Pearl of Pearl Island | Page 7

was very delightful.
For Lady Elspeth knew everybody worth knowing, and all that was to
be known about the rest; and those gentle brown eyes of hers had
missed little of what had gone on around her since she first came to
London, fifty years before. She had known Wellington, and Palmerston,
and John Russell, and Disraeli, and Gladstone, and Louis Napoleon,
and Garibaldi, and many more. She was a veritable golden link with the
past, and a storehouse of reminiscence and delightful insight into
human nature.
And--since she knew everyone worth knowing, Graeme very soon
discovered that she knew Margaret Brandt, and Miss Brandt's very
frequent visits to Phillimore Gardens proved that she was an acceptable
visitor there.
Upon that, his own visits to Lady Elspeth naturally became still more
frequent than before,--approximating even, as she had said, the record
of the milkman,--and, though his dear old friend might rate him gently
as to the motives for his coming, he had every reason to believe that her
sympathies were with him, and that she would do what she could to
further his hopes.
He had never, however, openly discussed Margaret with her until that
afternoon of which I have already spoken.
Miss Brandt, you see, was always most graciously kind and charming
whenever they met. But that was just her natural self. She was
charming and gracious to everyone--even to Charles Pixley, the while
he swamped her with inane tittle-tattle, and higher proof of grace than
that it would be difficult to imagine.

And, since she was charming to all, Graeme felt that he could base no
solid hopes on her gracious treatment of himself, though the quiet
recollection of every smallest detail of it would set him all aglow with
hope for days after each chance meeting. And so he had never ventured
to discuss the matter with Lady Elspeth, and would not have done so
that afternoon had she not herself opened it.
The dear old lady's encouragement, however, deepened and
strengthened his hopes, in spite of her insidious hints concerning Mr.
Pixley's possible intentions. For she was a shrewd, shrewd woman, and
those soft brown eyes of hers saw far and deep. And, since she bade
him hope, hope he would, though every brick in London town became
a Pixley set on thwarting him.
The fact of Margaret's means being, for the present at all events, so
much larger than his own, he would not allow to trouble him. It was
Margaret herself he wanted, and had wanted long before he heard she
had money. The troublesome accident of her possessions should not
come between them if he could help it. He did not for one moment
believe she would ever think so ill of him as to believe that he wanted
her for anything but herself. And in any case, if kind Providence
bestowed her upon him, he would insist on her money being all settled
on herself absolutely and irrevocably.
Since that never-to-be-forgotten dinner, they had come across one
another at Lady Elspeth's with sufficient frequency to open the eyes of
that astute old lady to the heart-state of one of them at all events.
Possibly she knew more of the heart and mind of the other than she
cared to say in plain words; but, as a woman, she would naturally abide
by the rules of the game. In the smaller games of life it is woman's
privilege, indeed, to stretch and twist all rules to suit her own
convenience, but in this great game of love, woman stands by woman
and the womanly rules of the game--unless, indeed, she craves the
stakes for herself, in which case----
And so--although Lady Elspeth favoured him, that afternoon, only with
vague generalities as to the pleasures of hope, and afforded him no
solid standing-ground for the sole of his hopeful foot, but left him to

discover that for himself, as was only right and proper--his heart stood
high, and he looked forward with joyous anticipation to the future.
The radiant sun of all his rosy heavens was Margaret Brandt, and he
would not for one moment admit the possibility of its clouding by
anything of the name of Pixley.
V
Graeme had not the entrée of the Pixley mansion.
Mr. Pixley he knew, by repute only, as the head of Pixley's, the great
law-firm, in Lincoln's Inn. Mrs. Pixley he had never met.
Mr. Pixley was a bright and shining light--yea, a veritable
light-house--of respectability and benevolence, and bushel coverings
were relegated to their proper place outside his scheme of life. His
charities were large, wide-spread, religiously advertised in the donation
columns of the daily papers, and doubtless palliated the effects of
multitudes of other people's sins.
He was a church-warden, president and honorary treasurer of numerous