Lady Beatrice seized and stroked the fat hand lying upon the pink silk coverlet.

"You darling, ducky Aunt Seraphim! Just that! I want to wear my enchanting boy's dress--I must be Ganymede, the cupbearer!"

"Well, I'll be no party to it--be off with you. I have serious affairs to settle with Miss Bush and have no further time to waste."

Lady Beatrice saluted her obediently and got off the bed once more; she was laughing softly.

"Gerard is coming to lunch," Lady Garribardine called to her, "and Lao Delemar, and they are going to see a winter exhibition afterwards."

"I can't stand Lao," Lady Beatrice cooed from the doorway; "she pretends to be so full of s.e.x and other dreadful natural things, she makes my innocent aesthetic flesh creep--Gerard always had fruity tastes--Bye-bye, dear Aunt Sarah!" And kissing her finger-tips she was at last gone, leaving Katherine wondering.

They had said very severe things to each other and neither was the least angry really--Gladys and Fred were not wont to bicker so.

"Call up Mr. Strobridge, Miss Bush--he will not have left home yet--you know his number--ask him to speak to me at once."

Katherine obeyed--she was an expert with the telephone and never raised her voice. Mr. Strobridge was soon at the other end of it, and she was about to hand the receiver to her employer when that lady frowned and told her to give the message herself.

"My right ear is troublesome to-day," she said, "you must do the business for me, Miss Bush."

"h.e.l.lo! Her Ladyship wishes me to give you a message--will you wait a moment until I take it?"

"h.e.l.lo! Yes."

"Say he is to come half an hour earlier to lunch to-day. I have things to talk over with him about to-night--He is to go to this ridiculous ball in my box--tell him so."

Katherine repeated the exact message.

"Tell her I am very much annoyed about the whole thing," Mr. Strobridge returned, "and have decided not to be present myself."

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Lady Garribardine, when she was told, and, seizing the receiver from Katherine's hand, she roared:

"Don't be a fool, G.--it is too late in the day to stand upon your dignity--I'll tell you the rest when you come to lunch."--Upon which she closed the communication and called for Stirling.

"Take all this rubbish of letters away, Miss Bush--I must get up and cope with the humiliating defects of old age--you may go."

Katherine had a very busy morning in front of her. She sat steadily typing and writing in the secretary's room, until her lunch was brought and even then she hardly stopped to eat it, but on her own way to the dining-room Lady Garribardine came in. She looked at the hardly tasted food and blinked her black eyes:

"Tut, tut! You must eat, child--_pas trop de zele_--Finish your pudding--and then bring me those two letters upon the report of the Wineberger charity--into the dining-room--You can have your coffee with us--Mr. Strobridge and I are alone, Mrs. Delemar is not coming, after all--By the way, do you have everything you want? The coffee they give you is good, eh? Servants always skimp the beans when left to themselves."

"I have everything I want, thank you--but I have not been offered coffee," Katherine replied.

Lady Garribardine's face a.s.sumed an indignant expression, and she sharply rang the bell.

"These are the things that happen when one does not know of them--you ought to have complained to me before, Miss Bush!"

Thomas answered the bell and whitened perceptibly when he saw his mistress's face. He was asked why Miss Bush had not been served with coffee, in a voice which froze his tongue, and the only excuse he could give was a stammering statement that Miss Arnott had not taken any, which aroused further wrath.

"Pampered wretches!" Lady Garribardine exclaimed. "Anything to save themselves trouble! I will speak to Bronson about this--but see that it never happens again, Thomas!" And the trembling footman was allowed to leave the room.

"I am glad you did not try to defend them, as the foolish Arnott would have done," Her Ladyship flashed. "She was always standing between my just wrath and the servant's delinquencies, always shielding them--one would have thought she was of their cla.s.s. The result was no one in the house respected her--good creature though she was. See that you are respected, young woman, and obeyed when obedience is your due."

"I will try to be"--and an inscrutable expression played round Katherine's full red mouth. "I would never shield anyone from what he deserved."

"It seems to me you understand a good deal, girl!--Well, come into the dining-room in half an hour," and, smiling her comprehending smile, Lady Garribardine left the room.

"G., that is a wonderful creature, that new secretary of mine--have you noticed her yet?" she said later on to her nephew when they had finished the serious part of their luncheon, and she had rung her enamelled bell for the automatic entrance of the servants from behind the screen--they were only allowed in the room to change the courses at this meal.

