Chapter 6 - Page 2

decorum to ask if Miss Anvoy had also
by chance expectations from her aunt. My enquiry drew out that
Lady Coxon, who was the oddest of women, would have in any
contingency to act under her late husband's will, which was odder
still, saddling her with a mass of queer obligations complicated
with queer loopholes. There were several dreary people, Coxon
cousins, old maids, to whom she would have more or less to
minister. Gravener laughed, without saying no, when I suggested
that the young lady might come in through a loophole; then
suddenly, as if he suspected my turning a lantern on him, he
declared quite dryly: "That's all rot--one's moved by other
springs!"

A fortnight later, at Lady Coxon's own house, I understood well
enough the springs one was moved by. Gravener had spoken of me
there as an old friend, and I received a gracious invitation to
dine. The Knight's widow was again indisposed--she had succumbed
at the eleventh hour; so that I found Miss Anvoy bravely playing
hostess without even Gravener's help, since, to make matters worse,
he had just sent up word that the House, the insatiable House, with
which he supposed he had contracted for easier terms, positively
declined to release him. I was struck with the courage, the grace
and gaiety of the young lady left thus to handle the fauna and
flora of the Regent's Park. I did what I could to help her to
classify them, after I had recovered from the confusion of seeing
her slightly disconcerted at perceiving in the guest introduced by
her intended the gentleman with whom she had had that talk about
Frank Saltram. I had at this moment my first glimpse of the fact
that she was a person who could carry a responsibility; but I leave
the reader to judge of my sense of the aggravation, for either of
us, of such a burden, when I heard the servant announce Mrs.
Saltram. From what immediately passed between the two ladies I
gathered that the latter had been sent for post-haste to fill the
gap created by the absence of the mistress of the house. "Good!" I
remember crying, "she'll be put by ME;" and my apprehension was
promptly justified. Mrs. Saltram taken in to dinner, and taken in
as a consequence of an appeal to her amiability, was Mrs. Saltram
with a vengeance. I asked myself what Miss Anvoy meant by doing
such things, but the only answer I arrived at was that Gravener was
verily fortunate. She hadn't happened to tell him of her visit to
Upper Baker Street, but she'd certainly tell him to-morrow; not
indeed that this would make him like any better her having had the
innocence to invite such a person as Mrs. Saltram on such an
occasion. It could only strike me that I had never seen a young
woman put such ignorance into her cleverness, such