A Great Success | Page 6

"Studies," a volume of Huxley's Essays, "Shelley" and "Keats" in the "Men of Letters" series. She borrowed two or three of the political biographies with which Arthur's shelves were crowded, having all the while, however, the dispiriting conviction that Lady Dunstable had been dandled on the knees of every English Prime Minister since her birth, and had been the blood relation of all of them, except perhaps Mr. G., whose blood no doubt had not been blue enough to entitle him to the privilege.
However, she must do her best. She kept these feelings and preparations entirely secret from Arthur, and she saw the day of the visit dawn in a mood of mingled expectation and revolt.

CHAPTER II
It was a perfect June evening: Doris was seated on one of the spreading lawns of Crosby Ledgers,--a low Georgian house, much added to at various times, and now a pleasant medley of pillared verandahs, tiled roofs, cupolas, and dormer windows, apparently unpretending, but, as many people knew, one of the most luxurious of English country houses.
Lady Dunstable, in a flowing dress of lilac cr��pe and a large black hat, had just given Mrs. Meadows a second cup of tea, and was clearly doing her duty--and showing it--to a guest whose entertainment could not be trusted to go of itself. The only other persons at the tea-table--the Meadowses having arrived late--were an elderly man with long Dundreary whiskers, in a Panama hat and a white waistcoat, and a lady of uncertain age, plump, kind-eyed, and merry-mouthed, in whom Doris had at once divined a possible harbour of refuge from the terrors of the situation. Arthur was strolling up and down the lawn with the Home Secretary, smoking and chatting--talking indeed nineteen to the dozen, and entirely at his ease. A few other groups were scattered over the grass; while girls in white dresses and young men in flannels were playing tennis in the distance. A lake at the bottom of the sloping garden made light and space in a landscape otherwise too heavily walled in by thick woodland. White swans floated on the lake, and the June trees beyond were in their freshest and proudest leaf. A church tower rose appropriately in a corner of the park, and on the other side of the deer-fence beyond the lake a herd of red deer were feeding. Doris could not help feeling as though the whole scene had been lately painted for a new "high life" play at the St. James's Theatre, and she half expected to see Sir George Alexander walk out of the bushes.
"I suppose, Mrs. Meadows, you have been helping your husband with his lectures?" said Lady Dunstable, a little languidly, as though the heat oppressed her. She was making play with a cigarette and her half-shut eyes were fixed on the "lion's" wife. The eyes fascinated Doris. Surely they were artificially blackened, above and below? And the lips--had art been delicately invoked, or was Nature alone responsible?
"I copy things for Arthur," said Doris. "Unfortunately, I can't type."
At the sound of the young and musical voice, the gentleman with the Dundreary whiskers--Sir Luke Malford--who had seemed half asleep, turned sharply to look at the speaker. Doris too was in a white dress, of the simplest stuff and make; but it became her. So did the straw hat, with its wreath of wild roses, which she had trimmed herself that morning. There was not the slightest visible sign of tremor in the young woman; and Sir Luke's inner mind applauded her.
"No fool!--and a lady," he thought. "Let's see what Rachel will make of her."
"Then you don't help him in the writing?" said Lady Dunstable, still with the same detached air. Doris laughed.
"I don't know what Arthur would say if I proposed it. He never lets anybody go near him when he's writing."
"I see; like all geniuses, he's dangerous on the loose." Was Lady Dunstable's smile just touched with sarcasm? "Well!--has the success of the lectures surprised you?"
Doris pondered.
"No," she said at last, "not really. I always thought Arthur had it in him."
"But you hardly expected such a run--such an excitement!"
"I don't know," said Doris, coolly. "I think I did--sometimes. The question is how long it will last."
She looked, smiling, at her interrogator.
The gentleman with the whiskers stooped across the table.
"Oh, nothing lasts in this world. But that of course is what makes a good time so good."
Doris turned towards him--demurring--for the sake of conversation. "I never could understand how Cinderella enjoyed the ball."
"For thinking of the clock?" laughed Sir Luke. "No, no!--you can't mean that. It's the expectation of the clock that doubles the pleasure. Of course you agree, Rachel!"--he turned to her--"else why did you read me that very doleful poem yesterday, on this very theme?--that it's only the certainty of death that