BOOK I

CLARE

June, 1903--April, 1907

I

On the evening of June 23rd, 1852, Old Dick Hammond, then still known as Young Dick, locked the door of the little oil-shop, dropped the key in his pocket, and turned westward up Middle Street in Marshington. Beyond the village, black against the sunset, a broken windmill crowned the swelling hill, even as the hill crowned Marshington.

"One day," he vowed to himself, "my son shall marry a lady and build a house on Miller's Rise."

It was typical of Dick that he made his vow before the first sack had been sold from the factory that eventually brought to him his moderate fortune. Yet more typical was the promptitude with which he forestalled his son and began himself to build the house at Miller's Rise. When Young Arthur Hammond rode to Market Burton to court Rachel Bennet, a house stood already prepared and waiting for his lady. Whatever other objections the Bennet family might have raised against Rachel's lover, at least they could not deny that he was offering her the finest home in Marshington.

Fifteen years after Arthur's wedding, the house was more than a mere dwelling place. Wind and rain had dimmed the aggressive yellow of the brick walls, half covered now by ivy and the spreading fans of ampelopsis. The tender olive and faint silver-green of lichens had crept across the slates roofing the shallow gables. The smooth lawn sloping to the laurel hedge along the road, the kitchen garden overstocked until it suffered from perennial indigestion, the stiff borders by the drive, wherein begonias, lobelia and geraniums were yearly planted out, regardless of expense; all these testified that the vows of Old Dick Hammond had been fulfilled in no grudging spirit.

"Eleven bedrooms, three real good sitting-rooms, and no making up for lost space on the kitchens," Dick had declared. "When you go in for bricks and mortar, go handsome. It's a good investment. Houses _is_ summat."

The house had been something more than the symbol of Old Dick's fulfilment. It had been the fortress from which Rachel Hammond had advanced with patient fortitude to recapture the social ground that she had forfeited by marrying Dick Hammond's son. Old Dick had mercifully died. When his continued existence became the sole obstacle to the fulfilment of his vow, nature performed her last service to him and removed it.

The death of her father-in-law had made it a little easier for Rachel Hammond to live down the origin of his son, but even by 1903 she still spoke with deference to Mrs. Marshall Gurney, and never passed the new store on the site of the old oil-shop without a shudder. She kept her difficulties to herself, and no one but her sister Beatrice knew how great at times had been the travail of her soul. Beatrice alone stood by her when she ignored the early callers from the Avenue and the Terrace. No small amount of courage had enabled a young bride to refuse the proffered friendship of auctioneers' wives and the Nonconformist section of the village, when refusal might have meant perpetual isolation. Old Dick Hammond had been a mighty witness before the Lord among the Primitives; but for a whole year of nerve-racking anxiety his daughter-in-law sat in the new house that he had built, awaiting the calls of that Upper Marshington to whom Church was a symbol of social salvation, and Chapel of more than ecclesiastical Nonconformity.

Beatrice alone supported Mrs. Hammond when she carried the war into the enemies' camp by inviting a formidable series of Bennet relatives, Market Burton acquaintances, and Barlow cousins to purify the social atmosphere of Miller's Rise. Sunday after Sunday these invincible reserves appeared in the Hammond pew. The success of that campaign had been slow but solid, and Mrs. Hammond, sitting in her elm-shadowed garden on this summer afternoon bowed in gracious but satisfactory acknowledgment to the hand that waved from Mrs. Waring's carriage, rolling handsomely along the road.

She put down her sewing and gazed dreamily beyond the garden. The air was heavy with sweet summer sounds and scents, melting together into a murmurous fragrance; the breath of the wind on new-mown grass, the cooing of doves, the sleepy orchestra of bees. On the upper stretch of lawn the two little girls, Muriel and Connie, were making a restless pretence at lessons with the governess, Miss Dyson.

Mrs. Hammond paused in her work, a faint frown on her smooth forehead. Then she spoke, to herself rather than to her sister:

"Mrs. Cartwright said yesterday that Mrs. Waring is sending Adelaide to school."

"School?" echoed Beatrice. Having been offered no clue yet, she knew not whether to approve or to decry. Seventeen years spent as the one unmarried daughter of a large family had taught Beatrice Bennet that she existed only upon other people's sufferance. Since her parents had died, she passed her time in a continual succession of visits from one brother or sister to another, paying for their hospitality by lending her approval, such as it was, to register or to confirm their own opinions.

Mrs. Hammond had not hitherto expressed her opinion on the subject of schools. Beatrice could therefore only wait and listen.

"To school?" she repeated, as her sister kept silence. "Did she say to which school?"

"She was uncertain." Mrs. Hammond resumed her sewing. Her plump, white hands with round, beautifully-polished nails, conveyed in repose a deceptive impression of gentle ineffectiveness. Directly she began to hem, inserting and withdrawing her needle with sharp, decisive movements, the flashing diamonds on her finger cut through the idle softness of that first impression. Her hands never fluttered uncertainly above her work. She moved directly to the achievement of her aim, or she kept still. Just now she sewed, with rapid ease, a petticoat for Connie.

"Connie's hard on her things," she observed. "You'd hardly believe how fast she grows, and then she tears them like a great tom-boy." She sighed, clipping off a thread with her sharp scissors. "Mrs. Waring seems to be thinking of York for Adelaide."

"There are good schools in York," suggested Beatrice.

"Well, there's the Red Manor School. Miss Burdass is a lady. Daisy and Marjorie are going there, and now perhaps Adelaide. But I'm not sure."

"Mrs. Marshall Gurney's little girl still has a governess, hasn't she?" suggested Beatrice with a helpful air.

Mrs. Hammond's eyes turned for one instant to the drooping figure of Miss Dyson, now trailing wearily towards the house.

"Mrs. Marshall Gurney found a treasure in Miss Evans," she remarked dryly. "I have already tried five for the children. You know that; but they seem to be either feeble sorts of creatures like this Miss Dyson or pert young minxes like that Porter girl. Mrs. Marshall Gurney hasn't got to deal with Arthur."

Mrs. Hammond never alluded directly to those other troubles of her married life unconnected with her husband's social position; but Beatrice nodded now in perfect comprehension. With a spinster's licence, she always believed the worst of husbands.

"Besides," her sister continued, "it's not only governesses. I was talking it over last night with Mr. Hammond." She called her husband Mr. Hammond sometimes from habit, because her subconscious mind recognized that conversation with Beatrice was conversation with an inferior, and prompted her accordingly. "He agreed with me that the girls must go somewhere where they'll make nice friends. After all, there are really very few nice people round Kingsport."

Beatrice followed her sister's glance beyond the flat meadows to where Kingsport lay veiled in a light haze from the river Leame. The city rose so slightly from the fields and gardens that its silver houses gleamed like a pool of mercury poured on stretched green cloth, leaving little drops and flattened balls before it had rolled together Marshington, Danes, Kepplethorpe, and Swanfield over on the pale horizon.

"I have to think of the future," Mrs. Hammond remarked.

Her sister nodded.

"Have you decided, then?"

"I did mention Heathcroft to Arthur. Mrs. Hancock's school is not very large, but the dear Bishop recommends it, and I understand that even the Setons of Edenthorpe thought of sending their little girls there."

"The Setons. Now, let me see, aren't they some connection of the Neales?"

"Mrs. Neale was a Miss Henessey, and the Henesseys are cousins to the West Riding Setons."

All Bennets had the gift of tracing genealogies by faith rather than by sight. A naive confidence in the magic of Birth dignified a curiosity that arose not from snobbishness alone.

A shadow fell across the lawn, darkening the upturned daisy-faces at their feet.

"Well, well, well! Gossiping your heads off as usual, you two women?" boomed Mr. Hammond's hearty voice.

They turned and looked up to where his figure dominated them, ponderous, aggressive, radiating heat and energy. Arthur Hammond had driven from the mill, but his great legs were encased from the knees downwards in leather gaiters, and from the knees upwards in vast checked breeches. His face was crimson, and his thick, darkly red hair damp with perspiration. He wiped his head and whiskers with a blue silk handkerchief, smoothing carefully into shape the heavy moustache of which he was inordinately proud. He beamed contentedly upon his women.

"Well, Mrs. H., how's tricks?"

His wife flushed slightly at the vulgarity of his phrase, even while she felt, faintly across a gulf of disenchantment, the fascination of his great virility.

"We have been discussing a school for the children, Arthur," she said, her pretty voice as usual reacting with increased gentility in his presence. "Beatrice agrees with me that Hardrascliffe has many advantages."

"Bee knows a thing or two, what? Well, Mrs. H., I leave it to you. I make the cash, Bee, but I let my wife do the spending."

It was true. His faith in her perspicacity was absolute. His offences against her womanhood had never dimmed his appreciation of her wisdom.

"You really think that it would be the best thing, Arthur?" Mrs. Hammond asked, with an assumption of deference only permitted when she had already made up her mind.

"Ay, ay. Do what ye will with the lasses. If they'd 'a been lads, I might ha' had sommat to say."

He lowered his great bulk slowly into the third garden chair. The little girls came running across the daisied lawn, Connie dancing ahead, Muriel following more sedately. Though she was fourteen, Muriel still looked a child in her short holland dress and round straw hat.

"Father, Father," shrilled Connie. "When did you come home? Have you been to Kingsport? How did the new bay mare go?"

They were singularly alike, Arthur Hammond and his younger daughter. He smiled down at her with fond assurance.

"She went like old Miss Deale goes when she sees the curate coming round t' corner."

"What do you mean, father? How does she go?"

"Arthur, I wish that you wouldn't say such things before the children," reproved his wife's sweet voice.

He laughed enormously, putting his hand out and drawing Connie closer to him, and thinking what a jolly thing it was to be sitting in his pleasant garden with the day's work done, and an evening of uninterrupted domesticity before him.

"Ay, Connie," he asked, "how would you like to go to school, eh? At Hardrascliffe with old Mrs. Hancock, who'd beat you like anything if you're a bad girl?"

"Oh, Father!" Connie glowed rapturously, understanding exactly how far his threats were serious.

Muriel stood quietly before them, her slim hands clasped, her grave eyes contemplative. She saw the sun lighting the pale brown of her mother's hair to the soft shadow of gold. She saw the deep blue of her aunt's flowing skirt against the speckled green and white of the unmown stretch of lawn. She saw her father and sister, their two red heads together, plotting some game of boisterous childishness that was peculiarly theirs. She saw the wind among the lime trees tumbling their leaves to delicate patterns of green light and shade.

Her wide eyes narrowed with the intensity of her secret thought.

"Mother," she asked unexpectedly, "do you suppose that there are many families in Marshington as happy as we are?"

A faint shadow crossed her mother's face, like a wind-blown cloud across a flower. Then she answered with the gentleness that she reserved especially for her children.

"Well, dear, I hope that many families are happy."

But Mr. Hammond, thrusting Connie aside, clapped his hand against his thigh and guffawed loudly. "Well, if that doesn't beat everything. That's a real good 'un, that is. A happy family, well, well, well. Which puts me in mind, Bee, did you ever hear tell of Bob Hickson and _his_ happy family?"

Beatrice, part of whose profession it was to have heard no tale before, gathered her scattered wits to give attention. Connie, bored by the prospect of a tale that she had heard before, danced off among the grass and buttercups; but Muriel, who had put her question seriously, stood patiently watching, a little puzzled, a little rebuffed, a little sad.

II

So Muriel was sent to cultivate suitable friendships under the guidance of Mrs. Hancock. Because she believed that school was a place where one learnt things, she had been pleased to go. She wanted to draw, to paint, to play the piano as no one before had played it. Most of all, she wanted to learn about Higher Mathematics and the Stars. Muriel felt rather vague about the exact meaning of Higher Mathematics. But she knew that she found in figures a sober and unfailing delight. They slid through her mind like water, separating easily into their factors, uniting quickly for multiples and additions, revealing their possibilities at a glance as a clear pool reveals the pebbles below its water. Then in figures lay a comforting assurance of absolute truth. In a world where Muriel was beginning to suspect that most conclusions were at best a compromise, she found triumphant satisfaction in the unquestionable certainty that, in all places and at all times, two and two made four.

At Marshington, Muriel's odd tastes had been discouraged. At school, she felt assured that she would reach her heart's desire. She would make wonderful friendships, win all the prizes, filling her beautiful mother's heart with pride, and Heathcroft with the glory of her triumphs.

Before a week had passed, she began to make discoveries. First, with a dull ache of disappointment, she found that school was not so different from Marshington after all; indeed, in a queer way the new place seemed to be more familiar than her home, as the type may be more familiar than the individual. At home, for instance, her mother said, "Muriel, I wish that you would keep the school-room cupboard a little tidier." At school untidiness became a crime, to be punished by order marks, to the disgrace of the whole form or bedroom. The accidental regulations of Marshington life were shaken out of their environment and transformed into infallible rules.

For Mrs. Hancock had been a wise woman when she founded her private school for girls at Hardrascliffe. Opening in business an eye to the main chance that she would have closed in private life, she realized that a head mistress has to make a choice. Generations are like divinities, and he who is not for them is against them. A school must be run either for the parents or for the children. As a business woman, Mrs. Hancock knew that the parents who pay the bills are the indispensable factor of success. She also knew that, for most of her parents, the unacknowledged aim of education was to teach their children to be a comfort to them. And how could a child be a comfort to parents whom she makes uncomfortable? Mrs. Hancock determined that no education received in her school should be responsible for this disaster.

Possibly these considerations influenced her when, during her first term, Muriel unexpectedly asked for an interview. In response to her "Come in, my dear," a small shy person stood before her, whose slight figure was tense with a tremendous effort of courage.

"Well, Muriel?" Mrs. Hancock smiled, with that famous motherly manner so much praised among her parents.

"Mrs. Hancock----" hesitated Muriel. Her temerity was born of deep desire. "You said that those of us who wanted to learn special subjects and things--extras--might come and ask you."

"Well, dear, I don't remember, though, that your mother said---- Now, let me see, where is her letter?" Mrs. Hancock searched among the orderly papers on her desk. "I don't remember that she asked for you to learn any extras, except dressmaking, perhaps, if it fitted in to your time-table."

"It wasn't Mother. It's me." Muriel groped her way to an untutored request. "I want--please, may I have lessons on Astronomy?"

"Astronomy?" Mrs. Hancock gasped. "My dear child, what are you talking about?"

Muriel, whose opinion of the wisdom of all grown-ups was sublimely high, did not take it upon herself to explain. She only protested fervently that she wanted to, always had wanted to, know more about the stars, and to do calculations and things. It must be confessed that it all sounded rather silly. The triumphant thing, the towering audacity of her desire, collapsed into the futility of ruined hopes. She felt that the tears were coming. Her unique adventure beyond habitual self-effacement was going to fail. She gazed appealingly at the head mistress.

Then, with a kindliness that Muriel found consoling even though it sounded the death knell to her hopes, Mrs. Hancock explained how there were some things that it was not suitable for girls to learn. Astronomy, the science of the stars, was a very instructive pursuit for astronomers, and professors (these latter being evidently a race apart), but it was not one of those things necessary for a girl to learn. "How will it help you, dear, when you, in your future life, have, as I hope, a house to look after? If you really want to take up an extra, I will write to your mother about the dressmaking. You are quite clever with your fingers, I think, and though it is usual to begin a little later, perhaps----"

"But, but----" Muriel began. She knew now quite certainly that she had resolved to become a great mathematician. She was not quite sure what this involved, nor could she trace her resolution to the day when she first read _The Life of Mary Somerville_ in the _Lives of Fine Women_ Series. She was certain that fate held for her something more exciting than dressmaking lessons, and yet her initial failure sapped her courage. She resigned herself to the wisdom of Mrs. Hancock.

Whatever doubts Muriel might have felt about that wisdom, Mrs. Hancock had none. Acceptance of the conclusions reached by experienced and older people, Muriel was told, was one of the first lessons to be learnt by rash, unthinking youth. One day Muriel would laugh at her childish fancies. She did not want to be considered different from other girls, did she? Mrs. Hancock had noticed with regret a tendency to hold herself aloof, to be a little odd. That should not be. Muriel must learn to conform to the standards of other, wiser people. One day she would be grateful to Mrs. Hancock.

