The Rape of the Beau

by Agnes Castle and Egerton Castle

The Rape of the Beau

A NEW “SWEET KITTY BELLAIRS” STORY

By Agnes and Egerton Castle

Authors of “The Pride of Jennico,” “The Bath Comedy,” “If Youth but Knew,” etc.

 

LADY KILCRONEY was at home, in her white and gold drawing-room, to a few special fair friends. She was fresh back herself from a somewhat prolonged country visit, and the little meeting had been convened at once to celebrate the joys of reunion, and for the purpose of culling all the latest tit-bits of gossip. My Lord Kilcroney, who—an unwonted arrangement—had been left behind in town, was an affectionate and constant, but not an informing correspondent.

Kitty Kilcroney, in the highest health and spirits, ran a sparkling, pansy-brown eye from face to face with some curiosity, as Pompey, the black page, went round with the tea-cups. It struck the astute Kitty that her friends were bursting with some communication of personal importance; that there were glances of meaning and melancholy between them, an abstraction as to each other's garments and an unwonted appearance of solidarity, for these five were not wont to endure each other's pretty looks and modish garments with equanimity.

“That will do, Pompey,” said Kitty, tossing a macaroon to her dusky slave. “Put another log on the fire and shut the door after you. Well, dear ladies,” she went on briskly, “and how have you all been getting on without me?”

The five looked at each other, and then their eyes turned with one accord to the pretty, merry face of their hostess. Five years of matrimony had added a little, not unbecoming, matronly amplitude to my Lady Kilcroney's figure. The famous Mistress Kitty Bellairs, before her union with the wild, good-natured Irish viscount, had been noted for her sharp tongue, her unsparing wit; but there had recently grown a softness upon her which revealed itself in glance and smile.

“I declare,” cried Lady Flo Dare-Stamer, “we're all in the same boat, ladies; but I'm sorriest for Kitty, I am indeed!”

“And what induced her to leave Lord Kilcroney behind?” cried young Sue Verney sharply. “The model couple to set a bad example to all our husbands—”

“Yes, indeed, Kitty,” interrupted Lady Day, “that you, of all women, should make such a mistake!”

“I'm sure,” said Lady Standish, in her trailing, plaintive way, “if Jasper has said to me once, he has said to me fifty times this last fortnight, 'I can't fail Kilcroney to-night; I've promised Kilcroney his revenge.'”

“Highty tighty!” cried Kitty, extremely amused, “and what's the to-do about now, and how has my poor Kilcroney become responsible? I can't help it, Julia, if Sir Jasper will gamble, and I never was jealous of the cards, Susan.”

“I've no doubt,” cried this last, with apparent and acid irrelevance, “your Lord was in perfect ecstasies over your return.”

An irresistible smile appeared on Kitty's lips. The other ladies looked at each other.

“You think, no doubt,” pursued Susie, “that you'll have a charming domestic evening with him, my love.”

Again the five sought each other's glance, and again silks and laces fluttered with heavy sighs.

“I think—” began Kitty. She stopped, drew her fine brows together in a frown, then laughed suddenly. “My dear Susie, I don't think—I know. Were his Majesty himself to summon him, he'd not leave my side this evening.”

If Kitty ever bragged, it was on the subject of Denis's devotion.

“And what is the particular excuse for to-night?” cried Lady Verney, turning to her sister.

Nan Day had a mouth full of macaroons, and it was Lady Standish who answered, upon one of her high sighs.

“My dear,” fumbling in her little silk bag for her handkerchief, “it is beginning to pass all bounds. You know they had a pair of minxes from Sadler's Wells last night—a Thespis supper, they called it! To-night, they say, 'tis a mere card-meeting.”

“Mr. Lafone warned me he would not be in till very late,” piped the bride, breaking her silence. “I promised him just to go to sleep like a little dormouse—”

She was interrupted by an indignant chorus.

“Upon my word!”

“My dear, you'll ruin the creature!”

“Sir Jasper knows that not even the utmost exhaustion would induce me to retire—”

Lady Verney's strident voice predominated. “Dormouse indeed!”

In the midst of the turmoil Kitty tapped her foot. A warning sparkle flew to the dark eyes. “Cackle, cackle!” she cried, covering her ears with her hands and then, dropping them, said: “In heaven's name, will somebody talk sense! Flora, my good soul—”

“The fact is,” said Lady Flora comfortably, poising a dainty “Cupid's kiss” between a large white finger and thumb, “there have been sad doings since you left us, Kitty. It might have been as well had you persuaded that excellent Kilcroney of yours to go to the country with you when you were taken with the vapors, my poor love, and Sir George ordered you solitude and syllabubs. He'd have gone with you then, I feel sure.”

She popped the “Cupid's kiss” into her mouth, and, munching it, shook her head. Kitty was staring at her in astonishment and displeasure.

“Persuaded my lord to go to the country? Persuaded, Lady Flo! It took all my eloquence, I assure you, ma'am, to prevent his starting off with me. Aye, and two couriers a day to keep him from posting after me. It was my desire he should remain in town. There were important debates in the House of Lords.”

