Chapter 3

XIII

When Delorme left Duddon, carrying with him a huge full-length of Victoria, which must, Victoria felt, entirely cut her off from London during the ensuing spring and summer--for it was to go into the Academy, and on no account could she bear to find herself in the same room with it--he left behind him a cordial invitation to the "little painting girl" to come and work in his Somersetshire studio--where he was feverishly busy with a great commission for an American town-hall for the remainder of August and September. Such invitations were extraordinarily coveted; and Lydia, "advanced" as she was, should have been jubilant. She accepted for her art's sake; but no one could have called her jubilant.

Mrs. Penfold, who for some weeks had been in a state of nervous and rather irritable mystification with regard to Lydia, noticed the fact at once. She consulted Susy.

"I can't make her out!" said the mother plaintively. "Oh, Susy, do you know what's been going on? Lydia has been at Duddon at least six times this last fortnight--and Lord Tatham has been here--and _nothing_ happens. And all the time Lydia keeps telling me she's not in love with him, and doesn't mean to marry him. But what's _he_ doing?"

Susan was looking dishevelled and highly strung. She had spent the afternoon in writing the fifth act of a tragedy on Belisarius; and it was more than a fortnight since Mr. Weston, the young vicar of Dunscale, had been to call. Her cheeks were sallow; her dark eyes burnt behind their thick lashes.

"Suppose he's done it?" she said gloomily.

Mrs. Penfold gave a little shriek.

"Done what? What do you mean?"

"He's proposed--and she's said 'No.'"

"Lord Tatham! Oh, Susy!" wailed Mrs. Penfold; "you don't think that?"

"Yes, I do," said Susan, with resolution. "And now she's letting him down gently."

"And never said a word to you or me! Oh, Susy, she couldn't be so unkind."

Mrs. Penfold's pink and white countenance, on which age had as yet laid so light a finger, showed the approach of tears. She and Susy were sitting in a leafy recess of the garden; Lydia had gone after tea to see old Dobbs and his daughter.

"That's all this _friendship_ business, she's so full of," said Susy. "If she'd accepted him, she'd have told us, of course. Now he's plucked as a lover, and readmitted as a friend. And one doesn't betray a friend's secrets--even to one's relations. There it is."

"I never heard such nonsense," cried Mrs. Penfold. "I used to try that kind of thing--making friends with young men. It was no use at all. They always proposed."

Susan's state of tension--caused by the fact that her Fifth Act had been a veritable shambles--broke up in laughter. She couldn't help kissing her mother.

"You're priceless, darling, you really are. I wouldn't say anything to her about it, if I were you," she added, more seriously. "I shall attack her, of course, some day."

"But she still goes on seeing him," said Mrs. Penfold, pursuing her own bewildered thoughts.

"That's her theory. She sees him--they write to each other--they probably call each other 'Lydia' and 'Harry.'"

"Susy!"

"Why not? Christian names are very common nowadays."

"In my youth if any girl called a young man by his Christian name, it meant she was engaged to him," said Mrs. Penfold with energy, her look clearing. "And if they do call each other 'Lydia' and 'Harry' you may say what you like, Susy, but she will be engaged to him some day--if not now, in the winter, or some time."

"Well, you may be right. Anyway, don't talk to her, mother. Leave her alone!"

Mrs. Penfold sighed deeply.

"Just think, Susy, what it would be like"--she dropped her voice--"'_Countess_ Tatham!'--can't you see her going to the drawing-room--with her feathers and her tiara? Wouldn't she be lovely--wouldn't she have the world at her feet? Think what your father would have said."

"I don't believe those things ever enter Lydia's mind!"

Mrs. Penfold slowly shook her head.

"It isn't human," she said plaintively, "it really isn't." And in a mournful silence she returned to her embroidery.

Susan invaded her sister's bedroom late that night, and found Lydia before her looking-glass enveloped in shimmering clouds of hair. The younger sister sat down on the edge of the bed with her arms folded.

"Why are you so slack about this Delorme plan, Lydia? I don't believe you want to go."

Lydia turned with a start.

"But of course I want to go! It's the greatest chance. I shall learn a heap of things."

Susan nodded.

"All the same you don't seem a bit keen."

Lydia fidgeted.

"Well, you see, I admire Mr. Delorme's work as much as ever. But--"

"You don't like Mr. Delorme? The greatest egotist I ever saw," said the uncompromising Susan, who, as a dramatist, prided herself on a knowledge of character.

"Ah, but a great, great painter!" cried Lydia. "Don't dissuade me, Susan. Professionally--I must do it!"

"It's not because Mr. Delorme is an egotist, that you don't want to go away," said Susan, quietly. "It's for quite a different reason."