Muriel, of course, was grateful. She failed to explain to her head mistress that her aloofness was not of her own making; but she had learnt her lesson. She never again asked Mrs. Hancock for anything until she said good-bye to her on her last day at school.

And yet that interview affected her life more deeply than she might have guessed. For at the dressmaking classes, Muriel met Clare.

III

It happened during Muriel's second term. She sat in the big school-room, opposite to the door that led up three steps into the hall. The dressmaking class was half over, and Muriel, while her fingers carefully tacked gathered nun's veiling, allowed her thoughts to dance away as usual into a delightful day-dream. Always at this time Muriel used her leisure moments to compose the next instalment of a secret serial history of which she was the heroine. In her dreams, her failures and timidities slipped from her. She became fascinating and audacious. Mistress of life, surrounded by adoring friends, she stood triumphant, poised on the threshold of some great adventure.

At the moment, having rescued the head girl, Rosalie Crook, from a terrible death by drowning, Muriel, still pale and dripping, was received upon the storm-swept sea-shore into the magic circle of "Them," the great ones. "They" were the élite, the prefects and the games captains, the popular and famous, surrounded by the ineffable prestige of tradition-making youth. Yet Rosalie, with tear-filled eyes, bent forward to her companions. "Did you know," she cried, "that Muriel has often been lonely and neglected? Do you know that she has lived in hourly dread of croc-walks, for fear lest she should not have a partner; that she has shrunk in terror from Speech Day, in case no one should ask her to sit next them? That she has been at school two terms, but nobody has asked her to be their friend? Who will be her friend now? I, for one, would have liked that honour, girls, that honour." Her voice quivered with emotion as They, with one accord, rose to claim the friendship of Muriel Hammond. The raging wind swept their ringing voices out to sea, as . . . the door opened and Mrs. Hancock entered, followed by Clare Duquesne.

Muriel rose obediently with the rest of the class, according to the Heathcroft rule of courtesy, but afterwards the action appeared as the natural result of instinctive allegiance to the triumphant personality, not of the head mistress, but of Clare.

Clare stood at the top of the three steps, smiling down at the class, not shyly, not stupidly, but with an assured and indestructible friendliness. She was as much mistress of the situation as a famous actress who has entered amid deafening applause to take her call. Not beautiful, but with the confidence of beauty, not tall, but with a radiant suggestion of height, Clare was utterly unlike anything that Muriel had seen before. From the surprising bow upon her sleek brown hair, to the shining buckles on her trim brown shoes, from her odd short dress of pleated tartan to the frill of muslin round her firm young neck, she defied all Marshington and Hardrascliffe conventions of the proper attire for young girls of fifteen. Wholesome as an apple, tranquil as a September morning, and unmysterious as a glass of water, she yet held for Muriel all mystery and all enchantment. From that moment, without calculation or condition, Muriel gave her heart to Clare Duquesne.

"Now, girls," announced Mrs. Hancock. She never called her pupils "young ladies," having informed their parents that this savoured of middle-class gentility. They, anxious to fling off the least suspicion of resemblance to the class to which they almost all belonged, had approved with emphasis. "Now, girls, I want you to make room in your class for Clare Duquesne. She has come unexpectedly in the middle of the term because her mother has been called to the South of France on account of her father's health. I want you therefore to be specially kind to her, and to give her a pleasant welcome, as I know that you will."

Having made her speech, Mrs. Hancock prepared to withdraw, but this surprising Clare forestalled her.

"Thank you immensely," she said in her clipped, precise voice, speaking as though English were a well-known yet foreign language to her. "It is very kind of you to take so much trouble over me. But," she bubbled with laughter, the dimples quivering in her rounded cheek, "I have no talent with my needle. Félix bet me five francs that I would never learn even to sew on a button."

Mrs. Hancock, slightly surprised, but still benevolently gracious, smiled kindly. "And who is Félix, Clare?"

"Félix? Didn't you know? He's my father." She turned to the class with an engaging air of frankness. "You know, Mamma and I always call him Félix, because she hates to hear me say Mamma or Papa. It makes her feel her age, she says, and when you are on the stage it is a crime to feel your age--on account of the dear public, is it not so?"

Clare's voice deepened to the rich intonation of Sophie O'Hallaghan, the charming Irish-American actress who had married the half-brother of Lord Powell of Eppleford, and who was, incidentally, Clare's mother.

Mrs. Hancock had not intended to divulge the profession of Clare's mother. It was, she considered, the approval of the dear Bishop always in her mind, a delicate subject upon which one might have expected Clare to preserve a little reticence. Especially since Félix Duquesne had been considerate enough to write his distinguished but embarrassing French prose in--French, and was, through his family connections, of unprecedented value as a parent. But Clare knew no more of reticence than a lark on a spring morning or a kettle on the boil. She saw no reason for Mrs. Hancock's sudden stiffness, and continued to smile at her with complete urbanity.

"Well, Clare," replied the head mistress, "I think that perhaps while you are at school you had better refer to your father by his proper title. Is there an empty place, Miss Reeve, for Clare? Now girls, go on with your work. There is no reason for you to let Clare's arrival interrupt it. You can continue just the same."

She swept from the room, masking a faint uneasiness behind her gracious majesty of deportment, but for the first time questioning her wisdom in admitting this new pupil.

In the school-room, however, Providence for once had favoured Muriel. The empty chair to which Clare was conducted by Miss Reeve was next to hers, and when Clare turned towards her with that dazzling smile Muriel knew, for all Mrs. Hancock might say, that things would never be quite the same for her again.

IV

The term after Clare's arrival Muriel lay in bed staring at the faint blur against the wall where Clare lay asleep. The room was dark and still, but near the pale translucent panels of the window the curtains stirred as though moved by the breathing of the seven girls.

The miracle that had led Clare to her on that first day still endured. Clare and Muriel slept in the same room. Of course that did not mean that they were friends. Clare had immediately marched with her cheerful serenity right into the most exclusive circle of the elect, of "Them." But to see Clare was an education; to speak with her a high adventure. To sleep in the same room with her, to see her bath-salts and her powder, only permitted at Heathcroft because she was her father's daughter, to touch her underclothing, embroidered in a Belgian convent--this was to live perpetually on the threshold of a marvellous world, removed by millions of miles from school or Marshington.

She was wonderful, this Clare Duquesne. At night Muriel would raise her head above the bed-clothes and try to tell herself that this was really true, that the world was large enough to hold people so different as Clare and Muriel. Muriel, for all her brave dreams, knew herself to be of those whose eager, clutching hands let slip prizes, friendships and achievement, as quickly as they grasp them. But Clare, lazy, careless, happy Clare, laughed when she made mistakes, was amused by her arithmetic, hopelessly confused by premature acquaintance with the metric system, cared nothing for her erratic spelling, and swung up her average of weekly marks by her staggering proficiency in languages. Her supremacy at singing and dancing cost her no more effort than the wearing of fine raiment cost the lilies of the field. Her French and German were more fluent than her clipped, accentuated English. She could swear in Spanish, order a dinner in Dutch, and write a love-letter in Italian. Impish as a street-urchin, sophisticated as a cocktail, fearless of life, loved by it and its lover, judging no man as no man judged her, she dazzled Heathcroft as a glorious, golden creature not wrought from common clay.

Muriel's heart went out to her in a great wave of adoration. Passionate emotion, stronger than any she had known, even on the hushed silver morning of her First Communion, filled her small body like a mighty wind.

"Oh, I would die for her," she breathed ecstatically. "O God, if you've planned anything awful to happen to Clare, let it happen to me instead. I could bear anything for her, even if she never knew how I cared. But do let me know her. Let me get to be her friend!"

Forlorn hope, thought Muriel next day, preparing reluctantly for the school walk. As usual the time was trapping her, and she had no partner. Life at Heathcroft being organized upon the partner system, this was Muriel's daily and hourly terror--to have no one to walk with, to be driven as an enforced intruder to walk with the last couple in the crocodile, to feel the checked resentment of the juniors upon whom she was thus imposed.

She stood in front of the small glass, pushing the elastic of her sailor hat beneath her long, brown plait, and thinking, "Well, there's one thing about Connie coming here next term. I'll never have to walk alone again." Which just showed how little at this time she knew her Connie.

Then she heard Clare's voice.

"Will you not walk with me, Muriel?"

Muriel gasped. She could not believe that Clare had spoken. But there was no other Muriel in the school, and no other voice like Clare's. Yet, Clare, who could walk with "Them," surely she would never ask Muriel? They never walked with those who were not of the elect. They would not so imperil their dignity. But, of course, Clare never bothered about her dignity. Years afterwards, when Muriel referred to "Them," Clare asked with interest, "Who were 'They'?" But when Muriel said, "Oh, you, and Rosalie and Cathie and Patricia. All the people who counted." Then Clare laughed. "Oh, was I one? How perfectly thrilling! And I never knew. What things we miss!" But now Muriel only blushed and asked: "I beg your pardon?"

"I haven't got a partner," Clare said. "Will you walk with me?"

Muriel, blushing and palpitating, answered, "If you like." Always, when she was profoundly moved, she became a little stiffer and more prim, not gauche, but prim, like a Victorian teapot, or a bit of sprigged muslin.

Clare never noticed. She was arranging her blue serge coat with the air of a mannequin trying on a Paris model.

"Would you mind holding my collar straight?" she asked.

They took their place in the crocodile.

All the way along the Esplanade Clare chattered. Muriel at the time was too much bewildered by her strange good fortune to remember everything that Clare was saying, but she retained a glowing impression of Clare skating outside a gay hotel in Switzerland, of Clare in a box at the Comédie Française, listening to one of her father's plays, of Clare crossing the Irish Channel in a ship, and being sea-sick all the way. It was perhaps the most unquestionable proof of Clare's attraction that even her sea-sickness became distinguished.

Before Muriel had said three words, the girls had reached the cliffs beyond the Esplanade. Beyond the asphalt and clipped box hedges of the Promenade, the cliffs sprawled untidily. They were not even real cliffs, but ragged slopes, overgrown with coarse grass and tamarisk, sprinkled with yarrow, and patched with stunted bushes of rusty gorse. Far below the tide crept up in circles, flat as paper, and washed back, dragging with white sickles at the shelving sand. The place had a deserted look, and Clare was bored.

"What shall we do now?" she asked obligingly, when Miss Reeve gave the order to break rank.

She waited for Muriel to entertain her.

"Oh, I'll do anything _you_ like," said Muriel fatally.

They strolled along the winding path. Abruptly to their right rose a steep rock, witness of the time before the landslide, when the cliffs had been cliffs. For fifteen feet it frowned above the way to the sands. Clare stood still, gazing at it in contemplative silence. Then she had an idea.

"Muriel," she suggested, "do let's see if we can climb that rock. No one can see us now. Miss Reeves's miles away. I'll go first. Come on, do."

Clare was like that. She never noticed natural things except as a potential background to her own action. But, having decided to act, she was prompt. She tore off her gloves and faced the rock. Muriel stood, suddenly smitten dumb by an agony of apprehension. But without looking back, Clare began to climb. Agile as a cat, she scrambled with firm hand-grips and burrowing toes, clutching at the sheer side of the rock and chuckling to herself.

"Clare! You can't. You'll fall. You'll be killed."

Muriel meant to cry out all these things, but somehow she said nothing. She only stood at the bottom of the rock while a sick numbness robbed her of her strength.

Then Clare was up. She swung herself easily on to the summit of the rock. Her figure was outlined against a windy sky. Her laughing face looked down at Muriel.

"It's glorious up here," she called. "But what a wind! I say, do come on, Muriel!"

Before she had thought what she was doing, Muriel began to climb.

"Whatever I do, I mustn't funk in front of Clare," she thought.

Her fingers tore at the sharp ledges of the rock. Her toes slipped on the uneven surface. She grasped at a brittle root of broom. It came away in her hand. She almost fell. Unused to climbing, blind with fear, she hardly saw the places for her hands to hold.

Clare, completely oblivious of her distress, stared calmly out to sea.

"Oh, Muriel, there's such a big steamer on the horizon. Do hurry up and tell me where it's going."

But Muriel could not hurry. She was beyond hope, beyond sight, almost beyond fear. For she had just remembered Freddy Mason's stories of the Ladder, and how the men carrying sacks up it had overbalanced and fallen to their doom, far in the yard below.

Her grasp loosened. Rock and sky swung round her. Her feet slipped on the narrow ledge.

She must not fail Clare; here was the time to test her courage.

Fear swooped upon her, tore her fingers from the rock, poured drops of perspiration on her forehead.

"Clare!" shrieked a voice that was not surely hers. "Clare, I'm slipping!"

Clare's round face appeared between the edge of the rock and the reeling sky. Clare's voice remarked imperturbably: "Oh, well, if you do fall you haven't far to go, so it won't hurt. But hold on a bit and I'll give you a hand."

She came over the edge again. Her solid, shapely ankles were on a level with Muriel's hat, her eyes. A firm hand reached down for Muriel's clutching, sticky one.

"That's all right. Come along. You've got a great dab of mud on your nose, Muriel."

She never faltered. Somehow they both scrambled over the edge. Muriel flung herself down on the short turf, too sick and humiliated to notice even Clare.

She had disgraced herself. She had failed. Her cowardice was flagrant. Far from conducting herself heroically, she had risked Clare's own safety because she was afraid. Far more than her nerve had failed then. Her confidence in her whole personality was shaken. Black with the unlit blackness of youth, the future stretched before her.

"Muriel"--when Clare pronounced her name it sounded warm and golden--"do you not think that the girls here are like children?"

Muriel opened her eyes and stared as if to discover some connection between this remark and her own disgraceful exhibition of childishness. But there was none. Clare, astounding, incalculable Clare, had not even noticed the tragedy of Muriel. She had taken it for granted that if you couldn't climb, you couldn't, and that was your affair. She continued meditatively:

"You must know what I mean, for you are different." Oh, glorious triumph! Mrs. Hancock forgotten, Muriel glowed at the delightful thought that she was different. "Have you not observed? How many of them have had _affaires de cœur_? But very few!"

"_Affaires de cœur_?" It is hard to grope with a meagre French vocabulary when one has just emerged from one physical and two spiritual crises. Affaires! Muriel's knowledge of Marshington phraseology assisted her. De Cœur--of the heart. Of course.

"Why, Clare, you can't mean being in love!"

"And why not?" asked Clare serenely. "I have had five affairs. There was the student at the Sorbonne, and the man who played with Mamma in New York, and my cousin Michael at Eppleford, and, and----"

"But were you in _love_ with them?"

"My dear child, no! Why should I be?"

"Then, how?"

"Dear me, _chérie_, have you never observed that I am very attractive?"

Her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous.

"What a solemn face! Muriel, do you ever smile? No, no, I shan't fall in love for years. Perhaps never. But crowds and crowds of men will fall in love with me. That's why Félix decided that I had better come to school. 'They're beginning too soon,' he said. 'You mustn't cut out your mother yet, child.' And he sighed. He's terribly sentimental, my Félix. I'm sure I didn't mind. On the whole it bores me. Men in love are so terribly alike, I think, don't you?"

Fascinating, incredible conversation!

"Of course, really, I'm rather grateful to Félix," Clare continued sagely. "It's no use getting it all over too soon. And of course one day one might go too far, and really I don't want to marry yet, however rich he was. What do you think?"

"But, Clare, do--do men fall in love with _all_ women if we let them?"

"Why, of course. Else why be a woman?" Clare responded with tranquility. "Of course there are some, poor dears, like Miss Reeve, I suppose, and most schoolmistresses, and missionaries, and things, but they are hardly _women_, are they?"

"I--I don't know. I----"

Somehow, it must be confessed, Muriel had always thought of these unfortunates as women. That merely showed her terrible simplicity. With a sigh, she pondered over her ignorance of Life.

"Oh, Muriel, do look at Miss Reeve coming up the path!" Clare darted forward and peered over the edge of the rock. The young lady from the Swiss hotel, the sophisticated philosopher on Life, had vanished. The Irish urchin, impish, grinning, disreputable, took her place. "Do just watch her hat bobbing along the path! It's as round as a soup plate. Why do people wear such hats? It should be forbidden by law. Here, hand me one of those little stones. Quick!"

