The Tigress Part 55

"You're more beautiful than ever, Mrs. Darling."

"We fancied you were horribly marked," cried the duke. "We did, really.

All purple blotches and that sort of thing. Didn't we, Doody?"

"Speak for yourself, Pucketts," said Doody. "I could never imagine Nina anything but lovely."

Kitty Bellingdown had turned to frown at her cavalier. She regarded his outburst as quite unnecessary and very ill-timed.

Charlotte Grey gasped a second time. Then she said: "I'd be willing to be burned to get a complexion like yours, dear."

"But, you see, I had the foundation to begin on; and I had a friend who was willing to sacrifice something for me," replied Nina sweetly. So sweetly that Charlotte Grey fairly gritted her teeth.

Lady Bellingdown grasped the situation and rushed to the rescue with a change of subject.

"Nina," she said, "did you know that Caryll had returned to his wife?"

Then it was really Mrs. Darling's turn to gasp. "Really!" she exclaimed.

"Yes. He was in England for a week, but never came near us. It seems they had a quarrel over some trifle and he ran away to give her a lesson. Unfortunately it got into the papers."

"I saw it," Nina white-lied valiantly.

"But did you see about Mrs. Veynol?"

"You mean--"

"About her marriage."

"Her marriage? Surely--"

"Yes. She's married for the third time. Now it's a journalist, a sub-editor on one of the cheap and nasty society weeklies. Fancy!"

"Ah, that cleared the way, then. Caryll would never have gone back otherwise."

"You think that?"

"I know it. He told me as much."

"You mean you saw him--saw him the week he was here?"

Nina colored faintly. She had not meant to tell.

"Yes," she answered. "He came to me at Bath. He wanted me to save him.

He couldn't quite decide between the pair of them, so he wished to compromise on me."

Lady Bellingdown nearly boiled over.

"He's a most ungrateful boy," she cried. "He must have known how anxious we all were about you, and he never sent me a line. Only a wire that he had returned to Nice and Rosamond."

"If he--" Nina began, and finished with: "He might have said Rosamond and Nice. Don't you think so? It's straws, you know--"

After dinner that evening Nina got the duke alone in a corner.

"Tell me more about Hal Kneedrock," she begged, taking the clawlike ducal hand in both her own. "Is there anything really wrong, do you think?"

His grace, out of ear-shot of the d.u.c.h.ess, didn't mince matters. "Mad as a hatter," he said earnestly. "Brain gone all to pieces over something.

No doubt about it. Poor old Nibbetts!"

"But how? What has he done except haunt the tiger-house?"

"Nothing. But the way he haunts it. There all day, you know, from opening to close, every day of the week."

"That's an odd mania. Can't anything be done? Has any one talked with him?"

"Yes," answered the duke. "His man. Bellingdown and I saw his man and told him what was up. We asked him to keep his master in sight and see that no harm came to him. Just that. But the beggar exceeded his instructions. He let Kneedrock see him and then he tried to argue him out of his habit."

"And what did Hal say?"

"He didn't say; he acted. He beat the poor fellow up most fearfully.

Went into a towering rage, in fact."

"And now n.o.body'll speak to him about it, I suppose," cried Nina indignantly. "You men are such cowards."

"No, no, no," the duke protested. "It isn't that, my child. It isn't really. But, you see, it's a most delicate matter. He probably has some reason for going there that in his own mind seems perfectly right and proper."

"Then, after all, why interfere?"

"Because he's attracting attention. Or was. Of course, he's not now.

He's in Dundee, you know."

"Yes. I've heard that. When he comes back perhaps he won't go to the tiger-house any more."

His grace adjusted his monocle and carefully examined his three ma.s.sive rings of yellow gold, handsomely set with jewels.

"If he does there'll be trouble," he said quietly.

"But if he's not creating a disturbance?"

"Ah, but he is. That's just it. He collects a crowd."

"How?"

The duke hesitated. "I suppose it's this that Kitty was afraid I'd tell you. You've been through a lot of nervous strain, with the fire and things, and she wanted to save you. I can see it."

Nina naturally was doubly interested. "You've gone too far now to turn back," she said. "You must tell me the rest. I have a right to know all."

"Well, it's this way"--the duke dropped his gla.s.s and turned to her, his voice very low--"it's just one cage that he's a _penchant_ for. He stands before it, or paces up and down before it continuously." Then he paused.

Nina was growing annoyed. "What of it?" she asked.