"What do you mean?"

"It's because--no, I don't mind if I do make you angry!--it's because you're so desperately interested in Mr. Faversham."

"Really, Susan!" The cloud of hair was thrown back, and Lydia's face emerged, the clear, indignant eyes shining in the candlelight.

"Oh, I don't mean that you're in love with him--wish you were! But you're roping him in--just like Lord Tatham. And as he's the latest, he's the most--well, exciting!"

Susan with her chin in her hands, and her dusky countenance very much alive, seemed to be playing her sister with cautious mockery--feeling her way.

"Dear Susy--I don't know why you're so unkind--and unjust," said Lydia, after a moment, in the tone of one wounded.

"How am I unkind? You're the practical one of us three. You run us and take care of us. We know we're stupids compared to you. But really mamma and I stand aghast at the way in which you manage your love affairs!"

"My love affairs!" cried Lydia, "but I haven't got any!"

"Do you mean to say that Lord Tatham is not in love with you?" said Susan severely--"that he wouldn't marry you to-morrow if you'd let him?"

Lydia flushed, but her look was neither resentful nor repentant.

"Why should we put it in that way?" she said, ardently. "Isn't it possible to look at men in some other light than as possible husbands? Haven't they got hearts and minds--don't they think and feel--just like us?"

"Oh, no, not like us," said Susan hastily--"never."

Lydia smiled.

"Well, enough like us, anyway. Do you ever think, Susy!" she seized her sister's wrist and looked her in the eyes--"that there are a million more women than men in this country? It is evident we can't all be married. Well, then, I withdraw from the competition! It's demoralizing to women; and it's worse for men. But I don't intend to confine myself to women friends."

"They bore you," said Susy sharply; "confess it at once!"

"How unkind of you!" Lydia's protest was almost tearful. "You know I have at least four"--she recalled their names--"who love me, and I them. But neither men nor women should live in a world apart. They complete each other."

"Yes--in marriage," said Susan.

"No!--in a thousand other ways--we hardly dream of yet. Not marriage only--but comradeship--help--in all the great--impersonal--delightful things!"

"You look like a prophetess," said Susan, appraising her sister's kindled beauty, with an artistic eye; "but I should like to know what Lady Tatham has to say!"

Lydia was silent, her lip quivering a little.

"And I warn you," Susan continued, greatly daring, "that Faversham won't let you do what you like with him!"

Lydia rose slowly, gathered up her golden veil into one big knot without speaking, and went on with her preparations for bed.

Susy too uncoiled her small figure and stood up.

"I've told mamma not to bother you," she said abruptly.

Lydia threw an arm round her tormentor.

"Dear Sue, I don't want to scold, but if you only knew how you spoil things!"

Susy's eyes twinkled. She let Lydia kiss her, and then walking very slowly to the door, so as not to have an appearance of being put to flight, she disappeared.

Lydia was left to think--and think--her eyes on the ground. Never had life run so warmly and richly; she was amply conscious of it. And what, pray, in spite of Susy's teasing, had love to say to it? Passion was ruled out--she held the senses in leash, submissive. Harry Tatham, indeed, was now writing to her every day; and she to him, less often. Faversham, too, was writing to her, coming to consult her; and all that a woman's sympathy, all that mind and spirit could do to help him in his heavy and solitary task she would do. Toward Tatham she felt with a tender sisterliness; anxious often; yet confident in herself, and in the issue. In Faversham's case, it was rather a keen, a romantic curiosity, to see how a man would quit himself in a great ordeal suddenly thrust upon him; and a girlish pride that he should turn to her for help.

His first note to her lay there--inside her sketch book. It had reached her the morning after his interview with Mr. Melrose.

"I didn't find Mr. Melrose in a yielding mood last night. I beg of you don't expect too much. Please, please be patient, and remember that if I can do as yet but little, I honestly believe nobody else could do anything. We must wait and watch--here a step, and there a step. But I think I may ask you to trust me; and, if you can, suggest to others to do the same. How much your sympathy helps me I cannot express."

Of course she would be patient. But she was triumphantly certain of him--and his power. What Susy said to her unwillingness to go south was partly true. She would have liked to stay and watch the progress of things on the Melrose estates; to be at hand if Mr. Faversham wanted her. She thought of Mainstairs--that dying girl--the sickly children--the helpless old people. Indignant pity gripped her. That surely would be the first--the very first step; a mere question of weeks--or days. It was so simple, so obvious! Mr. Melrose would be _shamed_ into action! Mr. Faversham could not fail there.

But she must go. She had her profession; and she must earn money.