Unthinking and hypnotized, Muriel obeyed.

Plop! went the stone, right into the middle of Miss Reeve's round hat. Clare was back behind the rock.

"Oh, Clare, she'll see you," agonized Muriel.

Clare chuckled. "She won't. I never get found out."

But for once she was wrong. Her crimson scarf, blown by the wind, waved a bright pennon from the rock. Nobody else at Heathcroft wore such a scarf.

"Clare Duquesne, Clare Duquesne!" Miss Reeve's shrill voice was ripped to ribbons of sound by the wind.

Clare leant down, smiling benignly upon the furious lady on the path. "You called?" she inquired politely.

"What are you doing there? Come down! How dare you?"

"How dare I come down? Well, it does look rather steep. I'm not sure that we can _this_ way," pondered Clare, her head on one side.

"Don't deliberately misunderstand me. Who threw that stone?"

"The stone?" Clare's innocent voice repeated, but Muriel knew that the situation was growing serious. With the ardent heroism of a martyr, she flung herself into the breach--in other words, her head appeared over the rock by the side of Clare. Desire to serve her beloved had vanquished fear, hesitation and conscientiousness.

"It wasn't Clare's fault, Miss Reeve," she called. "We were trying to get to the other path, and--and I slipped, and that set some stones rattling down, and Clare came to stop me falling, and I do hope that nobody's hurt."

Relieved to find that this was not a situation requiring to be dealt with by a major punishment, an embarrassing ordeal at the best of times, devastating when the culprit was Clare Duquesne, Miss Reeve contented herself with a haughty stare.

"I do not think that you two have been behaving very nicely. It is not ladylike to climb these high rocks, and I am sure that it is dangerous. Please come down at once, both of you."

It was impossible to scold two heads detached from bodies, appearing from the sky like cherubs from a Christmas card cloud. Muriel and Clare withdrew.

Safely back behind the rock, Clare chuckled delightedly.

"I didn't know you had it in you, Muriel; that was quite magnificent."

But Muriel, to her own surprise as much as Clare's, suddenly began to cry, aloud and helplessly, like a little child.

"But, Muriel, _chérie_, what is the matter?"

"I don't know. I'm so sorry to be so stupid. I think--I--you know, I didn't mean to tell a lie. It just came out."

"You? What? Is that all? But you didn't. We _were_ going to the lower path--sometime. And that stone _was_ loosened with your foot. And you did slip. That wasn't a lie. It was a stroke of genius."

Then, with a sudden access of delighted interest, Clare turned upon Muriel.

"My dear, is it possible that you have a temperament? And I never guessed it. But how very odd. I should not have thought it somehow. It just shows that you never can tell. And I _have_ been so bored with these suet dumplings of girls." _Them_! The elect and sacred "Them" suet dumplings! Muriel forgot her tears. "Although I, thank heaven, I have no temperament myself. That is why Félix says that I shall never be a singer."

She flashed her dazzling smile upon the embarrassment of Muriel, who, resolutely determined to acquire a temperament--whatever this might be--immediately, was returning thanks to a benevolent providence who sends success to people in spite of their own failures.

V

Friendships at Heathcroft should usually be registered, like births, deaths, and marriages, with all due publicity and certitude. It was just like Muriel that, right up to the moment of leaving school, she should never know whether she could really call herself Clare's friend.

She stood on the platform, waiting for the arrival of the York train that was to carry Clare off to London, Leipzig, singing lessons and Fame. Clare, radiant, blossoming already into a young lady in a hat sent by her mamma from Paris, smiled serenely from the carriage window down at Muriel.

"Au revoir," she laughed. Her rich voice lightly dropped the words for Muriel to take up or to leave as she would. Clare did not care.

"Good-bye, Clare," Muriel replied solemnly. She made no fuss about it, for that would have been cheek, as though she had some right to mind saying good-bye. "I hope that you will have a good time in Germany. I expect that when I see you again you will be a famous singer. But don't forget that if ever you _should_ want to stay in Yorkshire we should love to have you at Miller's Rise."

"Oh, thank you, _chérie_, I shall not forget."

She smiled and waved her hand, tossing back to Muriel, like a fallen flower, the invitation that had cost such terrific courage to propose. But Muriel rushed away to her own carriage on the local line to Kingsport with a sense of desolation that ached sullenly beneath the excitement of being grown-up at last.

Because Muriel did not much care for babies, they pursued her in railway trains and buses with relentless faithfulness. The carriage into which she hurled herself after Connie's vanishing figure was hot and overcrowded, and directly opposite to Muriel sat a baby, wriggling on its mother's knee, its mouth smeared with chocolate and crumbs of biscuits.

"Disgusting," thought Muriel. "How like Connie to choose a carriage full of babies." For Connie was at this time indiscriminately friendly, always scraping acquaintance with babies, all crumbs and chocolate, or puppies, all smells and fleas. And now, because of her lack of sensitiveness, Muriel at this crisis in her life had to endure a slow train, where at every station people with baskets crowded in upon her, even more hurriedly than her own overwhelming emotions. Connie would come by this train, because it arrived at Marshington half an hour before the express, and Muriel always tried to be unselfish. She might have guessed what it would be like, for circumstances never had much reverence for her feelings. Perhaps that was why she had come to think that they did not much matter herself.

The world was all right. It was she who was wrong, caring for all the wrong things. She could not, however hard she tried, stop herself from loving Clare, though passionate friendships between girls had been firmly discouraged by the sensible Mrs. Hancock. Their intimacy, she considered, was usually silly and frequently disastrous. If carried too far, it even wrecked all hope of matrimony without offering any satisfaction in return. Love was a useful emotion ordained by God and regulated by society for the propagation of the species; or else it inspired sometimes the devotion of a daughter to a mother, or a parent to a child. It could even be extended to a relative, such as a cousin or an aunt. Or in a somewhat diluted form it might embrace Humanity, engendering a vague Joan-of-Arc-Florence-Nightingale-Mrs.-Beecher-Stowish philanthropy, to which Muriel aspired faintly, but without much hope of realization. But Love between two girls was silly sentiment. By loving Clare, Muriel knew that she had been guilty of extreme foolishness. And she wanted so much to be good.

The words of Mrs. Hancock's farewell interview returned to her through the smoke-laden atmosphere of the train. "My dear, to-morrow you are going to take your place in the world outside your school, and there are one or two things that I want you to remember. I believe that sometimes you girls laugh at those words of Kingsley's, 'Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever,' but they contain a great truth, Muriel. Character, my dear, to be a fine womanly woman, that matters so much more than intellectual achievement. To serve first your parents, then, I hope, your husband and your children, to be pure, unselfish and devoted, that is my prayer for each one of my girls." Mrs. Hancock coughed. She had repeated this little homily so often that she did not hesitate for words, and yet now and then, unguessed by her hearers, would come a moment of wistful doubting whether this message contained the final expression of her wisdom. Below her worldly wisdom, Mrs. Hancock, like Muriel, wanted to be good. "I want you to remember the school motto, dear, '_Læta sorte mea_,' Happy in my lot. God will, I hope, give you happiness, but if He chooses to send you disappointment and sorrow you will, I hope, resign yourself to His dear will."

Forget? How could Muriel forget? It had been so sweetly solemn. A vast desire seized upon her then to serve, to be devoted, to be faithful. Sometimes at the early service she had knelt in the dim chancel, and thought the fluttering candle flames above the altar to be stirred by the soft breathing of the Holy Ghost. Then, too, she had prayed with passionate ardour for self-abnegation and for service. But last night the desire had swept upon her with rushing, mighty wings, and she had stood gazing into Mrs. Hancock's face with eloquent eyes, and murmuring, "I will try. I will try."

Connie's strident voice swung Muriel back from the dream of life to its business:

"Did you say that his name was Tommie? That's a nice name, isn't it? Tommie, Tom! No, my sister isn't fond of babies."

"Oh, I am," protested Muriel, always ready to sacrifice her tastes to other people's feelings. "Sometimes," she added, respectful to the truth. Her appealing eye sought those of the baby's mother, who nodded understandingly.

"Lor, bless you! I know. A bit scared of 'em, eh? You wait till you've had eight on 'em like me. Then a bairn's neither here nor there as the saying goes. Ah've got six an' buried two, dearie me, but Ivy's in service now, so I'm not complaining. The Lord's will be done, as I says to Mrs. Dalton, who's had fourteen. The Lord's will be done so long as He don't overdo it."

"Of course," smiled Muriel shyly, feeling somehow that the answer was inadequate.

Was that really the end of it all? Six alive and two buried, and the Lord's will being done, while one's face grew florid and coarse, with a network of purplish veins across the cheek, and days and nights passed in an endless race to keep abreast with small domestic duties?

Life's not like that. Life's not like that, vowed Muriel. Fiercely she fought this sense of inexorable doom for the salvation of her dreams. Surely God made the world most beautiful, and set within it to delight man's heart music, and lingering scents, and the clear light of dawn through leafless trees. To teach man the holiness of law, He set the stars to ride their courses; for patience, He showed the slow fertility of earth; for wisdom, He granted an eternal hunger that would snatch its secret from the lightning, and their riddle from the tombs of ancient men. He gave man beauty of body, and delight in swift, free, movement. He gave him friendship, and the joy of service. And, lest these things should be too sweet, and cloy with sweetness, He gave him danger, that man might know the glory of adventure. And, lest man should grow weary in his wandering, God gave the last and deepest mercy, Death.

Not quite in definite words, Muriel thought this, but somehow her heart told her that Life was this joyous, regal journey. She was grown up. The whole world lay before her. The great adventure, which just must end right, was about to begin.

She raised her hand to feel the long plait falling between her narrow shoulders. Soon there would be a cold feeling at the back of her neck. Her hair would be twisted up below her hat. Did being grown up really make such a difference?

The train jerked on. Beyond the window the flat, dun country slid past wearily. Hot July fields, ripening into dusty yellow for the harvest, paddocks dried to rusted fawn, hundreds and hundreds of allotments, variegated as a patchwork quilt, speckled with crazy tool sheds, seamed with straight dykes, splashed here and there with the silver-green of cabbages, or the faded motley of a wilted border of July flowers--this was the country that surrounded Marshington. After the ringing splendor of the wind-swept wolds, the stale flatness of the plain seemed doubly depressing.

But Muriel was not depressed. Marshington to her was not a select residential suburb of Kingsport, compensating for its ugliness by its respectability. It was the threshold of life, the gateway to a brimming, lovely world, whence she might start upon a thousand strange adventures. Its raw, red villas were transfigured. Its gardens glowed to meet her. When she could see from the right-hand window the elm-crowned hill of Miller's Rise, her excitement almost choked her.

She leaned back in her seat, half wishing that she need never rise, but Connie darted to the window.

"I say, Mu, hadn't we better pull the bags down? Look out! There's your tennis racket. Where's my book box? My book box, Mu? Good-bye, Tommie, bye-bye! See, Muriel, he's ta-ing his little hand at us! Isn't he an angel? Oh, there's Father! Cooee, father, cooee! We're here! We're here!"

VI

It really mattered. To have a belt that fastened trimly on to one's new serge skirt, a safety-pin that under no circumstances would expose itself to public view, a straw hat that sat jauntily (so long as it was not _too_ jaunty) upon one's piled up hair, all these things meant more than just "being tidy."

Being grown up was puzzling. It seemed to make no difference at all in most things, and then to matter frightfully in quite unexpected ways. It meant, for instance, not so much the assumption of new duties as the acceptance of new values.

Was she more stupid than other people, or did every one feel like this at first? She was travelling in a land of which she only imperfectly understood the language. Would she learn gradually, as one learnt French at Heathcroft, or would the new significance of things suddenly flash out at her, like the meaning of a cipher when one has found the key?

"My dear child, you were never thinking of going to the Club with _that_ terrible handkerchief? You must have a linen one. Scent? No, I think not for a young girl. It seems a little fast, I think, Beatrice, don't you? And whatever happens, a girl in her first season must not give people the impression that she is fast."

People. People. Until she had grown up, Muriel had been woefully ignorant of how important People were. At Heathcroft, if you were naughty, you offended God. At Marshington, if you were "queer" you offended People. Perhaps the lesser offence was noticed by the lesser deity, and yet the eye of the All-Seeing could hardly have been more observant than the eye of People, who measured worth by the difference between a cotton and a linen handkerchief.

Muriel was going for the first time to the Recreation Club since she had left school. Connie, who, being still a schoolgirl, cared for none of these things, walked beside her in sulky silence. She disliked the Club, because, as a junior member, she could only sit on the Pavilion steps to watch the sedate activities of her elders.

The Club being on the north-west side of Marshington, the Hammonds had about half a mile to walk from Miller's Rise, a half-mile which Mrs. Hammond improved by final injunctions to her daughter.

"The first time is so important, dear," she said.

By the time that they had reached the wire-topped gate, Muriel was in a state of frigid and self-conscious terror. In a dream she followed her mother's lilac-coloured linen across the wide grass path to the Pavilion, wondering whether she ought to smile at Mrs. Lane, and whether her hat was straight, and whether that terrible pin was showing yet above her skirt. But at last she was seated safely on the steps with Connie, while Mrs. Hammond was swept away by Mrs. Cartwright for a game of croquet. She sat quite still, waiting for the familiarity of the things she saw to remove the strangeness of her new attitude towards them. At least she could play her old game of Watching People, a game made doubly thrilling by the realization that now she, too, was one of the grown-ups. That thought amused her a little as she listened to Mrs. Marshall Gurney's rich, authoritative voice in conversation with Colonel Cartwright. Absurd that Muriel should now be grown up-like Colonel Cartwright! He was not a real colonel, Mrs. Hammond had once said. He had made lots of money by manufacturing soap. (Was soap more vulgar than sacks? Father made sacks.) But he had taken advantage of the Volunteer Movement to win a bloodless victory over the more exclusive circles of Marshington. Even Mrs. Marshall Gurney, who would hardly otherwise have known the creator of the Cartwright Complexion, loved to punctuate her comments upon life by "Ah, Colonel," and "Oh, Colonel."

She was saying it now.

"Ah, Colonel, if it were merely a question of leaving the Parish."

"Deuced fine girl, though, Mrs. Marshall Gurney, deuced fine girl." The colonel gallantly hid the traces of a Yorkshire accent behind a barrage of military phrases. "We shall miss her at the Club. I must say that I like to see her playing with young Neale. They make a damned fine couple."

"Oh, there's nothing in that, I do assure you, Colonel. Take it from me. He really takes no more notice of Delia than of any of the other girls about here. Except, of course, that she has had rather more practice at tennis than most of the others, and he likes a good game, being such a splendid player. He plays for his college at Oxford, you know. The other day, he told Phyllis----"

"Of course"--Mrs. Parker's gruff masculine voice cut across her pleasant amble--"Godfrey Neale knew the Vaughans long before Mrs. Neale condescended to associate with any of us."

Mrs. Marshall Gurney bridled. Muriel could hear offended dignity in every creak of her basket chair.

"I hardly think so, Mrs. Parker," she said with majesty. "I used to dine at the Weare Grange when Godfrey was quite a little boy. After her trouble Alice Neale turned to me a great deal. Why, Godfrey and Phyllis . . ."

"Godfrey Neale never _looks_ at Phyllis M.G.," whispered Connie with scorn. "Old Mrs. M.G. always makes out that they are bosom friends. Doesn't he play beautifully, though?"

On the court to the right of the Pavilion, a vigorous set was in progress. That tall splendid young man in the perfect flannels, with his shirt just open enough to show his fine brown throat, and the conquering air of the accomplished player in his sure, swift movements, that was Godfrey Neale, really and in the flesh Godfrey Neale, no longer a mythical but heroic figure, whose exploits, riches and tastes were whispered breathlessly at Marshington tea-tables, or described by the more imaginative with the assurance of intimacy. That was Godfrey Neale. And Muriel had actually spoken to him. Once at a dance, years and years ago, a party memorable for bitter shame, Muriel had not only spoken but danced with Godfrey. He had been a witness of her dire calamity. Did he remember?

