Mrs. Clifford exclaimed, with a sigh of relief, not a little set at ease by the timely diversion. “We’re so glad you’ve come, Colonel. And Lady Emily too; she’s over yonder, is she? Ah, well, I’ll look out for her. We heard you were to be here. Oh, how kind of you; thank you. No, Elma’s none the worse for her adventure, thank Heaven! just a little shaken, that’s all, but not otherwise injured. And this gentleman’s the brother of the kind friend who was so good to her in the tunnel. I’m not quite sure of the name. I think it’s—-”
“Guy Waring,” the young man interposed blandly. Hardly any one who looked at Colonel Kelmscott’s eyes could even have perceived the profound surprise this announcement caused him. He bowed without moving a muscle of that military face. Guy himself never noticed the intense emotion the introduction aroused in the distinguished stranger. But Mrs. Clifford and Elma, each scanning him closely with those keen grey eyes of theirs, observed at once that, unmoved as he appeared, a thunderbolt falling at Colonel Kelmscott’s feet could not more thoroughly or completely have stunned him. For a second or two he gazed in the young man’s face uneasily, his colour came and went, his bosom heaved in silence; then he roped his moustache with his trembling fingers, and tried in vain to pump up some harmless remark appropriate to the occasion. But no remark came to him. Mrs. Clifford darted a furtive glance at Elma, and Elma darted back a furtive glance at Mrs. Clifford. Neither said a word, and each let her eyes drop to the ground at once as they met the other’s. But each knew in her heart that something passing strange had astonished Colonel Kelmscott; and each knew, too, that the other had observed it.
Mother and daughter, indeed, needed no spoken words to tell these things plainly to one another. The deep intuition that descended to both was enough to put them in sympathy at once without the need of articulate language.
“Yes, Mr. Guy Waring,” Mrs. Clifford repeated at last, breaking the awkward silence that supervened upon the group. “The brother of Mr. Cyril Waring, who was so kind the other day to my daughter in the tunnel.”
The Colonel started imperceptibly to the naked eye again.
“Oh, indeed,” he said, forcing himself with an effort to speak at last. “I’ve read about it, of course; it was in all the papers.... And—eh—is your brother here, too, this afternoon, Mr. Waring?”
CHAPTER VII. — KELMSCOTT OF TILGATE.
To both Elma and her mother this meeting between Colonel Kelmscott and Guy Waring was full of mystery. For the Kelmscotts, of Tilgate Park, were the oldest county family in all that part of Surrey; and Colonel Kelmscott himself passed as the proudest man of that haughtiest house in Southern England. What, therefore, could have made him give so curious and almost imperceptible a start the moment Guy Waring’s name was mentioned in conversation? Not a word that he said, to be sure, implied to Guy himself the depth of his surprise; but Elma, with her marvellous insight, could see at once, for all that, by the very haze in his eyes, that he was fascinated by Guy’s personality, somewhat as she herself had been fascinated the other day in the train by Sardanapalus. Nay, more; he seemed to wish, with all his heart, to leave the young man’s presence, and yet to be glued to the spot, in spite of himself, by some strange compulsion.
It was with a dreamy, far-away tone in his voice that the Colonel uttered those seemingly simple words, “And is your brother here, too, this afternoon, Mr. Waring?”
“Yes, he’s somewhere about,” Guy answered carelessly. “He’ll turn up by-and-by, no doubt. He’s pretty sure to find out, sooner or later, Miss Clifford’s here, and then he’ll come round this way to speak to her.”
For some time they stood talking in a little group by the bench, Colonel Kelmscott meanwhile thawing by degrees and growing gradually interested in what Guy had to say, while Elma looked on with a devouring curiosity.
“Your brother’s a painter, you say,” the Colonel murmured once under that heavy white moustache of his; “yes, I think I remember. A rising painter. Had a capital landscape in the Grosvenor last year, I recollect, and another in the Academy this spring, if I don’t mistake—skied—skied, unfairly; yet a very pretty thing, too; ‘At the Home of the Curlews.’”
“He’s painting a sweet one now,” Elma put in quickly, “down here, close by, in Chetwood Forest. He told me about it; it must be simply lovely—all fern and mosses, with, oh! such a beautiful big snake in the foreground.”
“I should like to see it,” Colonel Kelmscott said slowly, not without a pang. “If it’s painted in the forest—and by your brother, Mr. Waring—that would give it, to me, a certain personal value.” He paused a moment; then he added, in a little explanatory undertone, “I’m lord of the manor, you know, at Chetwood; and I shoot the forest.”
“Cyril would be delighted to let you see the piece when it’s finished,” Guy answered lightly. “If you’re ever up in town our way—we’ve rooms in Staple Inn. I dare say you know it—that quaint, old-fashioned looking place, with big lattice windows, that overhangs Holborn.”
Colonel Kelmscott started, and drew himself up still taller and stiffer than before.
“I may have some opportunity of seeing it some day in one of the galleries,” he answered coldly, as if not to commit himself. “To tell you the truth, I seldom have time to lounge about in studios. It was merely the coincidence of the picture being painted in Chetwood Forest that made me fancy for a moment I might like to see it. But I’m no connoisseur. Mrs. Clifford, may I take you to get a cup of tea? Tea, I think, is laid out in the tent behind the shrubbery.”
It was said in a tone to dismiss Guy politely; and Guy, taking the hint, accepted it as such, and fell back a pace or two to his garrulous old lady. But before Colonel Kelmscott could walk off Mrs. Clifford and her daughter to the marquee for refreshments, Elma gave a sudden start, and blushed faintly pink through that olive-brown skin of hers.
“Why, there’s MY Mr. Waring!” she exclaimed, in a very pleased tone, holding out her hand, with a delicious smile; and as she said it, Cyril and Montague Nevitt strolled up from behind a great clump of lilacs beside them.
Two pairs of eyes watched those young folks closely as they shook hands once more—Guy’s and Mrs. Clifford’s. Guy observed that a little red spot rose on Cyril’s cheek he had rarely seen there, and that his voice trembled slightly as he said, “How do you do?” to his pretty fellow-traveller of the famous adventure. Mrs. Clifford observed that the faint pink faded out of the olive-brown skin as Elma took Cyril Waring’s hand in hers, and that her face grew pale for three minutes afterwards. And Colonel Kelmscott, looking on with a quietly observant eye, remarked to himself that Cyril Waring was a very creditable young man indeed, as handsome as Guy, and as like as two peas, but if anything perhaps even a trifle more pleasing.
For the rest of that afternoon, they six kept constantly together.
Elma noted that Colonel Kelmscott was evidently ill at ease; a thing most unusual with that proud, self-reliant aristocrat. He held himself, to be sure, as straight and erect as ever, and moved about the grounds with that same haughty air of perfect supremacy, as of one who was monarch of all he surveyed in the county of Surrey. But Elma could see, for all that, that he was absent-minded and self-contained; he answered all questions in a distant, unthinking way; some inner trouble was undoubtedly consuming him. His eyes were all for the two Warings. They glanced nervously right and left every minute in haste, but returned after each excursion straight to Guy and Cyril. The Colonel noted narrowly all they said and did; and Elma was sure he was very much pleased at least with her painter. How could he fail to be, indeed?—for Mr. Waring was charming. Elma wished she could have strolled off with him about the lawn alone, were it only ten paces in front of her mother. But somehow the fates that day were unpropitious. The party held together as by some magnetic bond, and Mrs. Clifford’s eye never for one moment deserted her.
The