The Talisman Ring

It seemed as though Sir Tristram would have demurred, but Miss Thane frustrated this by breaking into profuse expressions of gratitude. He made the best of it, and the instant the library door was closed on them, said: “Have you been talking like that all the time?”

Miss Thane sank into a chair in an exhausted attitude. “But without pause!” she said faintly. “My dear sir, I have been inspired! The mantle of my own cousin fell upon my shoulders, and I spoke like her, tittered like her, even thought like her! She is the silliest woman I know. It worked like a charm! He was itching to be rid of me!”

“I should imagine he might well!” said Sir Tristram. “The wonder is that he did not strangle you.”

She chuckled. “He is too well-bred. Did I sound really feather-headed? I tried to.”

“Yes,” he said. He looked at her with a hint of a smile. “You are an extremely accomplished woman, Miss Thane.”

“I have a natural talent for acting,” she replied modestly. “But your own efforts were by no means contemptible, I assure you.” She got up. “We have no time to waste if we are to find this panel. Do you take this side of the room and I will take that.”

“Oh—the panel!” said Sir Tristram. “Yes, of course.”

Chapter Seven

Having got rid of his cousin and of Miss Thane, the Beau turned to Eustacie, and murmured: “Could anything be better? Shall we go into the drawing-room?”

Eustacie assented, wondering how long she would be able to hold him in conversation. She did not feel that she possessed quite Miss Thane’s talent for discursive chatter, and she was far too ingenuous to realize that her enchanting little face was enough to keep the Beau by her side until she herself should be pleased to declare the interview at an end. It did occur to her that he was looking at her with an expression of unusual warmth in his eyes, but beyond deciding that she did not like it, she paid very little heed to it. She sat down by the fire, her soft, dove-coloured skirts billowing about her, and remarked that if her dearest Sarah had a fault it was that she was a trifle too talkative.

“Just a trifle,” agreed the Beau. “Do you really propose to accompany her to town?”

“Oh yes, certainly!” she replied. “But I cannot remain with her for ever, and it is that which makes everything very awkward. I meant to become a governess, but Sarah does not advise it. What do you think I should do?”

“Well,” said the Beau slowly, “you could, of course, engage a lady of birth and propriety to live with you and be your chaperon. Sylvester had left you well provided for, you know.”

“But I do not want a chaperon!” said Eustacie.

“No? There is an alternative.”

“Tell me, then!”

“Marriage,” he said.

She shook her head. “I will not marry Tristram. He is not amusing, and, besides, I do not like him.”

“I am aware,” said the Beau, “but Tristram is not the only man in the world, my little cousin.”

Foreseeing what was coming, Eustacie at once agreed with this pronouncement, and launched out into a eulogy of the Duke she would have married had her grandfather not brought her to England. The fact that she had never laid eyes on this gentleman did not deter her from describing him in detail, and it was fully fifteen minutes before her invention gave out and her cousin was able to interpolate a remark. He observed that since the Duke had gone to the guillotine, her fate, had she married him, would have been a melancholy one.

In this opinion, however, Eustacie could not concur. To have become a widow at the age of eighteen would, she held, have been йpatant

, and of all things the most romantic. “Moreover,” she added, “it was a very good match. I should have been a duchess, and although Grandpapa says—said—that it is vulgar to care for such things, I do think that I should have liked to have been a duchess.”

“Oh, I agree with you, ma chиre!” he said cordially. “You would have made a charming duchess. But in these revolutionary times one must moderate one’s ideas, you know. Consider, instead, the advantages of becoming a baroness.”

“A baroness?” she faltered, fixing her eyes on his face with an expression of painful intensity. “What do you mean?”

He met her eyes with slightly raised brows, and for a moment stood looking down at her as though he were trying to read her thoughts. “My dear cousin, what in the world have I said to alarm you?” he asked.

Recollecting herself, she answered quickly: “I am not at all alarmed, but I do not understand what you mean. Why should I think about being a baroness?”

He pulled up a chair and sat down on it, rather nearer to her than she liked, and stretching out his hand laid it on one of hers. “I might make you one,” he said.

She sat as straight and as stiff as a wooden puppet, but her cheeks glowed with the indignation that welled up in her. The glance she bent on him was a very fiery one, and she said bluntly: “You are not a baron, you!”

“We don’t know that,” he replied, “but we might find out. In fact, I have already recommended Tristram to do so.”