The Yellow Holly. Hume Fergus
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who had no nerves to speak of and a very strong will, laughed her out of this folly.
"Now my dear Margery," she said, when the girl was seated, "I want you to pay the greatest attention to what I am about to say, and to repeat nothing of my conversation."
"You are my best friend," said Margery, looking at the peaked white face with adoring eyes. "I shall do whatever you say."
"Good child," said Miss Bull, patting the hand that was laid confidingly on her lap. "Listen, child. Lord Derrington is the owner of this house, and he leased it to your aunt by the year-a very strange arrangement, for which there ought to be some explanation. I am going to seek it from Lord Derrington."
"But he won't tell you anything, Miss Bull."
The old maid tightened her thin lips. "I think he will," she said in a rather ominous manner; "at all events, there is no harm in my trying. With regard to the annuity-"
"What annuity?"
"I forgot-you don't know about that. Well, there is no need that you should. But it seems that Lord Derrington allowed your late aunt an annuity of five hundred a year. I don't know the reason why he did so, and as such reason is not pertinent to matters in hand I do not wish to know, but the annuity must lapse. It is not likely that Lord Derrington will continue it to you." She paused and looked at the girl. "Your parents are dead, I believe, Margery?"
"Yes. For many years I have been with my aunt. She was my only relative, dear Miss Bull."
"All the better. I don't want other people interfering," said Miss Bull in her icy way. "Well, Margery, I shall see if I can get Lord Derrington to renew the lease to you, and I shall be your security. With the money in hand-I have counted it, and with that in the bank it amounts to two hundred pounds-we can continue the boarding-house. A few of the boarders will go, but many will remain, as they will not get anywhere so cheap a place. You will be the nominal head of the house, but in reality I shall manage. Do you agree?"
"I am your slave," cried Margery with melodramatic intensity.
"You are my friend," said Miss Bull, her thin lips relaxing. "I am a lonely woman, Margery, though I still have a surviving sister-" her lips tightened again as she said this-"and I love you, my dear, for your goodness. Well, we shall keep on the boarding-house, and you, poor child, will be preserved from the terrible life which would otherwise be your portion."
"How good you are-how good you are!"
"A little selfish also," said Miss Bull, kissing the girl. "I do not wish to leave this place or lose you. I am growing old, and a change would break my heart."
She said this as though she really believed that she possessed such an organ. Mrs. Jersey always said that a heart was lacking in Miss Bull's maiden breast: but certainly the way in which the old woman was treating the helpless girl showed that she was better than she looked. And perhaps-as Mr. James considered-Miss Bull had an ax to grind on her own account.
However this might be, from that moment Miss Bull was in charge of the Amelia Square establishment. Whatever means she used to induce Lord Derrington to consent, she certainly managed to get the lease renewed in Margery's name. Some of the boarders went; but others came in their place, and these being younger added to the gayety of the house. So all was settled, and Miss Bull became a person of importance. She was the power behind the throne, and ruled judiciously. In this way did she do away with the reputation of the house as a place where a crime had been committed. In a year all was forgotten.
CHAPTER V
A LOVERS' MEETING
Every one who was any one knew the Honorable Mrs. Ward. She was a fluffy-haired kitten of a woman, more like a Dresden china shepherdess than a mere human being. Nothing could be prettier than her face and figure, and nothing more engaging than her manners. With her yellow hair, her charming face, and her melting blue eyes, she managed to hold her own against younger women. The late Mr. Ward, Lord Ransome's son, had been a fast young man, devoted to the turf and to his pretty wife. But he was killed when riding in a steeplechase two years after his marriage, and left his widow alone in the world with one daughter for consolation in her affliction. Mrs. Ward being in want of money-for her deceased father had been a general with nothing but his pay-played her cards so well with regard to her father-in-law, that he allowed her a good income and thought she was the most perfect of women. But Lord Ransome was the only one of the family who thought so, for the other relatives fought rather shy of the pretty, pleading widow.
Not that Mrs. Ward minded. She characterized the women as frumps and the men as fools, and, having enough to live on comfortably, set up a house in Curzon Street. It was thought that she would marry again; and probably she would have done so had a sufficiently rich husband with a title been forthcoming. But somehow no one worth capturing ever came Mrs. Ward's way, and as time went on she chose to assume the role of a devoted mother, and-as she phrased it-to live again in her daughter. This was quite wrong, as Dorothy Ward was a slim, serious-minded girl of nineteen, not given to gayety, and was one who was anxious to marry a husband with mind rather than with money. How frivolous little Mrs. Ward came to have such a Puritan daughter no one ever could make out. She resembled her mother neither in face, nor in manner, nor in tastes. Mrs. Ward openly lamented that Dorothy was such a difficult girl to manage, which meant that Dorothy had refused several good matches, and had declined to be guided entirely by her mother's opinion. When the Earl of Summerslea proposed and was not accepted, Mrs. Ward was furious, but Dorothy said steadily that she would never marry a brute with a title.
"You'll marry any one I choose," said Mrs. Ward when the two were discussing the matter.
"Certainly not Lord Summerslea," rejoined Dorothy, steadily.
"And certainly not that penniless George Brendon," retorted her mother. "You shall not throw yourself away on him."
"He is a good man and a clever man, and a man whom any woman might be proud of winning, mother."
"And a man with no money and no position. Who is he? What is his family? No one ever heard of him."
"They will one day, when he becomes famous."
"Oh, as a writing-person. As though any one cared two pins about that sort of thing. I want to see you a countess."
"You shall never see me the Countess of Summerslea. I know all about that man. He is bad and dissipated."
"O Lord! as if that mattered," cried Mrs. Ward with supreme contempt. "Your father was the same, yet we got on all right."
"I am sure you did," said Dorothy, with bitter meaning, upon which Mrs. Ward showed her claws. Her friends called her a kitten, but she was a cat in reality and could scratch on occasions. But all her scratching could not make Dorothy Lady Summerslea.
Hating Brendon, and knowing that her daughter liked him, it was supposed by Mrs. Ward's friends that the young man would be sent to the right-about, and that Dorothy would be kept out of his way. But Mrs. Ward knew her daughter too well to take such a disastrous course.
"My dear," she said to an intimate friend, "if I did that, Dorothy is just the kind of annoying girl to run away with him and live in a garret. If I let them meet they will not think of marriage, and I dare say Dorothy will get tired of Brendon. He is so shabby in his dress, and so poor, that after a time she will cease to like him. No! No! I'll let him follow her wherever he likes, and meet her on all occasions. They will grow sick of one another."
In an ordinary case this recipe might have answered. But Dorothy respected as well as loved George Brendon, and, every time she met him, grew to admire and love him more. Mrs. Ward became quite exasperated, and redoubled her efforts to sicken Dorothy of the "creature," as she called Brendon. She took to praising him on all occasions, and sometimes asked him to dinner. At the same time she constantly abused young Walter Vane, who was Lord Derrington's grandson and heir. He was the man she wished Dorothy to marry, as one day he would have a title and fifteen thousand a year. But in spite of this Machiavellian policy Dorothy still continued to love George, and expressed a hearty dislike for Walter Vane, whom she characterized as a "weakling."
"If he had only the grit of his grandfather I might respect him."
Mrs. Ward turned