CHAPTER XXV.
"FORGOTTEN ME, HAS HE?"
If ever a man was in earnest, Yorke, Viscount Auchester, was. He was going to marry Leslie! The thought dwelt with him all the way up to town, hovered about him as he lay awake throughout nearly the whole night, and came to him in the morning with a joy exceeding description.
To marry Leslie!
What had he done to deserve such happiness, such bliss, he asked himself as he hurried through his tub and dressing? And while he ate his breakfast in a feverish, restless kind of haste, he pictured and planned out their future; a future to be spent side by side till Death, and Death alone, parted them.
They would leave London immediately, after the marriage, and cross the Channel. Perhaps they'd stay for a while in Paris; but only for a few days. It would be too big and noisy for such bliss as theirs. No, he would take her to some quiet spot in Normandy; perhaps to Rouen, that delightful old-world town with its magnificent churches and historic streets. Why, he could see themselves standing arm in arm in the vast cathedral, listening reverently to the grand service; he could see Leslie's face with the sweet gravity in her lovely eyes, and the half pensive and yet happy smile on her pure lips. He fancied her by his side looking up at the carved gables of the quaint houses; or seated at one of the little marble tables at the Cafe Blanc, with its shining copper vessels and glittering glass. Then they could go on into Germany; up the Rhine. How delightful to have her beside him as the steamer toiled against the stream and the delicious panorama unfolded itself mile by mile! Then, if they chose, there were Switzerland and Italy. There was Lucerne, for instance. How she would delight in Lucerne, with its marvelous lake, in which old Pilatus shadows himself, with its famous bridge spanning the emerald Reuss; with its snug cathedral in which the wonderful organ surges and wails as no other organ can surge and wail, save that of honored Milan.
Happy! He would make her happy or know the reason why! He would devote every hour of his life, every particle of his by no means gigantic intellect to the effort to prove how dearly he loved her.
He sat for a little while after breakfast making a mental plan of his procedure. He would have to act prudently and warily. No hint of what he was about to do must be allowed to get out. If his numerous creditors, Jew and Gentile, had the least suspicion that he was about to marry a penniless angel instead of Lady Eleanor Dallas, the heiress, they would swoop down upon him. No, he would be very cautious.
He had gone round to Mr. Arnheim, the dealer, on the evening before, immediately he had reached London, and was very cautious with him; giving him to understand that he merely wanted a small picture of Mr. Lisle's, and asking Mr. Arnheim in quite a casual way to write and ask Mr. Lisle whether he would accept a commission.
"Don't mention my name, please," he said; and Mr. Arnheim had smiled and shaken his head.
Yorke went away quite confident that the vaguest of letters from the great dealer would bring Francis Lisle post haste to London; and, as we know, he was right.
Then he went down to Doctors' Commons, and inquired about the license.
He knew no more about the business than the veriest schoolboy; but he had a vague idea that you could buy a license somewhere in that strange locality, and that armed with that he could marry Leslie right away at once. At once! The thought sent the blood rushing to his handsome face, and made St. Paul's Cathedral, hard by which is Doctors' Commons, waver before his eyes.
A seedy-looking gentleman led him to the Faculty office where the mystic license was to be obtained, and a grave and sedate clerk got off a high stool at a desk and put several questions to Yorke, who for the first time in his life – or the second, perhaps, for he was nervous when he had asked Leslie to be his wife – felt embarrassed and agitated.
"Is it an ordinary license you require, or a special?" asked the clerk.
Yorke looked doubtful.
"What is the difference?" he asked, almost shyly, and struggling with an actual blush.
The clerk eyed him with cold superiority.
"By an ordinary license," he explained, "you can marry in the church of the parish in which one of the parties resides; and only there. And he or she must have resided there fifteen days. With a special license you can marry in a particular church without having resided in the parish fifteen days; but you would have to give sufficient reasons for requiring this special license."
Yorke stared at the dingy floor while he thought the matter out.
He knew of a quiet little church near Bury Street – a "little church around the corner," so to speak, to which he and Leslie could go, the morning after her arrival in London; and with no one but the parson, the clerk, and pew-opener the wiser. Yes, an ordinary license would do, he said.
The clerk inclined his head – just as if he were a shopman selling gloves! – and went off to another clerk at another desk, and presently appeared with an affidavit.
"What's this? the license?" said Yorke.