The circle interchanged its gaze of hidden knowledge, as Kitty sharply pursued: “And I'm not of your way of thinking, ladies, that a woman does well to keep her husband forever at her apron-strings! 'Tis my custom to show my lord from time to time how prodigious badly he gets on without me—”

She broke off. Her words were received with airs so varied and expressive that a saint would have been provoked. Kitty was none of your saints.

“In another moment you'll have me as positive a zany as yourselves,” she cried. “I'll to Kilcroney for the meaning of this. Nay, I'll send for him!”

“Do, my love,” shrilled Susie. “Ask him how many debates he has attended?”

“And how he relieved the monstrous tedium of your absence,” added Nan, softer noted, but no less bent on mischief.

“Alas, my poor Kitty,” bewailed Julia Standish, “men are all alike!”

“Tut, tut!” cried the good-natured Lady Flo, “you'll get him in hand again, my love, after a little driving.”

“Ask him where he intends to spend the evening.” The bride's childish treble came, as usual, after the others.

Upon her Kitty turned her accumulated fury. “He will spend the evening at home, Mistress Lafone.”

“He won't!” cried Susie. “He'll spend it at the Owl and Nightingale!”

“And what kind of a place might that be, my Lady Verney?”

“'Tis the newest haunt of dissipation—a new supper club. 'Tis easy to see you're fresh from the country, Kitty.”

“Originator, Mr. Stafford,” said Nan.

“President, or Senior Owl, Viscount Kilcroney,” added Lady Verney.

“Vice-President, Mr. Lafone,” chirruped the bride.

“And, I grieve to say,” continued Lady Flo, “its most assiduous member, Mr. Dare-Stamer. Positively, the creature has hardly been at Elm Park House these ten days.”

“And Sir Jasper's not behindhand,” said that gentleman's injured wife.

“Latest Owl, Philip Day, of Queen's Compton,” put in Susie spitefully.

“Introduced and proposed by his brother-in-law, the Lord Verney,” cried Nan, flushing. “And, indeed, Susie, I'd never have consented to come and stay with you if I'd known how Verney meant to corrupt my poor Philip.”

“Corrupt!” snorted Susie.

“Pray, pray!” interposed Kitty. Anger had left her. She sat nibbling her little finger, after a fashion she had when pensive. “It's taken you just half an hour,” she went on, “to tell me a single piece of news. But I begin to perceive a glimmer. Mr. Stafford has founded some kind of convivial club, and your husbands, my dear creatures, are over-assiduous members. Well, ladies, I'll do what I can to help you, but I never had much patience with the wife who could not keep her husband well amused at home.”

The chorus broke out afresh, indignant, malicious, plaintive, good-humoredly remonstrative, to tail off with Molly Lafone's pipe:

“Do you think you can amuse my Lord Kilcroney at home as well as the ladies from Sadler's Wells—'nightingales,' I suppose—amused him last night? Gentlemen seem to like play-actresses so much.”

In the silence which this monstrous pronouncement created, Kitty surveyed the speaker with a glance of majesty. “Speak for your own gentleman, if you please, ma'am; my Lord Kilcroney has the strange taste to prefer the company of his wife to that of any other lady, be she from Sadler's Wells or Half Moon Street. But I'm willing to help you, my dears,” went on their fair hostess.

The door opened upon this remark, and Pompey announced, “Mr. Stafford.”

There was a flutter, as of a dovecot; the five arose like one woman.

Susie could not trust herself in the wretch's presence, as she whispered noisily in Kitty's ear before that ruthless kiss of hers which spared not rouge nor patch. And Nan, with anger lurking in her lovely blue eyes and in her gentle voice, announced that she had promised to take Philip to her mother.

Lady Standish, shuddering from Mr. Stafford's elegant advance, trailed away, willowy and melancholy as usual.

“Come,” said Lady Flo to the bride, with her jolly laugh. “Two's company, my dear!”

She caught the latter's hand under her stout arm, turning a deaf ear to the reply.

“Oh! but I always understood that only applied to sweethearts, Lady Flora.”

Kitty returned her large friend's farewell kiss heartily, but only bestowed a curtesy on Mistress Lafone. The bride paused a second on the threshold to breathe an innocent valediction:

“It will be so vastly clever of your Ladyship if you prevent Lord Kilcroney from going out to-night. We shall all want to know. Sha'n't we, Lady Flora?”

She blinked at Mr. Stafford through her great eyelashes as that gentleman closed the door upon her.

“'Pon my soul,” said he, coming back to Kitty, “'tis as dewy a piece as I've ever seen!”

“Prodigious dewy,” said Kitty laconically.

She poured a cold decoction into the handleless, transparent cup and tendered it to her visitor; not for the founder of the supper club should the little silver caddy be opened again and its expensive contents diminished.

