Chapter 4

I

A telegram was handed to her as she came in from the garden, her broad-brimmed straw hat in her hand, and a bunch of fritillaries nodding in her blouse. That dates and places her at once: the time was April, and she was fond of curious flowers. She stood in the doorway to get the sunset glow upon the missive, and was herself ensanguined and enhanced, a sunny-haired, low-breasted young woman of middle height, rather faintly coloured, wholesome to see, with a bowed upper lip, and clear, grey-blue eyes of extreme directness and candour. A trick of looking you full, of considering you and her answer together, she had--a mild, steady beam, a radiance within the orb which told of a hidden glory. Her brows were level, eyebrows arched; her bust, though set like Aphrodite's of Melos, was full. The curving corners of the bow of her lips assured her the possession, even when she was most serious, of a lurking smile. Taking off her gardening gloves that she might break the red envelope, she disclosed a pair of fine, white, nervous hands, and pointed fingers which wore no rings.

The address, which she was careful to read before she tore the envelope, was--

Miss Percival, Wanless, Felsboro'.

Opening then, she read as follows:--

Home to-morrow seven people Ingram.

If she frowned slightly, it was a mere approach of the fine eyebrows to each other. She certainly smiled--wisely and meditatively, without showing her teeth. She touched her chin--a rounded, full chin--with the telegram, as she looked up at the maid who brought it.

“I must see Mrs. Benson about this. It's from Mr. Ingram.”

“Yes, Miss Percival.”

A friendly desire to share the puzzle was now manifest in the clear eyes.

“You see, Minnie, it might mean one of two things, and I am not quite sure which of them it does mean.” She looked again at the message with amused interest; but one could not have said whether she was amused at her interest, or interested in her amusement. That was part of Miss Percival's charm, that she was always baffling you.

But Minnie, the maid, was demure and monotonous under the attack of friendly desires. “No, Miss Percival,” she said, and added, “I am sure I couldn't say.” She stood aside from the doorway as the young lady entered the billiard-room, saying, as she went, “Ask Mrs. Benson to come to my room, Minnie, please; and tell Frodsham I should like to see him directly he comes to-morrow morning.”

She heard Minnie's “Very well, Miss Percival,” as she disappeared, smiling still, and with a slight heightening of colour. When her colour rose, it rose evenly, flooding her face and neck with the dawn-hue. There were no patches or streaks of flame; she showed, as it were, incandescent.

She crossed the hall in the deepening dusk, a fine, littered room, where a great log-fire revealed the tall portraits of ladies and gentleman of long ago--sportsmen with spaniels at their feet, general officers in scarlet, pointing through smoke the direction of the enemy, a judge in ermine and full bottomed wig, a lady in white satin leaning against a broken column in a park, and backed by a brewing thunderstorm; and as she went her way gave a couple of glances to right and left, picked up a _Bradshaw_ from a side-table, stooped to put a tiger-skin straight. She continued down a long corridor, swinging her hat, and entered an open doorway at the extreme end. By the way she tossed the hat on to a chair and stirred the crackling logs with the point of her shoe, it was to be supposed that she was in her demesne. Standing with a foot on the fender she presently fell into a reverie, and presently reopened and re-read her telegram. Certainly she was smiling, and certainly her colour was enhanced.

The room, though business-like, was feminine. It had a Chippendale bureau between the windows, its pigeon-holes stuffed with papers; but there were flowers upon it, and elsewhere many photographs, and pictures evidently chosen by the tenant. The _Dante_ from the Bargello was one, the three headless _Fates_ of the Parthenon another; the _Hermes_ and the _Sophocles_, all in autogravure. It had a piano and a small bookcase containing the poets in green morocco, a uniform set. Elsewhere, in a larger bookcase, were miscellaneous volumes, by no means all novels, though novels there were. One shelf was filled with household books: cookery, bee-keeping, poultry, the _Dog in Health and Disease_, the horse, the flower-garden, _Botany, British Edible Fungi_, the _World of Vegetables_, were some of the subjects treated of. Below the bookcase was a row of japanned tin boxes, carefully lettered in white paint. House Accounts, Garden Accounts, Stable Accounts, one read. A fourth bore the words “Wood Sales and Miscellaneous.”

If you were alone, waiting in the room, you would glance at the photographs perched about, like alighting butterflies, upon piano and mantelshelf and occasional table. You would pass over, I believe, the children on ponies and in sailor suits, that elderly, ample lady, brooched and in black, beaming under the status of Grandmamma, that gaitered gentleman with a square-topped felt hat upon his head and grizzled whiskers below his ears, in favour of a group of five girls in black muslin and lace, sisters evidently, prosperously together, an uncommonly happy five. They look on good terms with themselves and with each other. They look frankly at you out of the frame--and how they must have dazzled the photographer with their five pair of bright, uncompromising eyes! Hands rest easily upon familiar shoulders, elbows on knees. One of them smiles outright, two are very ready to smile; one is more serious, as becomes the eldest of five; and one is round-cheeked and solemn--the baby.

Miss Percival and her sisters, it's clear. One can't mistake the rounded chin, the level brows, the promise of womanhood. Women should always be photographed in evening dress if, like the Misses Percival, they have nothing to hide. But now to pick out our Miss Percival. You will observe that the young ladies' names are neatly printed beneath their persons.

Even if I were sure of dates, I should not insist upon the serious one. So far as I can judge, the photograph is some eight or ten years old. I go by the style of hair-dressing which it shows, and by the name of the photographer, who signs from Wigmore Street. He is out of date; fashion has deserted him. Then that grave, watchful young goddess, who sits enthroned with her nymphs about her, must be a great deal older than our lady of this room, of the doubtful smile and friendly desires. She has the sedate air of eight-and-twenty, and by this time must be thirty-six or even more. She is Philippa, anyhow, we read. Who comes next? Here is Hawise, standing behind her of the throne and the centre, with a hand on her bare shoulder. She is laughing, sleepily; she is distinctly pretty, but distinctly, also, fat. She cannot be the owner of this room.

There's a taste for names in the Percival family: we have Philippa, Hawise. Now for the seated pair, one on either side of Philippa: they are Melusine, who has a long neck and a very demure look, and a great deal of hair, and Victoria, who, having just tossed back her head, lifts her chin and glimmers at you through half-shut eyes. Her lips laugh snugly at some mischief meditating. Neither of these can be our lady, who must therefore be the last and youngest, this child of eighteen or so, round-cheeked, round-eyed and serious, with critical lids, like those of the Farnese Hera, and a beautiful mouth: Sanchia-Josepha, crouched on the floor at the feet of Philippa. A charming bevy of maidens--Philippa, Hawise, Melusine, Victoria, Sanchia-Josepha; ten years ago happily sisters and rich in promise, looking out boldly at the veiled years ahead of them. Ten years ago? Call it eight, and you make our Miss Percival, say, six-and-twenty by this time.

There are many other photographs--girls and women, most of them; but here is a man, dignified by a place apart upon the bureau. He occupies one side of it by himself, balanced by the sisters at the other. A youngish man in yeomanry uniform he appears only in torso. He has the smooth head of a soldier, and rather a low, but very square, forehead. His eyes are smallish, and set deep. They look to be grey, light grey, but may be light blue. He has a good nose, high-bridged, large, thin, and practically straight. Such noses are seldom perfectly straight, and his is not. I observe that he has curled his moustache with the tongs, so that it is well away from his upper lip. If I had been he I should not have done that. It is too much trouble--and if a man takes pains about his toilette, those pains ought not to be evident. Moreover, the mouth is by no means this young man's best feature. There is a twist, the hint of a snarl in the upper lip. The lower protrudes. The gentleman is the least in life underhung. Consider his chin. It has the jut of the Hapsburgs', of Charles the Fifth's, not pronounced by any means, but undoubtedly there. Firmness, or perhaps obstinacy, hard judgment, an uneven temper, a leaning to autocracy, I read in this portrait. There is no signature, nothing to tell you who he is. Certainly, no Percival.

I call your attention to one more photograph, in marked distinction to others of your notice. Those were, in every sense, full--dress affairs; this one, in all senses, undress. It is the work of an amateur, you can see at once--small, rather blurred to begin with, not perfectly focussed, and fading now towards the end of all such gear. It represents a bareheaded young lady in a white gown pinned very high. She is standing in a pond, with the water well over her knees. One hand keeps her balance with a pole, the other grasps a streamer of water-weed. Floating beyond her upon some kind of raft is a man, bareheaded also, in a white sweater with a rolling collar. His face is shadowed--you can see that his hair, black and straight, falls over his eyes. He is raking up the weed with his hand, his arm bare to the shoulder. Below is written, in a round, sprawling hand, “To Sanchia from Percy.” Both the workers are intent upon their task, with no idea that they are posing. The girl has a Greek face, and a very fine pair of legs heedlessly displayed. The man is as thin as a gypsy. Out of the dark in which his face is hidden gleam his white teeth. A classical, rather than romantic scene. The absence of draperies suggest it; but the absence of self-consciousness is conclusive.

But I keep Miss Percival too long at the fender. She had been standing there for some minutes after her entry, first re-reading her telegram, next stroking her chin with it. She was thoughtful still, and still smiling. Once she looked over her shoulder through the window to the dying day, and lightly sighed. The time was April's end, and had been squally, with violent storms; but the last onslaughts of the north-wester had routed the rain-clouds. The day was dying under a clear saffron sky, and a thrush piped its mellow elegy. Miss Percival heard him, and listened, smiling with her lips, and with her eyes also which the serene light soothed. Her lips barely moved, just relaxed their firm embrace, but no more. She held the light gratefully with her eyes, seemed unwilling to lose a moment of it, wistful to be still out of doors. Again she lightly sighed, and presently resumed her downward gazing at the fire.

Knuckles quavered at the door. She straightened herself, turned, and called out definitely, “Come in.” Mrs. Benson stood before her, vast, massive, black-gowned, cloudy for trouble, a cook.

There was instantly to be observed in Miss Percival's lifted head and eyes the same frank appeal for interchange of sentiments as had been manifested to Minnie the maid. Her brows were smoothed out, her smile became less dubious; her intention to be friendly was deliberately expressed. But truth will have it that, just as before, Mrs. Benson's guard turned out at the same moment, as at a signal. To vary the figure, her vedettes, in touch with the advancers, fell back upon the main body.

If the young lady perceived this she did not cease to be amiably disposed. “Oh, Mrs. Benson,” she said, “I've had a telegram.”

Mrs. Benson, with strict non-committal, lifted her eyebrows to “Well, well!” It was as if she implied that such things were to be expected in a world full of trouble. “So I hear, Miss Percival,” she grimly said.

“It's from Mr. Ingram, you know.”

“Ah, well--” Mrs. Benson could have been heard to sigh; but among the many things which Miss Percival chose to ignore, this sort of thing was one. Trouble to her, always, was a signal which braced the nerves and sinews.

“It's to say--but I think you had better read it.” It was held out unfalteringly, while Mrs. Benson dived for, opened, wiped, tested, and fixed her spectacles. These operations concluded, it was received as might have been a dangerous explosive.

Punctuating as she went, Mrs. Benson read, _“Home to-morrow--seven people--Ingram.”_ Then she looked, confirmed in her omens, over the rim of her spectacles. “Seven people, Miss Percival! A house-party! And, as you may say, at a moment's notice. Dear, dear, dear!”

Miss Percival remained cheerful. “Oh, I don't read it like that,” she said, went behind Mrs. Benson, and read over her shoulder, pointing the words with a pencil still wet from her mouth. “'Home to-morrow, seven--with people--Ingram.' That's what it must mean, of course.” She spoke wooingly, but Mrs. Benson was not to be won.

“Then, why does he say 'Seven people,' Miss Percival? Why does he say that?”

“But he doesn't, according to me.” She laughed. “He is telling us the time of his train. How could we meet him and his people if he didn't?”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Benson, heavily prepared for the worst, “how could we? That's where it is, you see. But of course he wouldn't think of _us_.”

“But he does, you know. He has. He says that he will have people with him. That is to prepare us.” Mrs. Benson's fist crashed into the paper.

“How many people, Miss Percival? How many people? Why, seven, of course? What else could it be? And where's the fish to come from for seven people? And what about maids and valets? Does he count up the likes of them? He's not Mr. Ingram if he does. Not he! Nor his father before him. And what's Frodsham going to do about carriage-room for seven--and the servants as well--and the luggage, and all? Dogs, very likely, dogs and cats, and parrots. Who knows? I've seen 'em bring scritch-owls and hawks on their wrists before now. Oh, they'll do anything, some of 'em--anything to be looked at. That's what it is; they want looking at. And I'd look at 'em if I had my way!”

Mrs. Benson, shining with indignant heat, had to be pacified. She required much tact, the exercise of a low and musical voice. It cooed upon her like a dove's. Miss Percival used her hands, too, and in the end had one of them on Mrs. Benson's shoulder. The charm worked. Dinner should be cooked for five or six; Frodsham should meet the seven-four from London with the omnibus and luggage-cart. There would be no dogs at this time of year. Parrots were urged upon her again, but tentatively. She chuckled them away, musically, with real relish for the picture. She was sure there would be no parrots. Now she must see about the bedrooms--but Mrs. Benson peered round into her glowing face.

“And what about your supper, Miss Percival? It's just upon ready. And there's a sweet-bread.”

Miss Percival almost caressed the ridiculous good soul. Her arm remained about her shoulder, her hand touched it. “How nice of you! I'll go and get ready at once. Then I'll see what rooms we had better have. Wasn't it lucky we did the drawing-rooms last week?”

Gloom gathered again. Mrs. Benson thought that some people didn't deserve their luck. It was clear to whom she referred; certainly not to Miss Percival, for instance. But the young lady, with really extraordinary simplicity, replied that surely Mr. Ingram deserved credit for having well-chosen his ministers. “Yourself,” she said, “for the kitchen, and me for the hall.” She exploded this little bomb with some heightening of colour.

Mrs. Benson, glancing at her sideways, observed the blush, and was scared. She blinked. Miss Percival's blush deepened.

In the awkward pause that ensued the friendly hand was about to be removed, when Mrs. Benson, with an effort which did honour to her resources, said, “We all have our troubles, Miss Percival, else we shouldn't be here, as the Bible says. The good Book! Well for them as read therein. Now, only this afternoon Mr. Menzies was talking to me about things at large, and he says, 'Mrs. Benson, what's to be done with Struan Glyde?' quite sudden. So I says, 'And what should be done with such a one, Mr. Menzies, but wallop him?' and he shakes his head and says, 'He's on the catarampus, ma'am--in one of his black fits. Tells me to go my way and let him alone; then turns his back.' Now, what about such troubles as that, Miss Percival?”

Miss Percival looked serious, but not especially interested. Her eyes looked before her, but seemed not to see anything. She asked, “What did Mr. Menzies say to him next?” but if she was interested it was not in that matter.

Mrs. Benson brandished her voice. “Ha, you may well ask me. 'No, my man,' he says, 'but 'tis you that must go mine while I'm head-gardener at Wanless,' he says. That's what Mr. Menzies told him, the elderly man that he is--and now look at this. Young Glyde turns his back upon him, with no more notice taken than you or I would have of a flea on the arm. Insolence, that is. Downright insolence of an elderly man. Ah,” said Mrs. Benson with tightening lips, “if you come to troubles!”

Miss Percival's tone was sympathetic, if her eyes were still sightless. “Really! I'm very sorry. I'll see Mr. Menzies about it to-morrow, and of course I'll talk to Struan. He _is_ difficult--it's very tiresome of him. I saw him this afternoon but had no notion of all this. I can't think how it is. Nerves, I suppose. He's a human creature, you see, as well as a gardener.”

Mrs. Benson was incapable of seeing such a possible combination: her explanation was simpler. Human! She scorned him. “Bad blood,” she said with energy; “bad, black, gypsy blood. He'll be murdering one of us in her bed in a day or two. You see if he don't.”

Miss Percival did not deny the suggestion. She considered it rather--its effect, its effectiveness. “Struan is tiresome, of course,” she said, “but I do think he has tried to restrain himself lately. He promised me he would.” She turned her full gaze suddenly upon Mrs. Benson, and almost disarmed that lady. “I like him, you know. He's very nice to me.”

Mrs. Benson gasped, but recovered just in time to resume the dark oracles in her keeping. “Ah,” she said, “he _would_ be. If you can call it nice--”

“He's wonderful in the garden,” Miss Percival calmly continued. “Even Menzies admits it. He'll work all day. He's never tired.”

“Nor's a tiger,” the cook snapped. “Nor's a tom-cat.”

Miss Percival looked pitifully at her and smiled. “Poor Struan--you don't like him. I'll see him to-night. I have an influence, I think.”

Mrs. Benson touched the hand that lay within her reach, which had lately been upon her shoulder. “Don't, my dear, don't,” she said.

“Why not?” asked the lady with her lifted brows. “Why shouldn't I?”

“Influence! The likes of him!--Gypsy blood at midnight--soft-voiced, murderous--”

She gave no coherent answer, but smiled always, then leaned forward and stroked Mrs. Benson upon her personable cheek. “Dear old thing, let me do as I like. It's much better for everybody,” she presently said.

II

It had clouded over after sunset: there was no moon visible, but an irradiance was omnipresent, and showed the muffled yew-tree walks, and the greater trees colossal, mountains overshadowing the land. Here and there, as you went, glimmered daffodils, like the Pleiades half-veiled, and long files of crocuses burned like waning fires.

Miss Percival, at about nine o'clock, came gently down one of these alleys, with a scarf over her head and shoulders. She looked like a nymph in Tanagra. And as if she knew where she was going, exactly, she walked gently but unfalteringly between the linked crocus-beacons to where the alley broadened into a bay of cut yews, to where ghostly white seats and a dim sun-dial seemed disposed as for a scene in a comedy. The leaden statue of a skipping faun would have been made out in a recess if you had known it was there. And as she entered the place a figure seated there, with elbows on knees and chin between his palms, looked up, listening, watching intently, then rose and waited.

“Struan,” said Miss Percival comfortably, “are you there?”

“I'm here,” she was answered.

Thereupon she came easily forward and stood near him. She was in white from top to toe; he could see the clean outline of her head and neck, denned by the hooding scarf. He had not as yet taken off his hat, but now, as she stood there silent, he slowly removed it. Still there was nothing said. Miss Percival was very deliberate.

Presently she spoke. “You didn't tell me this afternoon that you'd had a bother with Mr. Menzies. Why didn't you tell me?”

“Why should I tell you?” The words seemed wrung from him. “Why should you care?”

“Of course I care,” she said. “You know that I care. Why didn't you tell me? ... But I know why you didn't.”

“You do not.” He denied her hotly.

“Oh, but I do. Because you were ashamed.”

“It was not. I'm not ashamed. He's an old fool. He thinks he can teach me my business. Melons! Plants! Why, I'm one of them. What can he teach me?”

“He's a very good gardener,” Miss Percival began, but the rest was drowned.

“Gardener--he! He's a botcher. He measures his melons by the pound. It's money he wants, money-value. So much dung--so much meat. He says, 'Be careful, you, of the water-pot; go steady with your syringe. You'll damp off those plants it you're not handy,' he tells me. To me, this! Don't I know what the life of a plant must have, and how, and where it must be fed? He's an old fool, and you know it. And I'll not be told things I have got by heart before a lad new to his breeches. Besides,” he added darkly, “he'd vexed me before that, and bitterly.”

“How did he vex you?” Miss Percival's voice came cool and clear, but commanding.

“That I cannot tell you,” said he.

“But I want to know.” This seemed to her sufficing reason.

But he was dogged. “Then I can't help you. You cannot be told.”

“But perhaps I ought to be told. Do you think I ought?”

“Indeed, I don't know.”

“Well, will you tell me?”

“I will not, indeed. That is, I cannot.”

“It's very extraordinary.”

He made no answer.

“Struan,” said Miss Percival, after a while, “you are angry.”

He turned quickly. “With you? Never.”

“I didn't say that. I said you were angry.”

He said, “Ah--and so I am.”

“I am included, I suppose.”

“You are not. It could not be.”

She laughed. “I don't know---”

He was vehement. “But you do know. You know it very well.”

She had no answer; but she smiled to herself; and I have no doubt she knew.

