“Well, my dear Annabel, very glad to see you. You don’t often give me a chance of entertaining you. Come and have some luncheon; one can’t talk business on an empty stomach.”
“You’re very good, Haredale. I wish my errand was a pleasanter one; but—”
“Well, we’ll hear all about it directly. Champagne? Ladies always like champagne, so I provided some for you.—It’s very good, it won’t disagree with you.”
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.
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. 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. Both were unmistakably people of family and position, and to this air of his breeding the lady added that of personal worth. She looked like a good though not a clever woman; her brother, Lord Haredale, unfortunately, did not look like a good man. Their eyes, however, met with kindness, hers openly anxious, and his furtively so.
“And so you have given up the Twickenham villa and settled at Cleverley?” she said, after some surface conversation.
“Well, yes,—must economise, you know, and the old Admiral’s lease of the Hall being out, it seemed convenient. 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. Of course she wants to present her; but it’s confoundedly inconvenient this year.”
“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.
“What! you haven’t found a chance already of settling her?”
“Oh no, no! she has seen no one. She has never been away from school. But, Haredale, a great misfortune has befallen me; so that I can no longer do by her as I could wish. I am a poor woman now, and it is for you to decide what you think right about her.”
“Why! Deuce take it, have you been making ducks and drakes with your money?”
“No, but Farrant has done it for me. His brothers’ bank has failed, the investments he advised have proved worthless. I shall hardly have 150 pounds a year left—I have turned it over in my mind in every possible way—”
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. He swore at the family lawyer for giving her bad advice, and confounded her folly in not looking more closely after her own affairs.
“I’m infernally sorry for you, Annabel,” he said, when he had cooled down a little. “As you know, what with Charles’s cursed extravagance, to say nothing of my lady’s, I have nothing at command.”
“I never supposed, for one moment, that you would have, Haredale,” said his sister, emphatically. “Nor am I reduced to beggary. I can lessen my expenses. But if I do so, what can I do for Amethyst? Her life would be cut down to the narrowest limits. I could not possibly introduce her in London, which seems to me ess