“Is your tea agreeable, Mr. Stafford, sir?” she queried, her dimples peeping in a sweet smile, though there was a glitter in her glance that might have given the visitor food for thought.

“Quite agreeable, thank you, Kitty,” he answered, swallowing the mixture without a grimace.

“Still so free with my name, Mr. Stafford?”

“I crave your pardon, madam, but 'Kitty' has so much prettier ring than 'my Lady Kilcroney' and comes so much easier to my tongue. I can't forget the old days, Kitty.”

“Can't you, sir?” quoth Kitty. She stared at him reflectively.

He and she had come perilously near being man and wife, and neither had quite forgiven the other for the alacrity with which the parting had been accepted. Yet he had never wedded, and whenever they met his attitude was the tender and reproachful one of the immutably faithful lover.

“The country air has suited your Ladyship,” said Stafford into the silence. “I trust you find our excellent Denis in as good case as you could expect in the circumstances.”

Kitty dropped her white eyelids demurely. “To what circumstances might you be referring?”

“To the melancholy engendered by your absence. The poor fellow was inconsolable at first. A hundred times a day he'd vow he was lost without you.”

“But you undertook his consolation, I understand,” cried the lady, once again with smiling lips and glittering eyes. “You helped him to find himself.”

“All that a friend could do,” admitted Mr. Stafford suavely.

“This new club, sir?”

“'Twas started, I may say, for him; inspired by the sight of his loneliness, I thought of naming it The Benedict's Comfort. But no doubt Kilcroney has informed you of all its stages. 'Tis a prodigious success, Kitty.”

“So I hear, sir—especially among the ladies.”

Mr. Stafford could not help the laughter which had been gathering within him from bubbling gently from his lips. “As you say, Kitty, 'tis especially the ladies that attest to its success. Ha! ha! Lady Verney all but cut me just now! And that little white cat, Lady Anne Day, could scarce keep her claws off me as she went by. It was full dawn this morning when her squire sang us a new drinking song that sent a new bottle round as if it were but midnight.”

“Charming, indeed. 'Twas your Thespis meeting, I believe?” cooed Lady Kilcroney. “So you sang last night, and what do you do to-night, sir?”

“Has not Kilcroney told you; 'twas his own suggestion. We've a trifle of a card-party, but I can't think how the fellow was so forgetful as to fix on the very night of your Ladyship's return.”

“Kilcroney knows,” said Kitty sweetly, “that 'tis my pleasure that he should pass his time agreeably. Yet if he should not be able to join you to-night, Mr. Stafford—”

“If!” said Mr. Stafford. He rose and stood smiling insufferably.

“You will understand,” continued the lady unmoved, as she swept him her little hand, “that 'twill be none of my fault. He shall not break his engagement if I can keep him to it.”

Mr. Stafford raised himself from saluting the perfumed, taper fingers to glance again at the fair face. Kitty was curiously silky, and Kitty was, as he guessed, very angry; and she was a marvelously clever woman.

He hesitated a second. Then, “I'll see he does not stay too late,” he murmured.

She called after him, “Success to your club, Mr. Stafford!”

“She's plotting mischief,” he said to himself as he closed the door. “Gad, her eyes shot sparks, and if Lady Nan would have scratched me, I vow my Lady Kilcroney would have bitten me with all those little white teeth! The Benedict's Comfort!” he chuckled, as he went down the shallow stairs, pausing on every step. “'Tis the success of the season indeed—Kitty but a few hours back in the town and fit to slay me already! Ah, she's dangerous! I'll drop a word in Denis's ear to keep him up to the mark to-night.”

II

Lady F1o and Mrs. Lafone sat together in the latter's very small parlor; and Lady Flo was just settling down comfortably to a fresh dish of tea and contemplating pleasantly a plate of queen cakes, when, to her infinite amazement, the friends she had but even now parted from were ushered in a body into the room. Kitty was evidently the leader of the party.

“You'll excuse us, ma'am, I trust,” she began ceremoniously, to her hostess, “but, hearing my Lady Flora was here, I made so bold as to intrude upon you with my friends. Flo, my dear, I caught our sweet Nan and our dashing Susan here in the midst of a pretty quarrel, and culled poor Julia before she had quite cried her eyes away. 'Tis evident the time has come to act in concert. The Owl and Nightingale—”

She was interrupted. Out came Lady Standish's handkerchief; Lady Anne Day and her sister, divided from each other by all the breadth of Kitty's cream brocade, broke into simultaneous recrimination.

“Tut, tut!” cried Lady Flo, “'tis as bad as a cage of cockatoos. One at a time, my dears.”

“The one must be me,” said Lady Kilcroney. She lifted a taper finger authoritatively. “The supper club is the death of your domestic happiness. You must be the death of the supper club.”

“Couldn't you induce Lord Kilcroney to spend the evening with you, after all?” insinuated Mollie Lafone.

Kitty breathed a second through dilated nostrils; then, with a contemptuous superiority, ignored the interruption. Her three fair companions hung breathlessly on her words. Lady Flo herself was interested beyond queen cakes.