"No. You will have to swear this. I shall have to ask you to accompany me to the next office, to a solicitor. You have to swear that the parties are of age, and that one of you has resided in the parish fifteen days. You are prepared to do so, I presume?"
It is to be feared that Yorke was prepared to do anything to obtain his Leslie, and he was led off – he felt like a criminal of the deepest dye – to another dingy office, and there repeated the oath gabbled out by the solicitor. Then he returned to the proctor's office, and, after waiting a quarter of an hour, the clerk handed him a document.
"What have I got to pay?" asked Yorke, prepared for a demand, say, of fifty pounds. "Only two pounds two and sixpence!" he said, with a surprise that made even that solemn clerk smile.
Only two pounds two and sixpence for the privilege of marrying Leslie! He stood and gazed at the mystic document, and laughed aloud, so that the seedy man who had conducted him to the office eyed him rather fearfully, and pocketing the half-sovereign Yorke gave him, scrambled off, fully convinced that the young man was mad.
And indeed he could scarcely be considered in full possession of his senses that day. Nearly every hour he took out that precious license and read it through or gazed at the imposing coat of arms at the top, and the Archbishop's signature at the bottom; and every time put it away again in his breast coat pocket. He patted the coat to feel that the document was there safe and sound.
From Doctors' Commons he walked to the Dorchester Club.
Everybody knows that aristocratic institution. It is not so magnificent as some of the modern political clubs; some of them are palaces compared with which those of the Caesars were very small potatoes; it had no marble entrance hall and oak-paneled dining-room, and its smoking-room was not as vast as a church; but it was snug and comfortable, and excellent to a degree. You had to have your name down on the list of candidates full fifteen or twenty years before you could hope to be balloted in, and some fathers put their sons down when they were eighteen months old.
Yorke was well known at the club, and the hall porter in his glass box bowed to him with a mixture of respect and recognition which he accorded to a very few of the members.
"There are no letters for me, Stephens, I suppose?" said Yorke.
"No, my lord, none."
"Ah, well, I expect one or a telegram directly," said Yorke, trying to speak casually. "If it comes just send into the smoking-room, or dining-room, or drawing-room, in fact and see if I'm in the club. I want it directly it comes, you understand."
"Certainly my lord," was the response. "If your lordship is in the club when the letter arrives I will see that you have it at once."
Yorke sauntered into the drawing-room and took up a paper; but he did not see a word of the page he gazed at. He was calculating how soon that letter could possibly reach him.
Then he went out, and making his way to Regent Street examined the shop windows carefully, and ultimately made several purchases.
He bought a lady's ulster, a wonderful garment of camel's hair, soft as lambs' wool and as warm, with cuffs that could be let down over the hands, and a hood that could be drawn completely over the head.
No lady with this marvelous ulster on could be cold, even while crossing the Channel, where, as everybody knows, it is possible to be frozen even on a summer's night. He also bought a traveling rug of Scotch tweed.
Then he sauntered into the park till lunch time, when he went back to the club. He knew that no letter could be waiting for him, and yet he could not help glancing inquiringly at the porter, who faintly smiled and respectively shook his head.
One or two acquaintances dropped in while he was eating his lunch at a side table, and they gathered round him and plied him with eager invitations to join them in a driving trip to Richmond; but he shook his head.
"Better come, Auchester," said one young fellow. "Jolly afternoon! Besides, a friend of yours is of the party."
"Who is that?" asked Yorke with polite indifference.
Drive to Richmond when he wanted to be alone to think of Leslie and all that license in his breast coat pocket meant! Not likely.
"Why, Finetta," said the young fellow. "She has promised, if we get her back in time for the theater."
Yorke shook his head, and while he was doing it Lord Vinson strolled up.
"What's that about Finetta and Richmond?" he inquired. "Afraid you'll be disappointed. Just been up there," he drawled. "She's vamoosed the ranche, sloped off somewhere, and isn't going to dance to-night. Know where she's gone, Auchester?"
"No," said Yorke, and he answered very quietly. Poor Fin! was she taking the breaking off of their friendship to heart after all?
"Strikes me Mademoiselle Fin is playing it rather low on an indulgent public!" grumbled the young fellow who had arranged the outing, and as he sauntered off with the rest he remarked in a low voice, "Shouldn't be surprised if Auchester had arranged to take her somewhere; they're awfully thick, you know, and she'd throw over anything for him."
