“I don’t think I could,” she confessed. “If he were to be angry—! It makes me sick only to imagine it! And my grandmother says on no account must I tell him.”

“Well, I daresay she knows best,” responded Tom somewhat dubiously. “What will you do if he charges you with it? Deny it?”

“Oh, don’t, Tom!” begged Phoebe.

“Yes, but you’d best make up your mind,” he insisted. “I shouldn’t think, myself, that he’ll believe you: you never could tell a bouncer without looking guilty!”

“If he asks me,” said Phoebe despairingly, “I must tell the truth.”

“Well, perhaps he won’t ask you,” said Tom, perceiving that she was looking rather sickly already. “But take care you don’t mention it to anyone else, that’s all! Ten to one you’ll blurt it out to somebody! I know you!”

“Blurt it out! No, indeed!” she assured him.

She thought there could be little fear of it, but some severe trials had to be undergone, when she found herself obliged to endure in silence such discussions about her book as made her long to cry out: No! I never meant it so! For the one feature of The Lost Heir which aroused the curiosity of society was the character of Count Ugolino. The levelheaded might dismiss it as a piece of impertinence; Sylvester’s friends might be up in arms; but it seemed to Phoebe that the idiots who asserted there was never smoke without a fire were legion. She was speedily made to realize that she had not been Ianthe’s only confidante. Before ever The Lost Heir was written Ianthe had apparently blackened Sylvester’s character to as many persons as would listen to her grievances. “Oh, the circumstances have been changed, of course!” some avid-eyed female would say. “I don’t mean to say that Salford has done the same as Ugolino—well, he couldn’t, nowadays! But as soon as I read the book I remembered how poor Lady Henry told me once ...”

“Could it be true that Lady Henry’s son is the real Duke of Salford?” breathed the credulous. “They were twins, were they not, Salford and Lord Henry?”

That lurid fancy had almost proved to be Phoebe’s breaking-point. But for her grandmother’s quelling eye she believed she must have spoken. It caught hers in the very nick of time, and she remained silent. That eye was absent when she heard the same lurid fancy on Ianthe’s lips.

“Whoever it was who wrote the book,” said Ianthe impressively, “knows a great deal about the Raynes! That much is certain! Everyone says it is a female: do you think so, Miss Marlow?”

“Yes—and a shockingly silly female!” said Phoebe. “It is the most absurd thing I ever read!”

“But it isn’t!” insisted Ianthe. “Chance is not a castle, of course, and Sylvester couldn’t possibly keep poor little Edmund hidden, and Edmund hasn’t got a sister, but that’s nothing! I have read the book twice now, and I believe there is a warning in it!”

“A warning?” echoed Phoebe blankly.

“To me,” nodded Ianthe. “A warning that danger threatens my child. There can be no doubt that Matilda is meant to be me, after all.”

These naive words struck Phoebe dumb for several moments. It had not previously occurred to her that Ianthe might identify herself with The Lost Heir’s golden-haired sister. Having very little interest in mere heroes and heroines she had done no more than depict two staggeringly beautiful puppets, endow them with every known virtue, and cast them into a series of hair-raising adventures from which, she privately considered, it was extremely improbable they would ever have extricated themselves.

“Though Florian is not Fotherby, of course,” added Ianthe, unconsciously answering the startled question in Phoebe’s mind. “I think he is just a made-up character. Poor Nugent wouldn’t do for a hero. Besides, he is Baron Macaronio: everyone knows that!”

The unruffled complaisance in her face and voice provided Phoebe with the second shock of the day. This one was not of long duration, however, a bare minute’s reflection sufficing to inform her that the grossest of libels could be pardoned in an author who painted Lady Henry herself in roseate hues.

“And Harry was Sylvester’s twin-brother,” pursued Ianthe.

“Count Ugolino’s brother was not his twin!” Phoebe managed to say.

“No, but I daresay the author was afraid to make it all precisely the same. The thing is, Ugolino was a usurper.”

“Lady Henry!” said Phoebe, speaking in a voice of careful control. “You cannot seriously suppose that Salford is a usurper!”

“No, except that there have been such things, and he was a twin, and I have often thought, when he has encouraged Edmund to do dangerous things, like riding his pony all over the park, all by himself, and climbing trees, that he would be positively glad if the poor little fellow were to fall and break his neck!”

“Oh, hush!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Pray, pray do not say so, Lady Henry! You are funning, I know, but indeed you should not!”

