第49章

"And now, Mr.Harley," said Grandmother Ludlow, lashing the septuagenarian footman with one sharp look because he had spilt two or three drops of Veuve Cliquot on the tablecloth, "tell me about the present state of the money market."Under his hostess's consistent courtesy and marked attentions George Harley had been squirming during the first half of dinner.He had led her into the fine old dining room with all the style that he could muster and been placed, to his utter dismay, on her right.He would infinitely rather have been commanded to dine with the Empress of China, which he had been told was the last word in mental and physical torture.Remembering vividly the cold and satirical scorn to which he had been treated during his former brief and nightmare visit the old lady's change of attitude to extreme politeness and even deference made him feel that he was having his leg pulled.In a brand new dinner jacket with a black tie poked under the long points of a turned-down collar, which, in his innocence, he had accepted as the mode of gentlemen and not, as he rightly supposed of waiters, he had done his best to give coherent answers to a rapid fire of difficult questions.The most uneasy man on earth, he had committed himself to statements that he knew to be unsound, had seen his untouched plate whisked away while he was floundering among words, and started a high temperature beneath what he was perfectly certain was lurking mockery behind apparently interested attention.

If any banker at that moment had overheard him describing the state of the money market he would have won for himself a commission in the earth's large army of unconfined lunatics.

The old sportsman, sitting with Joan on his right and his daughter-in-law on his left, was more nearly merry and bright than any one had seen him since the two great changes in his household.His delight in having Joan near him again was pathetic.He had shaved for the second time that day, a most unusual occurrence.His white hair glistened with brilliantine, and there was a gardenia in his buttonhole.Some of the old fire had returned to his eyes, and his tongue had regained its once invariable knack of paying charming compliments.In his excitement and delight he departed from his rigid diet, and, his wife's attention being focussed upon George Harley, punished the champagne with something of his old vigor, and revived as a natural result many of the stories which Joan and her mother had been told ad nauseam over any number of years with so much freshness as to make them seem almost new.

Mrs.Harley, wearing a steady smile, was performing the painful feat of listening with one ear to the old gentleman and with the other to the old lady.All her sympathy was with her unfortunate and uneasy husband who looked exactly like a great nervous St.Bernard being teased by a Pekinese.

Joan missed none of the underlying humor of the whole thing.It was amusing and satisfactory to be treated as the guest of honor in a house in which she had always been regarded as the naughty and rebellious child.She was happy in being able to put her usually morose grandfather into such high spirits and moved to a mixture of mirth and pity at the sight of George Harley's plucky efforts.Also she had brought away with her from the girl she called the fairy a strengthened desire to play the game and a good feeling that Marty was nearer to her than he had been for a long and trying week.It's true that from time to time she caught in her grandmother's eyes that queer look of triumphant glee that had disturbed her when they met and the same expression of malicious spite at the corner of Gleave's sunken mouth which had made her wonder what he knew, but these things she waved aside.Instinct, and her complete knowledge of Mrs.Cumberland Ludlow's temperament, made her realize that if the old lady could find a way to get even with her for having run off she would leave no stone unturned, and that she would not hesitate to use the cunning ex-fighting man to help her.But, after all, what could they do? It would be foolish to worry.

Far from foolish, if she had had an inkling of the trap that had been laid for her and into which she was presently going to fall without suspicion.

The facts were that Gleave had seen Martin drive up to his house with Tootles, had watched them riding and walking together throughout the week, had reported what he had seen to Mrs.Ludlow and left it to her fertile imagination to make use of what was to him an ugly business.And the old lady, grasping her chance, had written that letter to Mrs.Harley and having achieved her point of getting Joan into her hands, had discovered that she did not know where Martin was and had made up her mind to show her.Revenge is sweet, saith the phrasemonger, and to the old lady whose discipline had been flouted and whose amour propre had been rudely shaken it was very sweet indeed.Her diabolical scheme, conceived in the mischievous spirit of second childhood, was to lead Joan on to a desire to show off her country house to her relations at the moment when the man she had married and the girl with whom he was amusing himself on the sly were together."How dramatic," she chuckled, in concocting the plan."How delightfully dramatic." And she might have added, "How hideously cruel."But it was not until some little time after they had all adjourned to the drawing-room, and Joan had played the whole range of her old pieces for the edification of her grandfather, that she set her trap.