After lunch Yorke went to Bury Street, and with his own hands packed a portmanteau or two.
Then he went back to the club, for though he knew no telegram could have arrived, he felt constrained to be there in waiting, so to speak, and dined quietly and in solitude, and afterwards he walked by the park railings to Notting Hill and round the quiet squares, and was happy thinking of Leslie and the days that lay before them, the delicious, glorious days when they two should be one – man and wife. Man and wife!
He went to bed early that night and slept soundly, so soundly that he was rather later than he meant to be at breakfast, and he hurried over that meal and made his way to the Dorchester with a fast-beating heart.
There might possibly be a telegram for him. But the porter said no, nothing had come for his lordship, and Yorke, too disappointed to make a pretense of looking at the papers, went out and stood on the broad steps and stared up and down Pall Mall.
Arnheim had promised to wire the night Yorke had seen him; there had been time for the Lisles to get up to London, time for Leslie to wire. Well, he would be patient and not worry. But, Heaven and earth, what should he do with himself while he was waiting for that telegram! He was so wrapped up in the thought of meeting his darling that he could not endure the distraction of even exchanging greetings with his acquaintances. He could not go to Finetta's – never again! – or Lady Eleanor's. He wanted to be alone, alone with his thoughts. What should he do? Was there anything else he could buy? As the question crossed his mind the answer flashed upon him and made him almost start. Why, there was the ring! He had not bought that yet. What an idiot he was. Even with a license, you could not be married without a ring. He went straight off to Bond Street, to the jeweler's of whom he had purchased the diamond pendant and the plain gold locket, and stood for a minute or two outside looking at the things in the window.
He would have a keeper as well as a plain wedding ring. He would get the prettiest and 'solidest' they'd got. He gazed at the rows of diamond ornaments, for the first time in his life covetously. Ah, if he were only the Duke of Rothbury, as she thought him, what things he would buy for her! Notwithstanding that, if he were the duke he would have the great Rothbury diamonds, those gems which were supposed to rank next to the Crown jewels, and they would be hers, his duchess's; yet, all the same, he would buy her all sorts of pretty things. As the heathen loves to deck his idol, so he, Yorke, would love to deck his idol with all that this world counted good and precious.
Regarding that masquerade of his, that sailing under false colors, he thought that Leslie would neither be very disappointed nor angry.
"It is me she loves," he told himself with a proudly swelling heart. "And it will not matter what I am or am not. But all the same I wish that idea had not occurred to poor old Dolph."
All this was passing through his mind as he was standing outside the well-known shop in Bond Street. Everybody knows it, and everybody knows that the street is rather narrow just where the shop is situated, and at that moment it happened that one of the many blocks of the day occurred, and that a neatly appointed brougham was brought to a standstill very nearly opposite the jeweler's shop.
It was a charming little brougham, one of those costly toys which only very wealthy people can indulge in. The interior was lined with Russian leather, the cushions of sage plush; there was a clock in ormolu and turquoise and a delightful little reading lamp, fan and scent case, and china what-not basket.
It was the brougham which took the celebrated Finetta to and from the Diadem; the brougham of which the newspapers have given an elaborate account, and in it was no less a personage than Finetta herself. She was leaning back against the eiderdown cushions, her handsome face pale, with purplish rings round her dark eyes. She looked as if she was half worn out by excitement and physical fatigue.
She had been lying with closed eyes till the block and stoppage came, then she opened her eyes and asked listlessly:
"What is it?"
"It's a block," said Polly who sat beside her. "There's a carriage and a butcher's cart in front, a swell carriage – ."
Finetta leant forward listlessly, then her listlessness changed, fled rather.
"It's – it's Lady Eleanor Dallas," she said between her teeth.
"Oh," said Polly; "is it? Well, I wish they'd get on, and – oh!" The exclamation escaped her lips unawares, and Finetta, following the direction of Polly's eyes, saw Yorke standing gazing in at the shop window.
She uttered a faint cry and fell back, clutching Polly's arm.
"It's him!" she breathed.
"Lord Auchester. I know it is!" said the matter-of-fact Polly. "Well, you needn't start as if you'd got the jumps."
"What is he doing there, what is he going to buy?" said Finetta in a low and agitated voice.
Polly jerked down the blind.
"Don't make a perfect fool of yourself, Fin," she ventured to remonstrate. "What's it matter to you what Lord Yorke is doing or going to buy? He and you have done with each other – ."
