Red Pottage | Page 2

moment, greeted Lord Newhaven, and passed on into the crowded rooms. How could any one have guessed it? No breath of scandal had ever touched Lady Newhaven. She stood beside her pink orchids, near her fatigued-looking, gentle-mannered husband, a very pretty woman in white satin and diamonds. Perhaps her blond hair was a shade darker at the roots than in its waved coils; perhaps her blue eyes did not look quite in harmony with their blue-black lashes; but the whole effect had the delicate, conventional perfection of a cleverly touched-up chromo-lithograph. Of course, tastes differ. Some people like chromo-lithographs, others don't. But even those who do are apt to become estranged. They may inspire love, admiration, but never fidelity. Most of us have in our time hammered nails into our walls which, though they now decorously support the engravings and etchings of our maturer years, were nevertheless originally driven in to uphold the cherished, the long since discarded chromos of our foolish youth.
The diamond sun upon Lady Newhaven's breast quivered a little, a very little, as Hugh greeted her, and she turned to offer the same small smile and gloved hand to the next comer, whose name was leaping before him from one footman to another.
"Mr. Richard Vernon."
Lady Newhaven's wide blue eyes looked vague. Her hand hesitated. This strongly built, ill-dressed man, with his keen, brown, deeply scarred face and crooked mouth, was unknown to her.
Lord Newhaven darted forward.
"Dick!" he exclaimed, and Dick shot forth an immense mahogany hand and shook Lord Newhaven's warmly.
"Well," he said, after Lord Newhaven had introduced him to his wife, "I'm dashed if I knew who either of you were. But I found your invitation at my club when I landed yesterday, so I decided to come and have a look at you. And so it is only you, Cackles, after all"--(Lord Newhaven's habit of silence had earned for him the sobriquet of "Cackles")--"I quite thought I was going into--well, ahem!--into society. I did not know you had got a handle to your name. How did you find out I was in England?"
"My dear fellow, I didn't," said Lord Newhaven, gently drawing Dick aside, whose back was serenely blocking a stream of new arrivals. "I fancy--in fact, I'm simply delighted to see you. How is the wine getting on? But I suppose there must be other Dick Vernons on my wife's list. Have you the card with you?"
"Rather," said Dick; "always take the card with me since I was kicked out of a miner's hop at Broken Hill because I forgot it. 'No gentleman will be admitted in a paper shirt' was mentioned on it, I remember. A concertina, and candles in bottles. Ripping while it lasted. I wish you had been there."
"I wish I had." Lord Newhaven's tired, half-closed eye opened a little. "But the end seems to have been unfortunate."
"Not at all," said Dick, watching the new arrivals with his head thrown back. "Fine girl that; I'll take a look at the whole mob of them directly. They came round next day to say it had been a mistake, but there were four or five cripples who found that out the night before. Here is the card."
Lord Newhaven glanced at it attentively, and then laughed.
"It is four years old," he said; "I must have put you on my mother's list, not knowing you had left London. It is in her writing."
"I'm rather late," said Dick, composedly; "but I am here at last. Now, Cack--Newhaven, if that's your noble name--as I am here, trot out a few heiresses, would you? I want to take one or two back with me. I say, ought I to put my gloves on?"
"No, no. Clutch them in your great fist as you are doing now."
"Thanks. I suppose, old chap, I'm all right? Not had on an evening-coat for four years."
Dick's trousers were too short for him, and he had tied his white tie with a waist to it. Lord Newhaven had seen both details before he recognized him.
"Quite right," he said, hastily. "Now, who is to be the happy woman?"
Dick's hawk eye promenaded over the crowd in the second room, in the door-way of which he was standing.
"That one," he said; "the tall girl in the green gown talking to the Bishop."
"You have a wonderful eye for heiresses. You have picked out the greatest in London. That is Miss Rachel West. You say you want two."
"One at a time, thanks. I shall take her down to supper. I suppose--er--there is supper at this sort of thing, isn't there?"
"Of a kind. You need not be afraid of the claret; it isn't yours."
"Catch you giving your best at a crush," retorted Dick. "The Bishop's moving. Hurry up."
CHAPTER II
But as he groped against the wall, two hands upon him fell, The