CHAPTER XXVI

And just as the dead cheetah was laid at Jill’s feet, a huge bull dog, with a face like a gargoyle to be seen on the Western transept of Notre-Dame, and a chest like a steel safe, supported on legs which had given way under the weight, walked across from Sir John Wetherbourne, Bart., of Bourne Manor, and other delectable mansions, to lay his snuffling, stertorous self at the feet of his mistress, the Honourable Mary Bingham, pronounced Beam, in whose sanctum sat the man on the bleak November evening, and of whom he had just asked advice.

People always asked advice of Mary, she was of that kind.  On this occasion she sat looking across at the man she loved, and had always loved, just as he loved and had always loved her, since the days they had more or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies.  She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled.  Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would some time marry, though never a word had been uttered, and being sure and certain of each other, they had never worried, or forced the pace.  And then Jill had disappeared!  Gone was their pal, their little sister whom they had petted and spoiled from the day she too had appeared on a fat pony, gone without a trace, leaving these two honest souls, in a sudden unnecessary burst of altruism, to come to a mutual, unspoken understanding that their love must be laid aside in folds of soft tissue, that they must turn the key upon their treasure, until such time as definite news of the lost girl should allow them to bring it out with decency, and deck it with orange blossom.  And worry having entered upon them, they both suddenly discovered that uncertainty is a never-failing aperitif, and they both hungered for a care-free hour like unto those they had carelessly let slip.

Foolish perhaps, but they loved Jill, making of themselves brother and sister; hurt to the quick when after the debacle she had sweetly declined all offers of help, and worried to death when she had started out on the hare-brained scheme of earning her own living off her own bat.

Mary Bingham was one of those delightful women peculiar to England, restful to look at, restful to know.  Her thick, glossy brown hair was coiled neatly in plaits, no matter what the fashion; her skin, devoid of powder, did not shine, even on the hottest day; her smile was a benison, and her teeth and horsemanship perfect.

Her clothes?  Well, she was tailor-made, which means that near a horse she beat other women to a frazzle, but on a parquet floor, covered with dainty, wispy, fox-trotting damsels, she showed up like a double magenta-coloured dahlia in a bed of anemones.