For two minutes or more there was silence, a time of suspense. Then Miss Percival said, “I've had a telegram. Mr. Ingram is coming to-morrow.”

To this he said nothing. She went on.

“He is bringing people with him. Mrs. Benson was very funny about it. He is coming at seven with some people, and she would read it that he was coming with seven people. When I asked her, how could we meet him if he had not told us the time? she made a grievance of it, and said that was so like him. So it is, of course.”

Struan remained speechless, and had turned away his face. Miss Percival continued her reflections aloud.

“How long has he been away? More than a year. He wrote once from Singapore--then from Rawal-pindi--and that was all, until I got this telegram. He's very casual, I must say.” Here she paused.

Struan said suddenly, “Miss Percival, I'm going.”

She turned with interest, and asked, with not too much interest, “Oh! Why?”

He said, “You know why.”

She lowered her voice by a tone, but no more. “I hope you won't. It would be a pity. There's no real reason for it. I'll speak to Menzies to-morrow. He doesn't mean any harm to you. He's only old and grumpy.”

“He's a fool,” said Struan. “Certainly, he's a fool. But that's neither here nor there.”

Miss Percival, ignoring what she chose to ignore, said again, “I hope you won't go.”

The young man shifted his ground, and dug his heel into the turf. “I must--indeed, I must.”

“Where shall you go?”

“God knows.”

“Why must you go?”

“You know why.”

“Is it because of Menzies?”

He threw his head up. “Menzies, forsooth!” He scorned Menzies.

“Then I don't see why you should go. I shouldn't like it. I hope you will stay.”

He looked at her now across the dusk, intensely. “You hope I will stay?”

“Yes, certainly I do.”

“You hope I will stay? You ask me to stay?”

She considered. Then she said, “Yes, I think so. Yes, I do.”

“Then,” said Struan, “God help us all. I stay.”

Miss Percival said cheerfully, “I'm so glad. I'll speak to Menzies to-morrow, and get him to leave you alone. He knows how well you do the melons, but of course he would never admit it.” She broke off the interview shortly afterwards.

“I'm going to bed,” she told him. “I've got lots to do to-morrow. Heaps of things. You must get me some of your flowers for the rooms.”

He was not appeased, “Menzies will do it,” he said. She laughed.

“You know what Menzies will say--'Pelargoniums for the hall, Miss Percival, and some nice maidenhair.' He's not inventive, poor Menzies.”

“He's an old fool,” said Struan. “He takes flowers for spangles in a circus.”

Miss Percival again laughed softly, and held out her hand. “Good-night,” she said. “I'm going.”

He touched her hand, and then put his own behind his back.

“Aren't you going to bed?” she asked him.

“Presently,” he said. “I'm going to walk round for a while.”

She hovered for a moment, seemed to hesitate, to weigh the attractions of walking round. It had a charm. Then she decided.

“Good-night,” she bade him for the third time.

He grumbled his good-night, and watched her fade into the dark. Not until she was completely hidden up did he put on his hat again. Then he prowled noiselessly about among the breathing flowers.

III

Wanless, as they call it there,--Wanless Hall, Felsboro', as it is politically,--stands squarely and deeply in the hills of a northern county, plentifully embowered in trees, with a river washing its southern side. To reach house from river you ascend a gentle slope of lawns and groves for some hundreds of feet, then find a broad stepway. That takes you to a terraced, parapeted garden very well tended, as one should be which has four men at its disposition. There stands the house of Wanless, stone-built in the days of Charles the Second--a gleaming, grey front, covered to the first-floor windows with a magnolia of unknown age. The main entrance faces north, from which point the true shape of the place is revealed as a long body with wings, an E-shaped house. Here are the carriage-drive and carriage-sweep; then there's a belt of trees, and beyond that, shaped by the valley, which gradually narrows to the incline of the hills, kitchen-gardens, glass-houses, a pond (fed by a beck), water meadows, and hanging woods. Above those again heather-clad slopes climb to piled rocks and a ragged sky-line. It is a fine property with 5,000 acres of shooting, a good many farms, and a hill village to its account. The lodge at the gate was half a mile away, at the end of a good avenue of beech and sycamore.

Mr. Nevile Ingram who, at thirty, had still the air of a brisk young man and was owner by inheritance of this place, arrived with his guests by the 7.4 train from London. The omnibus brought the four of them, with a maid sitting on the box beside Frodsham, and a bank of luggage behind her head. No parrots, no dogs; but a Mr. Chevenix brought his fishing-rods. Besides this Mr. Chevenix, who had been here before, there was an elderly Mrs. Devereux, white-haired and short-sighted, who used, whenever she could find them, a pair of long-handled glasses, and a young Mrs. Wilmot, pretty, very fair, rather helpless. It was her maid who shared the box-seat with Frodsham.

The absence of a footman at the station had been noted by Mrs. Devereux, the absence of any man-servant at the house struck her as remarkable. There was none, and had been none since Miss Percival assumed command; but at this time Mrs. Devereux knew nothing of Miss Percival. Nevile Ingram, banging the door open with his knee, jumped out first, and stood to help the ladies; the next to emerge was Mr. Chevenix who, the moment he touched earth, said “Right!” and looked as if he had sparkled. It was clear that he had abundant health and was satisfied with all the arrangements of Providence. He surveyed the house, the awaiting virgins at the door, wished them both good evening, nosed the upper air, snuffed the gale, said “Good old Wanless--my precious rods!” and dived for them before the ladies could descend. Thereafter a timidly poising foot and some robust breadth of stocking revealed the anxieties of Mrs. Devereux. On alighting she shook herself like a hen, and her draperies rustled to their length. She found her lorgnettes and surveyed (so to speak) the absent men-servants with blank misgivings. A maid advanced for her jewel-case, but Mrs. Devereux, shutting her eyes, said “Thanks, I carry it,” and pressed it to her bosom. A butler would have had it. Meantime, Mrs. Wilmot, a hand to each cavalier, was descending from the omnibus. She was a pretty, bedraped lady, with wide blue Greuze eyes, and soft lips, always wet and mostly apart. She murmured, “How kind you are to me,” and liked it from Ingram to Chevenix. Ingram said nothing, but Chevenix dropped down his brisk “By Jove, Mrs. Wilmot, that's nothing to what I _could_ do for you--nothing at all.” And then they turned to the house.

When Miss Percival, looking frailer than she really was because of her black gown, fairer, that is, and paler, entered the hall, she found the party at a loose end. Mr. Chevenix was in a deep chair, turning over _Bradshaw_, and whistling softly to himself. Ingram, hands in pockets, was deprecating the portraits of his ancestors to the two ladies, who were not at all interested in them. He appeared to be considerably bored by his guests, and they to be aware of it. Miss Percival's arrival was timely, if only because she effectively chased out _ennui_. Chevenix, as if he had been waiting for her, jumped up and went to meet her. He shook hands. “Hulloa, Sancie!” he was heard distinctly to say. “By Jove, I'm glad to see you again.” The latter sentence was not quite audible, but sufficiently so to send Mrs. Devereux' lorgnettes up to her nose. Sanchia herself, receiving civilities as if born to them, impelled her to keep them there. She had appeared silently and suddenly out of the blue. And now she hovered, smiling, fair, and unconcerned, like a goddess out of a chariot come to deal judgment, and listened charitably to Mr. Chevenix. How odd! How more than odd! Mrs. Wilmot looked as if her eyes were full of tears, but let nothing escape her. As for Ingram, he greeted the apparition with a smile and a nod sideways. But Mrs. Devereux could have sworn to a scare in the eye. “How are you, Sanchia?” he said, and then to his guests, “Miss Percival will show you where you all are, if you'll--Dinner's at half-past eight, I believe. At least, it always used to be; but I've been away for a year, and they may have changed all that. Have you, by the way?” he asked, with a sudden turn to Miss Percival.

She looked calmly at him. “No. It's still at half-past eight,” she said. He lit his cigarette.

“Will you show these ladies their rooms?” he required of her, adding as an afterthought, “Mrs. Devereux, Mrs. Wilmot. Mrs. Wilmot has a maid somewhere.”

It was a quasi-introduction, awkwardly done. Sanchia gravely bowed, and all might have been well had not her gentle smile persisted. The baffling quality of this, the archaic enigma of it, made Mrs. Wilmot stare at her helpless with brimming blue eyes. It made Mrs. Devereux shiver. It was she, however, who accepted the inclination of the head. “Good evening to you,” she said. The housekeeper! This--person! The pair of them followed her upstairs, Mrs. Devereux marching before, like one of the old _regime_ to the guillotine, Mrs. Wilmot trailing in her wake.

Young Chevenix, when they had disappeared, returned with a grin to his _Bradshaw_. “No change from Sanchia,” he said; and “Let's see: _Birmingham depart_ 4.45. By Gad, that's a good train. No,” he resumed; “no change out of Sancie. How long is it since you were here, Nevile?”

Ingram was staring blankly out of window. “I think a year. I don't know. You went out with me to Brindisi, I believe, and that was April, and so's this--just. So you can work it out. D'you want me to fix you up? You're in the east wing, you know--I expect you are, anyhow. Where you were before.”

“Right,” said Chevenix; “right. Only we're none of us where we were before, my boy. Don't flatter yourself.” He shut _Bradshaw_ with a bang, and went off, singing softly, to a tune of his own, “No change, no change from Sanchia,” which he turned into “Who is Sanchia? What is she, that all our swains...?”

Miss Percival, having played the exact and perfect housekeeper above--with no apparent interest in life but submergence in her duties--returned to the ground floor and sought Minnie in the dining-room. She made her survey calmly, and gave such orders as pertained in smooth tones which could not jar. She seemed to consult where she really directed. “Shall we have the _epergne?_ I think we will, don't you? Yes. It's a grand occasion. I don't think we have ever had ladies at Wanless before.” An admission which staggered Minnie. Her “Oh, yes, Miss Percival,” and “Oh, no, Miss Percival,” were appreciative and good to hear.

She was butler, we find, as well as housekeeper, for as she stood there, meditating the table, Ingram came in, in a hurry, with ideas about wine. He gave them out in jerks, without looking at her. Sherry, of course, a hock, Lafite. No champagne: it's beastly unless you are tired. Oh, and old brandy--the very old. Nothing of the sort to be had in India. The climate kills it. He stood very close to her as he spoke. When he remembered the brandy he put his hand on her shoulder, and finding it there, kept it so. Minnie presently went out of the room upon affairs; and then he looked into her face and said in a new tone, “How are you, Sancie?” He let his hand slide down, encircled her waist lightly with his arm. She gave him her grey eyes and a slow, patient smile. “I am quite well,” she said. “Are you?” Ingram, watching her still, seemed disconcerted, as if he wanted to say or do more, but couldn't, for some reason. What he did was to remove his hand quickly and thrust it into his trouser pocket. It might have been suddenly stung, judging from his way of whipping it away. “Oh, I'm all right, of course. I must go and dress, I suppose.” A year is a long time for an absence. In the doorway he stopped and looked back, a last look. “Supper in my room, you know. We'll talk.” She held to her mysteries, and he went.

Dinner passed gaily, Miss Percival away. Ingram was loquacious, though rather caustic; Chevenix a good foil, easy-tempered, always at a run, a very fair marksman for all his random shooting. His was that happy disposition which finds Nature at large, including men, as precisely there for his amusement. He relished, never failed to relish, the works of God. But then he had perfect health. Mrs. Devereux was something of a grandee, though not quite so much of one as she suspected. Her white hair towered; she wore black velvet and diamonds. Mrs. Wilmot was very much of a pretty woman, and knew to the turn of a hair how much. She had the air of a spoiled child, which became her; was golden and rosy; could pout; had dark blue eyes, which she could cloud at will, and fill, as we know, with tears. She excelled in pathetic silences, to which her parted lips gave an air of being breathless. She was beautifully dressed in cloudy, filmy things, and had a soft, slight, drooping figure. Innocence was her _forte_: her rings were superb.

One odd thing was noticeable, and noticed intensely by Chevenix, that Ingram hardly ate anything, though he pretended to a hearty meal. It came, Chevenix saw, to dry toast and three glasses of wine, practically. But he made great play with knife and fork, and talked incessantly. He revealed himself at every turn of his monologue--for it came to be a monologue--as one of those men whose motives are so transparently reasonable to themselves that they need never be at the trouble to explain or defend any act of theirs. He was witty, though occasionally brutal, as when he spoke of a dragoman he had had in Egypt, whose defence of his _harem_ had cost him his place. This man, a cultivated Persian, had proposed hospitality to his patron in Alexandria, where he lived. Accepted, he had made a great supper for Ingram, invited his friends and acquaintances, procured musicians and dancing-girls. It was magnificent, Ingram allowed. The trouble came afterwards, when the native guests had gone their ways and patron and host were together. Ingram proposed a visit to the ladies--“the civil thing, it appeared to me. But no, if you please! Mirza turned very glum, pronounced it not the custom: I must excuse him, he says. But I say, Will they excuse _me_, my good man? He makes a sour face, so of course I know that they won't, and that he knows they won't. Then he marches away upon some errand or another, and when he comes back finds me tapping at a door. You never saw such a change in a chap; upon my soul, it was worth it. He went white, he went grey, he went livid. His eyes were like stars. No, I'm wrong. They were not. They were like the flaming swords which kept Adam and Eve out of the garden. Magnificent police arrangements in Eden, they had. I heard his breath whistle through his nose like the wind at a keyhole. He says 'You mistake, sir. You forget. Or do I deserve to be insulted?' I told him that I was the insulted person in the party, and the ladies came next. I swear I heard a chuckle behind the door. That I swear to.”

Chevenix, round-eyed and staring, was heard to mutter, “Good old Nevile! Well, I'll be shot....” Ingram cut short his tale.

“I can't go into what followed. Much of it was irrelevant, all of it was preposterous. It ended by Mirza directing me to the nearest hotel, in perfect English. The crosser he got, the better his English. That's odd, you know. Of course, I chucked the chap. He lost a soft billet.”

There were no comments from the auditory, save such as Mrs. Wilmot's eyes may have afforded. She sighed, and laid her hand for one moment, caressingly, upon her neck. Her rings were certainly superb.

The dessert being on the table, Minnie served the old brandy and retired. Ingram drank of it freely, and began his cigarette the moment that the coffee and spirit-flame appeared. The ladies withdrew to the drawing-room, and Mrs. Wilmot sought the piano. But two chords had not been touched before her eyes found those of Mrs. Devereux, who stood by the fire. Eyebrows exchanged signals.

Then Mrs. Devereux said, “I am most uncomfortable,” and Mrs. Wilmot sighed, “I know.”

IV

The quiet cause of discomfort, slippered and loose-robed, sat meanwhile in an easy-chair, with her feet in the fender. Her hair floated free about her shoulders, silky from the brush. She had a book on her knees, but did not read it. Instead she looked into the fire, frowning.

Faint lines now printed themselves upon her face; two between her brows, one defining the round of each fair cheek. Her eyes showed fathomless sapphire: whatever her thoughts were of they held the secret close. Their gaze was one of fascination, as if she saw things in the fire terrible and strange, figures of the past or of the future, from which she could not turn her face. The curve of her upper lip, where it lay along its fellow and made a dimpled end, sharpened and grew bleak. Poring and smiling into the fire, she looked like a Sibyl envisaging the fate of men, not concerned in it, yet absorbed, interested in the play, not at all in the persons. This friend of Mrs. Benson, this midnight mate of young gardeners, disturber of high ladies' comfort, serene controller of Wanless, she was, it would seem, all things to all men, as men could take her. But now she had the fell look of a cat, the long, sleek, cruel smile, the staring and avid eyes. A cat she might be, playing with her own beating heart, patting it, watching its throbs.

These moments of witchcraft gazing were not many. They had been deliberately begun, and were deliberately done with. Within their span her cares were faced and co-ordinated; and the business over, she sighed and sank more snugly into her chair. She leaned back; her hands crossed themselves in her lap; she shut her eyes. All the lines upon her face softened, melted away. She looked now like an Oread aswoon in the midday heats, pure of thought or dread or memory. Her bosom below her laces rose and fell gently. She slept.

Outside, in the dusky dark, was one who padded up and down the grass on noiseless feet, passing and repassing the window, with an eye for the narrow chink of light.

She slept for a very short time. Towards ten o'clock she awoke. Collecting herself luxuriously, she was seen to face her facts again. Evidently they held her eyes waking; they were dreadfully there, still unresolved or still unpalatable. Before them now she plainly quailed. The flush of her sleep gave delicacy to her carven beauty; she looked fragile and tremulous; it would seem that a little more pity of herself would bring her to tears. As if she knew it, she took her measures, rose abruptly, and after two turns about the room went to a safe, opened it, and plunged herself into the ledger-book, which she took from it. Upon that and a cash-box--with certain involuntary pauses, in which her eyes concentrated and stared--she remained closely engaged until half-past eleven.

At that hour, having ascertained it, she put by her work, went into her bedroom, and began a deliberate and careful toilet. She was pale, serious, and evidently rather scared at herself; she lifted her eyebrows and opened wide her eyes. But she did what she had to do as daintily as ever Amina, in the Arab tale, figured her rice. A person of great simplicity, who did extraordinary things in an ordinary way, at the hour when all Wanless was going to bed, she brushed and banded her shining hair, and dressed herself in silk and lace as for a dinner party. To herself in the glass she gave and received again a face of pure pity and sorrow. She saw herself lovely and love-worthy, sleek under the caress of her own beauty. Yet she knew exactly what she was about to do, and how she would do it, and did not falter at all.

At a quarter past twelve her summons came--a knock at the door, the turning of the handle, the push to open, and Ingram's voice. “Come along, Sancie,” he said, and went away without any more ceremony. She got up from her chair, put her book down, having marked her place, and followed him after a few minutes' meditation. Ingram's quarters were on the ground floor of the house, as hers were, but in the opposite wing. She had two rooms in the western arm of the E; the whole of the eastern was his.

He was at table when she came in and shut the door behind her, at a table fairly naped, with fine glass, silver, and flowers upon it. There was hothouse fruit, too, a melon, a little pyramid of strawberries in fig-leaves. He was eating smoked salmon and bread and butter with appetite. By his side, half empty, was a champagne glass. A pint bottle stood at his elbow.

He hailed her gaily, with a jerk of his head, a “Come along,” and a lifted glass. Leaning back as she came on, watching and waiting for her, he stretched out his left arm. She smiled rather conventionally, did not meet his eyes, but came within reach. His arm encircled her, and drew her in. “Well, my girl, well!” he said, glancing up, laughing, tempting her to laugh. She looked down gently, blushing a little, and condescended to him, stooped and brushed his forehead with her lips. Condescension expresses her act. It was exactly done as one would humour an importunate child, excuse its childishness, and grant it its desire of the moment.

So it must have been felt by him, for there was a sharp, short tussle of wills. She would have had him contented, but he was not so to be contented. There was a little struggle, much silent entreaty from him, much consideration from her above him--her doubting, judging, discriminating eyes, her smile, half-tender and half-scornful; but in the end he kissed her lips, the more ardently for their withholding. Then he allowed her to sit by the table, not far off, and resumed his smoked salmon and his zest. She declined to share the meal; was neither hungry nor thirsty, she said. “Have your own way, my dear,” he concluded the match; “you'll feel all the better for it, I know.” She cupped her chin in her hand, and watched the play of knife and fork, her thoughts elsewhere.

“Now, Sancie,” he said presently, in his usual direct manner, “how long is it since I've seen you?”

She answered at once, without looking up, “A year and ten days.”

He shook his head. “That's too long. That's absurd. I don't like that kind of thing, as a man domestically inclined. But I've been a devil of a way. I wrote to you--from where?”

“From Singapore,” she told him.

“So I did. I remember. But I went to Egypt before that. First-rate place, Egypt. I know it well, but am always glad to be there. Fine river of its own. We went to Khartoum, and two marches beyond; then Singapore and the Straits, Burmah, Ceylon; then India. Didn't I write to you from India?”

“Yes,” she told him. She was balancing a salt-spoon idly on a wine-glass, and seemed scarcely to listen. He rattled on.

“Had great days in India. Shooting, fishing, pig-spearing; polo, dances, rajahs, pretty women, pow-wows of sorts, and a chance of a fight. All in a year, my friend--I beg your pardon--and ten days. Quick work, eh? One crowded year of glorious life. A cycle of Cathay.”

