Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Islands -- Fiction; Love stories; Nobility -- Fiction
Bowles came bowing and scraping into the room a few minutes later. He
immediately recommended an old-fashioned Dover's powder and ventured the
opinion that "good sweat" would soon put his lordship on his feet,
"better than ever." Deppingham kept Bowles beside him while Browne
generously prepared and administered the medicine.
Later in the night the Princess came to see how the patient was getting
on. He was in a dripping perspiration.
Genevra drew a chair up beside his couch and sat down.
Lady Agnes was yawning sleepily over a book.
"Do you know, I believe I'd feel better if I could have another chill,"
he said. "I'm so beastly hot now that I can't stand it. Aggie, why don't
you turn out on the balcony for a bit of fresh air? I'm a brute to have
kept you moping in here all evening."
Lady Agnes sighed prettily and--stepped out into the murky night. There
were signs of an approaching storm in the sultry air.
"I say, Genevra, what's the news?" demanded his lordship.
"The latest bulletin says that you are very much improved and that you
expect to pass a comfortable night."
"'Gad I _do_ feel better. I'm not so stuffy. Where is Chase?"
Now, the Princess, it is most distressing to state, had wilfully avoided
Mr. Chase since early that morning.
"I'm sure I don't know. I had dinner with Mrs. Browne in her room. I
fancy he's off attending to the guard. I haven't seen him."
"Nice chap," remarked Deppingham. "Isn't that he now, speaking to Agnes
out there?"
Genevra looked up quickly. A man's voice came in to them from the
balcony, following Lady Deppingham's soft laugh.
"No," she said, settling back calmly. "It's Mr. Browne."
"Oh," said Deppingham, a slight shadow coming into his eyes. "Nice chap,
too," he added a moment later.
"I don't like him," said she, lowering her voice. Deppingham was silent.
Neither spoke for a long time The low voices came to them indistinctly
from the outside.
"I've no doubt Agnes is as much to blame as he," said his lordship at
last. "She's made a fool of more than one man, my dear. She rather likes
it."
"He's behaving like a brute. They've been married less than a year."
"I daresay I'd better call Aggie off," he mused.
"It's too late."
"Too late? The deuce--"
"I mean, too late to help Drusilla Browne. She's had an ideal
shattered."
"It really doesn't amount to anything, Genevra," he argued. "It will
blow over in a fortnight. Aggie's always doing this sort of thing, you
know."
"I know, Deppy," she said sharply. "But this man is different. He's not
a gentleman. Mr. Skaggs wasn't a gentleman. Blood tells. He will boast
of this flirtation until the end of his days."
"Aggie's had dozens of men in love with her--really in love," he
protested feebly. "She's not--"
"They've come and gone and she's still the same old Agnes and you're the
same old Deppy. I'm not thinking of you or Aggie. It's Drusilla Browne."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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