The Tigress Part 21

The d.u.c.h.ess hastened with the required confirmation.

"Yes, Pucketts always has liked--" But there her grace stopped short.

There was a slight noise at the end of the hall, and the attention of every one was at once directed toward the door. It was a fact that the entire party was on the tiptoe of expectancy. Every soul there was speculating on how Carleigh would look and how he would act.

"No," said Lady Bellingdown, speaking in the a.s.sured tone of one who knows--and yet she had paused to listen, too--"that will not be he. I heard carriage wheels a minute ago. But we've sent a car for him."

She glanced nervously about. "Really, you know," she added, "you mustn't all stare so when he does come in. You must treat him absolutely as if nothing had happened. He is so frightfully sensitive, you know."

"I should think he would be," observed Nibbetts, lounging suddenly down on a settee and speaking in his usual resonant tone that was distinctly audible far and near. "I should think he would be."

"It was really her mother," said Charlotte Gray, who hadn't read _British Society_ and was not in the d.u.c.h.ess's confidence. "It was all her mother. It's a very shocking story. It's Borgian. It's Medicean.

It's not a bit our present Georgian. Not in the least."

She was looking at Kneedrock, but she was talking for her own amus.e.m.e.nt, since every one knew all this, and she must have been aware of it.

"It's better not to talk of it," cautioned Lady Bellingdown, by way of gentle rebuke. "Donty feels that it will be wisest not to speak of it while the poor boy is in the house."

Whereupon Lord Waltheof, from his customary place behind her chair, voicing his somewhat superior knowledge of affairs at Bellingdown, said: "He's going early Monday. It won't be a very long strain."

"Going early Monday, is he?" queried the duke, nibbling faster than ever. "That won't help much. We're all going early Monday, too."

The door at the far end of the hall opened just then to admit Sir George Grey--a handsome, slight boyish fellow, with curling chestnut hair.

"Oh, it's Shucks!" cried Charlotte, setting down her teacup and running forward to meet her husband, of whom, being still a bride, she was extremely fond.

"Those were the carriage wheels," discerned the duke, cutting into another seed-cake while his hostess was over behind the palms for a word with the newcomer. "They were Grey's wheels, Doody," he elucidated to the d.u.c.h.ess, who was back toward him at the moment. "They were Grey's wheels."

"I hear," said the d.u.c.h.ess.

The footman was bringing fresh tea.

"I'm late," said Sir George, coming around to the fire. "h.e.l.lo, Nibbetts!"

Then he nodded generally to the others. "I got shot in the back," he went on jovially, "and they had to undress me. And then I had to dress again, of course."

"Who shot you?" asked Lady Bellingdown, with the well-bred interest of a well-bred hostess. "Were you badly shot?"

When gentlemen go shooting, to be shot is so common that no one very much minds. Even Sir George's wife, loving him as she did, managed to preserve a stoical silence. To have appeared upset would have been very bad form.

"I don't know," answered the victim. "I don't know who shot me. I was ahead with Donty Down, and I heard Donty yell, and then--there I was peppered. He vows he saw the shot coming."

"How amusing!" cried the duke, delighted. "It is amusing. Donty's always funny."

"Was he shot, too?" asked Donty's wife.

"No, he--"

The door creaked beyond and the butler came tumbling forward to whisper: "Sir Caryll Carleigh."

Then he was really there before them--the hero of the biggest harvest of talk in recent years.

There had been nothing like it since the memorable day when Nina came back from India under the protection of her cousin, the viscount, and every one had a different version of everything.

He was very pale, a slender, brown-eyed youth with his underlip twitching nervously. To all appearances he was quite scared. Still, he certainly was really there.

Naturally there was a flutter--a perfectly visible flutter--for had it not been repeatedly and authoritatively stated that this love-wreck would never be repaired and float in his own especial "swim" again?

Grenfell and the icy coast of Labrador perhaps, or a government berth in Manchuria--but never home society again. Never, never!

And now he was here. His aunt, Lady Bellingdown, hurried forward, her hands extended.

"My dear Caryll! _So_ glad to see you again. You know every one here, I'm sure. We're all _so_ glad to see you. _So_ glad, you know."

He bent and kissed her hand very prettily. Then he bravely cast his big, dark eyes over the rest of the group, taking them all in, individually as well as collectively.

He knew them, every one. Yes, they were all kinsfolk or friends, whose wedding presents he had returned a month before.

It was a trying pair of seconds, through which the duke's seed-cake cheeped like a canary.

"Did you come straight from town?" Waltheof asked in a carefully careless tone. Then he remembered. Very stupid of him; but now too late to mend.

He was standing back to the fire, and the violent agitation of his coat-tails, beneath which his hands were locked, was to the observant ones sign and symbol of his embarra.s.sment.

"I've been in Scotland for a month," returned Carleigh, coloring deeply and seeking a seat.

Every one felt that it was unpardonable in Waltheof to have said "town"

to the man who was the center of its talk.

"Oh, Scotland!" exclaimed the duke, as if the fact that the boy had been there was the very remotest thing from his knowledge. "Very amusing place, Scotland. Lovely place, too, Scotland. We went there on our honeymoon. I say, Doody, that was where we went, wasn't it?"

The d.u.c.h.ess looked daggers at her duke. Fancy having a husband so lost to the fitness of things as to mention honeymoons in the presence of one who might have been on his at the moment--but wasn't!

"One goes there for the shooting now," she said, to ease the blow. "You always go there for the shooting."

"Not the last time," denied his grace; "it was the closed season--the last time." Then he took another piece of cake.

The d.u.c.h.ess didn't quite know whether mention of the closed season was or was not painfully pertinent. "Scotland's so gray," she said in a confidential aside to Waltheof.

Lady Bellingdown was looking beseechingly here and there, praying for some one to say something. It was Kneedrock who responded.

"I hate Scotland," he growled. "I know a girl up there that--" He broke off, leaving them to think anything, and concluded: "I wish I could keep away from the bally place."

Then Lady Bellingdown wished that he hadn't. It was positively awful!

Everybody looked at everybody in furtive consternation. Her hand trembled and she spilled Carleigh's tea all over.

He had risen in expectation of nourishment and was standing beside her.

With a frozen smile, as she changed saucers, she gasped: