The Vision of Desire | Page 7

powers that be, I shall get a 'day off' to-morrow. He's going over to Evian by the midday boat. The St. Keliers--blessed be their name!--have asked him to dine with them--to meet some exiled Russian princess or other."
"Lady Susan is going, too. She's staying the night there. Is Sir Philip?"
"Yes. There's no getting back the same night. This is topping, Ann." Tony's face had brightened considerably. "Suppose you and I go up to the Dents de Loup for the afternoon, and then have a festive little dinner at the Gloria. Will you? Don't have an attack of common sense and say 'no'!"
His eyes entreated her gaily. They were extremely charming eyes, of some subtly blended colour that was neither slate nor violet, but partook a little of both, and shaded by absurdly long lashes which gave them an almost womanish softness. A certain shrewd old duchess, who knew her world, had once been heard to observe that Tony Brabazon's eyes would get him in and out of trouble as long as he lived.
Ann smiled.
"That's quite a brain-wave, Tony," she replied. "I won't say no. And if you're very good we'll go down to the Kursaal afterwards, and I'll let you have a little innocent flutter at the tables." Ann had no belief in the use of too severe a curb. She felt quite sure that if Tony's gambling propensities were bottled up too tightly, they would only break out more strongly later on--when he might chance to be in a part of the world where he could come to bigger grief financially than was possible at Montricheux. She glanced down at the watch on her wrist and, seeing that the time had slipped by more quickly than she imagined, proceeded to gather up her gloves. "I think it's time I went back to Villa Mon R��ve, now," she said tentatively, fearing a burst of opposition.
But, having got his own way over the arrangements for the morrow, Tony consented to be amenable for once. Together they took their way up the pleasant street and at the gates of the villa he made his farewells.
"I shall drop into the club for a rubber, I think," he vouchsafed, "before going home like a good little boy."
"Don't play high," cautioned Ann good-humouredly.
She could detect the underlying note of resentment in his voice, and she entered the house meditating thoughtfully upon the amazing short-sightedness evinced by elderly gentlemen in regard to the upbringing of their heirs.
CHAPTER II
THE BRABAZONS OF LORNE
"Ann's the best pal Tony could possibly have, so, for goodness' sake, be content with that and don't get addling your brains by trying to marry her off to him. Match-making isn't a man's job. A female child of twelve could beat the cleverest man that's hatched at the game."
Lady Susan Hallett fired off her remarks, as was her wont, with the vigour and precision of a machine-gun. There was always a delightful definiteness both about her ideas and the expression of them.
The man she addressed was standing with his back to the open French window of the pretty salon, angrily oblivious of the blue waters of Lac L��man which lapped placidly against the stone edges of the quai below. He was a tall, fierce-looking old man, with choleric blue eyes and an aristocratic beak of a nose that jutted out above a bristling grey moustache. A single eyeglass dangled from a broad, black ribbon round his neck. "One of the old school" was written all over him--one of the old, autocratic school which believed that "a man should be master in his own house, b'gad!" By which--though he would never have admitted it--Sir Philip Brabazon inferred a kind of divinely appointed dictatorship over the souls and bodies of the various members of his household which even included the right to arrange and determine their lives for them, without reference to their personal desires and tastes.
It was odd, therefore, that his chief friend and confidante--and the woman he would have married thirty years ago if she would only have had him--should be Lady Susan, as tolerant and modern in her outlook as he was archaic.
She was a tall, sturdily built woman of the out-of-door, squiress type. Her fine-shaped head was crowned by a wealth of grey hair, simply coiled in a big knot on the nape of her neck and contrasting rather attractively with her very black, arched eyebrows and humorous dark eyes. Those same eyes were now regarding Sir Philip with a quizzical expression of amusement.
"Besides," she pursued. "Ann wouldn't have half as much pull with him if she were his wife, let me tell you."
"You think not?"
"I'm sure. A man will let himself be lectured and generally licked into shape by the woman he wants to marry--but after marriage he usually prefers to do