Also--the admission caused her discomfort--the sooner she went, the sooner would it be possible for Lady Tatham to induce her son to migrate to the Scotch moor where, as a rule, she and he were always to be found settled by the first days of August. It was evident that she was anxious to be gone. Lydia confessed it, sorely, to herself. It seemed to her that she had been spending some weeks in trying hard to make friends with Lady Tatham; and she had not succeeded.

"Why won't she talk to me!" she thought; "and I daren't--to her. It would be so easy to understand each other!"

Three days later, Green Cottage was in the occupation of a Manchester solicitor, who was paying a rent for it, which put Mrs. Penfold in high spirits; especially when coupled with the astonishing fact that Lydia had sold all her three drawings which had been sent to a London exhibition--also, apparently, to a solicitor. Mrs. Penfold expressed her surprise to her daughter that the practice of the law should lead both to a love of scenery and the patronage of the arts; she had been brought up to think of it as a deadening profession.

Lydia had gone south; Mrs. Penfold and Susy were paying visits to relations; and Duddon was closed till the end of September. It was known that Mr. Melrose had gone off on one of his curio-hunting tours; and the new agent ruled. A whole countryside, or what was left of it in August, settled down to watch.

* * * * *

High on the moors of Ross-shire, Lady Tatham too watched. The lodge filled up with guests, and one charming girl succeeded another, by Victoria's careful contrivance. None of your painted and powdered campaigners with minds torn between the desire to "best" a rival, and the terror of their dressmakers' bills; but the freshest, sweetest, best-bred young women she could discover among the daughters of her friends. Tatham was delightful with them all, patiently played golf with them, taught them to fish, and tramped with them over the moors. And when they said good-bye, and the motor took them to the station, Victoria believed that he remembered them just about as much, or as little, as the "bag" of the last shoot.

Her own feeling was curiously mixed. There were many days when she would have liked to beat Lydia Penfold, and at all times her pride lay wounded, bitterly wounded, at the girl's soft hands. When Harry had first confided in her, she had been certain that no nice girl could long resist him, if only she, Harry's mother, gave opportunities and held the lists. It would not be necessary for her to take any active steps. Mere propinquity would do it. Then, when Tatham stumbled prematurely into his proposal, Victoria might have intervened to help, but for Lydia's handling of the situation. She had refused the natural place offered her in Harry's life--the place of lover and wife. But she had claimed and was now holding a place only less intimate, only less important; and Victoria felt herself disarmed and powerless. To try and separate them was to deal a blow at her son of which she was incapable; and at the same time there was the gnawing anxiety lest their absurd "friendship" should stand in the way of her boy's marriage--should "queer the pitch" for the future.

Meanwhile, day by day, Tatham's letters travelled south to Lydia, and twice a week or thereabout, letters addressed in a clear and beautiful handwriting arrived by an evening post from the south. And gradually Victoria became aware of new forces and new growths in her son. "What does she write to you about?" she had said to him once, with her half-sarcastic smile. And after a little hesitation--silently, Tatham had handed over to her the letter of the afternoon. "I'd like you to see it," he had said simply. "She makes one think a lot."

And, indeed, it was a remarkable letter, full of poetry but also full of fun. The humours of Delorme's studio--a play she had seen in London--a book she had read--the characteristics of a Somersetshire village--the eager pen ran on without effort, without pretence. But it was the pen of youth, of feeling, of romance; and it revealed the delicate heart and mind of a woman. There was a liberal education in it; and Victoria watched the process at work, sometimes with jealousy, sometimes with emotion. After all, might it not be a mere stage--and a useful one. She reserved her judgment, waiting for the time when these two should meet again, face to face.

September was more than halfway through, when one morning Tatham tossed a letter to his mother across the breakfast table with the remark:

"I say, mother, the new broom doesn't seem to be sweeping very well!"

The letter was from Undershaw. Tatham--in whom the rural reformer was steadily developing--kept up a fairly regular correspondence with the active young doctor, on medical and sanitary matters, connected with his own estate and the county.

"Matters are going rather oddly in this neighbourhood. I must say I can't make Faversham out. You remember what an excellent beginning he seemed to make a couple of months ago. Colonel Barton told me that he had every hope of him; he was evidently most anxious to purge some at least of Mr. Melrose's misdeeds; seemed businesslike, conciliatory, etc. Well, I assure you, he has done almost nothing! It is not really a question of giving him time. There were certain scandalous things, years old, that he ought to have put right _at once_--on the nail--or thrown up his post. The Mainstairs cottages for instance. We are in for another diphtheria epidemic there. The conditions are simply horrible. Melrose, as before, will do nothing, and defies anybody else to do anything; says he has given the tenants notice that he intends to pull the cottages down, and the people stay in them at their own peril. The local authority can do nothing; the people say they have nowhere to go, and cling like limpets to the rock. Melrose could put those sixteen cottages in order for a couple of thousand pounds, which would be about as much to him as half-a-crown to me. It is all insane pride and obstinacy--he won't be dictated to--and the rest. I shall be a land-nationalizer if I hear much more of Melrose.