"Well, I think it distinctly lacking in a sense of duty, that Delia should go gallivanting off to college just now when her father's getting old," the denunciation from the veranda continued.

"Old?" snapped Mrs. Parker, who was only forty-five herself. "I was not thinking of his age, but that we should have to get a curate, and I don't know who's going to pay for him. All that I do hope is that, after all this, Delia will learn a little common politeness. I have rarely met a more disagreeable young woman than she is now."

"Well, I can't see why we should have to pay for a curate in order that the vicar's daughter might learn to be a lady," said Mrs. Marshall Gurney, quite tartly for her. Usually her consciousness of her own superiority helped her to regard with tolerance the failures of other people. But Delia Vaughan, as the one person in Marshington who refused to recognize that superiority, had committed the unpardonable sin. She had done more than that. Mrs. Marshall Gurney looked across the courts to where Phyllis, charming in her blue dress, was playing languidly in a ladies' double while Delia flaunted her intimacy with Godfrey Neale. Her heavy face hardened. "I can't think where she gets it from. Her mother was a delightful woman, one of the Meadows of Keswick, you know, and the dear vicar, even if he is a little unpractical, is a scholar and a gentleman. I hear that his last book has been a great success."

Mr. Vaughan wrote books. That was magic in itself for Muriel. _A Critical Survey of the Relation between Scutage and the Subsidy_, his latest triumph, did not sound frightfully thrilling, but it was a manifestation of profound scholarship which left Marshington mystified but complacent. Marshington liked to feel that its vicar's academic distinction was in some way a tribute to its own intelligence.

"Jolly good shot!" cried Connie, as a cannon-ball service from Godfrey Neale ricochetted along the grass and struck the step of the Pavilion with a resounding thump. "Muriel, isn't his service _wonderful_?"

"Splendid," murmured Muriel absently, straining to catch further scraps of gossip from the group behind her. She settled down again just in time to hear Mrs. Parker remark acidly:

"Delia Vaughan is one of those girls who pride themselves that, however objectionable they may be to your face, they are even more offensive behind your back. _She_ may call it being outspoken. I call it sheer ill-breeding."

The set was over. Bobby Mason collected the balls, and Daisy Parker fluttered round him apologetically. "I'm so sorry that I played so badly."

It always seemed curious to Muriel that Mrs. Parker should have such a fluffy daughter. She supposed that Daisy must have inherited her femininity from her father. Mrs. Parker, with her caustic tongue and masculine garments, looked more like the mother of Delia Vaughan. Muriel shivered with delightful apprehension as the victors strolled towards the steps. Life could never be dull while it contained beings so romantically distinguished as Delia and Godfrey Neale.

She heard Godfrey say, with his charming little stammer, "Thanks awfully, p--partner. That was a splendid game."

Marshington gloried in Godfrey's stammer. In him it appeared as a gracious concession to human weakness, a sign that in spite of Winchester, Oxford, and the Weare Grange, Godfrey was a man of like infirmities to other men.

But not even the stammer impressed Delia Vaughan. That disagreeable young woman dropped idly on to the Pavilion steps quite close to Muriel and sat leaning forward, her racket against her knees.

"Godfrey, is there any tea?" she suggested. "And you need not think that the splendid game was due to _your_ good play, my friend. Your first two services were abominable."

Fancy anyone daring to talk to Godfrey Neale like that!

Godfrey handed a tea-cup to Delia.

"Would you like some bread and butter, or shall I g--get you some of those little round buns?"

"Have they sugar on top?" asked Delia.

"Sugar? No, currants, not sugar. There is only one bun with sugar on it, and I want it for myself."

"Then you can't have it. How like a man to think that he has an indisputable right to the best bun. Bring me the sugar one, and--Godfrey, Miss Hammond hasn't had any tea yet. Have you, Miss Hammond?"

"Oh, s--sorry," said Godfrey Neale, and handed to Muriel his other cup.

Never before had Delia appeared to notice the existence of Muriel. Godfrey had never spoken to her since the Party. And here was Delia attending to her desire for tea, and Godfrey handing her his own cup! The traitor blushes glowed in Muriel's face, and chased themselves across her neck like the shadows of cloud across the tennis courts.

"Oh, I'm all right," she gasped. "Please keep that. It's your cup, isn't it?" She could not bear this unendurable honour.

"You must have that. Godfrey can fetch another. He is growing fat and lazy."

"Connie," desperately blundered Muriel, seeking as usual to cast the responsibility of life's gifts on to someone else, "don't you want this?"

"Godfrey, get two more cups," said Delia.

But Connie unexpectedly replied:

"No thank you, Miss Vaughan, Freddy Mason promised to bring me some."

"Did he?" whispered Muriel, under the sheltering stir of Godfrey's departure back to the Pavilion.

"No, of course he didn't. But do you think I was going to have that Vaughan girl showing off in front of me? You've got no pride, Muriel."

So after Godfrey Neale returned, Muriel, being without pride, drank gratefully the cup of shame, while Connie thirsted proudly by her side.

At that moment, Mrs. Hammond, returning from her croquet, appeared round the corner of the Pavilion with Mrs. Cartwright. She saw Muriel on the steps. She saw Godfrey Neale bending over her with a plate of little cakes. Muriel, looking up, saw the sudden gleam that crossed her face, like winter sunlight on a melting pool.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Neale. Home from Oxford, I suppose? Have you had some good tennis?"

"I thought s--so, Mrs. Hammond, but my partner tells me that I have been playing abominably," smiled Godfrey.

"Muriel, I hope that you haven't been scolding Mr. Neale," Muriel's mother began.

Mrs. Cartwright's eye flashed balefully upon her. Between them, Muriel was in despair. To say nothing was to act a lie, to let her mother go on thinking that she had been honoured by Godfrey's partnership. He would think that she was showing off. It was an unendurable position.

Muriel blushed; Godfrey Neale hesitated smilingly; Mrs. Cartwright awaited in triumph the revelation of Mrs. Hammond's error. Delia's clear voice cut the tension of the listeners:

"As a matter of fact, it was I who scolded Godfrey. He and Miss Hammond are just about to take their revenge on me."

"Well, I hope that they are not _too_ hard on you," smiled Mrs. Hammond, and passed on to her triumph, while Muriel sat speechless at the unexpected turn of events.

"Look here, Delia, is that a challenge?" asked Godfrey, too polite to show surprise.

"Of course. Directly I have finished my tea. Go and find Dennis Smallwood and tell him that he can play with me. He's asked me about six times to-day, because he wants to practise for the tournament. Of course this is if Miss Hammond has no objection," she added, inclining her head towards the miserable Muriel who sat crumbling her bread and butter, and wishing that she might plunge into her tea-cup and remain engulfed there for ever.

The proximity of the gods is exhilarating, but when they descend from their machines they are apt to be a little overwhelming.

"I--I'm so bad," stammered Muriel. "I've hardly played this year. I shall spoil your game."

"If I had thought that you played well," remarked Delia imperturbably, "do you think that I should have chosen you as a handicap for Godfrey?"

After that, there could be no escape. Godfrey returned, followed by the obliging Dennis. Delia stood up and flung off her jacket.

Muriel felt a little sick. These things simply did not happen. If only she could be a success. If only she could by some miracle play brilliantly. She tried to picture the delight on her mother's face. In a dream she rose, nervously fingering her racket.

"Muriel!" came Connie's hoarse whisper. "Your safety-pin's showing at the back!"

She clutched at her belt. "Excuse me," she murmured.

"Toss for courts, please," commanded Delia, ignoring her.

"Excuse me," she repeated, measuring the distance between the steps and the cloak-room door.

"The sun ought to be fairly well behind the roof," said Delia. "Rough."

"Smooth it is. You'll have to face the sun," cried Godfrey.

"Come along, Miss Hammond."

"But----" protested Muriel weakly, but too late. Dennis gathered up the balls and sauntered leisurely with Delia across the court. Muriel was left, her back and the terrible, indecent safety-pin exposed to the full gaze of Social Marshington in the Pavilion. Once, she had a nightmare that while shopping in Middle Street all her clothes fell off. Even that had not been as embarrassing as this.

Godfrey was measuring the net.

"Bit higher, Smallwood. G--good thing that we won the toss, Miss Hammond. The sun's awful."

A good thing that they won the toss! Muriel, hearing a burst of laughter from the Pavilion, felt sure that somebody had seen the pin. She gave a sickly smile.

The other courts were deserted. The whole of Marshington was there on the veranda. The whole of Marshington, finishing its tea, had nothing better to do than to watch the set. Muriel felt fifty eyes boring holes into her humiliated back.

Her mother would see. Her mother would see the pin. And the first time was so important.

She made a despairing effort to recapture her self-possession. At Heathcroft she had been counted as quite a steady player. Well, now she would show Marshington. She would show them that, in spite of the safety-pin, she could at least play tennis. If Godfrey Neale liked girls because they played well, then he should have no cause to dislike her.

"Service!" called Delia.

Muriel steeled herself for effort.

The first ball came driving, clean and straight, across the court. Muriel, dazed but optimistic, put out her racket. The ball sped on unchecked and bounded against the Pavilion steps.

"Fifteen love!" called Dennis.

"Hard luck," consoled Godfrey.

"I'm _so_ sorry," murmured Muriel.

Godfrey returned the second serve to Delia. She flashed it back to him. Really, it wasn't _nice_ for a girl to drive so straight and so efficiently. Delia's tall, white figure became to Muriel something malevolent and ruthless.

Godfrey returned the ball again, but Dennis at the net put out his long arm and sent the ball crashing down at Muriel's feet, to rise and soar far above her head, beyond her reach, beyond hope.

"Thirty love," called Dennis.

"My fault. I didn't place it well," said Godfrey.

"I am _so_ sorry," pleaded Muriel.

Her time of trial came again. She stood up brave and stiff.

"Play!" called the vicar's daughter.

Muriel played.

She played with such goodwill that the ball rose into the cloud-flecked sky.

"Forty love," called Dennis, polite but obdurate.

Godfrey Neale, infected perhaps by his partner's impotence, lost the next point.

"Game," announced Dennis. "Neale, look to your laurels."

"Your service, partner." Godfrey smiled his charming smile. "I messed up that last game fearfully."

Had he not seen that it was her fault? She could have kissed his hand for his forbearance. Negotiating carefully, so as not to expose to him at least the shameful pin, Muriel picked up the balls.

She could not decide whether to hold two or three. Which had she generally done at Heathcroft? She could remember nothing. They seemed suddenly to have grown large and slippery, heavier than cannon-balls. Surely it must be bowls that she was playing, and not tennis?

She was losing her nerve. She felt it going, and she could not stop it.

She would not lose her nerve.

She stepped back carefully, three paces from the line.

"Service," she called, in a voice that would not have roused a rabbit.

That, as it happened, was unimportant, for her first ball hit the net, and her second, slow and careful to avoid mistakes, sailed gently into the wrong court.

"Love fifteen," said Godfrey. "Bad luck, partner."

"_So_ sorry," repeated Muriel mechanically.

She _would_ serve the next one well.

"Play!" she shouted, and with all her strength she smote.

"Oh! Oh, Mr. Neale, I _am_ so sorry!" For Muriel's ball, driven at last fair across the court, had hit the unfortunate partner right between his shoulders.

"My fault," he said gallantly. "I got in the way. I stopped a s--splendid service too."

Entirely unnerved, she sent a ball so cautiously that it dropped before it reached the net. Godfrey picked it up and brought it to her.

Crimson-faced now, she was forcing back her tears. He looked down at her, kindly, carelessly, not even noticing her discomfort.

"I say," he said, "I'm awfully glad that you hit me just now. It's a favourite trick of Delia's, but if she sees other people doing it she'll stop, just from perversity. She's a bit like a cyclone when she gets going, isn't she?"

The humorous twist of his smile, the appeal to her criticism of his friend, the flattery of his attention, soothed Muriel's injured vanity. She giggled. Then with a sudden burst of confidence, she whispered:

"She's like the Day of Judgment, I think. I always remember all my misdoings in her sight. I--I'm terrified of her."

He laughed. "So am I, to tell the honest truth. But she's a ripping sport really, so for goodness' sake don't tell a soul."

They laughed, sharing a secret together, Muriel and Godfrey Neale. With one sentence he had drawn her in to the magic circle of his intimacy. She forgot her double faults and the safety-pin. She began to play to redeem his game against the girl who terrified him.

Her next serve went straight and hard. In her amazement, Delia failed to return it.

"Fifteen thirty," cried Godfrey. "Well done, partner. Do it again."

She did it again, not once nor twice. For the rest of the set, she played with serious care, keeping out of the way for Godfrey's smashing volleys. The air shimmered with dancing gold. Never before shone grass so green. Never were balls so white. Never was the joy of swift movement so exhilarating.

They won the next game and the next. Delia, half amused at the little Hammond child's spirit, was playing badly.

From the Pavilion, Muriel heard Mrs. Waring's voice:

"Your little daughter plays a good game, Mrs. Hammond. You must be pleased to have her at home now."

"Yes, it is delightful. Naturally I missed her dreadfully," answered Muriel's mother.

Someone beyond the net was asking, "Shall we play it out or have sudden death?"

"Sudden death," declared Delia, in the voice of a judge; but Muriel did not care. Neither death, pestilence, nor famine could affright her now.

"Game--and set," said Godfrey Neale. "By Jove, Miss Hammond, we must have some more like that!"

Sunning herself in his smile, she walked back to the Pavilion. Congratulatory smiles met her. For some reason, utterly unguessed by her, she had become a heroine. That Delia's defeat could be sweeter than honey to Marshington never occurred to her. She accepted the glory of the moment as it came.

"I say, Mu"--she had forgotten Connie. She turned upon her now with sudden irritation. But Connie had had no triumph. She was thirsty. She was bored. She thought that Muriel had had enough success--"do you know that your safety-pin's come undone, and you've got your blouse all out behind?"

Muriel fled to the cloak-room.

VII

The excitement of Muriel's _début_ at the Club was not repeated. She certainly went often enough, and once or twice Godfrey Neale spoke to her. She did not, however, play with him again, but sat for most afternoons on the steps of the Pavilion until asked to join a Ladies' Double with Nancy Cartwright and Sybil Mason and poor Rosie Harpur, who had also just left school, and who could play tennis no better than she danced. Then the tennis season closed, and Connie returned to school, and Muriel learnt how to order joints from the butcher's and stores from the grocer's, and passed cakes at her mother's tea-parties, and helped her with the accounts for the Mother's Union and the G.F.S., and wondered when her real Life was going to begin.

Then came November and the Lord Mayor's dance, and Muriel woke up next morning to remember that she had come out.

It would all have been wonderful, if only her hair had kept tidy. Next morning she sat before her looking-glass and wrestled with aching arms to cure her hair of its irresistible tendency to fall in heavy locks upon her shoulders. It had spoilt everything, the band, the supper, the confused medley of names upon her programme. From her first ball, Muriel brought home only the memory of a scrambling rush to the cloak-room, and of her mother's worried face bending above hers in the long mirror.

She rested her chin on her hands and gazed at her thin, solemn face in the glass, wondering whether she was really very plain, or whether she would improve with time, as Mrs. Cartwright said that Adelaide had done.

She was so much absorbed by these reflections that she did not at first hear Annie, the housemaid, who knocked and came straight in with the ostentatious familiarity of the old servant.

"Miss Muriel, a telegram for you."

"For me?" People were not in the habit of sending telegrams to Muriel. She was not that kind of person.

"It's addressed to Muriel Hammond," remarked Annie stolidly. She, too, found something unbecoming in the sending of telegrams to Miss Muriel.

Muriel took the envelope and fingered it. "Where's Mother?" she asked slowly.

"Mrs. Hammond's in the kitchen."

"Oh."

For a moment, Muriel's training fought with her curiosity. Then her training conquered. She seized her rope of hair, twisted it lightly round her head, and fled downstairs with the unopened envelope.

Mrs. Hammond was alone in the kitchen writing up the menu for the day. She raised her eyebrows at Muriel's flying entrance.

"Well, dear? Oh, Muriel, what have you been doing to your hair?"

"Doing it. Oh, Mother, there's a telegram."

"For me, dear?"

"No. It's for me." She hesitated, still afraid lest her mother should consider the receipt of telegrams by her improper.

