But as if drawn by a magnet, she felt impelled to look at her once more, and giving a quick glance, she saw the White Lady distinctly smiling at her. There was no mistake, it was a kind, amused little smile of a most friendly nature.
Patty was enchanted, and the warm blood rushed to her cheeks as if she had been singled out for a great honour. But frankly, and without embarrassment, she smiled back at the lovely face, and returned the pleased little nod that was then given her.
“Patty, what are you doing?” said Nan; “do you see any one you know?”
“No,” said Patty, slowly, almost as one in a dream, “my White Lady smiled at me,—that’s all,—so I smiled back at her, and then we bowed.”
“You mustn’t do such things,” said Nan, half smiling herself, “she’ll think you’re a forward American.”
“I am an American,” replied Patty, “and I’d be sorry to be called backward.”
“You never will be,” said her father. “Well, I suppose you may smile at her, if she smiles first, but don’t begin sending her anonymous notes.”
“Nonsense,” said Patty, “but you two don’t know how lovely she is when she smiles.”
Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield were seated with their backs to the lady in question, and could not see her without slightly turning their heads, while Patty, opposite them at the round table, faced her directly.
“You’re fortunate in your position,” observed her father, “for were you seated here and we there, of course she would have beamed upon us.”
“She isn’t beaming,” cried Patty, almost indignantly; “I won’t have that angelic smile called a beam. Now, you’re not to tease. She’s a sweet, dear lady, with some awful tragedy gnawing at her heart.”
“Patty, you’re growing up romantic! Stop it at once. I’ll buy the lady for you, if you want her, but I won’t have you indulging in rubbishy romance like that, with nothing to base it on.”
Patty looked at her father comically.
“I don’t believe you’d better buy her, Daddy, dear,” she said. “You know you often say that, with Nan and me on your hands, you have all you can manage. So I’m sure you couldn’t add those two to your collection; for I feel certain wherever the White Lady goes the Black Lady goes too.”
The subject was lost sight of then, by the greetings of some friends who were passing by the Fairfields on their way out of the Restaurant.
“Why, Mrs. Leigh,” exclaimed Nan, “how do you do? Won’t you and Mr. Leigh sit down and have coffee with us? Or, better yet, suppose we all go up to our drawing-room and have coffee there.”
After Patty had spoken to the newcomers and was sitting silent while her elders were talking, she looked up in surprise as a waiter approached her. He laid a long-stemmed white rose beside her plate, and said, quietly, “From Lady Hamilton, Miss.”
Involuntarily, Patty glanced at the White Lady, and seeing her smile, knew at once that she had sent the rose.
As Patty explained the presence of the flower to the others, Mrs. Leigh glanced across, and said: “Oh, that’s Lady Hamilton! Excuse me, I must speak to her just a moment.”
“Who is Lady Hamilton?” asked Nan of Mr. Leigh, unable longer to repress her interest.
“One of the best and most beautiful women in London,” he replied. “One of the most indifferent, and the most sought after; one of the richest, and the saddest; one of the most popular, and the loneliest.”
All this seemed enough to verify Patty’s surmises of romance connected with the White Lady, but before she could ask a question, Mrs. Leigh returned, and Lady Hamilton came with her. After introductions and a few words of greeting, Lady Hamilton said to Mr. Fairfield: “I wonder if you couldn’t be induced to lend me your daughter for an hour or so. I will do my best to entertain her.”
“Indeed, yes, Lady Hamilton; and I think you will find her quite ready to be borrowed. You seemed to cast a magic spell over her, even before she knew your name.”
“I must confess that I have been wanting to meet her; I have searched this room in vain for some mutual friend who might introduce us, but until I saw Mrs. Leigh over here, I could find no one. Then, to attract Mrs. Leigh’s attention, in hope of her helping me, I sent over a signal of distress.”
“I took it as a flag of truce,” said Patty, holding up the white rose as it trembled on its stem.
