She treated Blanche like a sister-dressed her up to the nines on every occasion-though she wasn’t her own child.” You know my lady won’t be jealous of her, and keep her back. “Yes, she is,” said Miss Haredale, dejectedly. “Ay, but you see,” said Lord Haredale, “her mother tells me she’s going to be a beauty.” “In that case, she might wait another year we might manage to keep her at school a year longer?” said Miss Haredale, anxiously. But as to a London house, and bringing the girl out ourselves, it’s impossible.” “You see, I got my lady down to Cleverley, on the plea that she could come up for two or three weeks when you had Amethyst in town. “It’s deuced bad luck,” said Lord Haredale. But of course you must decide for her as you think best.” I cannot tell you what it would cost me to resign the charge which I undertook. I could not possibly introduce her in London, which seems to me essential, in her position-all I had saved for the purpose is gone.
But if I do so, what can I do for Amethyst? Her life would be cut down to the narrowest limits. “I never supposed, for one moment, that you would have, Haredale,” said his sister, emphatically. “As you know, what with Charles’s cursed extravagance, to say nothing of my lady’s, I have nothing at command.” “I’m infernally sorry for you, Annabel,” he said, when he had cooled down a little.
He swore at the family lawyer for giving her bad advice, and confounded her folly in not looking more closely after her own affairs. Lord Haredale had always felt that, however unlucky he might be himself, it was his sister’s duty to the family to keep her few thousands safe they had held a satisfactory place in his mind. I shall hardly have 150 pounds a year left-I have turned it over in my mind in every possible way-” His brothers’ bank has failed, the investments he advised have proved worthless. “Why! Deuce take it, have you been making ducks and drakes with your money?”
I am a poor woman now, and it is for you to decide what you think right about her.” But, Haredale, a great misfortune has befallen me so that I can no longer do by her as I could wish. “What! you haven’t found a chance already of settling her?” “It is about Amethyst that I wish to speak to you,” said Miss Haredale, strenuously refusing more champagne, and showing unmistakably her desire to proceed to business. Of course she wants to present her but it’s confoundedly inconvenient this year.” My lady doesn’t like it much but she can leave the little girls down there, if she comes up to meet you and take out Amethyst. “Well, yes,-must economise, you know, and the old Admiral’s lease of the Hall being out, it seemed convenient. “And so you have given up the Twickenham villa and settled at Cleverley?” she said, after some surface conversation. Their eyes, however, met with kindness, hers openly anxious, and his furtively so. She looked like a good though not a clever woman her brother, Lord Haredale, unfortunately, did not look like a good man. Both were unmistakably people of family and position, and to this air of his breeding the lady added that of personal worth. The actors were a lady and gentleman, both some years past fifty, both tall, with large well-marked features, and reddish hair touched with grey. The scene was a rather shabbily appointed set of rooms in Duke Street, Saint James’s in one of which an elegant little luncheon was laid for two. Miss Annabel Haredale did not like champagne in the middle of the day, and thought that it was sure to disagree with her but she smiled at her brother and took it like a martyr. Champagne? Ladies always like champagne, so I provided some for you.-It’s very good, it won’t disagree with you.” I wish my errand was a pleasanter one but-” Come and have some luncheon one can’t talk business on an empty stomach.” You don’t often give me a chance of entertaining you. “Well, my dear Annabel, very glad to see you.
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