Love at Second Sight | Page 2

Frabelle has been very kind to you, Archie. I'm sorry you're not behaving nicely to a guest in your mother's house. It isn't the act of a gentleman.'
'Oh. Well, there are a great many things in her room, Mother; some of them are rather jolly.'
'Go and say you're sorry, Archie. And you mustn't do it again.'
'Will it be the act of a gentleman to say I'm sorry? It'll be the act of a story-teller, you know.'
'What! Aren't you sorry to have bothered her?'
'I'm sorry she found it out,' he said, as he turned to the door.
'These perpetual scenes and quarrels between my son and my guest are most painful to me,' Edith said, with assumed solemnity.
He looked grave. 'Well, she needn't have quarrelled.'
'But isn't she very kind to you?'
'Yes, she isn't bad sometimes. I like it when she tells me lies about what her husband used to do--I mean stories. She's not a bad sort.... Is she a homeless refugette, Mother?'
'Not exactly that. She's a widow, and she's staying with us, and we must be nice to her. Now, you won't forget again, will you?'
'Right. But I can mend it.'
'I think I'd better go up and see her,' said Edith.
Archie politely opened the door for his mother.
'I shouldn't, if I were you,' he said.
Edith slowly went back to the fire.
'Well, I'll leave her a little while, perhaps. Now do go and do something useful.'
'What, useful? Gracious! I haven't got much more of my holidays, Mother.'
'That's no reason why you should spend your time in worrying everybody, and smashing the musical instruments of guests that are under your roof.'
He looked up at the ceiling and smiled, as if pleased at this way of putting it.
'I suppose she's very glad to have a roof to her mouth--I mean to her head,' he hurriedly corrected. 'But, Mother, she isn't poor. She has an amber necklace. Besides, she gave Dilly sixpence the other day for not being frightened of a cow. If she can afford to give a little girl sixpence for every animal she says she isn't afraid of!'...
'That only proves she's kind. And I didn't say she was poor; that's not the point. We must be nice and considerate to anyone staying with us--don't you see?'
He became absent-minded again for a minute.
'Well, I shouldn't be surprised if she'll be able to use it again,' he said consolingly--'the mandolin, I mean. Besides, what's the good of it anyway? I say, Mother, are all foreigners bad-tempered?'
'Madame Frabelle is not a foreigner.'
'I never said she was. But her husband was. He used to get into frightful rages with her sometimes. She says he was a noble fellow. She liked him awfully, but she says he never understood her. Do you suppose she talked English to him?'
'That's enough, Archie. Go and find something to do.'
As he went out he turned round again and said:
'Does father like her?'
'Why, yes, of course he does.'
'How funny!' said Archie. 'Well, I'll say I'm sorry ... when I see her again.'
Edith kissed him, a proceeding that he bore heroically. He was kissable, but she seldom gave way to the temptation. Then she went back to the sofa. She wanted to go on thinking about that mystery, her guest.
CHAPTER II
Madame Frabelle had arrived about a fortnight ago, with a letter of introduction from Lady Conroy. Lady Conroy herself was a vague, amiable Irishwoman, with a very large family of children. She and Edith, who knew each other slightly before, had grown intimate when they met, the previous summer, at a French watering-place. The letter asked Edith, with urgent inconsequence, to be kind to Madame Frabelle, of whom Lady Conroy said nothing except that she was of good family--she had been a Miss Eglantine Pollard--and was the widow of a well-to-do French wine merchant.
She was described as a clever, interesting woman who wished to study English life in her native land. It did not surprise Lady Conroy in the least that an Englishwoman should wish to study English in England; but she was a woman who was never surprised at anything except the obvious and the inevitable.
Edith had not had the faintest idea of asking Madame Frabelle to stay at her very small house in Sloane Street, for which invitation, indeed, there seemed no possible need or occasion. Yet she found herself asking her visitor to stay for a few days until a house or a hotel should be found; and Bruce, who detested guests in the house, seconded the invitation with warmth and enthusiasm. As Bruce was a subconscious snob, he may have been slightly influenced by the letter from Lady Conroy, who was the wife of an unprominent Cabinet Minister and, in a casual way, rather grande dame, if not exactly smart. But this consideration could not weigh with Edith, and