Tristram of Blent | Page 6

quite unaccountably, did? She would weep then--but for their misfortune, be it understood, not for any fault of hers. People did not always understand her; her mother had understood her perfectly, and consequently had never interfered with her ways. Mina loved a mystification too, and especially to mystify uncle Duplay, who thought himself so clever--was clever indeed as men went, she acknowledged generously; but men did not go far. It would be fun to choose Merrion Lodge for her summer home, first because her uncle would wonder why in the world she took it, and secondly because she had guessed that somebody might be surprised to see her there. So she laid her plan, even as she had played her tricks in the days when she was an odd little girl, and Mr Cholderton, not liking her, had with some justice christened her the Imp.
Major Duplay bowed Mr Sloyd to the door with the understanding that full details of Merrion Lodge were to be furnished in a day or two. Coming back to the hearth-rug he spoke to his niece in French, as was the custom with the pair when they were alone.
"And now, dear Mina," said he, "what has made you set your mind on what seems distinctly the least desirable of these houses?"
"It's the cheapest, I expect, and I want to economize."
"People always do as soon as they've got any money," reflected Duplay in a puzzled tone. "If you were on half-pay as I am, you'd never want to do it."
"Well, I've another reason." This was already saying more than she had meant to say.
"Which you don't mean to tell me?"
"Certainly not."
With a shrug he took out his cigarette-case and handed it to her.
"You and your secrets!" he exclaimed good-humoredly. "Really, Mina, I more than earn my keep by the pleasure I give you in not telling me things. And then you go and do it!"
"Shan't this time," said Mr Cholderton's Imp, seeming not a day more than ten, in spite of her smoking cigarette and her smart costume.
"Luckily I'm not curious--and I can trust you to do nothing wrong."
"Well, I suppose so," she agreed with scornful composure. "Did you ever hear mother speak of a Mrs Fitzhubert?"
The major smiled under his heavy mustache as he answered, "Never."
"Well, I have," said Mina with a world of significance. "I heard her first through the door," she added with a candid smile. "I was listening."
"You often were in those days."
"Oh, I am still--but on the inside of the door now. And she told me about it afterward of her own accord. But it wouldn't interest you, uncle."
"Not in its present stage of revelation," he agreed, with a little yawn.
"The funny old Englishman--you never saw him, did you?--Mr Cholderton--he knew her. He rather admired her too. He was there when she rushed in and---- Never mind! I was there too--such a guy! I had corkscrew curls, you know, and a very short frock, and very long--other things. Oh, those frills!--And I suppose I really was the ugliest child ever born. Old Cholderton hated me--he'd have liked to box my ears, I know. But I think he was a little in love with Mrs Fitzhubert. Oh, I've never asked for that 'Peerage!'"
Major Duplay had resigned himself to a patient endurance of inadequate hints. His wits were not equal to putting together the pieces or conducting a sort of "missing word," or missing link, exercise to a triumphant issue. In time he would know all--supposing, that is, that there were really anything to know. Meanwhile he was not curious about other people's affairs; he minded his own business. Keeping young occupied much of his time; and then there was always the question of how it might prove possible to supplement the half-pay to which his years of service in the Swiss Army entitled him; it was scanty, and but for his niece's hospitality really insufficient. He thought that he was a clever man, he had remained an honest man, and he saw no reason why Fortune should not some day make him a comfortable man; she had never done so yet, having sent him into the world as the fifth child of a Protestant pastor in a French-speaking canton, and never having given him so much as a well-to-do relative (even Madame de Kries' villa was on a modest scale) until Mina married Adolf Zabriska and kept that gentleman's money although she had the misfortune to lose his company. His death seemed to Duplay at least no great calamity; that he had died childless did not appear to have disappointed Mina and was certainly no ground of complaint on her uncle's part.
Presumably Mr Sloyd's inquiries elicited satisfactory information; perhaps Mina was not hard to please. At all events, a week later she and