To her surprise, Mrs. Hammond took it quite calmly.

"Well, Muriel, who is it from?"

Muriel opened the envelope and read: "Can you have me week or longer harribels have measles Felix not due England till 24th no money to go Italy Duquesne."

She read it to herself. She read it aloud to her mother. She could not believe her eyes.

"What does it mean?" asked Mrs. Hammond.

Muriel explained. "It's Clare, Clare Duquesne. You remember, my great friend at Heathcroft, at least she wasn't exactly my friend, but I always wanted her to be. She went to Germany to learn singing."

"Yes, but I don't understand. Does she want to come here?"

"Well--I--she--I think. It looks as though she had been going to stay with the Harribels, and they had measles."

"But, who is Félix?"

"Félix is her father, Félix Duquesne, you know, the writer; he writes in French, and it's Clare's mother who insists that he shall be called Félix because 'Mother' and 'Father' make her feel so old and when you are on the stage you have to keep young because of the dear public," Muriel explained, feeling that somehow she was not being as clear as she might have wished.

"But, my dear child, you can't expect her to come here on her own invitation like this at a moment's notice. I never heard of such a thing. And uninvited. Really, I don't know what girls are coming to."

"But I did say--I mean I didn't ever think that she'd come, only I did say that I knew we should be pleased to see her. You see----"

Mrs. Hammond frowned. "Now Muriel, this is really too bad of you. Can't you see what a position you put me into? You know how much I want you to have the things that you like, and I should have been glad enough to let you have a school friend to stay at some proper time, but you know that Father doesn't like just anyone, and just now----"

"Well, mother, of course if we can't have her--I mean if it's inconvenient----"

Hope died from Muriel's grey eyes. Four months at home had taught her that argument, when not wicked, was futile. It meant not just difference of opinion, but a way of making things difficult for Mrs. Hammond, who had to see that the house ran smoothly.

"Well, dear, of course you must see how impossible it all is. I don't know anything about this girl. I'm very busy just now, and surely she must have other friends in England? It's a queer name. Is she French or something?"

"Half French, half Irish, I think. I don't think that she has any relatives in England. The nearest that I know of are the Powells at Eppleford in Donegal." Muriel's voice was sullen with resignation. She had turned from her mother and stood, smoothing out the creases from the telegram, while an enchanting vision of Clare faded into the limbo of impossibilities.

"Powells, at Eppleford? Surely, where have I heard that? Why, is this the girl of whom Mrs. Hancock spoke, Lord Powell's niece?"

"Yes. Did she tell you about her?" sighed Muriel, still without hope and rather wishing that her mother would close a painful conversation. She had been good. She had not pressed Clare's claims. For her mother's sake, no one should ever know how bitter a disappointment she had swallowed down, there by the kitchen table.

"But, dear, you never told me that she was a particular friend of yours. I thought that that Janet somebody or other----"

"Oh, Clare wasn't exactly my friend." These things could not be explained even to somebody as sweet and beautiful as Muriel's mother. "She was so lovely and so popular. She knew all the--all the people I didn't know."

In spite of her resolute stoicism, Muriel gulped. Her mother looked sharply at her averted face.

"You really want her so much, then?"

"Oh, mother!"

"Well, I must talk to your father. It just might be arranged. But I do wish that you had told me about this before, dear. You make things so difficult for me. Why didn't you tell me, dear?"

"There didn't seem to be anything to tell until now," said Muriel. "I thought that she had quite forgotten me. She never answered my letters; I thought that she hadn't liked me much."

"Dear, you mustn't be so--so backward. People will take you at your own valuation, you know, and there is nothing more objectionable than the pride that apes humility. Now run away. Have you done the flowers yet? I thought not. And for goodness' sake tidy your hair, and tell me when your father comes in."

"Then--then, will you ask him?"

"Yes, yes, I'll ask him, though I can't say what---- Why, my dear child! What? Now don't crush my dress!"

For Muriel had flung her arms round her mother's waist in an ecstasy of gratitude for her sympathetic understanding.

VIII

Because he wanted to drive the new chestnut mare, Mr. Hammond chose to go to the station to meet Clare. Muriel could come too if she liked, but the real reason was the mare. If there was one thing that Mr. Hammond prided himself upon more than another, it was his knowledge of horseflesh. The new mare was delicately perfect, from aristocratic shoulder to quivering nostril. A network of soft veins trembled beneath the shining velvet of her neck.

Muriel, terrified lest they should arrive too late, and always nervous in the high dog-cart, watched her father draw the lash of the whip lightly across the mare's back, playing it subtly as an angler plays a fly. He flirted with the mare as another man might have flirted with a pretty girl, chuckling because she was so daintily feminine and capricious. He had forgotten Muriel and Clare.

"Father," she spoke softly, being more than a little afraid of him, "we'll never be there in time." She watched for the curling smoke between the chimneys.

"By Jove, what time did you say that your friend's train arrived?"

"3.45."

"Well, now, if I hadn't had to stop to tell Tom Bannister about that order, we might just have done it. Maybe train'll be late."

But the train was not late, as trains never are except when you need them to be punctual. A little stream of Marshington residents had trickled out of the wicket-gate and separated up and down the straggling length of Middle Street before Muriel and her father drew up in the station yard. A shudder of apprehension stirred Muriel, who for one awful moment feared lest Clare should never have arrived, or lest, having arrived, she should have been offended that nobody was there to meet her. How like Father not to bother just because he thought Clare a child!

But when they appeared in the station, there at the end of the platform, surrounded by three suit-cases, a roll of rugs, a side-saddle, a hat box, a long, thin dachshund on a lead, and all the porters, stood Clare. She turned and saw them. She came to meet them. More beautiful and radiant than ever, in a grey travelling cloak, and a little grey toque with a scarlet quill, she hurried forward with outstretched hands to greet them, the dimples flickering in her cheek.

"You are Mr. Hammond, I am sure? But how good of you to come yourself to meet me!" Her small _suède_ glove slipped into his capacious paw and rested there a moment longer than was necessary, while she smiled up at him, fearless, friendly, the least little bit in the world amused. He was such an enormous father for funny little Muriel Hammond! Muriel saw her father's big red face, first grave, then surprised, then broadening out into a delighted smile. His blue eyes twinkled.

"Well, now, Miss Duquesne, a nice sort o' welcome we gave you leaving you like this all alone on the platform." He winked gaily at the surrounding porters.

Muriel shrank back, a little hurt. They had greeted one another like old friends, as though she did not count.

Then Clare saw her. "Muriel, my dear! How perfectly ripping to see you again! My dear, it is good of you to have me. Behold me, a lone creature lost in London, and the Harribels, with whom I was to stay, all over measles and things."

"Very glad to have you, Miss Duquesne." Mr. Hammond rubbed a stiff hand across his chin, a sure sign, as Muriel knew, that he was pleased. "Now then, what about all this luggage, eh?"

Clare explained volubly. "Oh, I'm frightfully sorry, but, you see, I had to bring all my things from Germany because I don't know when I'm going back, and the side-saddle is because Jimmie Powell promised me a mount when I go to Ireland. And Fritz was a most embarrassing gift from a student. I was in such a hurry that I couldn't make up my mind what to do with him, so I brought him all the way through the customs and everything rolled up in the rugs, with my umbrellas. He hated it, and I don't really care for him, and if there's a lost dogs' home here, for goodness' sake let me dispose of him painlessly. Down, my friend, down!"

"Oh, he's not a bad little tyke," commented Mr. Hammond with the eye of a connoisseur. "But it's all this other stuff I'm thinking about. Look here, Miss Duquesne, can you manage to-night with one of these bag things and have the rest of the caboodle sent up to-morrow? My man's sick or I'd have him come down for 'em now."

"Of course I'll manage. Only, wait a minute." Clare stood meditating while the youngest porter wrestled valiantly with the dachshund, and the others gazed with tolerant amusement at the eccentricities of this young lady, who at least seemed to be worth a good tip. "Now the point is," continued Clare, looking as though for enlightenment at the youngest porter, "my night things are in that bag, but my yellow dress, which I must wear this evening, is in this trunk."

Muriel was about to say, "Oh, don't trouble about that, because we don't change at night," when she remembered that while Lord Powell's niece was staying at Miller's Rise they were to have late dinner.

"I know," cried Clare. "A sudden inspiration. Can you wait just two minutes? I'll take the dress from the trunk and put it into the case, and then we'll be all right. Yes, go on holding the dog, please. Muriel, _chérie_, take my gloves. Mr. Hammond, will you be an angel and undo these straps for me?"

Muriel gasped horror-stricken. Even Clare could surely not take these liberties with impunity. But Mr. Hammond seemed to have forgotten the new mare and to be reconciled to his novel rôle of angel. He knelt upon the platform, breathing heavily as he tugged at straps, unfastened locks, and chuckled to himself while Clare dived into a foam of tissue paper, billowing chiffon and frothing lace.

"There, just hold that a minute." Clare thrust a tray full of gossamer _lingerie_ into the arms of the eldest porter, while she herself shook out the cloudy folds of primrose chiffon.

It must have been this that proved too much for the patience of Fritz. A fur-lined slipper fell from the tray, its fluffiness doubtless reminiscent of happy days of rabbiting. With a bound he broke from the hold of the youngest porter. A streak of yellow shot along the platform. The fur-lined slipper vanished, Mr. Hammond dropped the lid of the case, and the dachshund, free at last, forgot the tedium of his late experience.

Clare, regardless of her laden arms, started in pursuit. Muriel followed. Fritz, evading the ticket collector, dived under the bookstall, then out again towards the wicket-gate just as a tall, tweed-clad figure strolled leisurely on to the platform.

"Fritz!" cried Clare. "Catch him, catch him!"

A long arm shot down. A sudden squawk announced the breaking of Teutonic dreams of liberty, and Clare stood, her arms full of tissue paper, a filmy nightdress, a single bedroom slipper, face to face with Godfrey Neale.

Solemnly he held out to her a mangled slipper and an armful of protesting, elongated dachshund.

"I think that these are yours," he said.

For a moment Muriel saw them stand in silence. Then, simultaneously, they broke out into uncontrollable laughter.

IX

"Of course, if it had been your dog, Mu, it would have run into the curate," Connie observed cuttingly.

"But I haven't got a dog," sighed Muriel.

Connie looked at her with pity. Really there were times when she wondered whether Muriel was quite all there.

Mumps at Heathcroft had conspired with measles in London to throw Connie once again into Clare's company. School had broken up early, and Connie arrived at Miller's Rise two days after Clare's spectacular descent upon her family. She failed to appreciate the honour.

"Never in my life did I see any one make so much fuss of a girl. You're all daft. Mother's as set up as a pouter pigeon because she's got Lord Powell's niece staying here, and Mrs. Neale brings Godfrey at last to call--if you can say that it was a call. I wouldn't stand this eleventh hour patronage from a duchess, let alone just Mrs. Neale, and every one knows that she's crazy anyway. And look at Father! The way he goes on as though he'd never seen a girl before."

"Connie, don't be horrid."

"Horrid yourself. You see if I'm not right. And Mother can't stand her really, only she won't say anything before she's had a chance to show her off to the rest of Marshington."

"That isn't true. You're being simply horrid because you think it's clever, and you're jealous of Clare because Father takes a lot of notice of her. It's only because she's a visitor. You're always so unreasonable."

"Wait till she's been in the house a bit longer, and you'll see who's unreasonable."

Muriel turned away and left Connie to her dark prophecies. There were times when her younger sister exasperated her by a shrewd interpretation of their parents' motives which Muriel rejected as both unpleasant and untrue. Connie had no business to go about saying nasty things about people, just to pretend that she knew more about Life than Muriel who was grown up.

That conversation took place the day before Mrs. Hammond opened her campaign. She was sitting before the dressing-table in her room, finishing her morning toilet. She knew that in her dressing-jacket, with her plump arms bare from the elbow, she looked girlish and very charming. The silver in her hair gleamed like moonlight rather than Time's theft of colour. She rather liked to see it spread softly about her shoulders before she coiled it high upon her head.

From the dressing-room she could hear her husband whistling through his teeth, as a stable boy whistles when he grooms a horse. Through the open door she could see him standing before his shaving-glass, brushing vigorously his wiry thatch of hair.

Mrs. Hammond set down her own brush and called softly:

"Arthur!"

The whistling stopped. Mr. Hammond put down his brushes and began to flex and unflex his arms, then ran his hands down the firm line from his arm-pits to his thighs.

"Hardly an ounce of spare flesh, by gosh," he remarked irrelevantly. "Few chaps o' my age could say the same thing. Have you seen Ted Hobson? great coarse-looking, over-fed fellow, he's grown. Lifts his elbow a bit too often they say. Nothing like that for----"

"Arthur, you know I think that while Clare is here we ought to give a dinner-party."

"Of course I don't object to a moderate tipple myself----"

A little pucker of thought appeared on Mrs. Hammond's forehead. "I was thinking of just a few people, the Marshall Gurneys perhaps, and Colonel Cartwright, and Mr. Vaughan now that Delia's away. Arthur! Are you listening?"

"Yes, yes, my dear. Let 'em all come. Have a dozen dinner-parties for all I care."

"And the Neales, Arthur. I returned her call yesterday, but she was out with those everlasting dogs."

"Knows a good dog, the old lady. Yes, go ahead. Ask the Neales. Ask the Prince of Wales. Ask the whole blooming royal family."

"Arthur, I do wish that you would take this seriously. You know perfectly well that it's as much your duty as mine to do what you can for the girls."

"Oho! It's the girls, is it? And what do you expect to get for them out of all this fussification, eh?" He stood in the doorway now between the two rooms, smiling down at her, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "Are you going to marry Connie off to the vicar?"

"You needn't pretend to be stupid when you aren't," snapped Mrs. Hammond. When she saw him in a good temper she could sometimes take a holiday from her habitual patience.

She began to gather up her rings, and slip them one after the other on to her white fingers. Here was the diamond half-hoop, her engagement ring. Arthur had been generous but unoriginal. Here was the emerald that he had bought during their honeymoon. Here, the ruby set between two splendid pearls that he had bought her after that affair. She twisted it round on her finger reflectively. Her gentle face hardened. From the dressing-room she could hear her husband jingling pencils, pennies and his watch, as he transferred them from the chest to his pockets. "Does he still keep her photograph in his watch case?" she wondered. That would be like Arthur, to repent extravagantly, and then to keep one little trace of his misdeed to sigh over.

Mrs. Hammond was not a sentimentalist. She clapped the ruby ring down on top of the emerald and diamond, and smiled faintly without too much bitterness as she heard the faint whirring sound of Arthur winding up his watch. It was his inevitable prelude to descent for breakfast.

"You'll order some more Burgundy, Arthur, won't you?"

"Better have a few bottles of fizz up while we're about it, hadn't we?" Mr. Hammond was dressed and disposed to take the world and the dinner-party more seriously. Like many middle-aged men he laid aside maturity with his clothes, and looked like a schoolboy in pyjamas, feeling like one too.

"Not champagne, I think, Arthur. We don't want to be thought ostentatious. Things must be right."

Reluctantly he agreed. Though his taste in parties differed from hers, he had to admit that in these things she was right. Although he chaffed her, he paid this tribute of acknowledgment to the long years of patient sowing of the social ground in Marshington until now at last the Neales were ripe for harvest.

Half amused at the object of her ambition, pleased to allow her to please herself if that did not interfere with his comfort, proud that she was successful in the quest that she had undertaken, Arthur Hammond went downstairs to order some more of the best Burgundy.

X

Dinner was over. It had succeeded so far beyond Mrs. Hammond's wildest dreams. Mrs. Neale had talked dogs and horses with Mr. Hammond, and Clare had been effectively subdued between Colonel Cartwright and the curate. The colonel himself had lent a distinguished air of political interest to the party, proving that these "confounded Radicals will be the death of the country, Mrs. Hammond. All this talk of Home Rule and Insurance and whatnot. What I say is that the people were happy enough before Lloyd George began to give 'em eightpennyworth of conceit of themselves." Mrs. Marshall Gurney, whose efforts to disengage Godfrey Neale's attention from Muriel had been unavailing, had been forced to console herself with the admirable saddle of mutton and the carnations from Kingsport, ninepence each. And the _soufflé_ had been a dream, and Connie looked quite nice in her blue dress, and, best of all, something had happened to Muriel to startle her out of her usual dumb nervousness. Godfrey Neale really seemed to be quite taken by her. Why not? Mrs. Hammond looking down the charmingly appointed table smiled to herself. Why not, indeed, why not?