She was looking at her saltspoon, stretched beyond her the length of her arm. “I'm sure you were very happy.”

He looked at her directly. “Oh, I was, you know. Otherwise, I guess I should have written. I was idiotically happy. And you?”

“I was busy,” she told him, “idiotically busy.” He laughed gaily.

“That's one for me--and a shrewd one. Oh, you deep-eyed scamp! Sancie, you never give yourself away. I've noticed that many and many a time. And not I only, I can assure you. Bill Chevenix, now---”

Her thoughts, her regard, were far away from a world of Ingrams and Chevenixes. She may have heard, but she gave no sign. He rattled on.

“Oh, you're splendid, of course you're splendid. The comfort of you! I go off to the ends of the world--without a care left behind me--or taken with me, by Jove! No bothers, no worry--letters opened, the right ones, answered and done with. Letters forwarded, the right ones, unopened. How you can guess, it beats me! No worry. You don't ask me to write to you--or expect it. You don't write to me--and I don't expect it. You know me just as I know you. There's a confidence, a certainty about you. That's what's so splendid. There can't be a girl in the world like you.” He clasped her in triumph. “My Sancie! Back I come at the end of my time, and everything's in apple-pie order. And to crown all, there's you at the door, to welcome me--and wait your turn--and wait your turn. Always the same--my wise, fine Sanchia!” He leaned forward, picked up and held her hand. “My dear, I love you,” he said, and jumped up and kissed her. Then, as he stood above her, the triumphant young man, with the hand of possession on her shoulder, “Upon my word,” he declared to the assembled universe, “this is a very satisfactory world, so far as I am concerned.”

When he was seated again, and invited her to talk domestic affairs, she returned from her reverie, and gathered in all her self-possession. The estate, the household, the parish, the county: there was no mistaking his interest in these matters. He was interested in the smallest particulars: her broods of young chicks, her pigeons, the tabby cat's kittens, the Rector's baby. He asked searching questions. How many cows were in milk just now; when would Menzies have asparagus fit to eat? The servants--was all well there? Their young men? Nothing escaped him. She was quite ready for him, took a dry tone, showed a slight sense of the humour of the situation, descended to trifles, had statistics at her fingers' ends. She met him, in a word, as he wished to be met, as jointly concerned in these minute affairs.

He lit a cigar, and drew her to the fire. He would have had her on his knee, but she would not. She sat on a straight chair beside his easy one, and allowed him to play with her hand.

He talked now in jerks, between puffs, of his adventures; his first shot at a tiger, some trouble with hillmen at Peshawur, a row at a mess-table, in which two chaps lost their heads, and one his papers. He had been present as a guest, but had kept well in the background. There had been a lot of drinking done--luckily he was all right. He had a good head, you see; could carry a lot of stuff.

He had, by the way, “picked up” that little Mrs. Wilmot on board ship. She was coming home in the convoy of Mrs. Devereux. Of course he had known Mrs. Devereux for years; she was an institution. The little Wilmot person was a widow, it seemed. Niceish sort of young woman; knew the Trenchards up here, was a kind of cousin of Lady Trenchard's. In fact, she was going on to them from here; but not due for a week or so. She had, you might say, asked to be asked, or spelled for it out of those eyes of hers. You get awfully friendly on board ship, you must know. You can say anything--and do most things--oh, all sorts of things! He had no objection--to her coming, he meant; indeed, he rather liked the young party. He thought Chevenix did, too. But Chevenix was very much at Sanchia's disposal; “he talked a lot about seeing you again, my girl.” To meet him again might carry her mind back--how long? Eight stricken years. Was it possible that she--he and she--had been here together eight years? Yes, he could see that she remembered. Dear, sweet Sancie!

There was bravado here on his part, and nervousness to be discerned beneath it; for it is most certain that her reverie was not exactly as he would have it. Her chin was in her hand, her caught other hand lay idle in his own; her eyes were far-gazing and sombre; her smile was bleak. Whatever she heard, whatever she thought of, she betrayed nothing.

Her brooding calm spurred him in that sensitive spot whose throb or ache tells a man whether he is centre of a woman's mind or not. He must know whether she was glad to have him back; the wanderer returned, eh? She had not told him so yet, he must observe; no, nor looked it. She was mysterious, it seemed to him. “And you can speak with your eyes, my dear; none better. Your tongue was never very loose; but your eyes! Now, you know what you can do with them, Sancie; you know very well. Speak to me, then, my dear, speak to me. Speak to me only with thine ... no, not _only!_ You can speak in a thousand ways--with your hands, with the tips of your fingers placed here or there, with a bend of the head on that lovely neck you have, with your faint colour, with your quick breath.” ...

Fired by his own words, he worked himself into enthusiasm, was enamoured of what himself proclaimed. “My beautiful--my goddess!” he called her, and drew her to his heart.

And she allowed him, allowed herself to be pressed there, while within her the dull fire smouldered, and the deep, slow resentment gathered like clouds about the sun. But he held her face now between his two hands and forced to meet his own her unresponsive eyes; and when with ardour he had kissed her grave lips, the flippancy of a fool ruined him, and his triumph was flattened into dust, as when one crushes a puff-ball.

He suddenly held her at arms' length as he was struck by an idea. “Oh, by the way, I forgot,” he said, and looked vaguely across the room. “Claire is dead.”

Sanchia's eyes concentrated and paled. The pupils of them were specks. She paled to the lips, then slowly flooded as with a tide of sanguine. She withdrew herself from him; simply dropped him off her. She said nothing; but she watched him steadily, while within her the masked fire gleamed and fitfully leapt.

Bravado made him hold on to his airy tone. “She died, I'm told, at Messina, some time in March. I heard it at Marseilles. Met a man who told me. Yes! She's dead--and buried.”

Sanchia had nothing to say. She looked, however, towards the door--and he detected that. Her silence spread about the room, caught him and enveloped him. That she was calculating how long it would be before she could escape by that door was absolutely clear, and the frost of her silence struck down upon him so that he could not gainsay her purpose. He paused irresolute, glancing askance at her directed eyes. Then he gave in, left her, opened the door for her. She went out, folded in her own mystery, but as she went by him he caught up her hand, and kissed the fingers. They were very cold, and made him shiver.

“Good-night, my dear,” he said, all his dash gone out of him.

She said good-night very simply and went away. He looked after her until she had turned the corridor, then went to the table and poured himself brandy and soda-water, drank deeply, and set down the tumbler with a crash. “By God! I am a fool,” he told himself.

From the garden that narrow chink of light which shone through Ingram's shutter was seen to collapse by one who watched it. Shortly afterwards, that same haunter of the dark saw a shining slit part the shutters of a window in the west wing, and sighed, short and quick. He returned, to prowl among the secret flowers.

V

When, after dinner, Mrs. Devereux had told her young friend that she was uncomfortable, there had been no need of the words; but the slow answering “I know” with which Mrs. Wilmot expressed sympathy was not intended to imply that she shared the feeling. She herself was not at all uncomfortable, because, while she saw the whole state of affairs, she was not unhopeful of coping with it. Touching the place where the tender point of her breast lay nestling, she assured herself that she could hope. But Mrs. Devereux, moving about in worlds not realised, was incensed. Nothing that followed during the next few days served to clear the surcharged air. It is hard to say what vexed her most, where all was as it should not be. Ingram, bluntly unconscious of her sufferings, gloomed over his own; Chevenix spied about for what he could not find, spy as he would, and made the cause of woe more conspicuous than ever. As for her, the disastrous fair, the deliberation with which she went about her duties, and ease with which she did or caused them to be done; her self-possession, gentleness, suavity, yes! and benevolence, were sights to make angels weep. Tears of blood! If Mrs. Devereux, by any means, could have compressed tears of blood, they had been shed. Nothing less vivid would have met the case: to exhibit her scarlet handkerchief to Ingram with a “There, see, I weep. Tears of blood!” Day by day in that mild spring weather, under pale blue skies, fanned by zephyrs, she could but pace the terrace walks, and stiffen herself, and stare about her--with dull disapproval for the very flowers, lest theirs, too, should be frail beauty, and repeat for her only comfort that she was most uncomfortable. So she was. But it was because she did not understand, not because she did. Curiosity ravaged her.

On one of these days, breakfast over at half-past ten, young Mr. Chevenix declared his intention with cheerfulness and point. “Twentieth of April--Dizzy's birthday, or Shakespeare's. Nevile, I'm going to fish your river. They are leaping like the boys in _Eugene Aram,_ and I'm going to give them something to leap at. Now, what are all you people going to do? Because, I'll be free with you, I don't want you to come and look on. Mrs. Devereux, I let you off. You needn't gillie me. Nevile, you run away and play. Amuse Mrs. Wilmot. Do now: she likes it. I'm all right.”

The elder lady fixed him keenly with a look which saw through his saucy assurance; Ingram's eyes sought those of Mrs. Wilmot across the table. She lent him their wonder for a moment, then looked down at her bosom. He was satisfied. There were still women in the world.

“What shall we do?” he asked her. “Will you be driven? Will you drive? Will you ride?” Another shaft rewarded him, which said, “Do with me as you will.”

Ingram rang the bell. Minnie appeared. “Tell Frodsham, the horses at a quarter past eleven. I ride Sea-King, Mrs. Wilmot Lorna Doone. He had better come--or Butters will do. That's all.”

Mrs. Devereux had been ignored, but was not displeased. It showed, at least, that Ingram knew she was not to be disposed of like a white rabbit. It was, however, necessary to say something, to declare one's presence, as it were; so she collected her papers. “I have letters to write. You will excuse me, I know.”

Chevenix sprang to the door. “By George, I should think so,” he said, which was well intended, but too brisk. He bowed her out, shut her out, and stood with his eyes on the others.

Ingram remained before the fire looking out of window. “She's in a wax. I don't know why.”

“Oh, don't you, my boy?” said Chevenix to himself.

Mrs. Wilmot trifled with her tea-spoon. “And I don't care--much,” he added. Mrs. Wilmot smiled.

Mr. Chevenix, going a-fishing, saw, as he had intended to see, Sanchia in the rose-garden, talking to Struan Glyde, who was tying ramblers. “Morning, Sanchia--morning, Glyde!” Each greeted him, but the youth grimly.

He talked at large. “I'm for murder. I must flesh my steel. It's too good a day to lose. Clouds scurry, sun is shy; air's balmy: a trout must die. That is very nearly poetry, Sancie. It is as near poetry as I can hope to get this side the harps and quires. Now, what on earth is Clyde doing to his roses at this time of year?”

The dark-skinned, sharp-chinned young man, aproned and shirt-sleeved, turned a shade darker. His black eyes glowed. He was quietly arrogant, even to her. “It doesn't matter,” he had once told her, “what you say or do. I love you, and that's the sum and end of it.” Now he allowed her to answer for him.

“There was a wind in the night which tore them about. I asked him to make them safe. I hate to think of their bruised ribs.”

Chevenix whistled his satisfaction with this and all things else. “I see. Works of mercy. There's a blessing on that, somewhere and somewhen. All to the good, you know, Clyde. You never know your luck, they tell me.” He left Clyde and his roses, and turned to the young lady. “Well now, look here, Sancie--if works of mercy are toward, what d'you say to one on your own account? Here I stand, an orphan boy, upon my honour. The master's gone riding with the widow.” He stopped his rattle, as a thought struck him serious for a moment. “By George, and he's a widower--so he is!” Discharged of that, he resumed--“Yes, and Mrs. Devereux has got the hump, as they say--and here I am at your mercy, to be made much of. Who's going to admire me? Who's going to hold my net? Who's going to say, 'Oh, what a beauty!'” He had now got her thoroughly at her old ease with him. Her eyes gleamed, and there was no doubting her smile. “Now, I'll tell you what. Your roses are all right. Glyde will see to that. You leave that to Glyde and his strong right arm. His strength is as the strength of ten, because... you follow me, I think? Now, Sancie, I put it to you--I'm an old friend of the family, and haven't seen you for--how many years? Aren't you going to give me half-an-hour of your morning?”

He pleaded by looks. He was quizzical, but in earnest. Her brow was clear.

“Yes,” she said. “I'll come--for half-an-hour.”

“Right! Right, goddess of the silver brake. Come, hold the pass with me.” He turned to go, and she caught him up. “I mix my poets like salad, but that's because I'm in such high spirits. By Jove, Sancie, it _is_ good to see you again.” She met his laughing eyes with hers. She swam by his side--took his net, and was happy. Her face glowed. She had the power of casting troubles behind, recuperative power, resiliency. Glyde, the olive-faced, watched them down the walk, and owned to a heart of lead. “As well shut down the west wind as a spirit like hers!” He turned to his affair.

Below the steps, in the nut-walk which led to the bridge, Chevenix altered his tone. “It's good of you to come with me, Sancie, my dear. I'm a very friendly beggar, and Nevile, you know--I say!” and he turned her a sober face--“You know, I suppose? His wife--eh? Dead, you know. Oh, but of course you did!”

She met him unfalteringly. “Yes, he told me.”

Chevenix shrugged. “I must say, you know--what? Oh, of course, it was a ghastly affair all along. But _you_ know all that, as well as I do. Why, her temper! Oh, awful! I've seen her myself dead-white in one of her rages--she had hold of a wine-glass so hard that it snapped, and cut her hand. She looked at the blood--she didn't know how it happened. And he--well, _you_ ought to know--was as bad, in his way. 'Pon my soul, Sancie, Vesuvius might just as well have married Etna--every bit. But there! What's the good of talking! Everybody knew how it would be.” Words failing him, he stared about him.

“But still--oh, damn it all! To hear of your wife's death--casually--on a platform--from a chap you happen to know--happen to have met somewhere--oh, well, I call it casual. That's the word, I believe--casual. Well, it _is_ pretty casual--what? Now, just tell me what you think--between friends, of course.”

She stopped him: she was short in the breath. “I think not. If you don't mind.”

He became as serious, immediately, as he was capable of being. “I'll do as you like, my dear--but you'll let me say this, that if I could see you with all your belongings about you again, I should sing a hymn. That's all, Sancie; but it means a lot. When you went out of Great Cumberland Place, it became, somehow, another kind of place. I hardly ever go there now, you know. And now they're all married but you, and--I say, you heard that Vicky had a son and heir? Did you hear that?”

She had averted her face, but she listened intensely, nodding her head. “Yes, yes, I knew that. Papa told me. He always writes to me, you know; from the office, poor darling!”

She appealed to him urgently. “Please don't talk about them just yet. Please don't.”

He saw the mist in her eyes, and was afraid. “All right, Sancie, all right. I'm frightfully sorry. Beastly painful all this, you know.” He was much disturbed. To his simple soul a fine day, a fine-fettled river demanded, as of right, a happy mood in man, for whom all things were made. And a fine girl by his side, a good, a brave, a splendid girl--down on her luck--on such a day! What could one do? If, when you began, she choked you off! Wouldn't meet you half-way--bottled it up! And here he was, geared for fishing, and without the heart to wet a line, because of all this misery. Sanchia, sharply in profile to him, from cheek to chin, from shoulder to low breast, all one sinuous, lax, beautiful line, broke in on his rueful meditations. “There's a rise,” she said. “Look, look.”

His eye swept the river. “You're right. By Gad, that's a whacker. That's a fish. Now, you stop just where you are, net in hand. Don't move, and you shall see something.”

He left her, and ran stooping down the bank, all his little soul concentrated in his cast. The dimpled water ran and swirled, the line flashed in the sun. Three casts, four; a splash, a taut line, and his shout, “Come on, quick; I've got him.” Sanchia glided swiftly down the bank, her eyes alight, the lines of neck and shoulder finely alert. Her eyes shone, her lips parted; she looked the Divine Huntress to whom Senhouse had once likened her. She stooped, the net jerked; she watched, waited, tense to the act. Within the swirling water the great fish plunged: she watched, strung to the pounce; the net dipped and darted; she lifted it to land.

Chevenix admired. “By George, you are a one--er, I must say! Born to it. You strike like an osprey. That's a fish--what?” They peered together into the net, where, coiled and massy, beaming rose and pale gold, the trout writhed.

“Splendid!” breathed Sanchia, glowing and alight.

Chevenix gloried in her beauty. “If Nevile don't know what his chances are--if he ain't on his knees--my heavens, what a mate for a chap!”

A shadow falling upon him caused him to look up. Mrs. Devereux, grey and tall, boa'd, gloved, umbrella'd, stood regarding him and his companion from the bank. Instinct prompted him immediately to screen Sanchia by dragging her into the party. He held up the net and plunged. “First prize,” he cried out, as heartfully as he could, “to me and Miss Percival.”

“So I see,” said Mrs. Devereux. “Ah, good morning.”

This was to Sanchia's bland greeting, which, as always, made the lady shiver. It is difficult to say what a shock it was to her to be greeted cheerfully by Sanchia. To see one in so painful a situation occupied by anything less painful, interested in anything at all, was truly shocking. Mrs. Devereux's idea of irregularity was that it absorbed the devoted victim, kept her aghast. If it did not, surely, there was no reward left to the virtuous. But here we had a highly irregular young woman behaving with extreme regularity. Was the world turning upside down? Was black, then, really white? She shivered, she blinked her eyes; but she descended the bank and stood beside the pair, yet rigidly apart.

Chevenix, having got her there, knew not what to do with her. It seemed to him that he had better, on the whole, go on, so turned the lady a knowing face.

“This is not the first time by any means that Miss Percival and I have gone fishing, you must know. We began by tickling 'em--we were urchins together, you see.”

“Really!” said Mrs. Devereux, who still saw nothing but depravity.

“I remember,” he went on, “the first time we went fishing. I was at Alnmouth with a governess; awful lonely little beggar I was. I used to moon about on the sands, while she read the _Morning Post_, with spectacles and a red parasol. And I used to hanker about all the other young 'uns, and wish I was one of 'em. _Her_ party was there, you know--five of 'em, all girls and all pretty girls--eh, Sancie? I would have given my hopes of heaven--if I'd had any, you know--to go and paddle with 'em. Jolly party you were, my dear--jolly old plump papa, rosy mamma--and Philippa like a young tree, and Melusine and Hawise bright as apples; and then Vicky and you--little dears, you were. I was like a spent salmon, I believe, lantern jawed, hollow-eyed little devil, as solitary as sin.” He turned, flushed, to Sanchia, and put his hand on her arm; she turned away her face, and Mrs. Devereux believed she saw tears. “It was _you_ who took me in, you know.”

“No,” said Sanchia, turning him her shining eyes. “It was Vicky. She asked you to come fishing.” He accepting her ruling.

“Bless me, it _was_ Vicky. Always a frisky one. But after that it was always you and Vicky and me. And we had the time of our lives--at least, I did.” Even Mrs. Devereux felt an emotion from the beam with which Sanchia rewarded him--a tender, compassionate look, as if she understood and excused him.

“You are old friends, I see,” she said; and her smile was not unfriendly.

Chevenix shook his head wisely. “Frightfully old--I've known 'em all--all my life.” Mrs. Devereux then made a distinct advance.

“It must be very nice for you,” she said to Sanchia.

Sanchia's eyes were now clear, and her smile absolutely general. “To see Mr. Chevenix? Yes, indeed.” She collected herself. “But I'm afraid I must go now. I've a great deal to do.” She admonished the young man. “Now you had better catch some more,” she told him. “I must go.”

His face fell--without any regard for Mrs. Devereux--to “Oh, I say!” but it was then revealed to him that there might be a part for him to play. “Right, Sancie--you're mistress here. See you later.” He met her eyes gallantly, and lifted his hat. Sanchia bent her head to Mrs. Devereux, and went staidly away, her duties gathering in her brows. The elder lady and the young man stood face to face without speaking. Then Mrs. Devereux sat deliberately down, and Chevenix braced himself.

“You said just now,” the lady began, “to Miss Percival, that she was mistress here. What did you mean by that, exactly?”

Chevenix sprang sideways to this flank attack. “Oh, you know, Mrs. Devereux! you can't take a chap--literally--what?”

He wanted time; but she gave him none. “You must forgive an old woman of the world--of a certain world. I come here--to a house which belonged to Nevile's father, an old, old friend, and I find--installed--a young lady--who does not dine--who is extremely capable. I am bewildered, naturally.”

