The Grey Lady | Page 5

of some danger, and he wished to warn her. The peculiar twist in Luke's lips became momentarily more visible, and he kept his deep, despondent eyes fixed on the speaker's face.
There are two kinds of rich women. The one spends her money in doing good, the other pays it away to gratify her love of power. Of the Honourable Mrs. Harrington it was never reported that she was lavish in her charities.
"I think," she said, "that I ought to tell you that I have been paying the expenses of your education almost entirely. I was in no way bound to do so. I took charge of you at your father's death because I--because he was a true friend to me. I do not grudge the money, but in return I expected you to work hard and get on in your profession."
She stiffened herself with a rustling sound of silk, proudly conscious of injured virtue, full of the charity that exacteth a high interest.
"We did our best," replied Fitz, with a simple intrepidity which rather spoilt the awesomeness of the situation.
"I am not speaking to you," returned the lady. "You have worked and have passed your examination satisfactorily. You are not clever--I know that; but you have managed to get into the Navy, where your father was before you, and your grandfather before him. I have no doubt you will give satisfaction to your superior officers. I was talking to Luke."
"We all knew that," said Luke, in a dangerous voice, which trite observation she chose to ignore.
"You have had equal advantages," pursued the dispenser of charity. "I have shown no favour; I have treated you alike. It had been my intention to do so all your lives and after my death."
Mrs. Ingham-Baker was so interested at this juncture that she leant forward with parted lips, listening eagerly. The Honourable Mrs. Harrington allowed herself the plebeian pleasure of returning the stare with a questioning glance which broke off into a little laugh.
"Have you," she continued, addressing Luke directly, "any reason to offer for your failure--beyond the usual one of bad luck?"
Luke looked at her in a lowering way and made no reply. Had Mrs. Harrington been a poor woman, she would have recognised that the boy was at the end of his tether. But she had always been surrounded-- as such women are--by men, and more especially by women, who would swallow any insult, any insolence, so long as it was gilded. The world had, in fact, accepted the Honourable Mrs. Harrington because she could afford to gild herself.
"It was bad luck, and nothing else," burst out Fitz, heedless of her sarcastic tones. "Luke is a better sailor than I am. But he always was weak in his astronomy, and it all turned on astronomy."
"I should imagine it all turned on stupidity," said Mrs. Harrington.
"I'm stupid, if you like," said Fitz; "Luke isn't. Luke is clever; ask any chap on board!"
"I do not need to ask any chap on board," said Mrs. Harrington. "My own common sense tells me that he is clever. He has proved it."
"It's like a woman--to hit a fellow when he's down," said Luke, with his hands deep in his pockets.
He turned to Mrs. Ingham-Baker for sympathy in this sentiment, and that soft-hearted lady deemed it expedient to turn hastily away, avoiding his glance, denying all partisanship.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker was not a person given to the disguise of her own feelings. She was plausible enough to the outer world. To herself she was quite frank, and hardly seemed to recognise this as the event she had most desired. It is to be presumed that her heart was like her physical self, a large, unwieldy thing, over which she had not a proper control. The organ mentioned had a way of tripping her up. It tripped her now, and she quite forgot that this quarrel was precisely what she had wanted for years. She had looked forward to it as the turning-point in her daughter Agatha's fortunes.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker had, in fact, wondered more than a thousand times why the Honourable Mrs. Harrington should do all for the FitzHenrys and nothing for Agatha. She did not attempt to attribute reasons. She knew her sex too well for that. She merely wondered, which means that she cherished a question until it grew into a grievance. The end of it she knew would be a quarrel. This might not come until the FitzHenrys should have grown to man's estate and man's privilege of quarrelling with his female relatives about the youthful female relative of some other person. But it would come, surely. Mrs. Ingham-Baker, the parasite, knew her victim, Mrs. Harrington, well enough to be sure of that.
And now that this quarrel had arisen--much sooner than she could have hoped--providentially brought about by