VII
There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should makeher sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with aclick, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intenselypoignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman:dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pullthe wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively,furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the funit promised. Taken off her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats shesat up straight and stared; but with the eleventh her attitude relaxed.She had regained her outward nonchalance, and resolved upon her systemof fence.
"Ah," she said, on a tone judiciously compounded of feminine artlessnessand of forthright British candour, and with a play of the eyebrows thatattributed her momentary suscitation to the workings of memory, "ofcourse--Blanchemain. The Sussex Blanchemains. I expect there's only onefamily of the name?"
"I've never heard of another," assented the young man.
"The Ventmere Blanchemains," she pursued pensively. "Lord Blanchemain ofVentmere is your titled head?"
"Exactly," said he.
"I knew the late Lord Blanchemain--I knew him fairly well," shementioned, always with a certain pensiveness.
"Oh--?" said he, politely interested.
"Yes," said she. "But I've never met his successor. The two were not, Ibelieve, on speaking terms. Of course,"--and her forthright Britishcandour carried her trippingly over the delicate ground,--"it's commonknowledge that the family is divided against itself--hostile branches--aProtestant branch and a Catholic. The present lord, if I've got itright, is a Catholic, and the late lord's distant cousin?"
"You've got it quite right," the young man assured her, with a nod, anda little laugh. "They had the same great-great-grandfather. The lastfew lords have been Protestants, but in our branch the family have neverforsaken the old religion."
"I know," said she. "And wasn't it--I've heard the story, but I'm a bithazy about it--wasn't it owing to your--is 'recusancy' the word?--thatyou lost the title? Wasn't there some sort of sharp practice at yourexpense in the last century?"
The young man had another little laugh.
"Oh, nothing," he answered, "that wasn't very much the fashion. The latelord's great-grandfather denounced his elder brother as a Papist and aJacobite--nothing more than that. It was after the 'Forty-five. So thecadet took the title and estates. But with the death of the late lord, adozen years or so ago, the younger line became extinct, and the titlereverted."
"I see," said my lady. She knitted her eyebrows, computing. After aninstant, "General Blanchemain," she resumed, "as the present lord wascalled for the best part of his life, is a bachelor. You will be one ofhis nephews?" She raised her eyes inquiringly.
"The son of his brother Philip," said the young man.
Lady Blanchemain sat up straight again.
"But then," she cried, forgetting to conceal her perturbation, "thenyou're the heir. Philip Blanchemain had but one son, and was theGeneral's immediate junior. You're John Blanchemain--John Francis JosephMary. You're the heir."
The young man smiled--at her eagerness, perhaps.
"The heir-presumptive--I suppose I am," he said.
Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently tittered.
"See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, "You'reheir to an uncommonly good old title," she informed him.
"I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," said he.
"Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out.
"Oh, not so very old," he submitted. "Only seventy, or thereabouts, andyounger in many respects than I am. I hope he'll live for ever."
"Hum!" said she, and appeared to fall a-musing. Absently, as it seemed,and slowly, she was pulling off her gloves.
"Feuds in families," she said, in a minute, "are bad things. Why don'tyou make it up?"
The young man waved his hand, a pantomimic _non-possumus_.
"There's no one left to make it up with--the others are all dead."
"Oh?" she wondered, her eyebrows elevated, whilst automatically herfingers continued to operate upon her gloves. "I thought the last lordleft a widow. I seem to have heard of a _Lady_ Blanchemain somewhere."
The young man gave still another of his little laughs.
"Linda Lady Blanchemain?" he said. "Yes, one hears a lot of her. Ahighly original character, by all accounts. One hears of hereverywhere."
Linda Lady Blanchemain's lip began to quiver; but she got it undercontrol.
"Well?" she questioned--eyes fixing his, and brimming with a kind ofhumorous defiance, as if to say, "Think me an impertinent old meddlerif you will, and do your worst,"--"Why don't you make it up with _her_?"
But he didn't seem to mind the meddling in the least. He stood at ease,and plausibly put his case.
"Why don't I? Or why doesn't my uncle? My uncle is a temperamentalconservative, a devotee to his traditions--the sort of man who willnever do anything that hasn't been the constant habit of his forebears.He would no more dream of healing a well-established family feud than ofselling the family plate. And I--well, surely, it would never be for meto make the advances."
"No, you're right," acknowledged Lady Blanchemain. "The advances shouldcome from her. But people have such a fatal way--even without beingtemperamental conservatives--of leaving things as they find them.Besides, never having seen you, she couldn't know how nice you are. Allthe same, I'll confess, if you insist upon it, that she ought to beashamed of herself. Come--let's make it up."
She rose, a great soft glowing vision of benignancy, and held out herhand, now gloveless, her pretty little smooth plump right hand, withits twinkling rings.
"Oh!" cried the astonished young man, the astonished, amused, moved,wondering, and entirely won young man, his sea-blue eyes wide open, anda hundred lights of pleasure and surprise dancing in them.
The benignant vision floated towards him, and he took the little whitehand in his long lean brown one.