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."




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