“The Owl and Nightingale shall die to-night, and Mr. Stafford, the envious bachelor, shall smart for his doings. Is it to be borne? Lady Anne Day and Lady Verney, returning to Verney House full of the best wifely intentions, find— What do they find?”

“A letter,” broke in Nan, under whose creamy English skin ran a blood of almost Southern fierceness, “a letter announcing that Philip and that odious Verney—'tis your Verney who has corrupted him, Sue—mean to spend the evening at the Owl and Nightingale, and do not intend to return till late! Philip, who used not to bear me out of his sight! Philip, who—a letter, too! If he'd even told me. Oh, I'll pay him out! Aye, and Mr. Stafford, too.”

Before Susan, speechless with wrath, could bring forth the strident reply, Kitty suavely intervened.

“'Tis the way of husbands, my poor Nan, to write when speaking comes awkward.”

Julia dropped her kerchief. “Sir Jasper left a message with the butler,” she sobbed.

“Aye, and my Dare-Stamer will never pay me such a compliment. There's no 'By your leave' or 'With your leave' with him,” laughed Lady Flo, and picked up her cake.

“But I don't understand,” murmured the bride, her large eyes wandering from one distressed countenance to another. “I thought it was part of the pleasure of being married in London that one needn't have one's husband with one all the time. Of course, if he goes out of an evening, he wouldn't expect his lady to stay at home, would he? Some one told me that in the country, and I thought it was so agreeable.”

The circle sat aghast, then Lady Flo choked and chuckled.

“'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!'” she exclaimed. “Indeed, ladies, you might take a lesson! Aye, and I who used to cry myself sick those first months at Elm Park—”

“The question is,” interrupted Susan irritably, “What's to be done?”

“We must punish our husbands,” said Susan Verney between set teeth.

“What is the best way to punish a husband?” questioned the bride innocently.

“Make him jealous,” suggested Lady Flora.

“Make him ridiculous,” said Nan, with a vindictive flash of her blue eyes.

“Make him both, sweet ladies,” amended Kitty Kilcroney, while a reflective dimple peeped beside her smile.

“Nay, but,” sighed Lady Standish, “how does this help us, since 'tis of the club and its pernicious ways we must cure our ungallant lords?”

“Oh, Julia,” said Kitty impatiently, “you were ever dense of wit! Why, to be sure, let but your Sir Jasper imagine that you have good reason for wishing him out of the way of an evening, and I'll wager my eyelashes he'll not budge from your side till Michaelmas.”

At the mention of eyelashes, the bride made great play with hers.

“How would it be,” quoth she, and candor and sweet, youthful guilelessness seemed to hover on her lips and in her glance, “were I to induce Mr. Stafford to give me his company here to-night instead of acting host at his supper party—” She broke off, opening her eyes surprisedly at the outcry which ensued.

“Good heavens, child!”

“Mistress Lafone, you can have no idea of the consequences of what you are proposing. Pray, madam, how about punishing Mr. Stafford? Is not that to be part of the program?”

“Stay,” cried Lady Kilcroney, springing to her feet. She flung out a small imperative hand. “Mistress Lafone's proposal is absurd indeed; I will lend no hand to help a woman lose her character. But there is something, nevertheless, in the suggestion. Ladies!” she looked round upon the expectant circle with commanding eyes, “I have a plan for you which will encompass all your desires. You will make your husbands jealous, aye, and ridiculous! We will cut Beau Stafford's comb for him, and the town shall ring with the joke of it. Yet not one of you shall have as much as a summer cloud upon her fair fame. Mistress Lafone will lure the bird for you, and—” She lowered her voice; fair heads bent toward her in a listening circle, bright eyes fixed themselves on her face. When she had concluded, there was a breathless pause.

“Pray, my Lady Kilcroney,” said the bride then, in her sweet, shrill voice, “will you further inform us how you will deal with my Lord Kilcroney when the murder's out?”

“Madam,” said Kitty, with great dignity, turning toward the door of the parlor, “my advice in this matter is entirely disinterested. Lord Kilcroney will not join the circle at the club to-night. There will be no necessity to render him either jealous or absurd. My Lord Kilcroney will spend the evening with his wife.”

 

As my Lady Kilcroney's coach clattered away with its fair burden, her friends looked at each other without speaking. Then Julia Standish remarked, sighing, that Kitty was sadly puffed up since she had become a viscountess.

“And so sour of temper, too!” exclaimed Susan Verney. “No wonder my Lord Kilcroney enjoys a holiday when he can get one.”

“Poor Kitty!” cried the charitable Flo. “We must not forget, ladies, that she has an empty nursery.”

“Poor Kitty!” echoed Nan Day softly, her thoughts reverting with a rush of tenderness to the two sturdy boys she had left behind her at Queen's Compton.

“And she five years married,” bewailed Julia Standish. She had herself been wedded six, and five sweet babes had inherited her sensitive disposition.