An obstinate look came into Ianthe’s lovely face. “No, I am not. I don’t say it is so, for I can’t think Mama-Duchess would have changed the twins—for why should she? But Sylvester has never liked Edmund! He said himself he didn’t want him, and although he pretended afterwards that he hadn’t meant it I have always known it was the truth! Well, why does he hate Edmund?”

“Lady Henry, you must not indulge your fancy in this way!” Phoebe cried, quite appalled. “How can you suppose that a foolish romance bears the least relation to real life?”

“The Lost Heir is no more foolish than Glenarvon, and you can’t say that bore no relation to real life!” countered Ianthe instantly.

Phoebe said: “I know—I have reason to know—that the author of the book was wholly ignorant of any of the circumstances attaching to Salford, or to any member of his family!”

“Nonsense! How can you know anything of the sort?”

Phoebe moistened her lips, and said in a shaking voice: “It so happens that I am acquainted with the author. I mustn’t tell you, and you won’t ask me, I am persuaded, or—or mention it!”

“Acquainted with the author?” Ianthe gasped. “Oh, who is she? You can’t be so cruel as not to tell me! I won’t breathe a word, dear Miss Marlow!”

“No, I must not. I should not have spoken at all, only that I felt myself obliged, when I found you had taken such a fantastic notion into your head! Lady Henry, my friend had never seen Salford but once in her life: knew nothing more of him than his name! She was struck by his strange eyebrows, and when she came to write that tale she remembered them, and thought she would give Ugolino brows like that, never dreaming that anyone would think—”

“But she must have known more!” objected Ianthe, staring rather hard at Phoebe. “She knew he was Edmund’s guardian!”

“She did not. It was—she told me—nothing but the unhappiest of coincidences!”

“I don’t believe it! It could not have been so!”

“But it was, it was!” Phoebe said vehemently. “I know it for a fact!”

There was a momentary silence. As she stared, a look of comprehension stole into Ianthe’s eyes. “Miss Marlow! You are the author!”

“No!”

“You are! I know you are! Oh, you sly thing!” cried Ianthe.

“I tell you, no!”

“Oh, you won’t take me in, I promise you! I see it all now! What a rage Sylvester would be in if he knew—when he has been so condescending as to make you the latest object of his gallantry, too! I only wish he may discover it.” She saw the widening look of horror in Phoebe’s eyes, and said: “I shan’t tell him, of course: you may be easy on that head!”

“Indeed, I hope you won’t tell anyone, for it is untrue, and absurd as well!” replied Phoebe, trying to speak as though she were amused. “And pray don’t mention either that I am acquainted with the real author! I need not ask you: you must perceive how very disagreeable it would be for me—bound not to divulge the secret, and—and besieged with questions, as I should be!”

“Oh, no, of course I shall not! Only fancy being able to write books! I am sure I could never do so. How clever you must be! But were you really ignorant of the circumstances? It is the oddest thing! How in the world do you contrive to think of such exciting adventures? I hadn’t the least guess how Matilda and Florian would contrive to rescue poor Maximilian, you know. I could not put the last volume down until they ran the boat ashore, and Florian cried: “Safe! Safe, Matilda! At last we stand where Ugolino holds no sway!” I almost shed tears, it was so affecting!”

She rattled on in this way for some minutes. Phoebe was powerless to stop her. She could only repeat that she was not the book’s author, which made Ianthe laugh; and derive a little doubtful comfort from Ianthe’s assurance that she would not breathe a syllable to a soul.

18

The first repercussions of this interlude began to be felt by Phoebe almost at once. She saw one or two covert glances directed at her, and guessed several times that she was the subject of a whispered confidence. She was rendered acutely uncomfortable; and when, in a few days, she received the coldest and most infinitesimal of bows from two of the Patronesses of Almack’s, and the cut direct from Lady Ribbleton, only and formidable sister of the Duchess of Salford, she could no longer attempt to persuade herself that she was imagining the whole. She did her best to maintain an air of cheerful unconcern, but she quaked inwardly. Only one person ventured to ask her if it were true that she had written The Lost Heir, and that an ingenuous young lady embarking on her first season, who was at once frowned down by her mama. Phoebe exclaimed with a tolerable assumption of amazement: “I?” and at least had the satisfaction of knowing that she had lulled one person’s suspicions. Mrs. Newbury, the only other who might, perhaps, have openly taxed her with what she was fast coming to consider her crime, had been confined to the house by some indisposition, and might be presumed to know nothing about the gathering rumours.