"Have we!" between the set teeth. "Much you know about it!"
"Well, if you haven't, you ought to have done. Oh, I wasn't deaf the other night when he was telling you about the girl he had fallen in love with and was going to marry; I heard enough to put two and two together. And I tell you what it is, Fin: you are making yourself a perfect idiot over that young man, and all for no good. Why, you've been away from the Diadem for two nights, and though I suppose you think I don't know where you've been, why I can guess. You've been dogging him down in the country somewhere – ."
"Hold your tongue," said Finetta, her eyes still fixed, through a chink beside the silk blind, on Yorke.
"Yes, I can hold my tongue; but I'm talking for your good. Here you've been away for two days, goodness knows where, though I can guess, as I say, and you come back looking more dead than alive, and no more fit to dance to-night than I am."
"What is it he is buying? Something for her?" said Finetta almost to herself.
"What's it matter to you? You and he have done with each other, I tell you," said sensible Polly. "You let Lord Auchester alone, and forget him. You bet your life he's forgotten you by this time," and she ventured on a short laugh.
Finetta turned on her.
"Forgotten me, has he? What did he send me his portrait in a locket and that letter for, then? You hold your tongue! Tell the man to drive to Piccadilly and then back again!"
Her face was flushed, her eyes shining with feverish light in their purple rings.
"Well, if anyone had told me that you – you, Fin – would make such a fool of yourself over a man, I'd have given them the lie," remarked Polly after she had delivered the directions to the coachman.
Finetta fell back.
"Sneer on," she said in a low voice. "You don't understand, and, what's more, you never will. Is there any one in the carriage opposite? Is – is Lady Eleanor in it?"
CHAPTER XXVI.
A WEDDING RING
Polly peered out.
"I can't see," she said, "the blinds are down."
But though she could not see her, Lady Eleanor was in the carriage, and she was looking, as Finetta was, at the stalwart young man in front of the jeweler's window. And her face was quite as pale as Finetta's. Should she open the window and call him? She longed to do so, and yet something, some vague presentiment, kept her from doing so. She watched him, her heart beating with love, until the block had melted away and the carriage had moved on, then she pulled the check string and, when the footman got down, said:
"Drive to Oxford Street, and then come back here, please."
Meanwhile, all unconscious that these two women were watching him, Yorke went into the shop.
"I want to look at some rings," he said to the man who bowed to him with an air of respectful recognition. It happened to be the same man who had served him the other day.
"Fancy rings my lord?"
"No, no," said Yorke, trying to speak in the most ordinary and casual way, and feeling very much as he had felt while procuring the license. "Er – wedding and keeper rings."
"Certainly, my lord," said the man, without the faintest change of countenance, and he placed a couple of trays on the counter.
"What size, my lord?"
Yorke looked up with a start of perplexity.
"Size?" he repeated, vaguely as he mentally called himself an idiot for not having measured Leslie's finger. "Oh, a small size. I don't quite know. Yes quite a small size. Here, I'll take two or three. They're all alike. I suppose!"
"Some heavier than the others, my lord."
"All right; give me the heaviest. And the keeper – isn't that what it's called?"
"Yes, my lord; it keeps the wedding ring in its place, you see."
"I see," said Yorke. "Well, I'll have one or two of these, the smaller ones; put this one in," and he picked out one set with pearl and turquoise. "I'll send back those I don't keep."
He tried to slip them on his little finger, but they would not go farther than the first point, and he laid them down with a smile. In a few hours, perhaps, he would be placing them on his darling's finger; his wife's!
The shopman put the rings in a box, and Yorke stowed them away carefully, very carefully, in an inner pocket, and went out, still dreaming of the hours when he should stand before the altar of the quiet little church in St. James'.
Two or three minutes afterward the dainty brougham pulled up to the shop door, and Finetta entered.
She was as well known to the jeweler as was Lord Auchester, and, if possible, he made her a more respectful and elaborate bow; she was a good customer, and, like most people in her position, she liked a great show of respect. So he leaned forward and placed a chair for her, and with another bow asked what he could have the honor of doing for her. Finetta's large, dark eyes wandered over the counter with a feigned indifference and listlessness.
"I only want a small present," she said.