“I thought it was a cipher message,” said Nan, smiling. “Patty is so fond of puzzles and secret languages, I wasn’t sure but it might mean ‘All is discovered; fly at once!’”
“It means ‘all is well’,” said Lady Hamilton, in her gracious way; “and now I must fly at once with my spoil.”
She took possession of Patty, and with a few words of adieu to the others, led her from the room. The lady in black rose from the table and followed them, and Patty entered the lift, blissfully happy, but a little bewildered.
“We’ll have our coffee right here,” said Lady Hamilton, as having reached her drawing-room, she proceeded to adjust some dainty gilt cups that stood on a small table. “That is, if you are allowed to have coffee at night. From your roseleaf cheeks, I fancy you drink only honeydew or buttercup tea.”
“No, indeed; I’m far too substantial for those things,” said Patty, as she dropped into the cosy chair Lady Hamilton had indicated; “and for over a year now, I’ve been allowed to have after-dinner coffee.”
“Dear me! what a grown-up! Miss Fairfield, this is Mrs. Betham, my very good friend, who looks after me when I get frisky and try to scrape acquaintance across a public dining-room.”
If Lady Hamilton was lovely when she was silent, she was doubly bewitching when she talked in this gay strain. Little dimples came and went in her cheeks, so quickly that they had scarcely disappeared before they were back again.
Mrs. Betham bowed and spoke politely to Patty, but her voice was quick and sharp, and her manner, though courteous, was not attractive.
“I doubt the coffee’s hot,” she said, as a waiter, who had just brought it in, was filling the tiny cups.
“It’s steaming,” said Lady Hamilton, gaily, and Patty saw at once that whatever it was that made her new friend sorrowful, it was not the grumbling tones of Mrs. Betham.
“It’s quite too hot, Julia,” she went on; “unless you’re careful, you’ll steam your throat.”
“Not I,” growled Mrs. Betham. “I’m not such a stupid as that. But I must say I like my coffee at a table like a Christian, and not setting my cup in my lap, or holding it up in the air.”
“Dear me, Julia,” said Lady Hamilton, with great solicitude expressed on her face; “dear me, your gout must be very bad to-night. It makes you quite cross. Poor dear!”
Mrs. Betham sniffed at this, but a grim smile came into her eyes, and Patty concluded she was not quite so grumpy as she seemed.
After the coffee was finished, and the tray taken away, Mrs. Betham excused herself and went off to her own room.
“The way it began,” said Lady Hamilton, as if to explain her interest in Patty, “was one day when I went through the corridors and passed your drawing-room, and the door was a little mite ajar, and I heard you singing. I am very fond of just that high, sweet kind of voice that you have, and I paused a few moments to listen to you. Then afterward I saw you in the dining-room two or three times at luncheon or dinner, and I took a fancy to know you, for I felt sure I should like you. Do you mind coming to see me once in a while, my dear? I am very lonely.”
“Mind! No, indeed!” cried Patty, impetuously throwing her arms around her new friend. “I loved you the first time I ever saw you. But why do you say you are lonely? You, a great lady.”
“I will tell you my story in a few words,” said Lady Hamilton. “For I suppose you would hear it from others, and I would rather tell it you myself. I am the daughter of Sir Otho Markleham. Of course, if you were a Londoner, you would know all this, but as you’re not, I’ll tell you. Well, I am Sir Otho’s only daughter, and four years ago, when I was just eighteen, I ran away from home and married Lord Cecil Hamilton. He was a good man, but he had quarrelled with my father on a point of politics, and my father disapproved of the match. He disowned me as his daughter, though he said he would always continue the allowance I had had as a girl. I was glad of this, not only because Lord Hamilton, though a man of good fortune, was not a wealthy man, but also because it seemed to show my father had not entirely cast me off. But he forbade us to go to his house, and we went to Paris and lived there for a year. After one year of happy married life Cecil died, and since then my only aim in life has been to be reconciled to my father. But he will not have it, or at least he won’t have it unless I make the first overtures toward peace.”