“What! wed so long!” cried the bride of two months with spiteful joy. “And no hopes even? I wonder how her lord puts up with her airs and graces. But 'Pride goeth before a fall.'”

III

As my Lord Verney and Mr. Philip Day ran arm in arm down the steps of Verney House, setting forth for their evening's entertainment with a gaiety that marks perchance an uneasy conscience, they were arrested by a chairman, who, inquiring which of the two was his lordship, thereupon delivered a note.

Lord Verney tore it open, read, stared, read again, frowned; then—for he had a fraternal feeling, rare in such relationships, for his brother-in-law—he handed him the sheet.

“What do you make of that?” he asked.

The honest squire perused,

 

If you ask your wife to-morrow how she spent this evening, be sure she tells you the truth.

 

“What do I make of it?” cried Philip Day, scarlet. “This!”

He tore the anonymous scroll across and across, flung it from him, and, snorting contempt, linked his arm into Lord Verney's again and dragged him forward on their way.

“Think no more of it,” he exhorted. “'Tis when we rub the sting that the gnat poisons us.”

Within the hall of the well-appointed tavern where the club met—the Owl and Nightingale in Old Queen Street, Westminster—he was himself surprised to receive a letter which proved to contain a communication of similar spirit, though differently worded, and in a fine feminine hand, unlike the round characters of the other note:

 

The wise husband is he who gives his wife no opportunities. You should have left her among the haycocks. It had been safer. Why was Mr. S. so anxious to have you at supper to-night? Stay the evening out, perchance you will learn.

 

He bit his full lip. “'Tis some nonsensical piece of mischief.”

Yet it rankled. He did not treat the letter as he had done his brother-in-law's, but folded it carefully and laid it in his breast pocket.

“Where did Nan and Susan tell us they would pass their time this evening? At Lady Flora's? H'm!”

He followed his relative into the inner room, but he was beginning to rub his gnat-bite; and it stung.

Mr. Lafone was already present in the private room allotted to them, and so was Mr. Dare-Stamer; and, even as greetings were being exchanged with the newcomers, a servant entered and offered a letter on a salver.

This Mr. Stamer immediately read aloud with elevated eyebrows,

 

Do not wait for your host, if you would sup to-night, I advise you.

 

“Good heavens!” cried Philip Day, with a lightening of the spirits, “some Puck is at work to-night—”

Mr. Lafone became enveloped in a sudden abstraction. He had himself already received in the street, from an unknown messenger, a curious little note,

 

When the cat's away the mouse will play.

 

Man of the world as he was, he had tossed it away—out of his thoughts even. His mouse, his innocent country moppet, he knew would soon be safe tucked into her little bed, close folded like a daisy from the world and the night. Yet, it was odd that Mr. Stafford, the president, the Senior Owl, should be still absent from the meeting. It was odd that there should be this warning of his failure, joined with the warning to himself.

The conversation between the four lagged. Verney and Dare-Stamer were hungry, Philip Day and Lafone uneasy. They had been promised a merry evening and had come forth in defiance of their wives: and half the company was missing, including the convener himself! Where were Lord Kilcroney and Jasper Standish? Where was Beau Stafford?

The latter question was presently answered in a manner that deepened the mystery. A message was left at the tavern door, how Mr. Stafford deeply regretted that important business should detain him from the club to-night, and he requested my Lord Kilcroney to be kind enough to take the chair.

“Gentlemen,” said Philip Day, as his companions looked blankly at each other, “this is a farce if it is not an impertinence. I am for home again!”

“And I!” chimed in Lafone hastily.

“Not I!” cried Dare-Stamer. “I smell broiled bones.”

And, “Gad, not without my supper!” confirmed Lord Verney.

“Oh, come, gentlemen,” pleaded Lady Flo's husband then. “We can't part without a bottle between us, at least. Come, I'll do host. Stafford's caught by a petticoat, of course. Gad, gentlemen, we'll drink to it! Success to the Beau's business!”

There was a bellow; head down, like a bull on the rush, Jasper Standish dashed into the room. He held an open letter in his hand.

“How many are missing here? Stafford! Ha, where's Stafford? Stafford and Kilcroney?”

“Stafford has failed us,” cried Dare-Stamer. “Why, Jasper, man?”

For Jasper, with another bellow and rush, was gone; the room echoed and reechoed to his parting shout, the shout in which he demanded of the world at large, “Where is Lady Standish?”

Lafone sat down to supper. Standish was an object-lesson. And Philip, relieved again, took seat beside him; Mr. Stafford could scarce have an appointment with two fair ladies.

It was Verney who rubbed the sting again.

“I wonder where is Kilcroney?”

Kilcroney, who had been so set on coming, who had announced his intentions so often and so firmly—-where was he?

IV

Mr. Stafford surveyed himself in the round mirror over his dressing-table with something approaching to a dissatisfied expression on his usually urbane countenance.