"Yes, madam. For a gentleman?" and he made for a tray of silver cigarette cases and similar articles. Finetta looked at them, but kept the corners of her eyes fixed on the trays which had been on the glass counter when she entered.
"What pretty rings!" she said, taking up a jeweled keeper. "They almost tempt one to get married."
The man smiled sympathetically.
"I suppose the bridegroom always chooses the rings," she said, with seeming carelessness. "Now, I wonder which of these most men would choose?"
The man fingered the rings lightly.
"Some one, some another, madam," he replied. "The gentleman who has just gone out chose one like this."
Finetta's face was pale already, but it seemed to blanch, and the ring rolled along the counter.
"Lord Auchester was buying a wedding ring and keeper!" she said involuntarily.
As the words left her lips, a lady had entered the shop, and she heard them as plainly as if they had been addressed to her; and they took an instantaneous and extraordinary effect. She let the door slip, and put her hand to her heart, and so stood gazing with a strange expression in her eyes from Finetta to the man.
It was a dramatic moment. The two women stood silent and motionless, regarding each other with a world of meaning in their eyes. Finetta, still eyeing Lady Eleanor, went on:
"It was Lord Auchester who bought the ring?"
The jeweler smiled deprecatingly.
"Well, as you saw him, madam, it is no breach of confidence. It was his lordship." Then he looked toward Lady Eleanor, and, bowing, placed a chair for her.
Finetta rose; her face was still white, her full lips pale and trembling.
"I – I will come in again," she said, and moved toward the door; then she stopped, and swaying forward rather than stepping, leaned toward Lady Eleanor.
"I want to speak to you," she said abruptly and hoarsely.
Lady Eleanor shrank back and eyed her haughtily.
"I – I – " she began, but her voice seemed to fail her.
"You'd better not refuse, for – for your own sake!" said Finetta, hissed it, rather. "You – you know me – ."
Lady Eleanor tried to look a denial, but the effort failed as the effort to speak had.
"And I know you," went on Finetta, still in the low, husky, agitated voice. "What I have to say concerns you. You'd better not refuse!"
Lady Eleanor looked round as if seeking some means of escape, then rose, hesitated a moment, her white teeth catching her lip, and followed Finetta to the end of the long shop, the jeweler discreetly keeping out of earshot, and respectfully waiting until his customers had finished their conference. He saw that something was happening; but his well-trained face was absolutely impassive.
Lady Eleanor stood turned sideways to Finetta, her haughty lips half lowered, but her lips trembling. If anyone that morning had told her that Finetta of the Diadem would dare to address her, and that she would consent to listen to her for one single moment, she would have laughed the idea to scorn. And yet here she was actually waiting for what the woman had to say.
Finetta's bosom was heaving with the effort at self-control. She could not help admiring Lady Eleanor's self-possession, while she hated her; and she tried to imitate her.
"You heard what the man said," she said at last, in a low, shaken voice.
Lady Eleanor's haughty lids moved slightly in assent.
"Well!" said Finetta, with a kind of gasp, "it's true!"
Lady Eleanor made the faintest movement with her hand. It seemed to say:
"If it is, what is it to do with me – or you?" and Finetta understood her.
A hot flush passed over her handsome face.
"You mean it's no business of mine. Well – " she drew a long breath, "perhaps it isn't. But it is of yours, or people make a great mistake when they say he is going to marry you."
Lady Eleanor's face crimsoned with humiliation, and she made as if to leave the place at once; but Finetta put out her hand, and Lady Eleanor stepped back as if the touch would contaminate her.
"I – I cannot listen to you – I have nothing to say," she said in a labored voice. "You have no right to speak to me – I do not know you – have no wish – ."
Finetta's teeth came together with a click.
"Very well, go then!" she exclaimed vindictively. "Go! Do you think it's any pleasure to me to speak to you? Do you think I'd have spoken to you if it hadn't been for his sake?"
Lady Eleanor winced.
"You treat me like the dirt under your feet, you won't stoop to listen to what I've got to say, though it should save him from ruin. And you call yourself his friend! A pretty friend! I've heard you swells have got no heart, and I should think it's true, judging by you!" Her breath came fiercely. "Go! Why don't you go?"
Lady Eleanor looked at the door and then at the white, working face and flashing eyes; and remained.
She drew her light wrap round her and held it with a clenched hand.
"Say what you have to say quickly," she said, and her voice was thick and husky. "You are right; I am a friend of Lord Auchester's, if it is he whom you mean."