Numbers of politicians and diplomats frequently dropped in and preferred to discuss affairs with their hostess alone.

"No--not much," Mr. Strobridge admitted when they were again by themselves and coffee had come. "I thought she did my letter to the _Times_ remarkably well, though."

"She has not done anything badly yet--when she makes a mistake in social trifles she always realises it, and corrects herself. Her reading aloud was grotesque at first, but I have never had to tell her how to p.r.o.nounce a word twice. I lay traps for her; she is as smart as paint and as deep as a well."

"A treasure indeed--" but Mr. Strobridge's voice was absent, he was uninterested and was still smarting under the annoyance of the situation created by his wife.

Of course he could not make her stay at home by force--and he hated the idea of Ganymede and the bare legs. He reverted to the topic once more.

"I would really rather not go to see the freakish crew to-night," he said. "Beatrice is doing it merely from obstinacy; she is not like Hebe Vermont, a ridiculous _poseuse_, crazy for notoriety; she is a refined creature generally, though wearying. This is just to defy me."

"As I have always told you, G., you should never have married, you are made for an ardent and devoted lover, with a suitable change of inamorata every six months. In the role of husband you are--frankly--a little ridiculous! You have no authority. As Miss Bush put it just now about something else, you usually act from good nature, not from a sense of justice; and Beatrice snaps her fingers at you and goes her own way."

"I don't mind as a rule--indeed, I am grateful to her for doing so. Can there be anything more tedious and bourgeois than the recognised relation of husband and wife? The only things which make intimacy with a woman agreeable are difficulty and intermittency. Bee fortunately expects nothing from me, and I expect nothing from her, beyond acting in a manner suitable to her race and station, and I don't think Ganymede in his original costume at an Artist Models' ball a harmonious part for my wife or a Thorvil to adopt."

"You don't know how to manage her, and you are too indifferent to try--so you had better swallow your outraged dignity and come with me in my box after all. Lao will be there and you can sit and whisper in the back of it." And Lady Garribardine lit her cigarette, but Mr. Strobridge protested in whimsical distress:

"Heaven forbid! Would you kill this dawning romance, Seraphim? If Lao and I are to be drafted off like a pair of fiances, the whole charm is gone. I wish to _menager_ my emotions so that they may last over the Easter recess; after that I shall be too busy for them to matter. Don't be ruthless, sweet Aunt!"

Lady Garribardine laughed and at that moment Katherine Bush came in, the finished letters in her hand.

"Give Miss Bush some coffee, G., while I look over them," and Her Ladyship indicated the tray which had been placed by an attentive Bronson close to her hand.

Mr. Strobridge did as he was asked. His thoughts were far away, and beyond displaying the courtesy he used to all women, he never noticed Katherine at all. She was quite ordinary looking still--with the screwed up mop of ashen-hued hair, and her plain dark blouse, unless you chanced to meet her strange and beautiful eyes.

For some reason she felt a little piqued, the man's manner and phrasing attracted her, his voice was superlatively cultivated, and his words chosen with polished grace. Here was a person from whom something could be learned. She would have wished to have talked with him unrestrainedly and alone. She remained silent and listened when aunt and nephew again took up the ball of conversation together. How she would love to be able to converse like that! They were so sparkling--never in earnest seemingly, all was light as air, while Mr.

Strobridge made allusions and quotations which showed his brilliant erudition, and Katherine hearkened with all her ears. Some of them she recognized and others she determined to look up, but his whole p.r.o.nunciation of the sentences sounded different from what she had imagined they would be when she had read them to herself.

This was the first time she had heard a continued conversation between two people who she had already decided were worthy of note, and this half-hour stood out as the first milestone in her progress.

Presently they all rose--and she went back to her work with the sense of the magnitude of her task in climbing to the pinnacle of a great lady and cultivated woman of the world.

For a few moments she felt a little depressed--then a thought came to her.

"He could help me to knowledge of literature and art--he could teach me true culture--and since he is married there can be no stupid love-making. But for this he must first realise that I exist and for that when my chance comes I must arrest his attention through the ears and the eyes. He must for once look at me and see not only his aunt's secretary--and then I can learn from him all that I desire to know."

That this course of action could possibly cause the proposed teacher pain in the future never entered her head.

CHAPTER VIII