No, he had not made a mistake, a crow's foot had actually begun to show itself at the corner of each eye. There was also a droop of the mouth, which, when he caught his reflection sideways, caused a line decidedly resembling a wrinkle. Was there a hint of a double chin over the fine lace of his ruffles at his throat? He straightened himself and pulled at his waistcoat. Could it be fancy, or did he also perceive a tendency to a fatal outward curve in the region covered by its delicate sheen?

“What is it?” he cried, with unwonted asperity, as his valet sidled into the room.

“A letter for you, sir,” insinuated that personage. “The chair's at the door, sir, and Peter with his link is quite ready, if you please.”

Mr. Stafford gazed a second curiously through his quizzing glass at the pink folded note before taking it from the salver. If ever missive bore billet-doux on its countenance, it was this one. He turned it over with a dallying finger. It was sealed with a gilt wafer which bore the effigy of a Cupid tiptoe on the aim. Beau Stafford ripped up the note, flicked it open, and went to the light to read. A little breath of attar of roses gushed up at him as he did so.

 

I hope, sir, you will not think me bold; I am but new in the town and am ill at learning fashionable ways, but there are times when a lady feels sadly in need of a friend. When we met at my Lady Kilcroney's to-day, something whispered to me that I could trust you. If, indeed, this is the case, will you grant me a few minutes' private conversation this evening upon a matter of urgent moment? I shall await you at half-past nine of the clock at the corner of the Queen's Palace Gate. Something tells me that you will not fail me.

M. L.

 

A smile spread emolliently on Mr. Stafford's visage. 'Time was when the billet-doux was a frequent experience with him; of late he had scarce known once in a three months the sensation of unsealing such a document.

“M. L.” “To-day at Lady Kilcroney's.” Why, it was Molly Lafone! “New to the town, ill at learning fashionable ways.” Sure enough it was Lafone's country bride, the dewy piece, the child with the eyelashes, and no other. Gentle laughter shook him. “Something tells me, something tells me.” 'Pon honor, 'twas an audacious little creature! Well, the “something” had not told her wrong. It was not Beau Stafford, certainly, who could refuse such a challenge. Gaily he sniffed the perfume of the note again, thrust it into his breast, swung himself into his cloak, and lightly ran down-stairs, humming a cavatina. He had not felt so youthful, so stirred to adventure, since Kifty Bellairs threw him over for Denis O'Hara, now Viscount Kilcroney.

Peter, the footman, lifted up his torch to light his master into the chair.

“To the Owl and Nightingale, sir?” he remarked in the tone of one certain of the answer.

“No,” cried Mr. Stafford. “I will be set down at the entrance to the Queen's Palace Gate.”

He had a couple of hundred yards to walk to the place of the appointment, for Mr. Stafford was a gentleman of discretion and experience in his dealings with ladies. But, to his astonishment and annoyance, he was accosted by no soft fluttering creature, all cloak and mask and mystery, but by a stolid and stalwart footman.

“Mr. Stafford, sir?”

“Aye, my good fellow.”

“Will your worship follow me? The barouche is waiting down by Rosamond's Pond.”

“The barouche?”

“The lady's inside, sir,” said the domestic, with great simplicity.

Mr. Stafford marveled, smothered a curse, emitted a laugh, shrugged his shoulders, and obeyed.

It was full dark under the trees, and the spot where the dim, huge outline of the barouche and horses became visible to him was the darkest of all.

Gingerly the Beau advanced. The footman flung open the door.

“Come in, come in!” cried a sweet, high voice, thrilling with emotion. Two little white hands fluttered out of the gloom to him. He caught them, found himself drawn inward, fell against billows of silk, was seized on this side and on that; captured and held close; buffeted as by downy wings of monstrous birds; enveloped with suffocating, unknown sweetnesses; drawn hither and thither; and finally thrust down on a seat where there was scant room to sit between two warm, soft presences. The door was clapped upon him. He heard a voice cry out, not the one that had welcomed him,

“Tell the coachman to drive on, and you haste with the message, Nicholas.”

The carriage swayed and began to roll at a great rate. A multiplied titter broke out around him.

He felt as one who is the prey of a fantastic dream. He was in profound darkness. The atmosphere of mingled scents, the distracting rustle and whisper of silk that surrounded him on every side, suffocated and bewildered him. Gropingly, he put out his right hand; it touched the outline of a massive satin-clad knee. He ventured with the left; a small shriek responded.

“In heaven's name,” he ejaculated, “what has happened? Where am I? Who is with me? Mistress Lafone, are you there?”

“She is, sir,” responded severe accents (again not the bride's). “And so am I, and so are—most of the ladies whose domestic life it has been of late your pleasure to spoil.”

“You are kidnaped, Mr. Stafford, sir,” tittered a sweeter note.

Some one sniffed and caught her breath as if she were shedding tears opposite to him, and two laughed again in blatant enjoyment. He recognized Mistress Lafone's crystalline pipe.

A moment he kept silent, realizing, as far as he was able, the situation. Then dryly, “Whose lap am I sitting on, please?” he requested to know.

There was a jolly burst of merriment beside him.

