwise."

"Then I'm afraid that they won't be continued much longer. In such matters my uncle's tastes were--I hope it isn't treason to say so--perhaps a trifle florid. Mine are all the other way. I don't like floured heads, silk stockings, or crimson velvet breeches; I like everything about me to be plain to the verge of severity. My father's ideal millionaire was mine; shall I tell you what that was?"

"If you will be so good."

"He held that a man with five thousand a year, if he were really a gentleman, would do his best not to allow it to be obvious to the man who only had five hundred that he had more than he had."

"There is something to be said for that point of view; on the other hand, there is a great deal to be said for the other side."

"No doubt. There is always a great deal to be said for the other side.

I am only hinting at the one towards which I personally incline."

Presently they were pa.s.sing along an avenue of trees. "Where are we now?"

"We are on your property--this is the drive to the house."

"There seems to be a good deal of it."

"It is rather more than three miles long; there are lodge gates at either end; the house stands almost in the centre."

"It seems rather pretty."

"Pretty! Exham Park is one of the finest seats in the country. That is why your uncle purchased it."

After a while they came in sight of the house.

"Is that the house? It looks more like a palace. Fancy my living all alone in a place like that! Now I understand why a companion was an absolute necessity. It strikes me, Mrs Plummer, that you will want a companion as much as I shall. What shall we two lone, lorn women do in that magnificent abode?"

As they stepped in front of the splendid portico there came down the steps a man who held his hat in his hand, with whom Mr Stacey at once went through the ceremony of introduction.

"Miss Arnott, this is Mr Arthur Cavanagh, your steward."

She found herself confronted by a person who was apparently not much more than thirty years of age; erect, well-built, with short, curly hair, inclined to be ruddy, a huge moustache, and a pair of the merriest blue eyes she had ever seen. When they were in the house, and Mr Stacey was again alone with the two ladies, he observed, with something which approximated to an air of mystery,--

"You must understand, Miss Arnott, that, as regards Mr Cavanagh, we--my partners and myself--have been in a delicate position. He was your uncle's particular _protege_. I have reason to know that he came to England at his express request. We have hardly seen our way--acting merely on our own initiative--to displace him."

"Displace him? Why should he be displaced? Isn't he a good steward?"

"As regards that, good stewards are not difficult to find. Under the circ.u.mstances, the drawbacks in his case are, I may almost say, notorious. He is young, even absurdly young; he is not ill-looking, and he is unmarried."

Miss Arnott smiled, as if Mr Stacey had been guilty of perpetrating a joke.

"It's not his fault that he is young; it's not my fault that I am young. It's nice not to be ill-looking, and--I rather fancy--it's nice to be unmarried." She said to Mrs Plummer as, a little later, they were going upstairs together, side by side, "What odd things Mr Stacey does say. Fancy regarding them as drawbacks being young, good-looking and unmarried. What can he be thinking of?"

"I must refer you to him. It is one of the many questions to which I am unable to supply an answer of my own."

When she was in her own room, two faces persisted in getting in front of Miss Arnott's eyes. One was the face of Mr Arthur Cavanagh, the other was that of the man who was serving a term of twelve months' hard labour, and which was always getting, as it were, between her and the daylight.

CHAPTER IV