The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

The Duchess and her companion had risen to their feet, and the former, on her way out, recognising her solicitor, paused graciously.

“How do you do, Mr. Mangan?” she said. “I hope you are looking after those troublesome tenants of mine in Leicestershire?”

“We shall make our report in due course, Duchess,” Mangan assured her. “Will you permit me,” he added, “to bring back to your memory a relative who has just returned from abroad⁠—Sir Everard Dominey?”

Dominey had risen to his feet a moment previously and now extended his hand. The Duchess, who was a tall, graceful woman, with masses of fair hair only faintly interspersed with grey, very fine brown eyes, the complexion of a girl, and, to quite her own confession, the manners of a kitchen maid, stared at him for a moment without any response.

“Sir Everard Dominey?” she repeated. “Everard? Ridiculous!”

Dominey’s extended hand was at once withdrawn, and the tentative smile faded from his lips. The lawyer plunged into the breach.

“I can assure your Grace,” he insisted earnestly, “that there is no doubt whatever about Sir Everard’s identity. He only returned from Africa during the last few days.”

The Duchess’s incredulity remained, wholly good-natured but ministered to by her natural obstinacy.

“I simply cannot bring myself to believe it,” she declared. “Come, I’ll challenge you. When did we meet last?”

“At Worcester House,” was the prompt reply. “I came to say goodbye to you.”

The Duchess was a little staggered. Her eyes softened, a faint smile played at the corners of her lips. She was suddenly a very attractive looking woman.

“You came to say goodbye,” she repeated, “and?”

“I am to take that as a challenge?” Dominey asked, standing very upright and looking her in the eyes.

“As you will.”

“You were a little kinder to me,” he continued, “than you are today. You gave me⁠—this,” he added, drawing a small picture from his pocketbook, “and you permitted⁠—”

“For heaven’s sake, put that thing away,” she cried, “and don’t say another word! There’s my grownup nephew, St. Omar, paying his bill almost within earshot. Come and see me at half-past three this afternoon, and don’t be a minute late. And, St. Omar,” she went on, turning to the young man who stood now by her side, “this is a connection of yours⁠—Sir Everard Dominey. He is a terrible person, but do shake hands with him and come along. I am half an hour late for my dressmaker already.”

Lord St. Omar chuckled vaguely, then shook hands with his newfound relative, nodded affably to the lawyer and followed his aunt out of the room. Mangan’s expression was beatific.

“Sir Everard,” he exclaimed, “God bless you! If ever a woman got what she deserved! I’ve seen a duchess blush⁠—first time in my life!”

Worcester House was one of those semi-palatial residences set down apparently for no reason whatever in the middle of Regent’s Park. It had been acquired by a former duke at the instigation of the Regent, who was his intimate friend, and retained by later generations in mute protest against the disfiguring edifices which had made a millionaire’s highway of Park Lane. Dominey, who was first scrutinised by an individual in buff waistcoat and silk hat at the porter’s lodge, was interviewed by a majordomo in the great stone hall, conducted through an extraordinarily Victorian drawing-room by another myrmidon in a buff waistcoat, and finally ushered into a tiny little boudoir leading out of a larger apartment and terminating in a conservatory filled with sweet-smelling exotics. The Duchess, who was reclining in an easy-chair, held out her hand, which her visitor raised to his lips. She motioned him to a seat by her side and once more scrutinised him with unabashed intentness.

“There’s something wrong about you, you know,” she declared.

“That seems very unfortunate,” he rejoined, “when I return to find you wholly unchanged.”

“Not bad,” she remarked critically. “All the same, I have changed. I am not in the least in love with you any longer.”

“It was the fear of that change in you,” he sighed, “which kept me for so long in the furthest corners of the world.”

She looked at him with a severity which was obviously assumed.

“Look here,” she said, “it is better for us to have a perfectly clear understanding upon one point. I know the exact position of your affairs, and I know, too, that the two hundred a year which your lawyer has been sending out to you came partly out of a few old trees and partly out of his own pocket. How you are going to live over here I cannot imagine, but it isn’t the least use expecting Henry to do a thing for you. The poor man has scarcely enough pocket money to pay his travelling expenses when he goes lecturing.”

“Lecturing?” Dominey repeated. “What’s happened to poor Henry?”

“My husband is an exceedingly conscientious man,” was the dignified reply. “He goes from town to town with Lord Roberts and a secretary, lecturing on national defence.”

“Dear Henry was always a little cranky, wasn’t he?” Dominey observed. “Let me put your mind at rest on that other matter, though, Caroline. I can assure you that I have come back to England not to borrow money but to spend it.”

His cousin shook her head mournfully. “And a few minutes ago I was nearly observing that you had lost your sense of humour!”

“I am in earnest,” he persisted. “Africa has turned out to be my Eldorado. Quite unexpectedly, I must admit, I came in for a considerable sum of money towards the end of my stay there. I am paying off the mortgages at Dominey at once, and I want Henry to jot down on paper at once those few amounts he was good enough to lend me in the old days.”

Caroline, Duchess of Worcester, sat perfectly still for a moment with her mouth open, a condition which was entirely natural but unbecoming.

“And you mean to tell me that you really are Everard Dominey?” she exclaimed.

“The weight of evidence is rather that way,” he