Afterwards, when the men reappeared from their cigars and excellent port, there was music in the drawing-room. As he entered, Godfrey Neale looked hurriedly round the room for Clare Duquesne. He was uneasy and puzzled. All through the interminable dinner he had searched across the barrier of flowers for Clare's charming face, but the ninepenny carnations had blocked his view. Once he heard her laugh, full-throated and merry. And all the time Muriel's prim little voice had told him tale after tale of Clare at school, Clare on the Continent, Clare galloping wildly along the sands at Hardrascliffe on a rough hackney, after a mad Saturday outing with a school friend's brother. Godfrey felt somehow that he would not have liked that brother, but he listened to the tales, greedy for more. Muriel, delighted to find in a man such unexpected interest and sympathy, unlocked to him the doors of her mind, and poured forth all the wistful hero-worship hitherto suppressed for fear of ridicule. Godfrey, completely oblivious of her, sunned himself in the wonder of Clare's swift vitality. Only when Muriel had left the past for the future did he check her with abrupt, almost discourteous questioning, afflicted suddenly again with his worst kind of stammering. She had faltered then, played with her fork, and looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes. So, for a moment, he had seen, not Clare, but Muriel, facing her as for the first time and noticing her solemn childish face, her mobile mouth, and the questioning trustfulness of her slow, quiet glance.

In a moment she had answered his question, and each lost the sense of the other in the concentration of their thoughts on Clare.

At first, on looking round the drawing-room, he did not see her; then she became clear to him, withdrawn from the circle round the fireplace, sitting with head erect against a heavy background of dark curtains. The gloom of the unlit window-bay had quenched the glowing crimson of her dress, but its folds of still brocade flowed round her like the drapery in a Pre-Renaissance drawing. The dress covered her arms, but left her shoulders bare, so that her clasped hands lay together on her lap like a pale flower, and the faint glimmer of her perfect shoulders moved him to sudden anger against the shadow that robbed him of the purity of their line.

Why did she wear that queer outrageous dress? Why had she never spoken to him before dinner, but only smiled demurely as she bowed? What right had she to come straight from Ostend and Naples to Marshington, where the girls were all dull and stiff? Besides, she was fast. That ridiculous exhibition at the station. That was just the sort of thing that Godfrey hated. And his mother disliked her, though as usual she said nothing, and--well, altogether Godfrey felt that he had good reason to be angry with Clare Duquesne.

He pushed his way through the chairs to the window seat, disregarding Mrs. Hammond's gentle invitation and Phyllis Marshall Gurney's pallid smile. He sat down on the narrow window seat beside her, making himself as uncomfortable as possible out of spite against her. There was a wretched draught.

"Are you going to sing, Miss Duquesne?" he asked.

His usually friendly voice bristled with his grievance.

Clare looked up at him in surprise. "Who told you that I sang?"

"Miss Hammond told me during dinner that you are going to be a professional singer. Are you?"

Clare laughed, still sitting upright with her hands lying on her wine-red dress. He could only see the profile of her face.

"That is as may be. It is not so easy as I had thought to become a great prima donna. They want me to work. I detest working." She shrugged her bare, smooth shoulders. "Life is too short for spending its best years in stuffy German parlours singing scales that no one but an old professor wants to hear." Suddenly she turned upon him her full loveliness. "Why do you ask?"

"I--I----" Godfrey Neale himself was at a loss for words, feeling gauche as any country bumpkin.

"Do you disapprove?" Clare continued cheerfully.

"Yes," he said, unreasoningly rude. "I do. Decidedly. You, singing for the public, for just any ass----"

She opened her dark eyes very wide. "But why not? Not all the public are asses. Besides, my mother does it. She acts."

"Oh, I did--didn't mean that. I mean, it seems somehow such a waste."

"Waste? _Comme vous êtes drôle! Ils sont tous fous, les anglais_." She laughed again, teasing him, knowing how much he hated for her to speak French, partly because it was a foreign language, partly because he dreaded more than anything in the world that she should make a fool of him. "Why a waste? Is it not better to sing for the many than for the few?"

"No, no. It is not." He fumbled indignantly with his ideas, only knowing that he could not bear the thought of her, standing on show for any fool to gape at, any ill-bred, foreign fool, greasy Germans, nincompoop Frenchmen, Italians--ugh!

"How very English you are, Mr. Neale. That proprietary instinct. You want everything for yourself, land, ladies, music. You would like to put up a notice on me like you put up on your woods. 'Trespassers will be prosecuted.'"

"When did you see my woods?"

"Hush, I want to hear Mr. Smallwood sing."

Godfrey could not sing. He disliked fellows who chirruped inanely in drawing-rooms; but he had to sit there, consoling himself by watching Clare's intent, uplifted face.

"O flower of all the world, O flower of all, I see thee in my garden and I dare To love thee, and though my deserts be small, Thou art the only flower I would wear."

"O flower of all the world," thought Godfrey, seeing only Clare's glowing dress, her hands, her perfect arms.

"I dare to love thee," triumphed Dennis Smallwood's pleasant baritone voice.

Clare Duquesne was going back to Germany, to flirt with dapper little German officers. A good thing that she was going. Godfrey knew her type.

"A rotten song, that, isn't it?" he growled. "Smallwood plays a decent game of tennis. I wish that he'd stick to it."

"He sings rather well. Ah! _Mon Dieu!_"

"What is it?" Godfrey was all solicitude.

"Nothing. Except that our friend Connie is going to sing, and I--I have heard her before."

Her whisper soothed the young man's ruffled feelings. He did what all the evening he had been intending not to do. This connection with the Hammond _ménage_ had gone far enough. He said:

"Look here, do you ever care to ride, Miss Duquesne?"

"When I have a mount," she answered.

"When the birds go north again!" shrilled Connie.

"I wondered if perhaps, I've got rather a jolly little mare, a perfect lady's hack. My mother was going to ride her, but she hasn't been awfully fit, and hasn't been riding much. It would be a perfect charity if you would be good enough to exercise her. If you could come up one afternoon."

Clare smiled demurely. "Well, if Mrs. Hammond does not object, we might all come up one afternoon."

"All?"

"Well, you can hardly expect me to go alone, surely?"

He saw that it was not possible, but a new scheme was at work in his mind.

"Look here, I'll get the mater to ask up the Hammond girls one afternoon next week, if you'll sing to us to-night."

Clare frowned. "You see," she confided, "I've received not exactly orders but intimations that I am to keep in the background to-night. I'll sing when I go to tea with your mother."

"You'll sing to-night," said Godfrey. He was determined now that she should do so, not so much because he wanted to hear her, as because he wanted her to do something just because he willed it. "Just wait until Connie has sent those birds north again, and then you shall sing."

She shook her head, but as Connie left the piano, Godfrey rose.

"Mrs. Hammond," he said, "we have had a great stroke of luck. I have persuaded Miss Duquesne to sing."

So Mrs. Hammond had to be delighted, and Clare followed Muriel to the piano, and whispered to her. Muriel nodded once or twice, a frown of responsibility upon her face. She was a good accompanist, and had played for Clare many times at Heathcroft.

Mr. Hammond, leaning back in his chair, winked at Colonel Cartwright. "Now we shall have a treat," he said.

Muriel began to play. Her soft dress faded into the white walls of the room. Her hair was a brooding shadow above her earnest face. But about Clare was nothing pale nor shadowy. Her vivid dress had caught all light and colour from the room, and held them, glowing with barbaric splendour. She stood, not stooping over her music like the Marshington young ladies, but by herself in front of the piano, her head lifted proudly with the triumphant power of undaunted youth.

The accompaniment paused. The last chord hung for a moment poised above the waiting stillness. Across the room Clare looked full into the expectant face of Godfrey Neale.

Then she sang.

She had chosen Mignon's song, and at first she sang plaintively the cry of the lost maiden. But, at the end of the verse, with the sweeping melody of the refrain, she released the full power of her voice.

"Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin! Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn."

Mrs. Hammond pulled herself together. She could not understand German. Neither, she was thankful to reflect, could Arthur or the girls; but of one thing she was certain. No one could have sung with such impassioned appeal a song that was completely proper.

She decided that Clare must sing no more.

Directly the song was over, she rose amid the spontaneous applause that for once replaced the conventional thanks of Marshington "musical at homes."

"Thank you so much, Clare, dear. That was very nice. And how clever of you to remember all that German by heart. You must have worked very hard. And now, Arthur, did you say that you were going to carry the colonel and Mr. Neale off to bridge? Mr. Vaughan, you play, don't you?"

So Godfrey heard Clare sing no more, but at the end of the evening, when the company met again to say good-bye, she smiled up at him.

"Well," she said, "and when are we coming to tea?"

All the way home in his mother's stuffy little brougham, Godfrey forgot Clare and talked about the roof to be repaired on the Thaskholme cottages, and the agent at Mardlehammar; but as he ran up the shallow steps of the Weare Grange he suddenly saw Clare standing, the delicate contour of her face outlined against the curtain, her provocative smile teasing him.

"Damned pretty little minx," he told himself, determined that he would not be caught so soon. And, as he undressed, the song which he found himself whistling, with a cheerful disregard for time or tune, was not Clare's song, but Dennis Smallwood's.

"O flower of all the world, O flower of all."

XI

During the morning, Connie had hoped that it would rain; but wind and weather never favoured her. She walked mutinously along the muddy road, splashing in and out of puddles in the vain hope that she might thus leave her mark upon Clare's polished boots. How exactly like Clare, to be walking booted and habited along the road to the Weare Grange to ride with Godfrey Neale, while Connie, who adored horses, was only going to tea with his mother.

"And she's mad," reflected Connie bitterly.

"It was nice of him to send for the saddle," remarked Clare. "I thought that I should have to walk there carrying it on my head like the ladies walk in Palestine."

"What?" said Connie wearily. "Have you been there too?"

Muriel laughed nervously. It was difficult to keep the peace.

"We've never been allowed to ride since Father's accident," she said. "Years ago he let his favourite horse down on the road from Kepplethorpe market. It was badly hurt, I think, and he had two ribs broken. But he was frightfully angry with it for failing him, so he never said anything to anyone, though he must have been in great pain. He just walked back to the house and got his gun, and went back and shot it. He fainted afterwards, and was brought home and was frightfully ill for ages, and when he got better he sold all his hunters and wouldn't let any of us ride again. But he loves driving."

"Ah, poor Mr. Hammond," murmured Clare, but without much interest, for the road had turned, and to the right the hedge was broken by tall gates of delicately wrought ironwork, as fragile in appearance and as strong in reality as the barrier that enclosed the Neales from Marshington. Beyond the gates, half a mile of straight, shining road led to the grey square house. There was no park, but in the fields between the house and highway fine elms and chestnuts spread their naked boughs above the great Weare cattle, grazing with slow serenity on the vivid grass.

"So this is the Weare Grange," observed Clare. "What a delightful house! But, _Dieu_, how dull to live here all the year round."

But to Muriel the place was magic. She could not believe that real people moved behind those solemn windows. The still winter day, the cold light of the pale sun, the mouldering stonework of the terrace, were all part of a waking dream. A thrush, starting suddenly from a wet bough, shook down the rain-drops on to her face. She woke from her dream. This was the Weare Grange. She and Connie and Clare were going there to tea. This was the amazing adventure which the gods had brought her.

She did hope that Connie would behave.

The bell of the Weare Grange was one of the most powerful defences of that social fortress. It had a round, rusty head, and a long, stringy neck. Muriel put up her hand (and incidentally her new glove) and pulled. There was a harsh screeching sound. The neck extended three good inches from the wall. She let it go. Nothing happened. She pulled again. No faintest tinkle reached her ears.

"Let me try," said Connie.

"No, no, it may have rung."

They waited on the shallow steps, smudged with bird droppings and the multitudinous paw-marks of the dogs. Muriel's courage began to trickle away more rapidly than it had come. No wonder that only the Marshall Gurneys from all Marshington had dared to call upon the Neales. That bell was in itself a social snub.

"You're no good. Let me try," urged Connie. She thrust Muriel aside, pressing her knee against the wall, and tugged at the bell with both hands. A grinding, screeching sound, followed by a far-off tinkle, rewarded her just as a cheerful-faced young manservant appeared in answer to Muriel's second ring.

He took Muriel unprepared.

"Er--er--is Mrs. Neale at home?"

There was a blurred vision of vast hall, a confusion of shy greetings, the departure of Godfrey and Clare to the stables, and the fortress was entered.

"Once we really get started it will be easier," Muriel told herself.

It was not so. Mrs. Neale had dragged herself away from her kennels and rabbit-hutches at her son's request, but even her devotion to him could not make her genial to the Hammond girls. She disliked the whole affair, and only the knowledge that she could not stop it had brought her to face Muriel and Connie, seated in her great eighteenth-century drawing-room, across the wreckage of her afternoon.

She attacked Muriel first.

"Do you ride too?" she asked.

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

"I often used to meet your father with the Weare Valley hounds."

Muriel nodded dumbly.

There was a pause.

"Your sister ride?"

Connie made no answer. She was looking through the long windows, from which she could see Clare and Godfrey cantering side by side along the level green of the wet grass.

Mrs. Neale turned again to Muriel.

"You like dogs?"

"Not very much."

"Cats?" flashed Mrs. Neale.

"Fairly, when they're clean."

A withering glance. "Perhaps you like goldfish?"

"Fairly. Yes. I mean I do rather," confessed the hapless Muriel.

Enchanted castles are apt to conceal an ogress or two. Mrs. Neale felt disposed to let the Weare Grange live up to its reputation. Between her abrupt boredom and Muriel's timidity, the afternoon appeared interminable to Connie. She hated the white and draughty drawing-room. She hated the small gilt clock ticking in the corner. She hated the mixture of ceremony and discomfort, of wealth and squalor that characterized the house shared by Godfrey and his mother. The place seemed to be getting at her, making her feel vulgar and schoolgirlish. The thought of Clare and Godfrey riding together in the winter sunshine maddened her with jealousy.

But it was Muriel who relieved the situation.

After a longer pause than ever, she looked round the room and saw a single photograph on a table near the fire-place.

"Is that Mr. Neale when he was a little boy?" she asked in desperation.

That was enough for Mrs. Neale. Upon one subject alone could she be trusted to break her habitual silence, and Muriel's ingenuous questioning went direct to her heart. From the drawing-room to the smoking-room, from the smoking-room to the long gallery marched the procession of three, recapitulating pictorially and photographically the stupendous progress of Godfrey Neale from the nursery to Oxford, and from Oxford to the mastership of the Weare Grange and Mardlehammar. Connie, stumbling behind the other two, tripping over dogs and carpentering tools, grew full and more full of passionate resentment. When the riders appeared again by the terrace, so warm, so happy, so pleased with life and with themselves, Connie, who was neither warm nor happy, nor pleased, could bear it no longer.

"Well," snapped Mrs. Neale, with her stiff smile that seemed to creak from lack of use. "Good ride?"

"Ripping. Golden Girl went like a bird, and Miss Duquesne is a real sp--sportswoman."

Connie pushed her way past Muriel down the terrace steps.

"Mr. Neale, can I try?"

"Oh, Connie," began Muriel's shocked voice.

"Do you ride, Miss Hammond? I'm so sorry. I thought that you didn't. I would have found you a mount," lied Godfrey.

"I used to ride a lot before Father had his accident and would not let us any more."

The story was well known in Marshington, where picturesque incidents were not common. Here was a trouble that Mrs. Neale could understand.

"If she really wants to, let her have a trot down the drive while I order tea."

"Connie, you can't. You can't really," protested Muriel. To have stormed successfully the Neale citadel, to have come creditably through the ordeal of the drawing-room, and then for Connie to behave like this, was too bad.

But Connie was determined. The dogged look which Mrs. Hammond knew well upon her husband's face had descended upon Connie.