Chevenix's “I know, I know,” and his friendly nods ran on as an accompaniment.

“And then,” said she, raising her voice, “I find that this young lady--and you--are old friends. You speak of her--people--as if they were really--of the sort which--as if she were--of the kind--whom--” It was impossible. “Really,” she said, “it's most unusual. I don't frankly know what I ought to do.”

Chevenix listened carefully to her truncated phrases, where what she did not say was the most eloquent part of her discourse. He nodded freely and sagely; he was conciliatory, but clear in opinion. “I know, I know,” he said. “It's very rum--you must naturally find it so. I know exactly how you feel about it. Oh, rum's the only word for it. Or rummy. Yes, you might call it rummy--or a go, you know--or anything like that.” Then he grew plausible. “But I'm sure it's all right. It's a long story, but I'm quite sure. You've no idea what a fine girl that is. Ah, but I know it.” He tapped his forehead. “I saw the whole thing through--from beginning to end. She's a perfect beauty, to begin with.”

That was a bad note. Mrs. Devereux asked him at once if he thought that a good reason. “Well,” he said, “I do, you know--in a way. I can't explain it--but I think you see it in her face, you know--and manner. Yes, in her manner. She's uncommon, you see, most uncommon. And as cool as--well, it would be hard to say how cool a hand I thought her.” He paused, having got off this effective estimate, round-eyed and triumphant.

“It seems to me, Mr. Chevenix,” said the dry lady, “that the less you say the better.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Devereux, not at all.” He was eager to explain. “I don't think you quite follow me. What I meant to say was, that when a young woman can be as cool as she can be; can run a big place like this, and manage a staff of servants,--outdoors, mind you, and in; no steward, only a bailiff; keep all the accounts; and hold her head up--for she does that, you know, uncommonly well; why, then I say that she must be allowed the benefit of the doubt, you know. You must say, 'Well, it's rum, it's rummy,' or how you like to put it--'but she's got a head on her shoulders, and I suppose she knows what she's doing. I suppose she's seen her way.' For she's all right, you know, Mrs. Devereux; she's as right as rain. It's irregular, dashed irregular--but, by George, I'll tell you this, Nevile was in a bad way when he first met her; and she's pulled him through. He's steady enough now, is Nevile. Don't drink--nor do other things. He threatened to be a waster in his day; but he's no waster now. She did that, you know; she pulled him through. Why, bless your heart, Mrs. Devereux, he used to rave about her--rave, and chuck himself about on sofas, and cry like anything, and bite his nails down. There never was such a girl under heaven, he used to say. He called her a goddess. Love! Oh, Lord! And I assure you, on my solemn oath, that he never did a better day's work in his life, nor any girl a finer, than when he put in his word for himself, poor devil, and she said, 'Yes, I'll do it.'”

“Did she--” Mrs. Devereux asked, or began to ask, and he shrugged, and exclaimed,

“Ah! There you have me. Now you've done it. I don't know. That's the fact--I don't know. Everybody thought so. She went on as if she did; but now,--no, I don't know. You see, she's such a cool hand, she's such a deep one--you can't tell. There's no telling with that sort. All I can say is, it looked uncommonly like the real thing. We all thought so at the time. The symptoms were right enough--or wrong enough, you'll say--and then, look at her since! She's stuck to him through everything--good report, bad report, everything. She's chucked her people--or been chucked. Had four beautiful sisters--glowing, upstanding, fine girls, all of them; and chucked. Old father, in the City: chucked. Mother, big, handsome, hot-tempered: chucked. And all for Nevile, who (between ourselves) ain't worth it. He's not a bad one, but he's not a good one, either. He's got a cruel temper, Nevile has--like that ghastly wife of his. But--” he cried, opening his arms--“there you are. They're like that, her sort. Mighty quiet about it, you know; was turned into the streets, you may say; father, mother, sisters, all showed their backs. What does she do? Sets her teeth together, looks straight ahead, and takes old Nevile. And here she is now oh, as--right as rain. What a girl, eh?”

Mrs. Devereux was certainly moved. She was almost prepared to admit a genuinely exceptional case. But she had a question to ask. Did Ingram intend to marry her--now?

At this Chevenix stepped back, as if to avoid a blow. “Ah!” he said. “Ah! That's it. Ask me another.”

“Do you mean to say of your friend, and mine,” she pursued him, “that he would dare--after all that you tell me--to---”

“No,” said Chevenix, in a desperate stew; “no, I don't mean that. I think he would have her this moment--if he could get her. But--the fact is--Well, you know--” and he glanced anxiously at the lady, “I've nothing to go upon, absolutely nothing as yet; but the fact is, I'm not sure whether she would take him, you know--now.”

“Is that possible?” was all the lady could find to say, with a throw-up of the hands. “Is that possible?”

“Quite--with Sanchia,” said Chevenix. “Through with him, you know--got to the bottom of him--sick of him. I believe he bores her, you know.” Mrs. Devereux looked at him, more in sorrow than in anger, and then walked slowly away. Most eloquent comment.

VI

Whatever may have been the net result upon Mrs. Devereux's mind of the explanatory revelations made upon the river bank, two things became clear as day succeeded day. One was that Miss Percival avoided her, the other that she sought out Miss Percival. Being entirely unable to succeed, she did not renounce her now benevolent attitude towards the young lady, but she decided to leave Wanless.

All that she could do, she did. No wheedling of Mrs. Wilmot's could draw any further comment from her, and she said nothing to Ingram either for or against what she supposed now to be the desire, the honourable desire of his heart. Oddly enough, though it was against all her upbringing, Chevenix had so far succeeded in impressing her that she rather respected Sanchia the more for being cool now that rehabilitation was in full sight, and practically within touch of her hand. Chevenix, in fact, had made her see that Sanchia was a personality, not merely a pretty woman. You can't label a girl “unfortunate” if, with the chance of being most fortunate, she puts her hand to her chin, and reflects, and says, Hum, shall I? or shall I not? Short of deliberately knocking at the girl's door, she would have done anything to exchange views. That she could not do. She found herself waiting about in corridors and halls for Sanchia's possible passage. Once she had marked her down in the garden, flower-basket on arm, scissors in hand. She had been fluttered, positively felt her heart-beats, as she sailed down in pursuit; but then Sanchia, under the brim of her garden hat, must have divined her, for, with a few clear words of direction over her shoulder to the young gardener who was helping her, she had steered smoothly away, and, without running, could not have been caught. The thing was marked, not uncivilly, but quite clearly. What could one do?

Two more days of fine weather and perplexity, and she announced her departure as imminent. We were at Thursday. She must positively leave on Monday. “No more letters to write about my shortcomings,” was Ingram's comment upon this intelligence to Mrs. Wilmot apart. “It's a mistake to have people to stay with you who've known you all their lives. They are for ever at their contrasts: why isn't one still a chubby-faced boy, for instance? They see you in an Eton jacket once, and you're printed in it for ever. So you glare by contrast, you hurt, you wound. In other words, you have character, you see, which is dashed inconvenient to a woman who remembers you with none. You upset her calculations--and sometimes she upsets yours. No offence to Mrs. Devereux; but I rather wish she hadn't come.”

Mrs. Wilmot, who had no general conversation, thought that they ought to be “nice” to Mrs. Devereux; to which Ingram replied, snarling, that he was always “nice” to her, but that if a woman will spend her time writing letters or disapproving of her host, she can't expect to be happy in such a world as ours. But the worst of Mrs. Devereux, he went on to say, was that she couldn't be happy unless she did disapprove of somebody. Mrs. Wilmot, aware of whom the lady did disapprove, dug holes in the turf, and wondered what she herself ought to do. Supposing Mrs. Devereux went on Monday, ought not she--? Now, she didn't at all want to go just now.

At luncheon Ingram proposed a visit--to certain Sowerbys of Sowerby, and pointedly asked Mrs. Devereux to come. “You like her, you know. It's beyond dispute. So I do hope you'll come. I'll drive you over in the phaeton.”

Mrs. Devereux agreed to go. Chevenix said that he should fish. He hated calling--except on Mrs. Devereux, of course. He braved the discerning eyes of the lady, who had already caught him at his fishing.

The phaeton safely away, he found Sanchia, as he had hoped, in the garden. Her gauntlets were on, an apron covered her; she was flushed with the exercise of the hoe. Struan Glyde, silent and intent, worked abreast of her. He had just muttered something or another which had given her pause. She had her chin on her hands, her hands on her hoe, while she considered her reply. Then Chevenix heard her slow, “Yes, I suppose so. I don't like it at all, but I'm afraid you're right. We are poor creatures, made to be underneath.”

The cheerful youth rubbed his head. “Candid--what? Where _have_ we got to now?”

Glyde had stopped in the act to hoe: he was stopping still, his blade in the ground, but he turned his face sideways to answer her. “Not so,” he said, “unless you will have it so. She is queen of the world who is queen of herself.” Then Sanchia saw Chevenix, and waited for him.

“Philosophy--what?” the cheerful youth hailed them. “Plain living, hard thinking, what? Upon my soul, you are a pair! Now, Miss Sancie, I can expect the truth from you. What's Glyde preaching? Heresy? Schism? Sudden death?”

“He was talking about women,” Sanchia told him.

“Ah,” the youth mused aloud. “He was, was he? Glyde on Woman. He ought to wait for his beard to grow; then you might listen to him.”

Glyde, who was dumb in company, was hacking into the clods, while Chevenix, to whom he was negligible, pursued his own affair.

“I say, Sancie, I'm going to ask a favour of you--not the first, by any means; but I always was a sturdy beggar. The Lord loveth a sturdy beggar, eh? Well, look here, I'm at a loose end again. Nevile's taken 'em out driving--to a tea-party--to the Sowerbys. I jibbed, though I was asked. I lied, because they drove me into a corner. I couldn't face old Sowerby's chin--and all those gels with their embroidered curates--what? You know what I mean. I mean their church-work, and the curates they do it for. So I said I was going fishing--which was a lie--and Mrs. Devereux as good as said it was a lie. Now, suppose you invite me to tea; how would that be?”

“Then you _do_ go fishing,” said Sanchia, and smiled. “Very well. I do invite you.”

“Bravo! You're a true friend. O woman, in our hours of ease...! Trust me for an apposite quotation ... and new, what? I believe I'm pretty good at quotations. My people used to play a game. You write down a name on a bit of paper; then you fold it down; then a quotation; then another name. That's my vein of gold. Now you have it--the secret's out. I'm coming, you know. I accept. Many thanks. What's your hour?”

“Half-past four,” she told him. He bowed, and left her with Glyde. He turned to look at them as he left the walled garden, and saw them near together,--Glyde vehement in his still way of undertones, she listening as she worked.

At half-past four she received him in her room. Though her blouse was of lace and her skirt of green cloth, she looked like a virgin of the Athenian procession. Her clothes flowed about her, clung to her like weed as she swam. As he met her friendly, silent welcome, he expressed her to himself--“By the gods above, you are--without exception--the healthiest--finest--bravest--young woman--that ever made the sun shine in grey weather.” Aloud, he made things easy.

“Here's your tea-party, Sancie, dressed in its best, eager for the fray. When I think of old Sowerby taking whisky-pegs while his family has tea and curates, I bless my happy stars that I've got a friend at court--to save me, don't you know, from the wicked man. When the wicked man--what? You know the quotation, I expect. Not one of my best--but give me time.”

While she made tea he pried about her room, looking at photographs. He paused here and there as one struck him, and commented aloud. “Old Nevile, with his sour mouth. Looks as if the tongs had nipped him in the act. Why _will_ he roll his moustache like that? It's not pretty--shows him like a boar, with his tusks out, don't you think? But he's a good-looking beggar, and knows it. Ah! and there you all are--or, rather, were--all five of you! Philippa, Hawise, Melusine, Vicky, you. What a bevy! I say--” He turned to her. “I met old Vicky, for a minute, the other day. Met her in Bond Street. Sinclair'd got the pip, or something, down at Aldershot. Expensive complaint, seemingly. So she'd come up to see a palmist, or some kind of an expert about him. She spoke of you, of her own accord. I said I was coming down here.”

Sanchia's hand at the kettle was steady, but her eyes flickered before they took the veil. “Tell me about Vicky. What did she say--of me?”

Chevenix came to the tea-table and stood by her. “I think Vicky's all right. I do indeed. It seems to me she'd give her ears to see you--simple ears. Sinclair, you'll find, is the trouble. He's the usual airy kind of ass. Makes laws for his womankind, and has 'em kept. Vicky likes it, too.”

“I suppose he is like that,” Sanchia said, as if it was a curious case. “I have never spoken to him. He was about, of course--but Vicky took him up after--my time.” For a moment emotion, like a wet cloud, drifted across her eyes. “I should like to see Vicky again. It's eight years.”

Chevenix was anxious. “I do think it could be managed, you know--with tact. I'd do any mortal thing, Sancie--you know I would, but--” He despaired. “Tact! Tact! That's what you want.”

Her soft mood chased away. She looked at him full. “I can't use what you call tact with Vicky. That means that I am to grovel.” She drove him back to his photographs. He peered into the little print on the wall.

“What have we here? A domestic scene, my hat! You appear to be bathing--well over the knee, anyhow. High-girt Diana, when no man is by. Awfully jolly you look. But he _is_ by. Who on earth's this chap?” He peered. Sanchia from her tea-table watched him, in happy muse. He shouted his discovery. “I remember the chap! Now, what on earth was he called? Your casual friend, who lived in a cart and only had three pair of bags. Nohouse--Senhouse! That was the man.” He looked with interest at the pair, then at Sanchia. “Mixed bathing--what?”

She laughed. “Yes--we both got wet to the skin. Percy Charnock took it ages ago--oh, ages! Before I was out, or knew Nevile, or anybody except you. It was ten years ago. I must have been eighteen. It was when I was at Gorston with Grace Mauleverer--trying to save water-lilies from drowning in green scum. He--Mr. Senhouse--came along in his cart, and saw me, and lent me his bed for a raft--and worked it himself. That was the first time I ever saw him--” she ended softly in a sigh: “before anything happened.”

Chevenix listened, nodding at the photograph. “Wish to heaven, my dear, nothing had ever happened. The less that happens to girls the better for them, I believe. Not but what _this_ chap would have been all right. If _he_ had happened, now! He was as mad as a hatter, but a real good sort. Did I tell you?” He grew suddenly reminiscent. “I saw him a little more than a year ago--with a pretty woman. Had a talk with him--asked him to come up and have a look at you. It was when Nevile went off on this trip. No, no, I liked old Senhouse. He was a nice-minded chap. Not the kind to eat you up--and take everything you've got as if he had a right to it. No. That's Nevile's line, that is. You wouldn't see Nevile lending you his bed, or risking his life after water-lilies.”

Sanchia's eyes were narrow and critical. She peered as if she were trying to find good somewhere in Nevile Ingram. “He'd risk anything to get what he thought were his rights. But not upon a bed for a raft. He'd write to London for the latest thing in coracles. He's very conventional.”

“You have to be,” said Chevenix with sudden energy. He wheeled round upon her as he spoke. “We all have to be. We go by clockwork. You get the striking all wrong if you play tricks.” He resumed the photograph. “By Jove, but that suits you. Child of Nature, what? I suppose you're happiest when you're larking?”

“Mud-larking?” she asked him, laughing and blushing.

“Well, we'll say rampageing; going as you please.”

“Yes.” She owned to it without hesitation. “I can't be happy, I think, unless I can do just what I like everywhere. It was one of the first things Jack Senhouse ever taught me. He was an anarchist, you know--and I suppose I'm one, too.”

“Your gypsy friend?” He jerked his head backwards to the photograph. “By Jove, my dear,” he added, “you must have knocked him sideways--even him--when you carried out his little ideas--as you did.”

She opened her eyes to a stare. She stared, rather ruefully. “Yes,” she said, “I believe I did. I know I did. He was dreadfully unhappy. He and I were never quite the same after that. But I couldn't help myself. It was before me--it had to be done.”

“No, no, no!” cried he vehemently, but checked himself. “Pardon, Sancie. We won't go over all that, but surely you see, now, that it won't do. Now that escapade in the pond, you know. That was all right--with only old Senhouse in the way. You must admit that you were rather _decolletee_, to say the least of it. Now, would you say that you can do those sort of things--go as you please, you know, anywhere?”

“Why not?” Her eyes were straightly at him.

“What! Whether you're seen or not?”

She frowned. “I don't want to know whether I'm seen or not.”

“And mostly you don't care?”

“And sometimes I don't care.”

“Ah,” said Chevenix, “there you are. Your 'sometimes' gives you away.”

She changed the subject. “Do have some tea. It will be quite cold.”

He had been staring again at the photograph--Sanchia's gleaming limbs, the gypsy's intent face shadowed over the water. He now relinquished it with an effort. “Thanks,” he said. “I like it cold.” He sat beside her, and they talked casually, like old, fast friends, of mutual acquaintance. But for him the air was charged; she was on his conscience. Reminiscences paled and talk died down; he found himself staring at the wall.

He resumed the great affair. “Nevile's rather jumpy, don't you think?”

Her serenity was proof. “Is he? Why should he be?”

“Ah, my dear!” cried the poor young man. “Let's say it's the old Devereux. _Salmo deverox_, eh? Sounds fierce.”

Not a flicker. “Mrs. Devereux? What has she been doing to him?”

“Nothing,” he said; “and that's just it. She won't have anything to say to him.”

Then she went a little too far. A man charged with friendly impulse, charged also with knowledge, must be handled tenderly. You must not be foolhardy. But here was bravado, nothing less. For she arched her brows, and showed her eyes innocently wide. “Oh!” she said, “why? Why won't Mrs. Devereux speak to Nevile?”

“Oh, come, you know.” He looked at her keenly. He didn't wink, but he blinked. Then he crossed the room. “Look here, Sancie. Will you let me talk to you--really--as an old friend?”

She looked up into his face, nodded and smiled. “Of course you may say what you like.”

He sat by her, collecting himself. “Well, then, what I shall say is just this. The whole thing is in your hands--now. You can put it square. There's absolutely nothing in your way--now--well, now that Claire's gone, you know.” He watched her anxiously for a sign, but got none. So still she sat, glooming, watching herself--as on a scene.

“Mind,” he said in a new tone. “You know all about me. I jibbed at first when you broke away. I'll own to that. I couldn't do otherwise. Why, old Senhouse himself went half off his head about it. Anything in the world to get you out of it, I'd have done. Any mortal thing, my dear. But there! There was no holding you--off you went! But when once the thing was started--the extraordinary thing was that I was on your side directly. And so I always have been. Ask Vicky--ask your mother. I've done, in my quiet way, what you would never have asked of me. You must forgive me--I've defended you everywhere. I won't mention names, but I've explained your case, only lately, in a rocky quarter--and I know I've made an impression. I'm not much good at talking, as a rule, but I do believe that I put the thing rather well. You make your own laws--eh? Like Napoleon Buonaparte--eh? And somehow--the way you do it--it's all right, eh, Sancie?”

He got nothing from her. She sat on rigid, with unwinking eyes, staring at herself, as she saw herself on the scene. Chevenix leaned to her.

“And Nevile knows it. He believes it. He would say it anywhere. He's difficult, is Nevile; a wayward beggar. He's been his own master since he was sixteen; asked, and had. It's hard to make him understand that he can't go on. But he can't, the old sweep, when you put in your say. You know his way--he puts his desires in the shape of truisms. He states them--that's all he has to do--they become immutable laws. Very imposing, his desires, put like that. They've imposed upon me; they've imposed upon _you_ in their day. Well, with a man like that, you know, you can't take him up too short. Go slow, go slow. What was it I heard Clyde saying to you just now? Who's queen of herself is queen of the world--what? Now, that's quite true. One for Clyde. Apply that to old Nevile. Queen of herself! Why, what else are you? And what's Nevile but the blundering world in a man's skin? Well, queen it, queen it--and there's your kingdom under your feet. Marry the old chap, Sancie. You put everything right; you take your proper place. The county! But what are counties to you? You smile--and you may well smile. Let the county go hang; but there's Vicky. She's more than county to you. There's Melusine, there's Philippa, there's Hawise; there's your good old dad, there's your lady mother. You get 'em all. And Nevile's biting his nails for it. And a free man. Come now.”

