The Intrusions of Peggy

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Hope Anthony. The Intrusions of Peggy

CHAPTER I. LIFE IS RECOMMENDED

CHAPTER II. COMING NEAR THE FIRE

CHAPTER III. IN DANES INN

CHAPTER IV 'FROM THE MIDST OF THE WHIRL'

CHAPTER V. THE WORLD RECALCITRANT

CHAPTER VI. CHILDREN OF SHADOW

CHAPTER VII. A DANGEROUS GAME

CHAPTER VIII. USURPERS ON THE THRONE

CHAPTER IX. BRUISES AND BALM

CHAPTER X. CONCERNING A CERTAIN CHINA VASE

CHAPTER XI. THE MIXTURE AS BEFORE

CHAPTER XII. HOT HEADS AND COOL

CHAPTER XIII. JUSTIFICATION NUMBER FOUR

CHAPTER XIV. A HOUSE OF REFUGE

CHAPTER XV. NOT EVERYBODY'S FOOTBALL

CHAPTER XVI. MORAL LESSONS

CHAPTER XVII. THE PERJURER

CHAPTER XVIII. AN AUNT – AND A FRIEND

CHAPTER XIX 'NO MORE THAN A GLIMMER'

CHAPTER XX. PURELY BUSINESS

CHAPTER XXI. THE WHIP ON THE PEG

CHAPTER XXII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IT

CHAPTER XXIII. THE LAST KICK

CHAPTER XXIV. TO THE SOUL SHOP

CHAPTER XXV. RECONCILIATION

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At the age of forty (a point now passed by some half-dozen years) Mrs. Bonfill had become motherly. The change was sudden, complete, and eminently wise. It was accomplished during a summer's retirement; she disappeared a queen regnant, she reappeared a dowager – all by her own act, for none had yet ventured to call her passée. But she was a big woman, and she recognised facts. She had her reward. She gained power instead of losing it; she had always loved power, and had the shrewdness to discern that there was more than one form of it. The obvious form she had never, as a young and handsome woman, misused or over-used; she had no temptations that way, or, as her friend Lady Blixworth preferred to put it, 'In that respect dearest Sarah was always bourgeoise to the core.' The new form she now attained – influence – was more to her taste. She liked to shape people's lives; if they were submissive and obedient she would make their fortunes. She needed some natural capacities in her protégés, of course; but, since she chose cleverly, these were seldom lacking. Mrs. Bonfill did the rest. She could open doors that obeyed no common key; she could smooth difficulties; she had in two or three cases blotted out a past, and once had reformed a gambler. But she liked best to make marriages and Ministers. Her own daughter, of course, she married immediately – that was nothing. She had married Nellie Towler to Sir James Quinby-Lee – the betting had been ten to one against it – and Lady Mildred Haughton to Frank Cleveland – flat in the face of both the families. As for Ministers, she stood well with Lord Farringham, was an old friend of Lord Glentorly, and, to put it unkindly, had Constantine Blair fairly in her pocket. It does not do to exaggerate drawing-room influence, but when Beaufort Chance became a Whip, and young Lord Mervyn was appointed Glentorly's Under-Secretary at the War Office, and everybody knew that they were Mrs. Bonfill's last and prime favourites – well, the coincidence was remarkable. And never a breath of scandal with it all! It was no small achievement for a woman born in, bred at, and married from an unpretentious villa at Streatham. La carrière ouverte– but perhaps that is doing some injustice to Mr. Bonfill. After all, he and the big house in Grosvenor Square had made everything possible. Mrs. Bonfill loved her husband, and she never tried to make him a Minister; it was a well-balanced mind, save for that foible of power. He was very proud of her, though he rather wondered why she took so much trouble about other people's affairs. He owned a brewery, and was Chairman of a railway company.

Trix Trevalla had been no more than a month in London when she had the great good fortune to be taken up by Mrs. Bonfill. It was not everybody's luck. Mrs. Bonfill was particular; she refused hundreds, some for her own reasons, some because of the things Viola Blixworth might say. The Frickers, for example, failed in their assault on Mrs. Bonfill – or had up to now. Yet Mrs. Bonfill herself would have been good-natured to the Frickers.

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'You wouldn't even look in between the two and – and have an ice with us?'

'I really can't eat three meals in one evening, Tommy.'

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