“Faith, on mine, I think,” cried Lady Flo's voice. “Pooh, girls, open the window, I'm suffocating!”

“Yes,” said a low, angry voice from his left side, “and you will be safe in pulling up the blinds, for I scarce think Mr. Stafford will call for help and expose his situation to the town. Let him look upon our faces”

“It will be an agreeable spectacle, I am sure,” said the Beau.

Under eager hands the blinds rolled upward. A breath of welcome purity rushed in through the open window, and the ray of an oil-lamp flashing in upon them showed the prisoner the countenances of the three of his fair captors who sat opposite to him. There was Molly Lafone—little demure wretch, all eyelashes and pursed lips—“mouse,” her lord called her; little cat in Mr. Stafford's opinion forevermore. And, woebegone, scared, the faded prettiness of Lady Standish—the weary piece, if ever woman deserved a Jasper!—and, lud, there was Susan Verney, scarlet behind her rouge, with blazing eyes of fury and triumph!

Again they were jogging in darkness. To the right of him, he knew, sat Lady Flo; was he not wedged in, poor Beau, by her comely proportions? But his left-hand neighbor, she whom he felt shrink ever more pettishly from him—this left-hand lady, who was she? He must wait for another beam of lamplight to investigate.

Meanwhile, he thought he knew. It was Kitty Kilcroney, he told himself. Pshaw! this folly could only be of Kitty's conception, of Kitty's carrying out—none other had the wit or the audacity for it. Well had he told himself that afternoon that she was dangerous.

“Kitty!” he began, and stretched out his hand again.

He was met by a haughty, “Keep your distance, sir!”” Then came the lamp flash. It was Nan Day's quivering face that scorned and mocked.

At this discovery a mighty anger seized him. But what could he do? Fight for his freedom with five women? Scream to the watch? Expose himself still more hopelessly to the undying ridicule of the fashionable world? He was already made sufficiently ridiculous, ridiculous beyond redemption—of that every moment's reflection brought more relentless confirmation.

As soon as he could control himself sufficiently to speak, he asked, with an affectation of unconcern, “And may I ask whither you are taking me, my sweet ladies?”

It was Susan Verney again who answered him, stridently victorious. “To the house of my husband's old aunt, Lady Maria Prideaux, in Chelsea, Mr. Stafford. There you will remain till midnight. Fortunately my Lady Maria's reputation has been so firmly established these eighty years that your sensitive conscience need not fear to compromise her.”

There was a maddening chorus of laughter.

“And what,” stammered the Beau, “what is the object of this outrage?”

Lady Standish replied with a sob, “To punish our husbands for their neglect.”

“To punish you, sir,” said Lady Flo, with her fat chuckle, “for tempting them from their duty.”

“To kill your supper club,” said Nan Day between her teeth.

V

“Order a pretty meal for two toward eleven o'clock in my boudoir,” said Lady Kilcroney to the invaluable Lydia, her discreet maid, “and inform his Lordship that, as he proposes to pass the evening elsewhere, I shall have a dish of tea in my own apartment.”

Then, for the weather was chilly for the time of year, she further commanded a fire of wood to be kindled, and set herself down before it in great content, a basket of needle-work by her side. She had not set as many as twenty stitches when the door creaked open and Kilcroney insinuated his handsome countenance somewhat sheepishly into the aperture. Kitty popped the gossamer bit of lace back into the basket, flung a lawn handkerchief over the contents, and smiled invitingly at her lord.

Upon that smile he entered the room, closing the door behind him. “You look vastly cozy, my dearest life,” quoth he in airy tones, “with the fire playing on the rose of your gown. That's a mighty pretty gown of yours, Kitty.”

She glanced down at the sheen of her negligee. “I'm glad your Lordship likes it.”

He came heavily to the hearth and let himself subside into the soft cushions of the armchair opposite his wife's. (My Lady Kilcroney had ordered the setting of that chair.) There was a little table at his elbow with a bunch of shaded candles upon it.

“Upon my soul,” said the Irishman, “I'd never ask to feel more comfortable.” He stretched his legs to the blaze.

Kitty glanced at him under her eyelashes, very innocently. “Will you set out in the carriage to-night, my love, or have you ordered a chair? Or did you think of walking?”

“Oh, I'll take a chair,” he said hastily.

And there fell a little silence.

“I trust you will have an agreeable meeting,” quoth she then, with great pleasantness of accent.

She dived into her workbasket for a tangled length of pale pink ribbon and began to wind it as she spoke.

“Oh, aye,” said he, “agreeable enough, no doubt. But to tell you the truth, me darling, only that I promised Tom Stafford, wild horses wouldn't take me out again.”

“Oh, fie,” she said, “'you'll rust, my lord, if you indulge in these stay-at-home humors.”

He stifled a yawn. The warmth, the shaded lights, the yielding softness of the cushions that supported him, favored a gentle somnolence. He began to watch idly how swiftly the taper fingers moved, thinking to himself that few ladies of his acquaintance could boast so delicate a hand, when it seemed a doze must have overtaken him, for he was startled into liveliness again by the sound of his own snore.