She had listened, that's certain; she hadn't been displeased. He had seen her eyes grow dreamy, he had marked her rising breast. Rising and falling, rising and falling, like lilies swayed by flowing water. That betokened no storm, nor flood; that meant the stirring of the still deeps, not by violent access, but by slow-moving, slow-gathered, inborn forces. Had he had eloquence, he thought, as he watched her, he had won. But he was anxious. She was such a deep one.

When she spoke there sounded to be a tinge of weariness in her voice; she dragged her sentences, as if she foresaw her own acts, and was tired in advance. She seemed almost to be pitying her fate. At first she looked down at her hands in her lap, at her fingers idly interweaving; but midway of her drawn-out soliloquy--for she seemed to be talking to herself--she turned him her eyes, and he plumbed their depths in vain.

“It's very nice of you to be interested in me. You are much more interested than I am--and it's a compliment, a great compliment. I think you are very loyal--if I can call it loyalty--if you'll let me call it that. I like my work here; I'm perfectly happy doing it. It was hard at first. I knew absolutely nothing of housekeeping and managing things when I came here. I had to work--to learn book-keeping and accounts--cooking--building--carpentering--stock-raising--oh, everything. I had to feel that I knew very nearly as much about everything as the people who were to do what I told them. And of course that was quite true; but it wasn't at all easy. It has taken me eight years to get as far as I am now. And I could go on for years more. There's nobody on the place whom I can't manage: they all like me. I'm quite comfortable--if I can be let alone.”

... Speaking so, she believed it. But, thinking it over she was driven to explain herself.

“People seem to think that girls--that women--care for nothing but one thing--being married, I mean. I'm sure that's a mistake. One gets interested, one may get absorbed--and then there's a difficulty. For it's very true, I think, that unless we care for the one thing, and that thing only, we don't care for it at all. At least, that is how I feel about it. I have got lots of interests in life--all these things here--management of things. I don't want Nevile--or to be married. I don't want anything of the sort; I can't be bothered. I cared once--frightfully; but now I don't care. All that was long ago; at the beginning--eight years ago. Now it's done with, I only want to be let alone--to do my work here. It doesn't seem to me much to ask; but--” ...

It was then that she looked at him, and was beyond the power of his sounding. She grew vehement, full of still, passionless rage. She was like a goddess pronouncing a decree; she was final.

“I don't want to marry Nevile. It bores me. And he doesn't want me, really. He thinks he does, because he thinks that he can't have me any other way. But he would be miserable, and so should I. It seems to me impossible. You can't put life into dead things. When he came back here the other day he had been away a year: a year and ten days. He had written to me twice--”

Chevenix interrupted. “Excuse me,” he said. “How many times had you written to him?” He had guessed at pique; but he was wrong.

She replied slowly. “I forwarded his letters. I hadn't written at all.” Her simplicity! Chevenix allowed her to go on.

“The thing--all that it began with--was over. I felt that. I showed him that the first evening he was here. He has never spoken to me again--of that sort of thing, and I don't think he ever will. He doesn't understand being refused anything. I suppose he never has been before in his life.”

“Weren't you, perhaps, a little bit short?” he hazarded; and she considered the possibility.

“No, I don't think so. I wasn't more abrupt than he was--after a year.” She paused. “He threw out her death--Mrs. Ingram's death--” she forced herself to the name--“quite casually, as if he had been saying, 'By-the-by, the Rector's coming to dine.' If he had wanted me, do you think he would have put it like that?”

“Nevile,” said Chevenix, “would put anything--like anything. He's that sort, you know. He'd take for granted that you understood lots of things which he couldn't express. But I will say this for Nevile. He's not petty. He's fairly large-minded. For instance, I'll bet you what you like he didn't mind your not writing to him--or reproach you with it.”

She opened her eyes. “Of course he didn't. He was perfectly happy. He told me he had been idiotically happy. He knew I was here, because I forwarded his letters--and that was all he cared about. I was here for--when he chose. I assure you he didn't want me at all until I showed him that he couldn't have me.”

“But he did, you know,” said Chevenix; “he does. He was sure of you all through, from the beginning, as you say. That's why he didn't write or expect letters from you. He nattered himself that he was secure. Poor old Nevile!” He felt sorry now for Ingram. She was really adamantine.

She arose, with matches in her hand, knelt before the fire and kindled it. She blew into it with her mouth, and watched the climbing flames. “I don't think you need pity Nevile, really,” she said. “He will always be happy. But I am going to be made unhappy.” She proclaimed her fate as a fact in which she had no concern at all. Chevenix rose and paced the room.

“Well, you know--I must be allowed to say--your happiness is so entirely in your own hands. It's difficult--I've no right to suggest--to interfere in any way. I'm nothing at all, of course--”

“You are my friend, I hope,” she said, watching the young fire--still on her knees before it, worshipping it, as it seemed. Chevenix expanded his chest.

“You make me very proud. I thank you for that. Yes, I am your friend. That's why I risk your friendship by asking you something. You won't answer me unless you choose, of course. But--come now, Sancie, is there, might there be--somebody else?”

She looked round at him from where she knelt. Her hands were opened to the fire; her face was warmed by its glow; it was the pure face of a seraph. “No. There's nobody at all--now.”

He was again standing before the little photograph of the nymph thigh-deep in water. That seemed to attract him; but he heard her “now,” and started. “I take your word for it, absolutely. But, seeing what you felt for Nevile in the beginning, I should have thought--in any ordinary case--there must have been a tender spot--unless, of course, you had changed your mind--for reasons--”

She got up from her knees, and stood, leaning by the mantelpiece. Her low voice stirred him strangely.

“There are reasons. The spot, as you call it, is so tender that it's raw.”

“Good Lord,” said Chevenix. “What do you mean?”

She was full of her reasons, evidently. Rumours of them, so to say, drove over her eyes, showed cloudily and angrily there. Her beautiful mouth looked cruel--as if she saw death and took joy in it. “I think he is horrible,” she said. “I think he is like a beast. He doesn't love me at all until he comes here--and then he expects me--Oh, don't ask me to talk about it.” She stopped her tongue, but not her thought. That thronged the gates of her lips. She hesitated, fighting the entry; but the words came, shocked and dreadful. “He wants me, to ravage me--like a beast.”

Chevenix began to stammer. “Oh, I say, you mustn't--Oh, don't talk like that--”

The door opened, and Ingram came in.

He looked from one to the other, sharply. “Hulloa,” he said. “What are you two about in here?”

Sanchia looked at the fire, and put her foot close to it, to be warmed. “Tea-party,” said Chevenix. “That's it, Nevile.” He nodded sagely at his host, and saw his brow clear. Ingram shut the door and came into the room, to a chair. “That's all right,” he said. “I hope it was a livelier one than mine. That old Devereux was on her high-stepper. I'm sick of being trampled. I thought, though, that you had been having words. You looked like it.”

Sanchia said, smiling in her queer way, “Oh, dear no. Mr. Chevenix is much too kind for that. He's been talking very nicely to me. He's been charming.”

“Oh, come, Sancie--” cried the brisk young man, quite recovered.

Ingram, in a stare, said, “Yes, Sancie, you may trust him. He's a friend of ours.”

“I do trust him,” she said.

Chevenix said, “I shall go out on that. I declare my innings. Good-bye, you two. I'll go and pacify the Devereux.” He hoped against hope that he might have warmed her.

Ingram, when they were alone, threw himself back in his chair, crossed one leg, and clasped the thin ankle of it. He had finely-made, narrow feet, and was proud of his ankles. Sanchia was now again kneeling before the fire.

“Quite right to have a fire,” he said. “It's falling in cold. There'll be a frost. What was Chevenix saying about me?”

She had been prepared. “Nothing but good. He's your friend, as you said.”

“I said 'our friend,' my dear.”

She looked at him. “Yes, certainly. He's my friend, too.”

“I hope he'll prove so. Upon my soul, I do.” He remained silent for a time. Then he leaned forward suddenly, and held out his arms.

“Oh, Sancie,” he said, his voice trembling. “Love me.”

She looked at him with wide, searching, earnest eyes. They seemed to search, not him, but her own soul. They explored the void, seeking for a sign, a vestige, a wreck; but found nothing.

“I can't,” she said. Her voice was frayed. “The thing is quite dead.”

Ingram flushed deeply, but sat on, biting his lip, frowning, staring at the young, mounting fire, which she, stooping over it, cherished with her breath and quick hands.

VII

Ingram, at supper in his private room, had his elbows on the table, and spoke between his fists to Chevenix, let into these mysteries for the first time.

“I ought not to complain, you'll say, and in my heart of hearts I don't, because I'm a reasonable man, and know that you don't make a row about sunstroke or lightning-shocks. We call 'em the Act of God, and rule 'em out in insurance offices. No, no, I see what I've let myself in for. I've been away too much; she's got sick of it. I shall have to work at it--to bring her round. By God, and she's worth it. She's a wonder.”

“Pity,” said Chevenix, “you've only just found it out.”

Ingram frowned, and waxing in rage, stared at his friend as if he had never known him. “You don't know what you're talking about. Why, she adored me. I was never more in love with a woman in my life than I was with Sancie.”

Chevenix tilted back his chair. “Oh, you had it pretty badly--at the time. The trouble with you is that you are such a chap for accepting things. You're like a hall-porter in a Swiss hotel. You take things for granted. Do nothing--hold out your hand--and get your perks. Perks! Why, they ain't perks at all. They're bounty--what you get from a girl like Sancie.”

All this Ingram took as his due--as due, that is, to a man of passion and reasonable desires. He fell into a reverie. “Yes, yes, I know. She was devilish fond of me.”

Chevenix gritted his teeth, but Ingram went on. “It was a false position, I know, and I never ought to have looked at her twice. But she was awfully queer or awfully deep--one never knew which. Why, when we got thick together--always meeting out, always reading poetry and philosophy--Shelley, Dante, Keats (I forget half their names now)--I take my oath I hadn't a suspicion that she was getting to like me, in that sort of way, as we call it. She made all the difference in the world to me, I can tell you. You know what I was doing after Claire bolted with that swine: killing time and killing myself--that's what I was doing. It was like going into church out of the sun to hear her at her poetry, and see her. Oh, a lovely girl she was!”

“She's a lovelier woman than you and I are fit to look at,” said Chevenix, “if you ask me.”

“Damn you, I know all about that. D'you think I want telling, now that I can't get her? Well, then I found out what was the matter with me--and then we cleared the air.”

“Who had stuffed it up to begin with?” Chevenix murmured; but Ingram ignored him.

“I told her the whole thing--”

“After she had found it out!” cried Chevenix with energy. “Let's have cards on the table. I told Vicky all about it at a dance--and Vicky told her.”

“I told her,” Ingram said, “that I was in love with her, and promised to behave--and so I should have, only--”

“Only you didn't, old chap.”

“She loved me--there was no stopping it then. The thing was done. Mind you, her people knew it all, too.”

“The mother always was a fool,” Chevenix agreed. “And she liked you.”

“I know she did. I took care of that.”

“Not a bit of it, my boy,” the other objected. “That's just what you didn't do. She liked you because she thought you didn't care a curse whether she liked you or not.”

Ingram raised his eyebrows at such _naivete_. “That's what I mean, of course. So it went on all that summer. We used to shake when we met each other, and be speechless. By heavens, what a time that was! Do you remember the tea-party?”

Chevenix blinked. “I wasn't there; but I remember what happened afterwards. The poor child--as white as a sheet--and every hand lifted against her. By God, Nevile, what girls--mere chits--will go through!”

“I know,” said Ingram dreamily. “Isn't it awful?” Chevenix looked at him. He was quite serious. What can you do with such a man as this?

“They left us alone in the room, you know,” Ingram continued. “Vicky went out last and left us in there--and the whole place was charged with electricity. You could feel it, smell it, hear it crackling all about. My heart going like a drum; my ears buzzing with it all. I hadn't been able to speak when they spoke to me. I don't know what the devil they must have thought of me--and I didn't care a damn. And over across the tea-table, on a low chair--there she sat--my girl! Her eyes downcast, her mouth adroop.” He shut his eyes for a moment. “And Vicky went out, and left us there!”

“You had it badly, old chap,” Chevenix said. “Go slow. Take your time. Or chuck it, if you'd rather.”

Ingram appeared not to hear him; he was staring at the tablecloth, at his two hands locked in front of him, and at his knuckles white under the strain.

“I don't know how long I stood gaping at the window, I don't indeed. I could feel her sitting shaking in her chair; but neither of us said anything. Somebody came to take the tea out--and then I turned and looked at her; and she turned and looked at me. Something drew me--set me on the move. It was all over with me then. I went straight across the room to her; I stood above her, I stooped and took her hands. I don't know what I said: she looked at me all the time in a strange, clear way. She got up--I was beside her, and took her. Not a word said. I had her lips. Honey of flowers! Her soul came forth from them: new wine. Oh, God! I thought so, anyhow. And so did she. Chevenix, she meant giving.”

Chevenix nodded shortly. He believed that. Ingram had covered his eyes.

He drained a glass before he went on with his account. “I suppose you know the rest as well as I do. I never had the details out of her. One of them--that Mrs. King--Philippa, it was--came slam into the room; and what was there to do? I stuck it as long as I could--until I was practically kicked out. The mother came back and turned me out. I had to leave her to brave them all--and I never saw her again until I found out where she was in London.”

“Don't you trouble to tell me all that part,” said Chevenix frowning at him. “I know more about that than you do. I was in it. My head, how they treated her! What I never did understand, you know, was how you found out where she was.”

Ingram smiled. His memories now amused him. He looked straight at his friend. “I'll tell you that. It was rather neat. You remember that chap Senhouse--loafing kind of artist? Anarchist, gypsy-looking chap, who wore no hat?”

Chevenix opened his eyes. “By George, I do!”

Ingram nodded. “She thought no end of him. He took her affair with me very much to heart.”

“As well he might,” said Chevenix. “I fancy that you were the only person who took it easy.”

“Sancie used to tell him everything,” Ingram went on, “and she told him all the trouble. She'd been turned adrift with fifty pounds to her name.”

“Not quite so bad as that,” Chevenix put in. “They locked her up with an aunt, and she bolted.”

“Same thing,” said Ingram. “Well, this chap Senhouse comes here one day in a mighty hurry--turns up at breakfast, and makes a row. Wants me to swear I'll divorce and marry Sancie. Says he thinks I'm a blackguard and all that, but that, on the whole, I'd better marry her. Refuses to give me her address, all the same. We had a row, I remember, because he began to tell me what he thought about her. The man was a bore, you know.”

Chevenix screwed up one leg. “All men are, if they're sweet on your sweetheart, I suppose. He was worth fifty of you, all the same--but go on.”

Ingram laughed. “I set my wits against his,” he said, “and found out that he'd come straight from seeing her--in London. That was good enough for me. I got rid of Master Senhouse, and went off to town. He had no promises out of _me_, you may believe.”

Chevenix felt very sick, and looked it. “The less you say about your promises, my good chap, the better I'll take it.” But Ingram by now had got back to his holier reminiscences:--

“I hunted for her high and low for three months--advertised, turned on detectives, I had even dared her friends' eyes and their cold shoulders--couldn't hear anything ... I was walking in hell for three months....

“Then, one day, I met her--in Chancery Lane. Of all squalid places on earth--there....”

“I'd been to my lawyer's, in Lincoln's Inn. I'd settled money on her--in case anything happened to me while I was abroad. I was going to travel, because I'd given it up. And then I met her. Chancery Lane!

“I was passing some school or another--Commercial Academy--book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting--that sort of place; a lot of ogling, giggling girls, and boys after 'em, came tumbling down the steps--all sun-bonnets and fluffy hair; and down the steps she came, too--Sanchia came--like a princess. She was in white, my dear man--as fresh and dainty as a rose, I remember. Daisies round a broad-brimmed straw: some books under her arm. The sun was on her, lit the gold in her hair. She looked neither right nor left, spoke to no one, had no one with her, or after her. She was never showy. You had to know her well to see how lovely she was. She never showed off well, and was always silent in company. Oh, but what a girl!

“When she saw me she flushed all over, and stood. She stood on the last step, and looked at me. Looked at me straight, as if she waited. I went directly to her, and took her hand. She let me. I couldn't speak sense. I said, 'You!' and she said, 'I knew I should see you like this.' It sounded all right. I never questioned it.” ... He stared, then broke out. “Good God, Bill! To think of her then--and to see her now! She won't look at me! I don't exist.” He plunged his face between his hands, and rocked himself about. Chevenix watched him without a word. Suddenly he lifted his pinched face, and complained bitterly.

“I can't understand it--I don't know what's changed her. Why, it's awful to make a chap suffer like this!” He stared about him. “Why, Bill,” he said, hushing down his voice, “is she going to drop me, d'you think--let me go to the devil?”

Chevenix rose and stood with his back to the fire. “I'll trouble you not to whine, Nevile; I've got something to say to all this tale of yours. I've got to ask you a thing or two. When you found her, now; and when you knew all that she'd gone through--a child like that! You brought her up here--hey?”

Without shifting his head to face his cross-examination, Ingram answered between his hands--“No, I didn't. She wouldn't budge from her school till she'd finished her course. I courted her for a month. It took me all that to make her listen to reason.”

“Reason!” Chevenix rated him. “You call it reason!”

“It was what _she_ called it--not I,” said Ingram from between his fists. Then he looked up. “She refused the idea of going abroad. Said she wasn't at all afraid of people talking. Said she wanted to work for me. Must be doing something, she said. I tell you, it was her idea from the beginning. And I do say, myself, that it was reasonable.” He searched for agreement in his friend's face, but got none. “It suited better,” he said presently, with indifference. “It suited better--in every way. I had to be here.”

“Why had you to be here, man?” Chevenix raised his voice. “What the devil did it matter to you, having her, where you were?”

“It mattered a lot. I like this place. It's mine. I've got duties up here. I'm a magistrate and all that.”

Chevenix was now very hot. “Magistrate be damned. Do you mean to tell me that you profess to love a woman, and turn her into a servant because you want to try poachers? And you talk about the sun in her hair! And then--upon my soul, Ingram, you sicken me.”

“You fool,” said Ingram. “I tell you it was her own idea. She loves the place. She loves it a lot more than she does me. It's been a continual joy to her. Why, where would she have been while I was in India--all that year--if she hadn't had all this in her hands? You don't know what you're talking about.”

His voice rang down his scorn. Chevenix began to stammer.

“You're hopeless, Nevile, utterly hopeless. Every word you say gives up your case. What's it to do with you whether she likes it or not? I'm not talking of her, but of you. You silly ass, don't you see where you are? You fall in love with a woman and make her your head housemaid. Then you say, Oh, but she likes it. It's not what she likes we're talking about; it's what you can bring yourself to do with her. Wait a bit now. There's more to it. You play about here, there, and all over the shop. Off you go for three months at a time, sky-larking, shooting antelope, pigeon-shooting, polo, and whatever. She sits here and minds the gardeners--she whom you saw with the sun in her hair! Year in, year out it goes on. Now here you are back from India. Good. You leave her for a year, and write to her twice--then you say, Why, where would she have been if she hadn't had something to do? The sun in her hair, hey? Love, my good chap! You don't know how to spell the word. You ought not to touch her shoe-string. You're not fit. By Gad, sir, and now I remember something! And it's the truth, it's the bitter, naked, grinning truth.” He did remember something. He saw her curled-back lip--he saw her fierce resentful eyes. He heard her say it: “I think he is like a beast. He wants to ravage me--like a beast.” “You've been judged, Nevile,” he said. “You've done for yourself. And now I'll go to bed.”

Ingram's face was very cloudy. He looked for a moment like quarrelling. “Do you mean to leave me like this?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Chevenix, “I do. I don't want to stop and hear you protest that you intend to marry her. Marry her! Why, man, if you'd meant to marry her, you'd have posted home express from Marseilles the moment you heard that you could do it. But no! You've got her there--in cap and apron--she'll keep. You know she's here--you have your fling. And you stop three days in Paris, and drop it to her casually, when you please, that you're a free man. Yes, by George, I do mean to leave you like this. You're best alone, by George. Good-night to you.”

He went smartly away; but he had worked himself into a shaking fit, could not have slept to save his life. A cigar at the open window was inevitable.

