whood I
was governed by a committee of scoundrels of both sexes until another
criminal idiot was imposed upon me as a second husband. My own
personality has never had the gleam of a chance. I have never yet
done any single thing because I wanted to do it. Between first my
politician-mother and her band of tonsured swindlers, and then my
cantankerous brother and his crew of snarling and sour-minded preachers,
and all the court liars and parasites and spies that both sides
surrounded me with, I have lived an existence that isn't life at all. I
purport to be a woman, but I have never been suffered to see a genuine
man. And now here is one--or what I think to be one--and I'm given to
understand that he is a pirate and a murderer and an unspeakable ruffian
generally--but he takes my fancy, and he has beckoned to me to come to
him, and so you will kindly get me my hat and jacket and gloves.' That's
what she would have said to you, my dear."

"And I"--said Celia, rising after a moment's pause, and putting her hand
upon Edith's arm--"I would have answered, 'Dearest lady, in whatever
befalls, I pray you never to forget that I am to the end your fond and
devoted and loyal servant.'"

CHAPTER XIX

AUGUST wore itself out in parched tedium, and a September began which
seemed even more unbearable in town,--and still Thorpe did not get away
from London.

So far as the payment of an exorbitant rent in advance, and the receipt
of innumerable letters from a restless and fussy steward whom he had
not yet seen, went as evidence, he knew himself to be the tenant in
possession of a great shooting in Morayshire. He had several photographs
of what was called the lodge, but looked like something between a
mansion and a baronial castle, on the mantel of the Board Room. The
reflection that this sumptuous residence had been his for a month, and
that it daily stood waiting for him, furnished and swept and provisioned
for his coming, did nothing to help the passing of time in the hot,
fagged City. More than once he had said resolutely that, on the morrow,
or at the worst the next day, he would go--but in the event he had
not gone. In the last week of August he had proceeded to the length of
sending his niece and nephew Northward, and shutting up the house in
Ovington Square, and betaking himself to the Savoy Hotel. This had
appeared at the time to be almost equivalent to his getting away
himself,--to be at least a first stage in the pro