As for Godfrey, he had no desire to ride with a lumpish schoolgirl after that wonderful afternoon, and yet even he felt a slight compunction at the way in which he had used the two Hammond girls. He knew the glacial atmosphere of his mother's drawing-room.

"But she hasn't a habit or anything," Muriel pleaded.

"That doesn't matter. I have often ridden without," laughed Clare. "Here, take my whip."

She held Golden Girl for Godfrey, while he went to tie his own horse to a ring on the terrace wall. She watched him loosen Blue Boy's girths and tie one end of the reins round the ring.

"Aren't you going to ride?" asked Connie.

But even for his conscience' sake Godfrey would not risk the breaking of the yellow mare's knees.

"No, I think I shall walk this time."

Connie stood before the mare. Somehow she seemed to have grown miraculously taller. The saddle upon which her rider must sit was miles up in the air. The chestnut head tossed restlessly. Even Clare's caressing fingers could not quell the baleful frenzy of the rolling eye.

Godfrey returned.

"Now, put your foot on my knee, Miss Hammond, and hold the reins so, and the saddle here. I shall count one, two, three, up. When I say up, you must jump. Don't worry about the stirrup. That comes later."

Connie obeyed the directions. Golden Girl seemed to grow before her like Alice in Wonderland after she had eaten the magic cake. Was it a cake she ate? Connie could not remember. She could hardly see the sky, or Clare, or Godfrey. A huge yellow mare blotted out heaven and earth.

"One, two, three, UP!" called Godfrey. "Oh, but you must jump, Miss Hammond."

"So sorry. I wasn't quite ready," lied Connie. "Will you count again?"

"One, two, three, JUMP!"

Connie jumped. Unluckily the mare jumped also, and Connie landed back into a puddle sending a shower of water over Godfrey's perfect breeches.

"Oh, Connie, give it up. Don't make a fool of yourself," whispered Muriel. Then she remembered her own school-days, and the rock. "Look how you are splashing poor Mr. Neale."

"That's all right," said Godfrey heroically. After all it was the Hammond girl who was making a fool of herself, not he. "Now then, we'll try again."

Connie jumped. A strong hand seemed to lift her up, up into the cold clear air. She jumped with such a will that she almost seemed to fall on to the other side of the mare, but not quite. There she was, mounted at last, while Godfrey Neale placed her muddy boot in the stirrup, and Clare arranged her short serge skirt.

"Ah, now that is excellent," said Clare. "Hold the reins so, and press your left knee well against the pommel. Sit square and face the horse's head."

"You and your horse's head!" laughed Connie. "You talk as though I'd never been up before."

But for all her defiant gaiety, she felt that indeed she hardly had. Golden Girl was different from the old, lop-lobbing pony. When she thrust down her disquieting head, there seemed to be little enough between Connie and the gravel drive. Still there she was. She looked patronizingly down at the group below, at Mrs. Neale, grimly amused, at Clare laughing back at her, at Muriel, white-faced and anxious.

"I'm ready," she said.

They began to walk sedately down the drive. Now that Golden Girl was actually moving, Connie found it less alarming. Indeed, she told herself, it was good beyond all dreams of goodness. The great house gaped at her from a score of long, blank windows. On the steps stood Clare, now only a spectator in the drama, and by the side of the mare walked Godfrey Neale, Connie's companion for as long as she could keep the mare's head turned away from the house down the long drive.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Rather. Don't bother to hold the reins, please. I'm really quite used to it."

Dubiously he let her go. Just to show her independence, she touched the mare lightly with her whip. It started.

"Steady, steady, old girl. Ride her on the snaffle, Miss Hammond. Her mouth's awfully sensitive. She won't stand the curb."

Curbs and snaffles were all the same to Connie. These slippery, writhing strips of leather slid through her hands as the mare tossed her head. She struggled to arrange them to her satisfaction. In another minute Mr. Neale might say, "Don't you think that we had better turn?" and back they would go to that awful drawing-room and to Clare's easy triumph.

Connie sat straight, her red, wind-blown head high. The reins slipped in her left hand, but her right held Clare's riding-crop. She would show them that even if she could not ride like Clare she too was a sportswoman.

Again she flicked her whip. The mare broke into an uneasy trot, shaking Connie up and down in the unfamiliar saddle.

"Hold hard," called Godfrey, stretching out his hand for the slack rein.

"It's all right. This is splendid," cried Connie and, with set teeth, gave the mare another cut.

The mare shuddered. For one moment Connie felt the earth rise to meet her. Then she was suddenly jolted down into the saddle. The shaking trot gave place to a rhythmical rise and fall, the wind brushed past her, touching her wide bright eyes, her flying hair, and Connie was away at full gallop down the drive.

"Stop her," cried Clare, running down the terrace steps. "Stop her, you idiot. The mare's bolting."

"It's all right. The gate will stop her," Godfrey called. For all his swiftness he could not reach her now.

"It won't. We left it open. Don't you remember?"

"Oh, damn!" Connie mattered less to Godfrey than the mare, but both were serious propositions.

He stopped now. Clare, running, was nearly up to him. He faced her on the drive. There was nobody else in the world then but Clare and Godfrey, looking for some solution of the problem into each other's eyes. Muriel, hurrying behind Clare, felt this even then.

Without a word, Clare ran back to Blue Boy.

"Quick. You must catch her before she reaches the road," she said, tugging at the knotted strap.

"The girth's not fastened," cried Muriel, who knew just enough to see this.

Godfrey never listened. He was mounted, had turned, and was off along the drive in pursuit of Connie's flying figure.

The yellow mare was going hard, making for the gate at the south end of the drive. Godfrey, seeing this, swerved suddenly to the right.

"Where's he going? The gate's not there," cried Muriel, running blindly along the drive. Clare followed, picking her way delicately among the chalky puddles. Then she stopped, watching the stooping figure on the great black horse.

"He's going to take the hedge. And he said that he'd never found a horse to leap it yet! Bravo, the sportsman!" she breathed. Her eyes shone. A smile of excitement parted her lips. The dimple flickered on her cheek.

Muriel gasped. "To jump? With his girth unfastened, and only one rein?" She nearly sobbed. "He'll never do it."

"He will. He will. Did you ever see such riding?"

Above the blackness of the hedge, against the transparent, water-coloured shimmer of the sky, the great horse and his rider thrust up suddenly a black silhouette. They hung for a moment thus, poised between earth and sky, then disappeared.

"Ah, good," whispered Clare, with a little sigh of pure enjoyment.

"But they'll be killed," moaned Muriel.

"Not they," laughed Clare.

The two girls walked in silence down the drive. By the gate the hoof-marks swerved to one side, cutting deeply into the turf, as though Connie had made one desperate effort to pull up. Then they went on again, along the rough, chalk road.

"They've gone a long way," remarked Clare imperturbably. "Your sister is having a good run for her money."

"Oh, Clare, don't joke. What if they are killed?"

"Killed? Nonsense. Why, here they are!"

Over the brow of the rising ground they came, Godfrey leading both the horses, Connie by his side, limping a little, spattered with mud from head to foot, her hair wild, her cheeks flaming.

"I didn't fall off," she announced jubilantly. "Not until right at the very end. Oh, it was glorious. I galloped, and Mr. Neale galloped. We had a race, hadn't we, Mr. Neale? Did you see him jump the hedge? Oh, Muriel, you do look queer. Your eyes are popping out of your head. Were you frightened? I wasn't frightened a bit, although we went at a terrific rate right down the field."

"I was," laughed Godfrey. "I was in a blue funk."

Clare looked at him. "How high is that fence?"

"I don't know. N--nothing much." It confronted them then, laced thick and high with blackthorn, a nasty obstacle under the best conditions.

"With a loose girth and one rein," half-whispered Clare. "That was great riding, Mr. Neale."

They walked back to the house together, Connie chattering all the way. She was upborne upon the wings of triumph. She had conquered her fear, conquered Muriel's prudishness, and Clare's attractions, and the indifference of the Weare Grange. She was happy.

Muriel saw her happiness with a sudden heartache, for she saw also what Connie did not see.

She saw that this adventure was not even their adventure. It was Clare's and Godfrey's--Clare's because she had taken upon herself the command of rescue, Godfrey's because her whisper of praise had fallen upon him like an accolade. Connie had been merely a pretext for Godfrey to perform deeds of daring before Clare. At tea-time, though with remorseful attention Godfrey handed to Connie cakes and little biscuits such as she loved, it was Clare to whom, in the intervals of his duties as a host, he turned and smiled.

XII

There was an unwritten rule at Miller's Rise that one bathed at night, not in the morning. Morning baths consumed the washing-up water, and even if they did not they had not been the custom, and so were not approved. Muriel, who accepted all domestic theories with reverence, frowned anxiously as, on her way to her mother's room, she heard Clare's voice upraised in ablutionary song behind the bathroom door.

Ever since the episode of the ride a week before, Muriel had been worried by her mother's attitude to Clare.

Mrs. Hammond was polishing her nails when Muriel came in. It was their custom to hold a little conference in Mrs. Hammond's room before breakfast if Mr. Hammond had left the house early upon business.

"Well, dear? You dressed? Are you tired after last night?" Mrs. Hammond's nails shone like polished pink glass as she held them up to the light. "Muriel, that wasn't Clare whom I heard just now in the bathroom, was it? Didn't Annie take her some hot water? Surely you told her that we----"

"I expect it was because of the dance last night. It was too late to bath when we came in." Recently, Muriel always seemed to be explaining Clare's actions to her mother. It was a duty that she hated.

"I think it unnecessary. Clare is evidently a little selfish, or else inconsiderate. This house is not a hotel."

Wasn't it? For a moment of bitterness, Muriel wondered whether to Clare it was much more. She crossed to the window, and stood looking out into the rain-soaked garden.

"Muriel," her mother's voice continued from the dressing-table, "do you know how long your friend intends to stay?"

"Her father comes to England on the 24th." Muriel knew what would follow.

"Oh." There was another pause. Muriel could hear the soft brush, brush of her mother's nail pad. "Well, of course that's all right. We can manage, I suppose, though of course it comes rather hard on me now that I am so busy over Christmas and everything. Still, if Clare likes to take us as she finds us, I dare say that we shall get through. Still I had thought that perhaps she would have been able to---- Oh, and that reminds me, about Saturday night, dear, at the Warings'. There is no need when we go out like that for Clare to push herself forward in that way. She is only our visitor, after all, and that time Mrs. Waring particularly wanted to hear how Connie's singing had improved. There was no _need_ for a stranger to monopolize the whole programme."

"But they kept asking Clare to sing."

"Naturally, they had to say something out of politeness, but nobody meant her to go on and on like that. However, I should not have mentioned even that if it had not been for last night."

Muriel could feel the stiffening of her mother's figure before the looking-glass. She, too, braced herself for battle.

"I--I don't know what you mean, mother."

"Now you know perfectly well what I mean. Clare is a very nice girl in a way, and up till now it has been quite a pleasant visit. I have managed to keep things running smoothly. But I realize that, with her continental upbringing, she has rather different standards from those which we think proper in Marshington. How many dances did she have last night with Godfrey Neale?"

Then Muriel knew that Clare would have to go.

"Oh, five or six perhaps. But----"

Between the mist-shrouded valley and the sodden lawn, Muriel could see a vision of Clare and Godfrey as they had danced together, of Clare's laughing face, of her strong young arm pressed firmly against his black coat, of the swing and balance of their turning figures. She caught her breath.

"Well," remarked Mrs. Hammond, "that may be all right for Ostend, but when you consider the position that Godfrey holds in Marshington----"

The dancing figures swayed towards Muriel. So near they came, they almost warmed her with their glowing happiness. She pressed her small, cold hands against the window-sill, and gazed out towards the dripping trees.

"Just come and fasten my dress, dear. No, the bottom hooks first. Clare's very selfish. She wants everything for herself."

Was she? Was she? Muriel, fastening hooks and eyes at complicated angles knew that in spite of last night, in spite of everything, she had a fierce desire for Clare to stay. What if she did dance with Godfrey Neale? Who else could match her for charm and for daring? Yet, even while Muriel told herself that this was as it should be, she remembered the dragging hours of the Kingsport dance, while she sat by the wall and the couples passed her, the girls' dresses swinging out against her knees. She remembered how she had tried to compose her face into an interested yet indifferent smile above her fan, as though she did this sort of thing because she liked it, not because her mother's valiant efforts to fill her programme were unavailing.

That fear of being left out was horrible.

"If Clare does go," thought Muriel, "that won't make Godfrey look at me."

She went downstairs to order breakfast. "If Clare doesn't go, Godfrey will never look at anyone else." Why care whom Godfrey looked at, whom he knew? Why did she feel this silent force of her mother's will coming between her and the most glorious friendship that she could ever know? Who cared if Clare danced every dance with Godfrey Neale--not that she would, because she said that he bored her just a little when he was not riding or dancing or doing something with his body?

If only all the people whom she loved would care for one another and not make her feel disloyal because she could not share in their distastes, how simple life would be!

As she ran downstairs, Muriel heard her mother meet Clare on the landing.

"Well, Clare, good morning. How are you after last night? Not tired? That's right. I'm so glad. _So_ nice you looked too!"

XIII

Clare went; the winter dances came, and Muriel's programme still remained half empty. Connie returned to Heathcroft. Aunt Beatrice came to stay and went. Muriel continued to be grown up. Her hair sat more securely on her shoulders now. She grew accustomed to the whiteness of her neck above an evening frock. She paid calls with her mother; she dusted the drawing-room. She went to church assiduously, seeking in the Early Service for an emotional satisfaction that she could find no other way. She bought and read shilling copies of the classics. She began to study Astronomy with the help of three second-hand textbooks and a toy telescope, but here she found herself handicapped by lack of instruments and tuition. She did the Nursing Club accounts for her mother, who was at this time much occupied by charitable works. She took piano lessons with Fräulein Heissler every Wednesday in Kingsport. The days passed quickly enough, and yet something seemed to be lacking. Then, in April, came Clare's letter.

Muriel dear, it may amuse you to hear that I am going to be married. His name is Ferdinando Alvarados. He is a Spaniard, but he lives mostly in South America, where it is gloriously warm and you live on oranges and play the guitar. I am not going to have a career, thank Heaven, but I'm going to try being very rich instead. Félix and Mamma are disappointed but resigned, and Ferdie is the most amusing thing God ever made. I adore him and am very happy. Needless to say, he thinks that I am the loveliest thing in the world, which just shows his good taste. When are you going to get married? How is dear, quaint Marshington? Did I ever write to thank you for the good time that you gave me there? I don't believe I did. Forgive me. I never was brought up properly, as I think that your mother saw. If you ever see Mr. Neale now, tell him that I never met a nicer mount than Golden Girl. My cousin's gees in Ireland were nothing to her. Yours to eternity, CLARE.

The letter came the day before the Conservative Club Picnic. Politics in Marshington were of particularly acute interest that year. Mrs. Marshall Gurney, it is true, held the presidency of the Club for the third time running, but when Mrs. Hobson was elected treasurer Mrs. Waring had to replace Mrs. Parker as the secretary.

"Whatever the men may choose to do," said Mrs. Parker, justly indignant, "I will not countenance the introduction of just anyone on our committee. Hobson himself may be a very decent man and a good Conservative. But we never have had a publican's wife on the committee, and if I can stop it we never will. Even if the Duchess of Northumbria goes in for indiscriminate toleration, in Annabelle Marshall Gurney that sort of thing is pure affectation. One might as well be a Radical, like all the Nonconformist clerks in Marshall Gurney's office."

So Mrs. Parker left the committee, and Mrs. Waring reigned in her stead. Mrs. Hammond, who had only recently decided to show an interest in politics ("The new Conservative candidate was such a nice man"), after some mental struggle resolved not to follow Mrs. Parker into the wilderness, although she had once been a useful ally, but declared herself a supporter of Democracy and Mrs. Marshall Gurney.

It was therefore particularly distressing that the day before the picnic Mr. Hammond should have announced himself to be unwell, and have retired to bed.

"Oh, well, dear," Mrs. Hammond told Muriel, "you will just have to go alone."