He leaned far into the night. It was densely dark, and had been raining. Soft scud drifted over his face; clouds in loose solution drenched the earth. He smoked fiercely, inhaling great draughts and driving them out into the fog. Being no thinker, his sensations took no body, but he broke out now and again with pishes and pshaws, or scornfully--“Old Nevile--hungry devil, what? Stalking about like a beast. Oh, she was right, she was right. Pish! And there's an end of it.”

He was aware of softly moving feet below--a measured tread. He listened and heard them beyond dispute. “Nevile!” he said, “like a beast, padding about his place.” He listened on, grimly amused. Let him pad and rage.

But he was to be startled. A voice hailed him, not Ingram's. “Beg your pardon, sir.”

“Hulloa!” he cried. “Who are you, my man?”

“Glyde, sir. Is all well?”

“What do you mean, Glyde? What are you doing?”

“I was passing, sir, to my houses. I heard voices, and I wondered--”

“Oh!” he laughed. “You thought there was a scrap, did you? It's all right, Glyde. I and the master were having a talk. Nothing for you to worry about. I shared his lonely meal. Don't you be disturbed.”

“No, no, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Chevenix called to him when he was at some distance. “I say, Glyde.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You can go to bed. It's all right.”

“Thank you, sir. Good-night.”

He chuckled as he undressed. “Rum fish, Glyde. Watch and ward, what? Watching his shield. Bless her, she's got friends, then.” He considered for a while, flicking the glowing end of his cigar. “That chap--Senhouse--Jack Senhouse. I wonder what's become of him.”

VIII

The discrepancies of an unfortunate party caused no disturbance to the staff of Wanless Hall. Sanchia, whatever her private cares--and they seemed less than those of other people on her account--suffered nothing to interfere with her housekeeping. Ingram might rage for her in vain, Chevenix agonise, or quarrel with his host and friend, Mrs. Devereux disapprove to the point of keeping her room; but Sanchia, with front serene, moved from office-table to kitchen, to the garden, to the home-farm, interviewed Mrs. Benson, consulted with the stockman, pored--her head close to Clyde's--over seed-pans and melon borders, was keenly interested, judicial, reflective, pleading, coaxing by turns--seemed, in fact, not to have a perplexity in her fair head. Her health was superb, she never had an ache nor failed of an appetite. To see her sitting in the stable-yard on a sunny morning, her lap full of nozzling fox-hound pups, was to have a vision of Artemis Eileithyia. So, it seemed, the grave mother-hound, erect on haunches, with wise ears, and sidelong eyes showing the white, knew her certainly to be. Beside and over her stood Frodsham of the stables, and his underlings, firmly her friends.

She looked up, beaming. “Oh, Frodsham; aren't they sweet? One of them tries to suck my finger. What are you going to call them? I do hope you mean to keep them all.”

“I doubt they're too many for the old bitch, Miss Percival. She'll not feed the lot of them. We'll be wise to duck the latest cast.”

“Oh, no,--please. I'll feed it--I will, really. I couldn't let you drown it. Now, what are their names to be?”

“There's Melpomeen, Miss Percival, and Melody, and Melchior, and Melchizedek. That's for the bitches.”

She quizzed him. “No, Frodsham, really that won't do. I'm not quite sure about Melchizedek; but Melchior was a man--he was a king--a king of the East. And I believe Melchizedek was an angel.”

Frodsham rubbed his chin. “May be you are right, Miss Percival. An angel, was he now? Wings to him? 'Tis a name for a bird, then. If we kept the hawks the old Squire used to love--there's a name for a peregrine! Melchizedek--a fair mouthful.”

“A Priest for ever,” mused Jacobs, a wizened elder, the kennel man, who yet bowed to the coachman in his own yard. “We may put him among the dogs, I believe. We've Proteus, and Prophet; but no Priest.”

Frodsham looked to Sanchia for direction, ignoring Jacobs. She flashed him a name. “Melisande, Frodsham. Call her Melisande, and save her life; and she shall be mine. I'll look after her. Please do.” He owned to the spell of her eyes, of the sun upon her hair. “Melisande she shall be, Miss Percival, and your own,” he said. “The Missus shall rear her if the old bitch won't. She's had six of her own, and knows what it is.”

Regretfully, one by one, she put the striving blind things down; then rose and went her way into the gardens about the house. Slowly through the kitchen gardens she passed. Glyde, thinning walled peach-trees, saw her, felt her go. She shed her benediction upon him--“Good morning, Struan,”--and went on. He watched her for a while, then turned fiercely to his affair. Through dense shrubberies, over drenched lawns her way was; it led her to the lily-pond, which lay hidden within rhododendron walls, with a narrow cincture of grass path all about it. Dark-brown, still and translucent like an onyx it lay before her. It was her haunt of election when she was troubled, as now she was, when she gave herself time to remember it.

She stood, her hands clasped before her, close to the water's brim, and looked over the shining surface. She had never yet squarely faced her difficulties. Her sceptre was slipping from her; her realm, usurped at first, hers by sufferance first, but then by love of them she ruled, could hold her but a little while more. The shadow of coming eclipse made her eyes grow sombre. Doubt of the unknown made lax her lips.

If Nevile's wife, with all her sins clotted on her, was dead, what was she herself going to do, or allow to be done? She had yielded to love--her first love and her last; but that had been long ago. Love, the fire, the trembling and the music in her heart; pride, the trust, the loyalty, the bliss of service; the wonder, the swooning, the glory like a sun upon her--all gone, burned out, or worked out. Why, how long had it lasted her? Her lips stretched to a bleak smile to think of it. Three months joy in herself, three months joy of him; then work, incessant and absorbing; and then the growth of a new pride, the pride of mind (for she found that she had a brain), and of a new love--for she found that she loved the creatures more than man. Education indeed! To draw from a child caught unawares the force and the brooding love of an Earth-Goddess.

In the beginning, she could have told herself (but never did), she was to be pitied, not blamed. Reticent among her free-speaking sisters, shy, what the maids call “a deep one,” rarely a talker, keeping always her own counsel, she had first been moved to utter herself by the extreme carelessness of Ingram whether she did so or not. The blame--if it is to be laid--must be upon her mother when she, knowing Ingram's story of miserable marriage and separation, allowed the man to continue a friend of the house, be much with her girl, and unfold himself under her clear young eyes. What she was about--that masterful, self-absorbed woman--there's no saying. It was always supposed that, with five beautiful daughters to market, she had pushed Welbore Percival--Thomas Welbore Percival, East India merchant of The Poultry--into lavish entertainment of his friends and acquaintance. Ingram, a squire and son of squires, was perhaps a shade above her degree; she may have required him to give a tone. This, considering that wretched marriage of his--a month's engagement in defiance of head-shaking, a blazing Hanover Square wedding, a year's bickering, one month's acrimony (done by letter) and Ingram's unquenchable hatred of the woman--this, I say, you may well doubt. But I can give no other explanation. He came, he talked in his high-voiced, querulous, bitter-humoured way, he saw and sought the grave young Sanchia, and he won her pitying heart directly he had engrossed her watching eyes.

She was a girl intensely interested in a hundred dawning things, to whom love had come late. Until she was near twenty you would have thought her sexless. Senhouse, her poetical friend and teacher--her only friend, her only confidant--had dubbed her Artemis; and it may well have been his adoring service of her pure flame which first turned it inwards, to scorch her heart. All that she had learned of this scholar gypsy she poured out as balm over the stricken Ingram, who swallowed it and her together. Then the truth about him was blared upon her suddenly, and she found that he was to be pitied. Guileless victim of a hateful woman as she believed him then, she found that she held a store of balm. She pitied him deeply, she opened, she poured out her treasure. Enthusiasm for the saving work captained her thereafter; nothing would turn her from her purpose. Ingram was to be saved by love: she gave him all.

To do him justice, a young man born to possess and command, he did his best to repair what was beyond repair. He told her the truth unasked by her; he confessed that he loved her, and owned that he had no business to do it. Nearness, circumstance, brooding on that which was true of both of them and must not be uttered by either, did the rest. Upon that evening in the drawing-room when they found themselves alone, each trembling under the god, they simply drifted together, and without effort to resist, mingled their natures through the lips. Discovery, earthquake and eclipse, her mother's chill rage, her father's tears, her sisters' dismay; all this and more she endured. She passioned like a young martyr. She admitted the facts without comment, and accepted the consequences without a falter. They might have whelmed a greater heart than hers; turned on to the town as she was to all intent, at two-and-twenty, a girl with the face and figure of a goddess, with fifty pounds between her and the devil. They might have sent her, at the least, weeping and trembling into Ingram's arms. But they did not. She was of finer clay. She took a lodging in Pimlico, and, to fit herself for employment, went to school. The commercial course which she chose was the shortest possible, but all that she felt she could afford. “My dear young lady, we can only promise you a smattering--really no more for the money.” “It must start me,” said Sanchia, and began. There was a month more to run when Ingram found her, and, glad as she was of him, doting and doted upon, in the first flood of youth and love, she persisted in it, finished it out, and got her diploma for what it was worth, before, as he put it, she would listen to reason.

It sounded extremely reasonable to him what he then proposed; and also to her, though Chevenix scorned its propounder. As Ingram put it to her, it attracted her newborn pride of knowledge. She was to flesh her steel, so to speak, in reality: in plainer words, she, with her smattering of accounts, was to manage a great house, an army of servants, possibly an estate. Excessively in love as she was, with all the music of it in her untried ears, she knew already in herself that her mind must have other food than her heart's rapture. I think, indeed, that she would have declined him altogether if he had proposed nothing more tangible to her than perpetual honeymoon. That was what Senhouse would certainly have proposed to her--she saw that in every look of his, and read it in every line he sent her; but that had never attracted her. She had given Senhouse her confidence, but not her heart. Ingram's proposals, therefore, pleased her. She had not a sweet enough tooth, nor the taste for flattery which the other involved. She was entirely without vanity. Therefore, however little honourable and however much a lover of his ease Ingram may have shown himself in making them, his reasonable proposals were gratefully received. It was he who suggested, but she who took the lead. She began immediately to plan her new career--was perfectly business-like. Ingram was to leave London at once, and go to Wanless--to his duties of the bench, his delights of the field, cares of the farm. He was to announce to his househould his intention of “settling down”; and he was to announce the advent of a housekeeper. In this very outset of his bliss he must needs do as she bade him. He went, and made her ways as smooth as they could be made. Her rooms were assigned to her; her duties mapped out, the exact range of her authority. Her wages were fixed, to be paid quarterly. She would take nothing else from him--no jewellery (she wore nothing but simple things, which had been given her by her parents or sisters--amber, a string of cowries, an agate heart, a bangle or two), no frocks. She was to have two hundred a year, and throughout her time to this present she had no more, and kept herself exquisitely upon it, with a sense of what was due to him, to herself, and to her position, which was admirable, unhesitating, and never at fault. In due time she arrived and entered upon her career. That which was unlawful seemed now justified; the secret intimacy, the wedded amity, the giving, which was the dearest gain she had. Discretion, on her side unsleeping, on his the more effective because he never seemed to have any, secured them. There was no open scandal among the neighbours; whatever the household may have suspected, very little was said. Within a year her servants were her slaves. The Rector, it is true, reproached her for not going to church. She deprecated his indignation, but didn't go.

Up to the day when we first met with her, her garden-hat in her hand, reading her telegram by the garden window, she had been eight years governor of Wanless--and for nearly two of those years alone. For the first two or three of them Ingram, revelling in his snug ease, with little to do but devise things--alterations, extensions, ventures into farming, and the like, which it was her delight to execute--never left the county, hardly cared to leave the estate. He entertained very sparingly: Chevenix came once or twice, his own brother, Maxwell Ingram; there were some other dinner-parties to the countryside, hunt-breakfasts, once a hunt-ball, at none of which ceremonies did she appear. He endured these wearinesses, shrugging them away as soon as he could, to hasten from a dinner of dry toast and knives and forks to his room--the Master's room--where supper, Sanchia, sweet intimacy awaited him. He spent thus by far the cleanliest and most sane years of his wayward life. She soothed, amused, stimulated him at once. He taught her all he knew of country-lore, gave her, as they say, “the hang” of landed estate; he learned by teaching, and might have become a wholesome gentleman.

But domestic business called him to London presently. He went, and was away three months, with lawyers, fierce threatenings from Claire, intermediaries, friends of both parties, and the rest of them. He was worried, flurried, put into a rage; exploded, put himself a thousand times in the wrong; finally, he came back to Wanless embittered and restless. He came back to find himself welcome, but not excessively so. At least he thought not. His extensions, suggested in that first wonderful time--a range of glass-houses, new heating apparatus, acetylene gas installations, were well advanced. Sanchia's brows were often knit over estimates, specifications, and bills. He had to pay for novelties from which the salt had evaporated; he was never very fond of paying, and now, it seemed, he wasn't very fond of what he had to pay for. Sanchia was kind to him, but there was a difference. She was as happy as the day was long, always at work, outdoors or in, had not a moment for him (business apart) until the very end of the day, when (at eleven or so) she dressed with care and went to him at his supper. Sanchia was perfectly happy; but he was not.

He stayed six months that year--from April to September; but then went to Scotland, deer-stalking, shooting pheasants. He was back for Christmas and brought a houseful of guests--all men. Again she welcomed him, again she was kind. He was now a little blunted to the fine shades of love, took his happiness as it happened to come, and could rub his hands over the household blessing she was. By-and-by, at the end of her fourth year, she took over the gardens as well as the house, was accepted by Mr. Menzies as his liege-lady and by young Clyde as much more than that. The estate-management, home-farm, woods, tenancies, were given up to her at the end of the fifth year, just before Ingram sailed for West Africa on a shooting expedition. By that time he had grown to depend upon her entirely for everything. She was become the faithful well-tried wife of standing, which in a man of Ingram's bone means that nothing remained of love but entire confidence and occasional gratification. After this, he left her for long periods together; for the whole of the eighth year he was abroad, “idiotically happy,” as he had told her.

During all this time no intercourse with her family--except those furtive letters from her adoring old father, which were pitiful to her, because they could not be answered as he would have had them; and nothing from her friend of the Open, who had at last got himself a mate. It seemed that she had made a clean break, and that nothing of what had made her dawning life sweet and sane was to mingle with the sweetness and sanity which she had brought into Wanless. And then--after eight years--she caught herself looking back. And now--here was an end of the dream.

If you are to ask me what had changed her regard for Ingram during that solitary year, so that she received him at the end of it as she did, I don't know that I can tell you. Slowly discovery--of herself, of him--came to her, slowly combustible stuff was heaped within her; it slowly kindled, and smouldered long. No doubt he himself blew it into clear flame by his let-drop news of Claire's death. She had not known that: she never read the newspaper, having neither time for the world's affairs nor interest in them. Suddenly, by that, she was offended; suddenly saw him as he really was, always had been, and always must be. Suddenly, also, she saw herself, as brimming with life, energy to live and to make live, at the end of her music-time. The folds fell from her eyes, she could see Ingram as a man, squalid. Nay, more: she could now see him as a beast, ravening. Thereupon he gave her horror, so that she dared not look back upon her hours of blindness.

Perhaps he had offended her by his silence--his two letters, which she had neither invited nor answered. That can hardly account for it, since she had not written to him of her own initiative. Their parting certainly had been discrepant: the clinging and wistfulness had been hers, though she had uttered nothing of complaint or misgiving. But perhaps he had been too gay and nonchalant, a little too much the husband secure. For a week she had shivered at her loneliness; then she had plunged anew into the flood of affairs, and had come out, as from a cold bath, braced and tingling. Round went the wheels of Wanless. The house was new-papered, painted, carpeted; every month brought new wonders to the garden. Under Glyde's tuition, seeing with his eyes, watching with his tensity of vision, she had come closely into Nature's arms. Perhaps she was unwise with the young man: the fact is she never stopped to consider him. She liked him and his queer, secret, passionate ways. She took a royal line of her own. She required much of him, and if he made much of it, she didn't know it. She dreamed no harm to him or to herself. Her absorption in the business of the moment, or the needs, was so manifest that not even the maids, who saw her frequently with the youth, could have thought harm for a second. It was just Miss Percival all over--as “keen as mustard.” Perhaps it was as much under Glyde's fostering as any other nurture that she came, during that year alone, to love the earth so well that she could appraise the worth of human love. I don't know. It was a critical year for her.

As she was anything but a fool, there's no doubt that she came, before the end of that year, to know what was the matter with Glyde. She had had experience--of herself and another--and he was utterly incapable of concealing his feelings. Of course she knew what was the matter with him, and was tenderly and quietly amused. She approached him gradually, let herself play elder sister, and let him play what he chose, within severe limits, never overstepped by him, never unwatched by herself. He was a passionate, sensitive, inarticulate creature, narrow-faced, sharp-eyed, scowling and thin. He always looked cold, mostly angry, and never seemed contented, even when his plants flowered themselves to death to please him.

A woman, any woman, knowing that a man covets her possession, stores her knowledge, exults in it in secret. It is a fund, a store against lean years or wry ones. You can see it throned sedately in her eyes, when she is with him, however much she may feel his absurdity or presumption. So it was with Sanchia. She was fully conscious of Struan's preposterous state, strictly the elder sister, never the patroness, for were they not bond-slaves both? She patronised nobody at Wanless, yet, with a steady eye for distances, kept a perfect length, varying with each oncomer. With Mr. Menzies, lord of the gardens, so far on she came; with Frodsham, master of horse and hound, so far; with the engineer so far; with Minnie nearer; nearest of all with Mrs. Benson: her attitude to the stout woman was that of favourite pupil to a family governess of immemorial service. She could wheedle Mrs. Benson, and often did. The elder sister attitude was kept for young Glyde; she admonished, scolded, preached to him high doctrine of duty and honour; there was something benignant, a sort of pitying care shed from above. To him she may have been like Cynthia, stooping to the dreamer on Latmos. Whether she knew that, she must have known a good deal. She knew, for instance, that he kept vigil; for she had met him at night, as you have been told. She knew where to find him. Nothing had ever passed between them, of course, of her relations with the Master. I don't think that she was aware of his sentry-go under the windows--first under Ingram's, then under hers. I am sure she was not, or he would have heard of it in plain terms, have seen her eyes grow hard, and her mouth stretch to bleakness. She was capable of royal, cold rage when she was offended. But that he hated Ingram must have been plain to her.

And now, as she stood at gaze, lonely and pensive by the black pond, she saw that it was over, her busy life. She was at the end of her tether, must lose her power and the sense of it. She was to begin the world again, starting with her fifty pounds, and without that which had made it a pride before. With a little shiver of self-pity, a half-sigh and a tightening of the lips, she accepted her fate. That was her way.

She regretted nothing, asked neither for mercy nor allowance. What she had done, she had done; if it was to be done with, she could not help that; she must go her way. Never for an instant did it enter her head that she could marry Ingram. Nothing that he had urged, or Chevenix counselled, made the smallest difference to her. She did not love Nevile any more; he was horrible to her: enough of that. Whatever her fate was to be, she would accept it: she chose it so. Without reasoning it out, that was final for her. She had always had _sic volo_ for her final cause. _Stet pro ratione voluntas._ Marriage, even nominal marriage, with Nevile was the accursed thing: none of it. And why? Because she chose it so.

This was very sublime. I sing, or Mr. Senhouse sings, a Goddess in her own Right. That is to be observed, or we fail. Persons have existed, and do yet exist, who are law unto themselves, deliberate choosers of their fate, deliberate allies of Atropos with the shears, who go what seems to us, shivering on the brink of things, a bright and bloodstained way, and furrow deeply into life, because it must be so, because so they will have it. Great ones of time, a Caesar or so, a Catherine, a Buonaparte, come handily to mind, who, wreaking countless woes, wrought evenly their own. And since greatness is a relative term, and time an abstraction of the mind, in their company, says Mr. Senhouse, was Sanchia Percival, and in her blue-clouded eyes was to be discerned seated, like a captain, foreknowledge of her own fate, and will to choose it. But, as for Mr. Senhouse himself, at this time of envisaging of ways I don't believe that he entered her head. Small blame to her, either, seeing that the man, having renounced her, or failed of her, as you please, had taken up with his Mrs. Germain, and found her to be a Fact, as I have related.

