Cressida Read Free Page B

laughed.
    “Of course he would do so if I asked him to—and a great piece of impertinence it would be upon my part!” she said. “Do try to recollect, love, that Octavius is a man of vast importance in the City, and that the only reason he condescends to act as my man of business is out of a sense of gratitude to Great-aunt Estella. And if you tell me that he is not a gentleman,” she went on, forestalling another of Lady Constance’s familiar objections, “I shall remind you that Sir Walter Scott himself has spoken warmly of his wit and learning, that he has gathered what is considered to be one of the finest art collections in England, and that he has Royalty to dine at his house whenever he pleases!”
    “Good heavens!” exclaimed Lady Constance in dismay, for, though she had heard this encomium before, it seemed to her it had never been delivered with quite so much spirit and feeling. ‘‘You are never thinking of marrying him, my love! He is quite old enough to be your father, by what I have heard, and, as fabulously rich and important as he may be, one cannot really call him—” “A gentleman?” Cressida’s mischievous smile was very much in evidence again. “Oh, no, something far better—the wisest man I know! But never fear—I am not at all the sort of female he would consider allying himself with, though I believe he has the intention to  ranger himself with a lady of suitable rank and years when he is ready to retire from business. He discussed the whole matter with me very seriously one day, and I discovered myself weighed in the balance and found wanting—”
    “Wanting! You! A Calverton!” exclaimed Lady Constance, in her deepest tones. “The man, my dear, is an impertinent fool!”
    “Not at all!” said Cressida, laughing again, “though I won’t say he is not riding his collector’s hobbyhorse in this instance, with an eye out for obtaining only the rarest and most distinguished article of its kind. In fact, I have sometimes suspected him of having designs upon one of the Royal Princesses: there are so many of them, and all pining for husbands, poor things! But he was really quite complimentary in dismissing my pretensions. ‘I see through you, my dear,’ he told me, “and yet I allow you to twist me around your little finger, which is a very poor situation for a husband to find himself in. What you need is a man who sees through you and can still stand up to all that will and charm—’
    “Well, that is Langmere. Langmere could do that,” Lady Constance said stoutly, putting in a word for the absent marquis; but this statement was manifestly so absurd, since the love-stricken Lord Langmere would notoriously have gone through fire and through water, though much against his better judgement, at his beloved’s bidding, that even Lady Constance felt she had not got the better of that exchange.

CHAPTER 2
    Something less than an hour later Miss Calverton, stepping down from her carriage before a building near one of Wren’s charming little City churches, St. Mildred’s Poultry, was met by an obsequious clerk of Sir Octavius Mayr’s and escorted upstairs to the elegantly furnished office where Sir Octavius himself was awaiting her.
    “Well, Cressy?” he greeted her, with the lift of a quizzical eyebrow, as he rose from the large armchair in which he had been sitting behind a magnificent Bellange desk decorated with green bronze paterae and resting on eight winged lions sculpted in mahogany. “Only a quarter hour late today? You are improving! Were you so late coming from the Campetts’ ball last night that you could not bring yourself to leave your bed this morning, or am I to gather that the reason for your tardiness is that that fetching costume was donned for my benefit, and required a great deal of time and thought in the selection?’
    Cressida, who was indeed looking very smart that morning in a walking-dress of