Finetta eyed her with a touch of scorn in her flashing eyes.
"You know it is him. Friend! I should think you were! Do you think I didn't see you start when you came in, and do you think I don't see how you're trembling and shaking? Bah! with all your acting you wouldn't be worth much on the stage. I tell you what the man said is true. Yorke Auchester has bought his wedding ring, and he'll use it unless you can prevent it!"
Lady Eleanor's face was like a mask, but her eyelids quivered.
"I've done my best – or worst," went on Finetta, and she laughed harshly. "I've seen the girl and tried to put a spoke in her wheel, and I thought I'd succeeded; but it seems I haven't – ."
"You have seen her?" escaped Lady Eleanor's lips.
"Yes!" said Finetta. "Did you think it was me he was going to marry?" Her lips twitched. "It's a young girl down in the country, at a forsaken place called Portmaris."
"Portmaris!" Lady Eleanor breathed.
"Yes. Quite a young girl, a country girl, a mere nobody, and not a swell like you; though she's what you call a lady," she added.
Lady Eleanor sank into a chair and sat with tightly clasped hands. The shock of this sudden news had caused her to forget that the woman who was speaking to her was Finetta, the dancing girl at the Diadem, the girl with whom Yorke Auchester had been so intimately friendly.
Finetta looked down at her with a bitter smile. She had brought this haughty aristocrat to her knees, at any rate.
"How she must love him!" she thought. "How we both love him!" and she ground her teeth.
Lady Eleanor, with her eyes downcast, asked after a pause:
"What is her name?"
"Leslie Lisle," replied Finetta. "She's as pretty and – and fresh as – as a flower; and when I told her that – that – "
Lady Eleanor looked up.
"What did you tell her?" she asked, in a low, husky voice.
Finetta flushed sullenly.
"Well, it doesn't matter. I thought that what I'd told her would break it off between him and her; but it hasn't, or he wouldn't be buying the wedding ring. They are going to be married secretly, and at once; and now what are you going to do, my lady?"
Lady Eleanor looked before her vacantly. Her heart was aching, burning with jealousy and the terror of despair. She shook her head.
"I daresay you wonder why I spoke to you, why I tell you this, seeing – that it can't matter to me who he marries?" said Finetta, with a flush.
Lady Eleanor glanced at her.
"Yes; why did you speak to me?" she said indistinctly.
Finetta bit her lip.
"I don't know, and that's the truth," she admitted. "The news knocked me over, and – and I was flurried. And besides – well, two heads are better than one, and – ."
Lady Eleanor understood. This dancing girl meant that she was not afraid of Lord Auchester's marrying her, Lady Eleanor, but that she was terribly afraid that he would marry this girl in the country, this Leslie Lisle.
She rose.
"I can say nothing. I am not Lord Auchester's keeper. If he chooses to marry a dairy maid – or worse – it is his business."
Finetta watched her keenly.
"But all the same, you'll do all you can to prevent it," she said sharply, and with an air of conviction. She had caught a significant gleam in the proud eyes.
Lady Eleanor turned pale, stood a moment as if waiting to see if Finetta had anything more to say, then with a slight inclination of her head passed out of the shop.
She walked proudly and haughtily enough to her brougham, but when she got inside her manner changed, and she covered her face with her hands, and cowered in the corner, trembling and moaning.
Yorke going to marry! Going to marry and beneath him, too! He had passed her over for some country wench, some nobody beneath him in rank, utterly unworthy of him. It tortured her. What should she do? What could be done? She asked herself this as the carriage rolled on homeward, and for a time no answer came; then suddenly she started and pulled the check string.
"The nearest telegraph office," she said to the footman.
There was only one person who could help her, even if he would, which was doubtful. She sent a telegram to Ralph Duncombe.
"Can you come and see me at once on important business?"
Meanwhile all unconscious of the strange meeting between his two old loves, Yorke betook himself to the Army and Navy Stores, and whiled away the time by buying a lady's portmanteau, one of the latest and most expensive kind, and ordering the initials "L. A." to be painted on it. This afforded him a subtle delight. "Leslie Auchester." How well it sounded, "Leslie, Viscountess Auchester!" Take the peerage all through, and there wouldn't be a more beautiful, charming woman than this wife of his! He bought one or two other things – traveling luxuries, which should add to her comfort on their journey, then went back to the club.