But to do wrong or right, the prerogative of choice: she arrogated that. So, I think, if the sister of the Far-Darter had ever stepped aside from the path of her lonely delight--as some have it she did on Latmos--she would have done it without shame. It would have been her pleasure and her choice; she would never change countenance or have to breast the flood of colour. It must be hers to take up or discard an empire, or a Nevile Ingram of Wanless Hall. So, in her degree, did Sanchia Percival--of the stuff of goddesses.

IX

Mrs. Devereux having departed as impressively as might be expected of a lady with a sense of injury, there was little for Chevenix to do but to follow her; for whereas Mrs. Devereux considered herself badly treated by both parties in the house, the young man had to own that he had quarrelled with his host. “I laid for Nevile,” he told Sanchia, “and he don't let me forget it, either. He don't like commentators on his text--never did. So he's making Wanless too hot to hold me.”

Sanchia, with rueful eyes, feared that this was her fault. “I'm very sorry,” she said. “On all accounts I'm very sorry. I shall miss you. It was nice to see you again.”

“See me again,” cried Chevenix, “as soon as you please; but not here--unless you feel you can make up your mind to settle down, as we call it.”

She shook her head. “I don't think I can. I think it might be wicked--as things are.”

Chevenix raised his eyebrows. “That's you all over, my dear. Other people's Right is your Wrong. Why question the decrees of the police? They tell you that you may do what you please when you're married, but not before. But you won't have that. Of course, if you can't swallow Nevile, you can't--and there's an end of it. Only,” he added, “there _must_ be an end of it. You're in a false position--now.”

“According to you I always was,” said the candid young lady, and made him change countenance. She shirked nothing.

“I did think so once; we all did, you know. Even your bare-footed friend, What's-his-name--”

“Mr. Senhouse.”

“Beg your pardon. Mr. Senhouse, of course. Well, he didn't take it sitting down, so to speak. Did he now?”

She considered. Her eyes grew gentle over the remembrances which this name always called up. “He knew that I was right. Oh, yes. I'm sure of that. But he was frightened. He lost his nerve because--”

“Because it was you, my dear,” said Chevenix briskly. She owned soberly to that.

“I shall see your people when I get to town,” he told her. “I shall make a point of seeing Vicky and your governor. And if I could drop in upon Senhouse, by George, I'd risk it. You don't know where he is just now, I suppose?”

“He was in the Black Forest when I last heard from him,” she said, “and was going to the Caucasus--to collect plants. That was a long time ago. Three years, I should think. He doesn't write now. He's married, you know.”

“Married?” he repeated, with open eyes. “I never knew that.”

“He married a Mrs. Germain--a widow.”

Chevenix stared, then slapped his leg. “Then that accounts for it! Didn't I tell you I met him when I went out to Brindisi to see Nevile off--met him on a steamer, with a pretty woman? That was Mrs. G.--_his_ pretty woman. Good Lord, how rum!” He laughed, staring. Then, “What on earth did he do that for? She's not his sort. And I gave myself away--confoundedly--to each of 'em in turn. You'll never believe it, but I told _him_ that she'd always been in love with Tristram Duplessis, and then I gave _her_ to understand what had been the matter with old Senhouse.” He exploded, then grew mighty serious. “That's rather a bore. I was counting on him, you know. I thought you might want him.”

Sanchia made no reply. About the corners of her mouth there lurked the hint of a smile, which her wistful eyes belied. Chevenix watched her, but could make nothing of it.

“He was a rum 'un,” he continued. “The first time I saw him after you came up here, was when I ran against him by chance in Norfolk somewhere. Spread abroad he was--in flannels--all his things strewn about. He had a little fire going, and a little pot on it. Doing a job of tinkering, he said, to oblige a lady. There was the lady, too, if you please, sitting on a bank, smoking a clay. She had a beard, and an old wide-awake on her head. Senhouse introduced me, I remember. He told me he was on his way North--Wastwater, I think. A planting job up there--or something. Rum chap that! Oh, one of the very rummest! He asked me a lot about you. I didn't know how much he knew, so I went very pussy. The chap was as sharp as a needle. Spotted me. He said, 'My dear sir, I don't ask you what she is doing or where she is. I ask you if she is well.' Then I told him a lot--about you, and Nevile, and all this business. I let out, I tell you. I was fairly deep in the thing--you know that I felt pretty badly, because it was my fault that you ever knew Nevile at all. Don't you suppose I've ever forgiven myself that, Sancie; never you suppose it. No, no.”

He was much moved. She, by a sudden impulse, put out her hand to him. He wrung it, and said, “Thanks, Sancie; thanks, my dear.”

After a wrestling bout, he went on: “Do you know what that fellow said to me? I should like you to know it. Mind you, he was yours, body and soul, then--whatever he may be now. I think he's yours still, for that matter--but _then!_ He never concealed it--so far as I know--from anybody. Now, listen to me.” He heard me out, never said anything till I'd done. Then he looked out over the marshes into the weather, and he said, “No harm ever came to a good woman. I shall see her again, crowned. Now, what do you say to that? Queer, isn't it?”

Sanchia blushed deeply and bent her head. Chevenix marked her confusion, and varied his tone to suit the case. He became practical. “Now, what'll he say about this new state of affairs, do you suppose?”

She lifted her head. “He will think me in the right.”

Chevenix shrugged. “There's going to be trouble,” he believed. “There's bound to be, just on that account. Nevile can be a brute when he's in the wrong, and knows it.”

Sanchia squared her jaw for trouble.

“He wants you back, you know, awfully--because you won't come. And the more he wants you the less he'll say so. That's the pride of the cobbler's dog. If he's uncomfortable, he'll scratch until he's comfortable again. And he says, 'If you can't get the best take the next best'; and runs about with Mrs. Wilmot at his heels, and is bored all the time. That's Nevile all over.” His eyes grew rounder. “You'll have to go, you know.”

She admitted that. “Yes, I must.” Then she sighed. “I don't want to go. There's such a lot to be done here.”

“Yes, yes, my dear,” said Chevenix with some irritation. “No doubt there is. But you can't afford it.”

He stammered out his next. “I should like to say, Sancie, that there's nobody on earth I respect--for whom I have more respect than for you. I don't understand your point of view--don't pretend to. But I know a fine thing when I see it. I'm not much of a chap, I know--no brains, and all that--simple, rotten chap, I know; but if we're not going to be friends I shall be unhappy.”

“We are, I hope,” she said, smiling kindly at him. She gave him her hand.

“Right, Sancie. Look here,” he said sternly. “I'll punch Nevile's head for you, if you like.”

“I shouldn't like it at all,” she assured him.

“We're old acquaintance, you know. He'd take it from me better than from anyone else--like Senhouse.”

“Mr. Senhouse would never touch him,” she was sure. He dropped in Chevenix's estimation immediately.

“Quaker, eh? I didn't know that.”

Sanchia explained. “He can't be changed in those sort of things. He would only use force against wild beasts.”

“Well,” cried Chevenix, “what do you think Nevile's going to be? My advice to you is to get out as soon as you can. And when you're in town, command me.” They parted firm friends.

Mrs. Wilmot remained, against her inmost judgment, against her maid Purcell's clear advice, for one more day. The night of Chevenix's departure she was there, and on the morrow was to be conveyed to the Trenchards', across the county. Wanless had her steadily in its score pair of eyes for twenty-four hours, as Purcell, her maid, had foreseen. “You are doing a strange thing, ma'am, permit me to say.” Purcell was an elderly spinster, who only required her own permission to say what she pleased. “You will be watched and reported. I suppose I am not in the servants' hall for nothing.” Mrs. Wilmot said feebly that she supposed she was there for meals. Purcell stiffened her wiry neck. “Meals, ma'am! In the best houses there's a second table. The butler may be there, and perhaps the valet. The lady's maid, of course. But where there's no lady, one may put up with the cook, though the cook in such houses is rarely a female. But the housekeeper here! A Miss Percival! Dines alone--or is said to--and the cook sits at the head of our table. This is no house for you, ma'am.”

The lady gave a little cry and hoisted a white shoulder. “Oh, Purcell, you are hurting me dreadfully. Do be more gentle with me. You are tearing my hair out by handfuls. What can it matter to you where Miss--where the housekeeper dines?”

“Ho,” said Purcell, “little or nothing--to me, ma'am. I cannot help my thoughts. But I keep them to myself. Not one word in this house--downstairs--of Miss Percival. Not one word. They keep their mouths shut, I promise you, and their eyes open. But what you will, you will. As for Mr. Ingram, the less I say the better.”

“Much the better,” said Mrs. Wilmot, fretfully wriggling under the comb.

That fine afternoon--April budding into May--this lady listened to Ingram in the garden. Of all sounds in the world the sweetest music for her ear was made by a man's voice embroidering the theme--_“You are lovely, you are cruel, I die.”_ Ingram's descant on the golden phrase was querulous, after his manner. He took his lover's smarts, as one must suppose them, hardly. As thus: _“You are lovely_--but what's that to me, if I can't touch you? You sting my eyes, you inflame, you wound--or I think you do; here am I, tied by the leg to a dead woman--for dead to me she is, the she-cat Sanchia--looking at you because I can't help myself. You are soft and lax, you purr when I stroke you; I could make a pet of you. Was ever a man of property and station in such a case?”

_“You are cruel_--because, though I could put out my hand and take you, yet you expect me to do it. That's all over, for me. I've done that sort of thing--Sanchia knows. Now I must trouble you to advance. I'm sick of life on these terms: you could make life worth living. I must really trouble you: sorry to seem languid, but I _am_ languid. You, with your fine sensibilities, ought to be the first to feel that; but no: you wait, looking exquisite, with eyes like blue-black water, and a mouth, a mouth like a flower. You soft gossamer beauty, I could crush you where you hover; but you won't come and be crushed. Certainly, you are cruel.”

_I die._ He avoided that. It was absurd. She thought for one moment that he hinted it when he said, shrugging off his ranges of hot-house--“Good of their kind, I fancy. But what good are they to me--a solitary beggar? I never go into 'em, you know. I thought I should take an interest when I had 'em put up. It looked like it--But now! who cares whether I go into 'em or not? Who cares whether I live or die?” There had been a pathetic ring there.

She had murmured a gentle rebuke; her eyes had brimmed, reproaching him. It was then that he had taken her hand, at the going-out from the fig-house. “Ruth,” he had said, “my kind, pretty Ruth.” Then he stooped his head and kissed her. Through three pairs of doors Glyde, in the peachhouse, had seen the act, and paused in his spraying. It was over in a minute. The pair strolled away and passed out of the walled-garden. Glyde, who had turned very white, compressed his lips and went back to his work--like a machine. Presently a light step made him start, look guardedly up, watch and wait. Sanchia, bare-headed, fresh and _debonnaire_, came in, like a stream of west wind. Her eyes beamed her health and pleasure. “Oh, Struan,” she said, “do come and see the _Susianas_. They are on the very point of opening. Do come. There's nobody about. They've gone down to the river.”

He could not face her, knowing what he knew. But he could not resist her either. “I'll come,” he said, and followed her.

She went gaily and eagerly. “You've never done so well with them as this year. I counted a dozen. Huge! I felt rather miserable this morning; I've been worried rather. I thought I would just see what they would do for me. They made me feel ashamed of myself. Their strength, their contentedness--just to grow, and be strong and well! Nothing more. What else ought we to want? Food--the sun--strength to grow! Isn't that enough?” She was echoing Senhouse here, and felt an added glow to remember it. He had been much in her thoughts since her last exchange with Chevenix.

Out of the warm brown soil, sheltered by the eaves, the iris clump made a brave show. Its leaves like grey scimitars, its great flower-stems like spears. Stiffly they reared, erect, smooth, well-rounded, and each was crowned with the swollen bud of promise. She displayed them proudly, she counted them, made him check her counting. She glowed over them, fascinated by their virile pride. Struan watched her more than her treasures. He was pale still, and bit his lip; had nothing to say.

She knelt and took one of the great stalks tenderly in her hand. A kind of rapture, was upon her, a mystic's ecstasy. She passed her closed hand up and down, feeling the stiff smoothness: she clasped and pressed the bursting bud. “Feel it, Struan, feel it,” she said. “It's alive.” He turned, shaking, away.

“They say,” she went on, caressing the bud, “that this is really the Lily of the Annunciation. It's a symbol, I've read. Gabriel held one in his hand when he stood before Our Lady. Did you know that?”

Glyde broke out. “Don't. Don't. Come away. I must speak to you--quickly--if I dare. Come away from here.”

He spoke fiercely, meaning what he said. Grave, sobered, she rose and followed him. He drew her after him to the yew-tree walk, to the enclosure at its end, where the leaden Faun capered and grinned. There he faced her.

“You must leave this place,” he said shortly. She looked to the ground.

“I know,” she replied in a low voice.

“Every moment you stop here insults you, puts shame upon you. Shame! And on you! It's not bearable. It's not to be suffered. I'll not suffer it for one.”

At this she lifted her head and reproved him by a look. It was mild, queenly mild, but not weak. Remote from him and his world, it said, “I can't hear you.”

He understood it so. “Who says I may not speak to you? Who else is to speak to you if I don't? How can you bear yourself and speak nothing? Is it natural?” He seemed on the point of angry tears; with a gesture infinitely kind she bore with him. Her hand just touched his arm.

“Dear Struan,” she said, “I know how nice you mean to be to me; I am very grateful to you. Of course I am going away. I have brought everything on myself, and must bear the consequences by myself. But I have been happy here, lately, and shall be most unhappy to go. I have so many friends here.” Then, after looking at him, reflecting, she added, “Of course I know that you care.”

“Care!” he cried out, scornfully. “Do you think that I've watched you, in and out, for three years without caring? Do you think that I have schooled myself to put up with--with him--without caring? And when I thought that he was coming back here to--to prove himself an honourable man--I thanked the Lord. Yes, I did that. I was ready to go when I knew he was coming back for that. I told you I would go--and I meant it. I should have cut my heart out and left it here, and gone away--clean away, glorifying and praising God. But--oh, it's hideous, hideous! You are discarded--you! Cast off--you! Peerless as you are--you! Oh, my Saviour, what's this?” He broke away, and sobbed. He dashed his arm over his eyes in a rage with himself. She was very gentle with him now.

She put her hand on his shoulder, and though he shook it off, put it there again. “You hurt me, Struan, really. If you are my friend, you shouldn't doubt me. I don't feel about it as you do, you know.”

He lifted his head at the challenge. “Then you should,” he said. “Dog that he is. He's insulting you. He had better have died than do as he does. Damn him, he shall pay for it.” She shook her head, smiling rather dismally.

“I can't talk to you any more if you don't understand why I can't talk to you,” she said. “There are things which friends cannot do for each other--which we have to do alone.”

The lad gasped and made a step towards her. He could not control himself--he shook.

“Not you--never you. I'll die for you--and you know it.” She looked at him full, then left him.

Mrs. Wilmot stayed for the better part of a week longer than she had intended, and then, perceiving by subtle but unmistakeable signs that she would wiselier go, went. To Wanless that had been a week of strain; the air was charged with trouble. One could not have pointed to anything--it was beyond the range of weathercock or glass; but everybody felt it. Sanchia, graver than she was wont to be, pushed herself sharply from duty to duty, and avoided sympathy by a dry manner. Or she was obtuse, affecting a foolish interest in trivialities. She never went into the garden, and saw nothing of young Glyde. Mrs. Benson, glooming thunder from her brows, Minnie with scare in her russet eyes turned Purcell's feasts into fasts. The wiry tire-woman, to do her justice, was as uncomfortable as any of them; but loyalty spurred her to feats of endurance undreamed of by any but servants. They, in a world of their own, where speech is rare, and skins rarer, where everything must be done by glances and hints, are perhaps more aware of themselves than any other children of men. They are for ever judging their betters; how shall they escape from judgment of each other? Judge not, says the Book; but if you pry for vice, what can you be yourself but a prying-ground? So Purcell agonised, and felt her very vitals under the hooks. The case was past praying for. She suffered and was dumb.

At last the delicate beauty, seeing Adonis faint in the chase--for Ingram, as a lover, was languid and gloomy--was helped into her lacy draperies, helped into the carriage, driven to the station; and Ingram, on horseback, rode by her side. He helped her into the train, stored her with magazines, kissed her mouth, revolted at her tears, and returned sulkily, with hard-rimmed eyes, at a foot's pace to his halls. Midway of the carriage-drive, instinctively, he tightened the rein; for Glyde stepped out of the undergrowth some ten paces ahead, and stood, waiting for him. He was dressed, not for the garden (in shirt-sleeves and baize), but in his blacks, and had a soft felt hat on his head, basin-shaped, with the brim over his eyes. “Now what the devil does that chap want, play-acting here?” was Ingram's enquiry of the Universe.

Glyde, as the horse drew level, came within touch of his flank, and told Ingram that he wished to speak with him.

“Eh?” said Ingram; and then, “oh, what a nuisance.” He felt himself injured. “Well, what is it, Glyde?”

Glyde said, “I wish to give notice, if you please.” The manner of address was curt and offensive.

“Oh, do you?” Ingram said. “Well, then, you had better do it in the proper way. See Miss Percival about it, will you?” He pressed his knees in as if to continue his way.

Glyde, however, stood by the horse's head.

“I have seen Miss Percival about it, Mr. Ingram,” he said. “I saw her--a week ago. And now I've got to see you about it.”

Ingram looked at him sharply--a sudden stiffening of the spine; spine stiff and eyes sharp, acting together. What he saw made him the more alert.

“What on earth do you mean?” he asked.

“I'll tell you,” said Glyde. “I'm free of your service from this minute, so I'll tell you. I say that you are a damned scoundrel, and that you know it.” A concentration of many grudges, kept very still, as by white heat, characterised this remarkable speech.

Ingram blenched. “By George, my man,” he said, “you'll have to make that good.”

Glyde said, “And I will. You have behaved, you are behaving, like a dog in this house; and you're to take a dog's wages.”

Ingram jumped in his saddle, rose in his stirrups. “By God,” he said, “by God--” but he said no more.

Glyde sprang up at him where he stood above his saddle, unseated--sprang up at him, took him by the shoulders and then dropping, pulled him off his horse. The freed animal, startled, kicked out, shook his head, and cantered gaily homewards. Glyde, having Ingram on the ground, took him by the collar of his jacket and belaboured him with his open hand. He cuffed him like a schoolboy, boxed him about the ears and face, shook him well, and then cast him into the young bracken of his own avenue. “There's for you, seducer,” he said; and that done, he walked steadily up the road towards the lodge gates.

Ingram, on his feet, in a rage which was the most manly he could have suffered, went after him at a run, and caught him up. “You blackguard,” he said, and panted. “Turn and fight with me.”

Glyde stopped. “I'll not fight with you, Ingram,” was his measured reply, “because I've that in me which would kill you. No mercy for you there. You can go as you please; you can send me to gaol or not; but you shan't get me hanged. I've something to do with my life--as much of it as you leave me; and I want it.” As Ingram glared at him, crimson now, with bulging eyes and teeth at lips, the other went on. “I'm going no farther to-day than my lodging. Your police will find me there when you send 'em. I shan't fight them, because I can't afford it; and I shan't fight you, dog that you are, for the same reason.” Ingram cursed, and sprang at him, but Glyde stiffened his arm and held him off. Master was no match for man, and felt no better for the knowledge of that. It did serve, however, to bring him to his senses. He saw that he was making an ass of himself.

“You'll hear more of this,” he said, and turned and walked rapidly back to the house.

Mortification inflamed his rage; his furious walking blew into it a sense of incurable injury. Injury, shocked pride, and animal heat altogether made a devil of him. He went directly to his own room, and rang the bell. “Send Miss Percival to me,” he told Minnie, “at once.”

Then he waited for her, with a face like a rat.

XI

She might have gathered warning from Minnie's panting summons, but had been busy over her accounts and had noticed nothing amiss.

“He wants you, Miss Percival! Don't go!” She had scarcely heard. She said, “Who wants me? Mr. Ingram? I'll come;” and though the maid stammered, “I wouldn't, oh, I wouldn't,” had gone.

The face he showed her from his bureau, where he sat huddled over a litter of papers, prepared her instantly for crisis; snarling, white and wicked, yet it had tragedy in it--as if he knew that he had himself to reckon with beyond all.

