“I never saw any one so fascinating,” said the Honorable Bertie, who was very badly hit indeed. “She’s a regular little witch. I assure you, Mrs. Brinton, I would marry her to-morrow if I were only lucky enough to have the chance. But she hasn’t a word to throw at me, and if she is not with the Denmeads, why she will stick like a leech to Miss Orme, and how is a man to make love to a girl when that’s the way she treats him? I wonder whether she still cares for that fellow Denmead? If so, couldn’t you give his wife a hint, then perhaps she would not have so much to do with her and I might possibly stand a chance of getting a hearing.” “Well,” said Myra, rather startled by this suggestion. “I could do that if you like, but of course, it would lead to a quarrel between them.” “Oh, never mind what it leads to,” said Mr. Vane-Ffoulkes. “It will at least give me a fair chance with her. Isn’t it hard, Mrs. Brinton, that when a fellow doesn’t care a straw the girls are all dying for love of him, and when at last he does care why the fates ordain that he shall fall in love with a girl who--well--who doesn’t care a straw for him.” Myra could have found it in her heart to laugh at this lame ending, and at the sudden reversal of fortune which had so greatly depressed the earl’s son, but after all there was something genuine about the poor fellow that touched her: for the time Mr. Vane-Ffoulkes really was very much in love with Ivy. It was the sort of passion that might possibly exist for about six months, it might even prove to be a “hardy annual,” but it was certainly not a passion of the perennial sort. She promised that she would do her best for him. “If he is an empty-headed fellow,” she reflected, “he is at least rich and well-connected. It would be a remarkably good marriage for Ivy Grant, and I will do what I can to further it.” CHAPTER XXXIII “When ye sit by the fire yourselves to warm, Take care that your tongues do your neighbours no harm.” Old Chimney-piece Motto. |Christmas had passed and they were engaged for a fortnight at Mardentown, one of the large manufacturing places. It was on a frosty clear morning early in the new year that Myra set out from her rather comfortless lodgings to call on Evereld. There was no rehearsal that day and she happened to know that both Macneillie and Ralph were out, so that the coast would be clear for her operations. “I shall be doing a kindness to her as well as to Ivy and Mr. Vane-Ffoulkes,” she reflected. “She is so very innocent, it is high time she understood a little more of the ways of the world.”