Up at the castle, on the broad marble terrace, where clematis
and jessamine climbed over the balustrade and twined about its
pilasters, where oleanders grew in tall marble urns and shed
their roseate petals on the pavement, Beatrice, dressed for
dinner, in white, with pearls in her hair, and pearls round her
throat, was walking slowly backwards and forwards, reading a
letter.
"There is a Peter Marchdale--I don't know whether he will be
your Peter Marchdale or not, my dear; though the name seems
hardly likely to be common--son of the late Mr. Archibald
Marchdale, Q. C., and nephew of old General Marchdale, of
Whitstoke.
A highly respectable and stodgy Norfolk family.
I've never happened to meet the man myself, but I'm told he's a
bit of an eccentric, who amuses himself globe-trotting, and
writing books (novels, I believe) which nobody, so far as I am
aware, ever reads. He writes under a pseudonym, Felix--I 'm
not sure whether it's Mildmay or Wildmay. He began life, by
the bye, in the Diplomatic, and was attache for a while at
Berlin, or Petersburg, or somewhere; but whether (in the
elegant language of Diplomacy) he 'chucked it up,' or failed to
pass his exams, I'm not in a position to say. He will be near
thirty, and ought to have a couple of thousand a year--more or
less.
His father, at any rate, was a great man at the bar, and
must have left something decent. And the only other thing in
the world I know about him is that he's a great friend of that
clever gossip Margaret Winchfield--which goes to show that
however obscure he may be as a scribbler of fiction, he must
possess some redeeming virtues as a social being--for Mrs.
Winchfield is by no means the sort that falls in love with
bores. As you 're not, either--well, verbum sap., as my little
brother Freddie says."
Beatrice gazed off, over the sunny lawn, with its trees and
their long shadows, with its shrubberies, its bright
flower-beds, its marble benches, its artificial ruin; over the
lake, with its coloured sails, its incongruous puffing
steamboats; down the valley, away to the rosy peaks of Monte
Sfiorito, and the deep blue sky behind them. She plucked a spray
of jessamine, and brushed the cool white blossoms across her
cheek, and inhaled their fairy fragrance.
"An obscure scribbler of fiction," she mused. "Ah, well, one
is an obscure reader of fiction oneself. We must send to
London for Mr. Felix Mildmay Wildmay's works."