For some time he seemed not to see her, though he looked at her. He sat glooming, like a man dumb in high fever, working his lower jaw, screwing and unscrewing his hands. Afterwards she believed that he had been groping for the cruellest thing he could say, and was goaded into what he did say by the sense that he could find nothing.

“So that was your work? Your choice way! To set one of my own servants to club me.”

She looked at him blankly; but her face glowed with sudden fire. “I haven't the least notion what you mean. Who has clubbed you?”

His eyes flickered. “Glyde. Your friend. You seek your champions all about, it seems. You make things snug for yourself. It's master or man with you--it's all one.”

He spluttered his venom broadcast. She held up her head. “Are you insulting me?” He wheeled round full in his chair.

“Is it possible to insult you?”

At that she lowered her panoply of fire, and grew still. “I see that you are. I can't allow that.”

He foamed. “Bullies in your hire. Now I see what Bill Chevenix was after. And Glyde-faugh! who else?”

She watched him steadily without fear or disgust. His words held no meaning for her. “I think you must be mad,” she said. “It will be better if I go.”

He scoffed at her. “Better! You are right.” He rose in his place. “You'll go to-day.”

Sanchia regarded him deeply, almost curiously, as if he had been a plant, interesting for its rarity.

“Naturally,” she said, and left him in his staring fit.

The ordered little realm of Wanless went on its diurnal course. Luncheon was served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr. Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by rote: yet the whole house knew the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with them. She had been angry with Glyde, but now could think of him as “poor Struan,” Punchinello in a rustic comedy. Of Ingram, deliberately, she thought nothing. It had been necessary to survey her feelings of eight years ago, to make a sour face of disgust over them, before she could shake them out of her head. Now they were gone, and he with them: the world, with May beginning, was too sweet a place for such vermin to fester in. She had swept and ridded herself, rinsed her mouth with pure water, and now could sit to her dinner and review her plans.

But the storm burst over Wanless, at half-past four. Minnie came into her room, breathless, Mrs. Benson stertorous in her traces.

Minnie wailed, “Oh, Miss, oh, Miss Sanchia, oh, dear Miss Percival, what's going to become of us? Struan's beaten the Master, and the Sergeant's here!”

“Apes and tigers”--Mrs. Benson tolled like a bell. “Apes and tigers. What says the Book?”

Sanchia let them run, so the distorted tale was pieced together. At a quarter to twelve--it must have been that, because Emma heard the stableclock chime the half-hour--Struan was seen in his blacks. He came out of the wood-house, an ashplant in his hand. “Apes and tigers, apes and tigers,” from Mrs. Benson--his face was dreadful to see. Who said so? Who saw him? Not Minnie, for sure. It was Bella the laundrymaid--she saw him from the window, and had a turn. The window was open. “Why, Struan,” she said--but he told her to shut mouth and eyes. “The less you see, and know,” he said, “the better for you.” Poor Struan, with his tragedy airs! Bella told that to Minnie, and that she would never forget it to her dying day. It turned the beer in her stomach, she said--and now she was lying down. As he went out of the yard, a cloud came over the sun, and Bella felt the chill. She had the goose-flesh all up her back. That, they say, betokens a person walking over your grave. Somewhere in England we all have our grave-ground lying green under turf. It awaits the spade and the hour. In the morning it is green and groweth up--this was Mrs. Benson's piece, but Minnie had the rest of the stage.

The saddle-horse came flinging into the yard at one o'clock--no later. That's certain, because Frodsham was at his after-dinner pipe--or should have been: instead of which he came running in after him. Just about that time, or maybe a little before, Mr. Menzies had been asking for Struan? Where was he? Did anyone ever see such a wastrel? No man's account, he called him. Mrs. Benson tolled her apes and tigers all.

It was Minnie had seen the Master when the bell pealed. She had gone with her heart in her mouth--and oh, his collar and tie! His red ear! She had never seen anything like his face, and never must again on this side of the tomb. Wicked, oh, wicked! He showed his teeth. His face was as white as a clout. His voice was like a nutmeg-grater. “Miss Percival--here--at once.” It was all he said. She did her bidding, for servants must--but her heart bled for Miss Percival, and she felt like fainting at any minute when she waited at luncheon. He drank brandy--jerked his head towards the sideboard when he wanted more. Never said a word. And how he ate, wrenching at his food! Fit to choke him. How she had lived through the luncheon she didn't know at all. But that Struan, that quiet in an ordinary way, should have dared--with a stick in his violent hand! And the Sergeant ready for his warrant--stiff in the hall.

“A villain has got his deserts,” boomed Mrs. Benson. “My dear, you're going, it seems, and I with you. This is no place for a young lady--no, nor ever was, God be good! I know my place, to all parties; but I know that better--and now it's come upon us like a thief in the night. Well, well, well--my pretty young lady! Old women must put up with what they get, we all know--but not murderers in gentlemen's seats: no, nor beastly doings in and out of doors. I shall go, my dear, when you go--ah, me! When the wicked man ... but he's got his deserts. What! a widower--with duty and pleasure before him, combined for once, and no thanks to him!--to dally with a French doll--movable eyes and separate teeth and all--when he might have gone on his knees to a splendid young lady! And I'd have kept him there to say his prayers, which he's never done before, not since his mother died, poor old gentlewoman, worn out by the gnashings of a tiresome, God-Almighty, wicked old man, and a slip of sin who nothing was too good for. Not in this world, no! But it will be made up to him in the next, by the unquenchable worm--as he'll find out when he tries his 'down, dog' tricks; his 'drop that, will you?' None of that down there in the fire. What says the Book? My dear, my dear,” and she took the girl in her arms with a fine look about her of Niobe amid arrows, “I've a bosom for your head and a roof to shelter us both, and we'll see what we shall see. There's castles and towers for the great oneyers and their minions; but mine is in the Fulham Road, my dear; my own property out of a building society that does business for the widow and the orphan--makes it their special line, as I understand, and have treated me squarely throughout--that I will say. Yes, yes, and I'll tend you fairly, will Sarah Benson, widowed mother of a graceless son, who can feel for her poor dead mistress, mother of a worse. My lamb, you shall want for nothing.”

Fast in a good pair of arms, Sanchia snuggled and smiled. She patted Mrs. Benson's cheek, and put up her lips to her. Minnie, like a thawing icepack, ran rivers of water.

“You _are_ good to me,” she said; “you _are_ sweet to me. I don't mind anything when I can be sure of such friends. But you mustn't leave, you know. Really, you ought not. I shan't forget you, be sure of that, whether you stay or go.”

Mrs. Benson crooned over her, “Oh, you're not one that forgets, my precious, with your golden heart. And there's more than me will find it out.” She wiped her spectacles, breathing on the glasses, and Sanchia shook out her plumage, escaped from the nest. Ingram, without knocking, came into the room.

His rage was now cold and keen. He took in conspiracy with one glance at the three.

He spoke to Minnie. “I have been ringing for twenty minutes. The brandy in my room, and some soda-water. At once.” Scared Minnie fled. Then he turned half to Sanchia, but didn't look at her.

“I understood you were leaving this afternoon. You had better order a fly. There's the telephone.” He held out an envelope. “I think that you will find this correct.”

Sanchia was at her bureau. “Put it on the table, please,” she said, without turning; and while Ingram hovered, Mrs. Benson heaving like the sea, gathered into a combing wave and, breaking, swallowed him up.

“Money-ah! You come with money to a lady of the land! Offer me money, Mr. Ingram, if you dare. Your bread I've eaten, having baked it, and your father's bread, and not choked yet, though each mouthful might be my last. By every word out of the mouth of God, says the Book; and what shall He say of you? I've watched for this, I've seen it coming. You keep long accounts, but there's One keeps longer--and in His head, as we read. To breaking mother's heart so much, to scandal of matrimony so much--and to perjury and dirty devices, wicked dalliance, so much. When she came here--this fine young lady, so fresh and sweet--I wailed. I shook my fist at you, Mr. Ingram; 'I know what this means,' I said, 'a false tongue and a young heart.' And I waited, I tell you--for I could do nothing else. She could have come to me at any hour of any day and welcome; and I'd have told her, 'He's bad--he's rotten at the heart. He'll tire of you--neglect you--trick you--and cast you out.' But she was too proud for that; she bore it all, and not a word. And she did your work as never before, not in your time, nor your father's time; and made friends of the poor, and kept her place--sweetly and smoothly it was done. And you on your travels with foreign women--”

Ingram now emerged from the flood. “Are you mad?” he said. A dreadful calm came over Mrs. Benson, succeeding the tempest.

“'I am not mad, most noble Festus,'” she said; “but I am mother of a graceless son, and will not be cook to another. I leave your service from this hour. Your dinner is a-making, and Emma is a steady worker.” She turned to Sanchia. “The best vegetable-hand I ever had under me, Miss Percival, and I've had a score.” One further cut at Ingram she allowed herself. “I would not take a penny piece of your money now, not to save my darling from the lions.”

“You won't get it, you know,” said Ingram. “But you've had lots of 'em.” She braved that truth.

“And earned them, Mr. Ingram, as you know, better than I do.”

Ingram, ignoring her, observed quietly to Sanchia, “The sooner the better, I think.”

That was the manner of his farewell.

It was not the way she would have chosen to leave; but she reasoned with herself, as she packed her belongings, that it was probably the best way. It gave no time and little inclination for sentiment. Now, it was almost certain that had a term been ahead of her, whose end could be felt nearing, there would have been good-byes, last interviews, and last interviews but one, which are apt to be more poignant than those of the last moment of all. Even as it was there were threatenings of emotion. Wanless was stirred deeply. Mr. Menzies brought in a nosegay, and grasped her hand. “You will be sorely missed here, Miss Percival, sorely missed. Less said's the sooner mended, but you're a true young lady, greatly to be deplored.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Menzies,” she had said, “and thank you a thousand times for--”

“They are from my own plot of ground,” said the grizzled gardener, and looked away. She had his tulips in her hand, and now buried her face in them.

“Then I love them all the better,” she told him; and put in a word for Struan. “Be kind to him when you see him again--please do.”

Mr. Menzies became far-sighted. He had very blue eyes. “Ahem!” he said, in his Scotch fashion. “He'll not be here again, I doubt. He'll be away, the headstrong young man.” But he warmed to it. “Ay,” he said, “ay, Miss Percival. For your sake I'll listen to what he has to tell me.” She felt that she must be content with that. Each servant in degree must be dealt with, and Minnie comforted in her place. She was all for going that night; but had a mother and four sisters in Doncaster--all at home. Would Miss Sanchia forgive her, and accept of this Prayer-book? Miss Sanchia would; kissed her, and did.

In the carriage drive she told Mrs. Benson of her immediate intention. “I must say good-bye to Struan. We will stop at his cottage on the way. There's plenty of time.”

Mrs. Benson was strongly against it, but rather showed her mind than declared it. Mischief enough had been done through that youth--and in him, she doubted. Better let him alone. Are you to countenance violent hands? Raised against them in authority? Then where's authority? Where are Principalities and Powers? Much as she contemned Ingram, she was on his side against Struan any day. On the other hand, Sanchia was, in a manner, her guest, and could not be spoken to plainly about it. She could only shake her head.

“He's better alone, Miss Percival, alone with his devil. While the fit's on him, let 'em fight it out. And what can he be--to the likes of you?”

“He's always been a friend of mine,” she said. “He's been very foolish, very wicked; he had no business whatever to do as he did--to put me in the wrong. I'm angry with him, and he will see that I am. But--” Mrs. Benson knew the force of that “but.” It had brought the young lady to Wanless.

Yet Mrs. Benson might have triumphed if she would. Sanchia, at the cottage door, was met by the anxious tenant of it with whom Struan lodged. “He's not here, Miss,” she was told, and then, “oh, Miss, they've took him away. The Sergeant's come for him and took him. And we hear--” There had been no stopping her, but by Sanchia's way.

She walked into the cottage and put up her veil. She showed a pale, sad face. “How dreadful! I must write a note. Will you let me write here, and leave it with you--to give him when he comes?”

She wrote in pencil, “My dear Struan, I am very sorry. You made me angry, but I'm sorry now. I came to say Good-bye, as I am going away. Mrs. Benson is with me. See Mr. Menzies when you can. He has promised to help you, and, of course, I will too, if I can.--Yours always, S. J. P.” With the fold of the envelope to her tongue she paused, reflective. Then she took the note out again, read it over, and ran her pencil through the last two letters of her signature. And taking two Parma violets from the knot at her breast--a recent gift from Wanless--she put them within the paper. Thus she did deliberately--as the Fates would have her. Addressing “Mr. S. Clyde, by Mrs. Broughton,” she gave her letter in charge. “Be sure to give it him when he comes back,” she said. Then she and her protector were driven to the station.

There was a full bench, a crowded court when the accused was brought in. The hush that preceded him and the buzz when he stood up made Ingram set his teeth. The reporters, with racing pen, cleared the ground. Thus the world might read of “The Squire of Wanless, every inch a soldier,” in one journal, and of “Nevile Ingram, Esquire, of Wanless Hall,” in another. There are no politics in police reports, but broadcloth is respectable. The prisoner was described as “Struan Glyde, 23, a sickly-looking young man, who exhibited symptoms of nervousness.” It was allowed that he spoke “firmly but respectfully to the Bench,” but, on the other hand, “to the complainant he showed considerable animosity, and more than once had to be reproved by the Chairman.” The proceedings were short. “At the close there was a demonstration, which was immediately checked by the police.”

Glyde, in fact, was revealed as a narrow-faced young man, slim and olive-complexioned, having light, intent eyes, and very long eyelashes. Nervous he undoubtedly was; he twitched, he blinked, he swallowed. He looked effeminate to one judge. Another said of him to his neighbour, “As hardy as a hawk.” A newspaper called him “puny,” a rival “as tough as whip-cord.” It depended upon your reading of him--whether by externals or not. He had a quiet, fierce way with him, a glare, the look of a bird of prey. He was very self-possessed. All the papers observed it.

Ingram, playing his privilege to the last ounce, told his tale to his brother-magistrates, shortly, but with considerable effect. He had had occasion to dismiss a servant, and the prisoner had taken upon himself to resent it. Yes--in answer to a question--a female servant. Prisoner had attacked him in his own carriage-drive, had pulled him out of the saddle before he knew what he was about, and had beaten him while on the ground. He had no witnesses. There had been none. His voice, as he chopped out his phrases, was dry, his tone impartial. He took no sides, stated the facts. He spoke to the Chairman--even when he replied to the question which made him, for a moment, take breath; and he never once looked at the accused.

The Bench consulted together. Old Mr. Bazalguet, the Chairman, leaned far back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling, while two younger justices whispered to each other across his portly person, peering sideways at Ingram, who showed them his smooth head and folded arms. Colonel Vero, the fourth of the tribunal, was drawing angels on his blotting paper. Then they settled themselves, one of them with a shrug, and Sergeant Weeks told of the arrest. Accused had declined to make a statement, but had spoken certain words to his landlady, one Mrs. Broughton, to the effect that what was to come was “nothing” to what had been done. He had left in her charge papers, which the Sergeant had afterwards examined, and now had in his care. This had led to a brief interlude.

Mr. Bazalguet had caught the words. “Papers? What papers?” he asked. “Newspapers?”

“No, sir,” said Sergeant Weeks. “They were writings. Poetry and the like--and foreign tongues.” The bench sat up, and now Glyde had the hawk-look in his light eyes. Ingram stifled a yawn, and impressed the Bench.

Mr. Bazalguet, inclining his head to either side, enquired only with his eyebrows. Did we want these papers? Should we, perhaps, for form's sake examine them? Mr. Max Fortnaby was of opinion that we should. As they were handed up, the prisoner, who had been wetting his lips, said plainly, “There's nothing in them about this business,” and was reproved by Sergeant Weeks.

A formidable pile of MS. was passed up by the Clerk, whose deprecating glances were not lost upon the Chairman. But Mr. Max Fortnaby cut open the budget in the midst, and peered in.

_“janua vel domina penitus crudelior ipsa”_--he read. It was a footnote. He lifted his eyebrows--then his eyes upon the accused.

“Propertius? You know Latin?”

“I know some, sir.”

He returned to the MS., then again to Glyde.

“You are a bit of a poet, I see.”

“Yes, sir. I hope so.”

“If it leads you to battery, my young friend--” was his private comment. To Mr. Bazalguet he whispered, “The fellow's got scholarship. We might give these back, I think.” Mr. Bazalguet was only too happy, and Glyde saw his offspring returned. Sergeant Weeks, safe in Mr. Fortnaby's good opinion, scrupulously wrapped and tied them. Mr. Fortnaby said, “Let them go back to his landlady,” and caught the prisoner's eye.

It was now time to ask him whether he had anything to say. Glyde, perfectly master of himself, said that he pleaded Guilty, but would like to put a few questions. The Chairman, biting the tips of his fingers, nodded; and Mr. Fortnaby watched him.

Facing Ingram, who looked always to the Chairman, Glyde asked--“Did you dismiss your servant, as you put it, before I met you, or afterwards?” All eyes flew from Glyde to Ingram.

“Actually, afterwards,” it was explained. “But the thing was understood before.”

“By whom?”

“By me,” said Ingram, “and--” He stopped there. A very interesting struggle, momentary, and done in silence, took place. Glyde was daring Ingram to bring in Sanchia's name, and Ingram could not do it.

“And--?” said Glyde. “And by whom?”

Ingram paused, biting his lips. He was pale. He took a long breath, and then said, “And by you, I have no doubt.”

“Thank you,” Glyde said. Then he began again. “Did you ask me to fight with you?”

“I believe I did.”

“And I refused?”

“Yes,” said Ingram, “you did.”

“Did I say that I didn't fight with dogs?” Ingram smiled at the Chairman.

“You did not.”

“I say so now,” said Glyde, and stirred the Court. Mr. Bazalguet interfered.

“You mustn't talk like that, Glyde. We can't have it, you know.” Colonel Vero added, “Certainly not,” and stretched his long legs out.

Glyde recovered himself, and begged pardon. He was told that he might go on, in reason, but declined. “Thank you, sir. I think I'll leave it so. I own to what I did.”

He was told that he could be dealt with summarily, or sent for trial. “I'll take it from you, gentlemen,” he said, and settled himself reposefully. The Bench drew together, with the Clerk intervening.

Mr. Bazalguet, double-chinned and comfortable squire, was disturbed by this case. What troubled him was that Ingram had not been straightforward. What was this dismissal of a servant? He knew, and therefore he asked the question. Fortnaby knew also, but didn't intend to say. Everybody, indeed, knew. Romance appeals to us all in diverse ways; and it was actually romance which settled Clyde's romantic affair.

Fortnaby, Maximilian Fortnaby, had been a schoolmaster, had succeeded to an estate at forty, and retired. He, with his keen face and trim whiskers, leaning his head on his hand, thus spoke in undertones, and carried the day. “The case is clear. The young man's taught himself tongues, and has poetry. He's been taught other things, too, and has got some of them wrongly. One thing he ought to learn is that to relieve your feelings is not the way to help the oppressed. He's set himself up for a champion, and tongues have got to work. I should give him three months.” Mr. Bazalguet looked at the Clerk, who said it was a bad case. Mr. Ingram was a magistrate and--the maximum was two years. The third magistrate saw his way to impressing himself,--“Make it six months,” he said. The Chairman agreed with him, until Colonel Vero said, “I should give him a year.” That shocked him. “It'll take a long time for it to blow over, you know,” he whispered to Fortnaby, who smiled and shrugged. “I don't suppose six will hurt him. He'll be able to write after a bit.” “Ingram will go abroad, you know,” said Mr. Bazalguet. “Did you happen to know the--party?” Fortnaby looked up quickly. “I? Oh, dear no. But I gather that the less we say the better. It was not an ordinary servant.” Mr. Weir, the third magistrate, said, “A lady, I hear;” but his colleagues ignored him. Then they all sat up, and the Clerk sank into the well.

“Clyde,” said Mr. Bazalguet, “you will have to go to prison for three months, with hard labour. I hope this will be a warning to you. I do indeed.”

The prisoner was removed amid murmurs. There was some cheering outside the court--at which Ingram grimly smiled. But he was very pale, and did not leave the Sessions house until late in the afternoon. Old Mr. Bazalguet was very cool with him after court. He grunted when they met in the hall. “You go abroad?” he asked him. Ingram said, it was probable.