You have said Tangier, and we shall certainly try Tangier."
"Really, Lady Clara, your implicit faith is most flattering. It is not everyone who would sacrifice their own plans and inclinations so readily."
"We know your skill and your experience, Sir William. Ida shall try Tangier. I am convinced that she will be benefited."
"I have no doubt of it."
"But you know Lord Charles. He is just a little inclined to decide medical matters as he would an affair of State. I hope that you will be firm with him."
"As long as Lord Charles honours me so far as to ask my advice I am sure that he would not place me in the false position of having that advice disregarded."
The medical baronet whirled round the cord of his pince-nez and pushed out a protesting hand.
"No, no, but you must be firm on the point of Tangier."
"Having deliberately formed the opinion that Tangier is the best place for our young patient, I do not think that I shall readily change my conviction."
"Of course not."
"I shall speak to Lord Charles upon the subject now when I go upstairs."
"Pray do."
"And meanwhile she will continue her present course of treatment. I trust that the warm African air may send her back in a few months with all her energy restored."
He bowed in the courteous, sweeping, old-world fashion which had done so much to build up his ten thousand a year, and, with the stealthy gait of a man whose life is spent in sick-rooms, he followed the footman upstairs.
As the red velvet curtains swept back into position, the Lady Ida threw her arms round her mother's neck and sank her face on to her bosom.
"Oh! mamma, you ARE a diplomatist!" she cried.
But her mother's expression was rather that of the general who looked upon the first smoke of the guns than of one who had won the victory.
"All will be right, dear," said she, glancing down at the fluffy yellow curls and tiny ear. "There is still much to be done, but I think we may venture to order the trousseau."
"Oh I how brave you are!"
"Of course, it will in any case be a very quiet affair. Arthur must get the license. I do not approve of hole-and-corner marriages, but where the gentleman has to take up an official position some allowance must be made. We can have Lady Hilda Edgecombe, and the Trevors, and the Grevilles, and I am sure that the Prime Minister would run down if he could."
"And papa?"
"Oh, yes; he will come too, if he is well enough. We must wait until Sir William goes, and, meanwhile, I shall write to Lord Arthur."
Half an hour had passed, and quite a number of notes had been dashed off in the fine, bold, park- paling handwriting of the Lady Clara, when the door clashed, and the wheels of the doctor's carriage were heard grating outside against the kerb. The Lady Clara laid down her pen, kissed her daughter, and started off for the sick-room. The Foreign Minister was lying back in his chair, with a red silk handkerchief over his forehead, and his bulbous, cotton-wadded foot still protruding upon its rest.
"I think it is almost liniment time," said Lady Clara, shaking a blue crinkled bottle. "Shall I put on a little?"
"Oh! this pestilent toe!" groaned the sufferer. "Sir William won't hear of my moving yet. I do think he is the most completely obstinate and pig- headed man that I have ever met. I tell him that he has mistaken his profession, and that I could find him a post at Constantinople. We need a mule out there."
"Poor Sir William!" laughed Lady Clara. But how has he roused your wrath?"
"He is so persistent-so dogmatic."
"Upon what point? "
"Well, he has been laying down the law about Ida. He has decreed, it seems, that she is to go to Tangier."
"He said something to that effect before he went up to you."
"Oh, he did, did he?"
The slow-moving, inscrutable eye came sliding round to her.
Lady Clara's face had assumed an expression of transparent obvious innocence, an intrusive candour which is never seen in nature save when a woman is bent upon deception.