He sat bolt upright and flung an abashed look across the hearth. Kitty was laughing.

“Yes, indeed, sir!” she mocked him, “'tis sadly evident we've been five years wed, since you cannot sit a few minutes in your wife's presence without being overtaken by slumber. Do you know 'tis gone of half-past nine? Shall I not bid Lydia have them call your chair?”

“Oh, pshaw!” said he, “'tis early yet, Kitty darling.” He leaned forward. “Five years wed, is it? 'Tis gone like an hour's blissful dream!”

“A dream that sets you snoring, my lord!”

“Ah, now, asthore—Kitty, you've the wickedest dimples in the whole wide world.”

Having finished rolling her bobbin, she cut a length off the ribbon with a knowing little pair of scissors and began to stitch at it.

“Mr. Stafford will be growing impatient,” she remarked.

“You're in a mighty hurry to get rid of me,” said the man, not without a shade of pique in his voice. But, instead of rising, he lay back again, and, half-closing his lids, continued to scrutinize her. “Don't you ever want to have me with you, my lady? Begad, if you knew how I've missed you all these days! Sure, the house was emptier and lonelier than the grave!”

“How you go on!” she said, and smiled. “You, the most popular buck in the town, with your friends and your clubs and your merry supper meetings!”

“Dash the clubs and the supper meetings,” he cried. “I beg your pardon, Kitty, the word slipped out somehow. Do you think that can make up to a man for his wife?”

“Some men,” she said—her head was on one side, contemplating the result of her manipulations—“some men prefer such distractions to their wives.”

He opened his gaze full upon her, not sure whether the remark contained a reproach; half hoping, indeed, that it did so, for he was longing for the excuse to find his arms about her pretty shoulders. and his lips upon that distracting dimple. But Kitty was strangely, sweetly unapproachable to-night.

She looked up at him, all guilelessness, all placidity. He hoisted himself out of his cushions; it was only to draw nearer to her.

“What fine things are you contriving there, my lady?”

“A rosette, sir,” she said. She held it up on two fingers for his inspection.

“For what 'illiput adornment?” he smiled.

“You are too curious, my lord.” She dived into her basket and drew forth the bits of lace she had been previously at work upon—a wonderful filmy thing it was, with a foam of tiny frills.

With bent head and an air of most complete absorption she began to stitch the rosette upon it. “I never knew you taken with such a power of industry before, me darling,” said Kilcroney at last.

“La, and are you there still?” said his lady in tones of placid surprise, “and the quarter struck these ten minutes.”

“Kitty,” said her lord, bending over to her, “I'm thinking you must have some reason for wanting me out of the way. You're expecting company, maybe?”

“No company but my own thoughts, sir.”

“Troth, and they must be agreeable ones,” quoth he, “for your eyes are dancing in your head this minute, I declare.”

“Maybe they are,” said Kitty. And with that she snipped her thread and tweaked the rosette. And then she set the little flimsy of lace she had been working at on her closed hand and dangled it in front of her.

And Kilcroney saw that it was a baby's cap.

“Kitty! Kitty!” he cried.

And then, big soft-hearted fellow that he was, he fell on his knees beside her and hid his face in her lap, that she might not see his tears.

 

When Miss Lydia whisked in at the quarter to eleven she was followed by Pompey with the tray and carried a table-cloth over her arm, which she shook out with a flourish. Then she began to lay for supper with a briskness all her own, snapping each article out of Pompey's hand to lay it delicately on the table.

Who so surprised as Kitty, when these preparations were completed, to discover that her damsel had spread for two. “Why, Lydia!” she exclaimed.

“Isn't his Lordship having supper with your Ladyship, then?” inquired the invaluable one, all innocence.

“Troth and I am, me good girl,” said his Lordship.

“Are you, indeed?” ejaculated the lady faintly.

No one could expect her to make further attempt to keep him to his engagement. There is such a thing as wifely tact.

Kitty never remembered having enjoyed an evening more. She made an excellent repast, while her lord could scarce swallow a morsel for devouring her with adoring eyes. There was an agreeable interlude when Sir Jasper, in search of his wife, broke roaring into the house and roared forth again. And Kitty was amused to learn that not only was her sweet Julia missing, but that that wretch, Mr. Stafford, had failed to attend the supper-party he had himself convened.

She declared she could scarce believe her ears. Not that anyone in their senses could doubt my Lady Standish! Yet both missing. 'Twas an impossible conjunction! It was here Sir Jasper ran bellowing from her presence.

Next day the murder was out. Mr. Stafford took coach for Dover on his way to Paris, whither, as the news-letter had it, he had been summoned by an urgent invitation from his friend, Mr. Horace Walpole.

Thus died the supper club to the echo of laughter. True, its whilom members looked more foolish than amused over the joke; but the ladies, their wives, laughed. So much so, indeed, that Kitty was forgiven her private triumph.