My Ladys Money | Page 4

statements, reflecting most untruly and unjustly on my
conduct; lies, in short," her Ladyship burst out, losing her dignity, as
usual. "Lies, Moody, for which Mr. Tollmidge deserved to be
horsewhipped. I would have done it myself if his Lordship had told me
at the time. No matter; it's useless to dwell on the thing now," she
continued, ascending again to the forms of expression which became a
lady of rank. "This unhappy man has done me a gross injustice; my
motives may be seriously misjudged, if I appear personally in
communicating with his family. If I relieve them anonymously in their
present trouble, I spare them the exposure of a public subscription, and
I do what I believe his Lordship would have done himself if he had
lived. My desk is on the other table. Bring it here, Moody; and let me
return good for evil, while I'm in the humor for it!"
Moody obeyed in silence. Lady Lydiard wrote a check.
"Take that to the banker's, and bring back a five-hundred pound note,"
she said. "I'll inclose it to the clergyman as coming from 'an unknown
friend.' And be quick about it. I am only a fallible mortal, Moody. Don't
leave me time enough to take the stingy view of five hundred pounds."
Moody went out with the check. No delay was to be apprehended in
obtaining the money; the banking-house was hard by, in St. James's
Street. Left alone, Lady Lydiard decided on occupying her mind in the
generous direction by composing her anonymous letter to the
clergyman. She had just taken a sheet of note-paper from her desk,
when a servant appeared at the door announcing a visitor--
"Mr. Felix Sweetsir!"
CHAPTER III.
"MY nephew!" Lady Lydiard exclaimed in a tone which expressed
astonishment, but certainly not pleasure as well. "How many years is it

since you and I last met?" she asked, in her abruptly straightforward
way, as Mr. Felix Sweetsir approached her writing-table.
The visitor was not a person easily discouraged. He took Lady
Lydiard's hand, and kissed it with easy grace. A shade of irony was in
his manner, agreeably relieved by a playful flash of tenderness.
"Years, my dear aunt?" he said. "Look in your glass and you will see
that time has stood still since we met last. How wonderfully well you
wear! When shall we celebrate the appearance of your first wrinkle? I
am too old; I shall never live to see it."
He took an easychair, uninvited; placed himself close at his aunt's side,
and ran his eye over her ill-chosen dress with an air of satirical
admiration. "How perfectly successful!" he said, with his well-bred
insolence. "What a chaste gayety of color!"
"What do you want?" asked her Ladyship, not in the least softened by
the compliment.
"I want to pay my respects to my dear aunt," Felix answered, perfectly
impenetrable to his ungracious reception, and perfectly comfortable in
a spacious arm-chair.
No pen-and-ink portrait need surely be drawn of Felix Sweetsir--he is
too well-known a picture in society. The little lith e man, with his
bright, restless eyes, and his long iron-gray hair falling in curls to his
shoulders, his airy step and his cordial manner; his uncertain age, his
innumerable accomplishments, and his unbounded popularity--is he not
familiar everywhere, and welcome everywhere? How gratefully he
receives, how prodigally he repays, the cordial appreciation of an
admiring world! Every man he knows is "a charming fellow." Every
woman he sees is "sweetly pretty." What picnics he gives on the banks
of the Thames in the summer season! What a well-earned little income
he derives from the whist-table! What an inestimable actor he is at
private theatricals of all sorts (weddings included)! Did you never read
Sweetsir's novel, dashed off in the intervals of curative perspiration at a
German bath? Then you don't know what brilliant fiction really is. He

has never written a second work; he does everything, and only does it
once. One song--the despair of professional composers. One
picture--just to show how easily a gentleman can take up an art and
drop it again. A really multiform man, with all the graces and all the
accomplishments scintillating perpetually at his fingers' ends. If these
poor pages have achieved nothing else, they have done a service to
persons not in society by presenting them to Sweetsir. In his gracious
company the narrative brightens; and writer and reader (catching
reflected brilliancy) understand each other at last, thanks to Sweetsir.
"Well," said Lady Lydiard, "now you are here, what have you got to
say for yourself? You have been abroad, of course! Where?"
"Principally at Paris, my dear aunt. The only place that is fit to live
in--for this excellent reason, that the French are the only people who
know