Maggie MacKeever by The Right Honourable Viscount Page B

interest, his lordship did not explain. “You wound me!” he protested. “Why do you doubt my conviction that the electoral system is corrupt? That the franchise should be granted to all men?” He made a fist. “We must have annual elections and secret ballots. And if the weight of public opinion doesn’t suffice, then we must persuade Members of Parliament to do their duty—forcibly!”
    Lips parted, Miss Phyfe stared at his lordship’s swarthy countenance and bright eyes. Then she laughed again. “Gracious God! Surely I do not sound like that!”
    Lord Darby lowered his raised fist, which had occasioned no little comment from the opera-goers in attendance at the theater this evening, to say nothing of the opera-goers present in Lord Phyfe’s box. “Not precisely, my little hornet; your voice is more melodious.” She continued to chuckle, so genuinely and innocently amused that his lordship’s own good humor abruptly fled. Not Miss Phyfe’s enjoyment of his sallies caused this abrupt change of mood, but an unprecedented pang of conscience.
    That England’s most jaded rakehell should still possess a conscience surprised no one more than “Devil” Darby. Ruefully, he regarded the lady responsible for his momentary discomfort. No female of Morgan’s stamp had ever before put herself in Lord Darby’s way. But here she was, so simultaneously enticing and naïve. There was but one course open to a rakehell thus presented with an alluring maiden whose cool demeanor hinted at a nature very warm. Ironic that a lady so knowledgeably adamant in her demands for the comeuppance of those villains responsible for miscarriages of justice should be totally innocent of her own imminent (did his lordship have his way) downfall.
    Again his conscience twinged. Very well, he would issue fair alarm. “Conscience prompts me to warn you once more about tempting me to break my rules, Miss Phyfe.”
    What rules were those? Morgan wondered, but refused to ask. Instead she made a politely noncommittal rejoinder, upon which his lordship took an equally polite departure from the box.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    “I vow it makes me all out-of-reason cross!” announced Miss Phyfe. “Sidoney is running mad over a notorious rakehell; while English, whom I had trusted to divert her, is making a cake of himself instead. I do not know how he thinks he may fix Sidoney’s interest by taking up with three—” She glanced at Callie. “... Er—sisters whose combined ambition seems to be to see him drowning in the River Tick. I shall have to extricate him, I suppose. And meantime Sidoney has set her cap at Darby, and I must try and prevent her tossing her bonnet over the windmill. To own the truth, Alister, I have good enough reason to seem worn-down.”
    Not only Morgan seemed thus afflicted, Dr. Kilpatrick thought; and the focus of his observation was not the patient whom he treated for chilblain. “Send him to the rightabout!” he said impatiently. “Darby, that is. I make no doubt you can.”
    Miss Phyfe looked less convinced and considerably annoyed, due not to Alister’s suggestions, but to the recollection of certain other comments. Various speculative remarks made by the Polite World to one another, behind glove and handkerchief and fan, during a recent evening’s entertainment at the theater had reached Morgan’s ear. Galling, the discovery that her conversation with Darby had occasioned such notice.
    Yet she could not fairly condemn the Polite World for speculation upon the marked sign of favor he had made her, the surprising length of time he had remained at her side. Morgan herself was somehow curious as to why he had singled her out for such particular attention. Perhaps he meant to make Sidoney jealous. Or perhaps he sought to amuse himself by making a most unlikely conquest.
    These conjectures Morgan quickly abandoned as futile; her knowledge was of the political arena, not love’s more exotic stage. For whatever reason