"Oh, no, Mother. I should hate to do that. Do let me stay and look after Father, you know that there's nothing really wants doing. You go instead."

"It's quite impossible." Mrs. Hammond picked up her husband's supper-tray. "I like to think that you can enjoy yourself. Go along, dear, and have a good time. I shall manage."

Muriel knew that her mother had wanted to go. She knew that, as far as Mr. Hammond was concerned, the maids could have administered to his wants. But she had slowly come to realize that the passion which had once led Mrs. Hammond to commit her single social indiscretion could still draw her aside from that concentration on her position which had once or twice moved Muriel to vague uneasiness.

She had not wanted to go, and her spring hat had not come yet from Kingsport, and the morning of the picnic had been strained and harassed at home because of Father, and Mother's disappointment, and the rest of it. By the time that she arrived at the yard from whence the picnic was to start in hired waggonettes she was wishing that she never need have come.

There stood Mrs. Marshall Gurney with a bunch of primroses on her sables, and Mrs. Waring, looking elegantly worried as she stooped with her _lorgnette_ over a bunch of papers, and Mrs. Hobson, fussing backwards and forwards between the gate and the already laden waggonettes. Everybody looked terribly smart and confident and self absorbed. The space between Muriel and the waggonettes was painfully wide. She wanted to shrink away on to her seat and be forgotten.

"Any room in the last waggonette?" called Mrs. Marshall Gurney.

"Quite full up," returned Mrs. Hobson, with the metallic crispness of one who may have a Yorkshire accent but knows that she is as good as many of those who haven't.

"Any room in your carriage, Phyllis?"

But Phyllis Marshall Gurney regretted that she had promised to keep the only seat available in her carriage for somebody else, and blushed deeply as she said it. Muriel was almost ready to retire defeated, when Delia Vaughan called to her from the first carriage. Grateful but embarrassed, Muriel went forward, and climbed in among the knees and new tweed skirts of the élite of Marshington. She counted them surreptitiously, Adelaide Waring and a cousin, Dennis Smallwood, Nancy Cartwright, Bobby Mason and Delia. A man for every girl except herself. Wise by experience, she sighed, thinking of the long day before her. At Heathcroft, if you had no partner, you could at least walk with the last couple in the crocodile. At Marshington it seemed that you could only sit and look forlorn among the sandwiches.

The waggonettes waited.

"Are we never going to start?" asked Adelaide.

Mrs. Marshall Gurney and her committee were conferring hurriedly.

"Did anybody see Mr. Neale on the way down?"

Nobody had enjoyed that honour.

"I suppose that he _is_ coming?"

From every waggonette Muriel could feel the tension of anxiety. A Primrose Picnic without Godfrey Neale would be like lamb without mint sauce. Phyllis Marshall Gurney's pretty face grew pale beneath her pink hat.

"Ah, here the conquering hero comes," laughed Nancy, who was still secure in the pose of _enfant terrible_. "It's more effective to be late, isn't it?"

Godfrey Neale strolled into the yard. His breeches were beautiful, his smile the most disarming, his confidence superb. Phyllis Marshall Gurney gripped more tightly the hand-rail of her waggonette. Delia Vaughan nodded carelessly. Godfrey made his apology to the waiting committee, and moved towards the carriages.

Muriel calculated rapidly. If he joined the waggonette in which she sat he would make the numbers of males and females equal. She held her breath.

Godfrey hailed Miles Buchanan in the last carriage, exchanged a greeting with Phyllis Marshall Gurney in the second, and then climbed up beside Delia Vaughan in the first. The carriages rattled down the village street into a world glittering and green. In every meadow the grass stretched upright blades like thirsty tongues to drink from the dripping trees; but the clouds had broken and blew about a radiant spring sky like wind-tossed feathers.

"It's going to be fine," observed Adelaide complacently. "I'm glad that I put on my new light tweeds."

"Stunning," commented Dennis, exhibiting his well-shaped leg. "What about my own light tweeds?"

Everybody seemed to be in high spirits. After all, the drive would not be so bad, thought Muriel. She could watch the grey, flat road unwind like ribbon behind the waggonette. She could see the clay-red furrows of the ploughed land, and she could hear the cry of sea-birds circling behind and around the plough. Some magic lingered in the fresh spring air.

Lunch was pleasant enough too, although she found herself seated on an unsteady log between Mrs. Hobson and Colonel Cartwright, who had motored to the woods. He at least was bent upon enjoyment. As an old campaigner he insisted upon showing every one how to do everything, from lighting a fire with two matches, to opening ginger-beer bottles with a walking-stick.

"Dangerous things, picnics," he declared to Muriel, determined to show her how to be jolly too.

Anxious to learn, she said sedately:

"Why, Colonel?"

He winked at her. "Ah, the spring, and a young man's fancy, happy hours and woodland bowers, and chaperons asleep under the trees."

"I don't think that that sounds very dangerous," said Muriel politely, and received a light flutter of laughter from the party as a reward for her _naïveté_.

But she was soon to learn where for her the danger lay.

After lunch Adelaide's cousin, Mr. Weathergay, said to Nancy:

"There's a jolly old church, I hear, at Ribbleswaite, that seems the sort of thing one ought to see. Won't you show it to me?"

And Nancy giggled that churches weren't much in her line, but she wouldn't mind a walk.

Then Miles Buchanan bore off Freda Mason, and her two brothers wrangled for the right to escort Mrs. Farrell, a charming girl, who was staying with the Warings. The company scattered into couples and quartettes. Muriel still sat on her log, playing with a strand of long coarse grass, and hating picnics.

She saw neither the budding woods nor the delicate cream of primroses upon the banks. She saw only the ignominy of her own position, and with averted head she dug her fingers into the soft turf as couple after couple vanished through the trembling curtain of foliage. She was glad that her mother was not there to see her shame, and yet this probably only meant a short respite, because Mrs. Waring was certain to betray, as she had done before, the curious solitude of Mrs. Hammond's daughter.

From the other side of the abandoned meal she could hear Delia's careless voice:

"Well, you can lie and smoke in the sun if you like, Godfrey. The grass is wet, and you are growing fat from idleness, but I don't care. I, the only Socialist among you, am going to celebrate Primrose Day properly and pick primroses. Coming too, Muriel?"

No wonder that Delia was unpopular, monopolizing Godfrey all through lunch, and then abandoning him to smoke his pipe alone. The sheer wanton waste of it appalled Muriel. She shook her head.

"No, thank you," she said, shivering a little at her courage. To have gone with Delia would have been to put an end to her misery, but it would also have been a confession of defeat.

Delia went, and Muriel was left alone upon her log. Bobby Mason, defeated by his brother in the contest for Mrs. Farrell, was pretending to do something scientific to the fire, and Mrs. Marshall Gurney was directing the repacking of the luncheon baskets. She looked round the clearing, then beckoned Bobby majestically to her side.

"Go and make yourself agreeable to the Hammond girl, for goodness' sake," she commanded. "We want to hold a committee meeting here."

Muriel could feel the young man approaching her. She guessed why he had come. She was half crying with shame and weariness.

"Like to see the jolly old church, Miss Hammond?"

Dumbly she nodded. They too went.

The young birches curtsied round them. A delicate earthy scent of ferns and leaf mould and wet grass rose to their nostrils. Muriel saw and felt nothing, but she heard Bobby Mason say:

"Been to Burley Woods before, Miss Hammond?"

"No. Have you?"

"Er--no."

There was a pause.

"Going to play golf this year, Miss Hammond?"

"No. I don't think so. Are you?"

"No--er, in the office you know. Men like myself haven't much time."

"I suppose not."

The silence grew more gloomy.

Muriel rehearsed to herself the coming interview with her mother.

"And what did you do, dear?"

"Oh, I went for a walk to see an old church with Bobby Mason."

"Oh. That was nice, I expect. That boy's coming on, I think. They say that he's doing very well in his father's office," followed by a swift look at Muriel's face, and a reflection that the Masons were quite successful timber merchants even if the boys were reputed to be a little brainless.

Muriel did so much want to make her mother happy.

The silence oppressed them like a heavy weight. It grew fecund with other silences. They walked through the springing woods.

It was like that all the afternoon.

Then, when they had returned to the clearing and had finished tea, Delia returned. Godfrey Neale had gone to find her and they appeared together. Her eyes shone. Her thin cheeks glowed with colour. An elfish, secretive smile of happiness quivered on her lips, and her hands were full of primroses and great sprays of beech leaves.

"Did you have a good time?" asked Phyllis Marshall Gurney wistfully.

Delia nodded. She was standing to eat her tea, for the rest had finished. A thick slab of cake replaced the primroses, and she and Godfrey swooped upon the last of the tartlets.

Muriel climbed into the waggonette, and sat still, hating Delia. Somewhere in the woods that day had lurked happiness and beauty and gay liberty. Delia, who cared for no one, who was selfish, had been free to find them. And Godfrey Neale had followed her unsought.

She was talking to him now, softly under cover of the rattling of the wheels, only Muriel with an effort could hear stray fragments of their conversation. Delia was scolding him about some girl.

"My dear Godfrey, you are as tenacious of your rights over a practical stranger as you are over your own tenants. The girl probably forgot you months ago."

The carriage jolted on. Bobby smoked moodily. His duty for the day had been done. Adelaide chatted with her cousin. Delia was talking again. "You think too much of your unconquerable charm. You won't be fit to speak to until quite three women have refused to marry you."

Godfrey pulled placidly at his pipe. He appeared to enjoy her lecturing, as people do who prefer to have their personality criticized rather than ignored.

Muriel thought that she understood. "They're talking about Clare," she said to herself. "And he doesn't know that she's engaged." She felt glad that she knew something which neither Delia nor Godfrey knew. She was no longer powerless, but armed. She could, if she would, make a difference to the lives of these two Olympians. She, Muriel, could one day say to Godfrey Neale, "Do you know that my friend, Clare Duquesne, is going to be married?" He would take notice of her then.

She still felt proud, though chilled and stiff, as she climbed out of the waggonette, and said good-bye to Mrs. Marshall Gurney.

When Delia Vaughan suggested, "I'm going your way. Shall we walk together?" she answered with indifference, as though she were accustomed to such offers.

"Well, and how do you like living at Marshington?" asked Delia as they left the yard.

"Very much, thank you," she answered primly.

"Good, what do you do with yourself all day?"

"I help my mother. We have been very busy with the Nursing Club lately. And I sew a good deal. And I study music and astronomy."

"Music and astronomy?" The vicar's daughter looked at her in genuine surprise. "How delightfully mediæval that sounds! But why astronomy? You can't study it in Marshington properly, can you? Do you mean it seriously? Are you going to college or somewhere?"

Muriel shook her head. "Oh, no. I could not go away. My mother and father need me at home. I just do a little reading on my own."

Delia looked wonderingly at her small, secret face. "Look here," she began, "you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward's way of shifting responsibility on to some one else. Reading at Marshington! It's only a sort of disguise for the futility of life here. I know. I've tried it."

She was warming up to her favourite topic. Her dark eyes glowed above the trailing boughs of beech. Muriel, unaccustomed to exhibitions of strong feeling, looked coldly at her.

"Do you seriously intend to stay here all your life?" asked Delia. "To wash dishes that the next meal will soil, to arrange flowers that will wither in a week, to walk in fear and trembling of what Mrs. Marshall Gurney will say, although you know quite well that she hasn't got the intelligence to say anything worth saying?"

Intelligence? Muriel remembered how once she had suggested to Aunt Beatrice that she would like to go to college, and Aunt Beatrice had replied, "Well, dear, it isn't as if you were as clever as all that, is it?" And reluctantly Muriel, with the memory of the elusive mathematics prize before her, had had to admit that she was not as clever as all that.

"We can't all be clever," she said, without much joy in the thought.

"Clever? who said that we all had to be clever? But we have to have courage. The whole position of woman is what it is to-day, because so many of us have followed the line of least resistance, and have sat down placidly in a little provincial town, waiting to get married. No wonder that the men have thought that this is all that we are good for."

Muriel looked at her with grave distaste. She knew what her mother had to say about the suffragettes.

"Because I happened to be an idealist," remarked Delia, with the solemnity of twenty-two addressing eighteen, "Marshington could never forgive me. It could not forgive me for thinking my education incomplete unless I sought it beyond the councils of Marshington matrons. I happened to think that service of humanity was sometimes more important than respectability. I valued truth more highly than the conventional courtesies of a provincial town, while Marshington spends half its time in sparing other people's feelings in order that it may the more effectually ruin their reputations."

Muriel remembered hearing what Delia had said to Mrs. Cartwright over the Nursing Club accounts. She felt interested but uncomfortable. She had never been to a college debating society, and was unaccustomed to hearing what she called rudeness defended on principle. Also, she distrusted all this talk, feeling that she could be an idealist, too, without making so much fuss about it.

"But of course," continued Delia, "women in Marshington are not expected to have Ideals, only sex."

Muriel knit her brows. Sex conveyed to her merely a synonym for gender, masculine, feminine or neuter. She sought for more familiar ground.

"I certainly am not going to college, because my mother needs me at home. I am not unhappy here. Some of us have to stay at home. I have my duty too," she added stiffly.

Delia looked at her, a queer sidelong glance below her long lashes. Then she laughed a little. "And I am being properly called to order for pursuing my selfish ambitions while you are following the path of virtue?"

They had come to the Vicarage gate, and stood below the budding trees.

"Well, well," smiled Delia, "I hope that you will be happy. I suppose that it's no good arguing. But for goodness' sake stay with your eyes open. Remember, there's only one thing that counts for a girl in Marshington, and that is sex success. Turn and twist how you will, it comes to that in the end. The whole of this sort of life is arranged round that one thing. Of course it's an important thing, but it's not the only one. If that's what you are after, stay by all means, and play the game. But if you can't play it well, or if you really care for anything else, clear out, and go before it is too late."

She opened the gate of the Vicarage garden, and stood for a moment looking down at Muriel.

To her surprise Muriel answered her gravely, with a wistful obstinacy that stiffened her slim, small figure as though for some great act of courage.

"It's all right to talk, Miss Vaughan, but we all have to do what we think right, haven't we? And some of us can't choose. We have to take life as it comes. I don't see why I shouldn't be doing just as much my duty here as you where you are." Then, feeling that she was not being very explicit, she added, "I hope that you will be very happy at Cambridge."

"Thank you," said Delia with equal gravity. Then quite suddenly she laughed. "That's the second time you've snubbed me, Muriel, you strange child. Good-bye. Don't hate me too much."

She held out her hand, then with a flutter of bright green leaves she had vanished, lithe as a wood nymph, queer, graceful, and confusing.

Muriel walked home, thinking of Clare and Godfrey, Delia and college, and the meaning of sex-success.

When she arrived home, she found her mother coming from her father's room with an empty tray. The happy, satisfied expression that her face wore rarely transfigured her. She looked charming as a girl when she smiled at her daughter and said: "Well, dear, did you have a good time?" And Muriel replied, "Yes, thank you, mother. Bobby Mason took me to see the old church at Ribbleswaite."

That night she stood before her bedroom window and pulled back the curtains that Mrs. Hammond liked her to keep drawn. ("It looks so bad, dear, to see an uncurtained bedroom window. Even if people can't see anything, they always think that they can.") There were no stars in the deep sky, but from the darkness of the garden rose the thin and unmistakable breath of the spring. Muriel stood with outstretched arms holding back the curtains.

Down there in the valley lay the wonderful, perilous, grown-up world, holding its carnival of adventure and romance.

She pitied Connie, a child who was still at school.

She pitied Delia, who was, after all, still at college, which was only a kind of glorified school.

She thought of herself, holding the key to Godfrey Neale's happiness or sorrow, she alone, who knew that Clare was going to be married. She was sorry for Godfrey, who, she was sure, had fallen in love with Clare; but the thought of her power was more exciting to her than pity.

Oh, lovely, rich, full, adventurous life, teeming with experience, glowing with beauty, hurry, hurry, hurry! Let me come to you and learn your secret, in your strange carnival of love and tears!

The soft wind fanned her cheeks as though it were the breath of life itself. She sank upon her knees, holding out her arms to the heavy darkness of the sky.

Down in the valley, the lights of Marshington winked at her, one by one.