"Meanwhile, Faversham will soon come in for his master's hideous unpopularity, if he can't manage him better. He is looking white and harassed, and seems to avoid persons like myself who might attack him. But I gather that he has been trying to come round Melrose by attempting some reforms behind his back, and probably with his own money. Something, for instance, was begun at Mainstairs, while Melrose was away in Holland, after the fresh diphtheria cases broke out. There was an attempt made to get at the pollutions infecting the water supply, and repairs were begun on the worst cottage.

"But in the middle Melrose came home, and was, I believe, immediately informed of what was going on by that low scoundrel Nash who used to be his factotum, and has shown great jealousy of Faversham since his appointment. What happened exactly I can't say, but from something old Dixon said to me the other day--I have been attending him for rheumatism--I imagine there was a big row between the two men. Why Faversham didn't throw up there and then, I can't understand. However there he is still, immersed they tell me in the business of the estate, but incessantly watched and hampered by Melrose himself, an extraordinary development in so short a time; and able, apparently, even if he is willing, which I assume--to do little or nothing to meet the worst complaints of the tenants. They are beginning to turn against him furiously.

"Last week the sight of Mainstairs and the horrible suffering there got on my nerves. I sat down and wrote to Melrose peremptorily demanding a proper supply of antitoxin at once, at his expense. A post-card from him arrived, refusing, and bidding me apply to a Socialist government. That night, however, on arriving at my surgery, I found a splendid supply of antitoxin, labelled 'for Mainstairs,' without another word. I have reason to think Faversham had been in Carlisle himself that day to get it; he must have cleared out the place.

"Next day I saw him in the village. He specially haunts a cottage where there is a poor girl of eighteen, paralyzed after an attack of diphtheria last year, and not, I think, long for this world. The new epidemic has now attacked her younger sister, a pretty child of eight. I doubt whether we shall save her. Miss Penfold has always been very kind in coming to visit them. She will be dreadfully sorry.

"Faversham, I believe, has tried to move the whole family. But where are they to go? The grandfather is a shepherd on a farm near--too old for a new place. There isn't a vacant cottage in the whole neighbourhood--as you know; and scores that ought to be built.

"As to the right-of-way business, Melrose's fences are all up again, his rascally lawyers, Nash at the head, are as busy as bees trumping up his case; and I can only suppose that he has been forcing Faversham to write the unscrupulous letters about it that have been appearing in some of the papers.

"What makes it all rather gruesome is that there are the most persistent rumours that the young man has been adopted by Melrose, and will probably be his heir. I can't give you any proofs, but I am certain that all the people about the Tower believe it. If so, he will no doubt be well paid for his soul! But sell it he must, or go. I have no doubt he thought he could manage Melrose. Poor devil!

"The whole thing makes me very sick--I liked him so much while he was my patient. And I expect you and Lady Tatham will be pretty disappointed too."

* * * * *

Victoria returned the letter to her son, pointing to the last sentence.

"It depends on what you expected. I never took to the young man."

"Why doesn't he insist--or go!" cried Tatham.

"Apparently Melrose has bought him."

"I say, don't let's believe that till we know!"

When his mother left him, Tatham took his way to the moor, and spent an uncomfortable hour in rumination. Lydia had spoken of Faversham once or twice in her early letters from the south; but lately there had been no references to him at all. Was she disappointed--or too much interested?--too deeply involved? A vague but gnawing jealousy was fastening on Tatham day by day; and he had not been able to conceal it from his mother. Lydia was free--of course she was free! But friends have their right too. "If she is really going that way, I ought to know," thought poor Tatham.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Lydia herself would have been hard put to it to say whither she was going. But that moral and intellectual landscape which had lain so clear before her when she left Green Cottage was certainly beginning to blur; the mists were descending upon it.

She spent the August and September days working feverishly hard in Delorme's studio, and her evenings in a pleasant society of young artists, of both sexes, all gathered at the feet of the great man. But her mind was often far away; and rational theories as to the true relations between men and women were neither so clear nor so supporting as they had been.

She had now two intimate men friends; two ardent and devoted correspondents. Scarcely a day passed that she was not in touch with both of them. Her knowledge of the male temperament and male ways of looking at things was increasing fast. So far she had her desire. And in her correspondence with the two men, she had amply "played up." She had given herself--her thoughts, feelings, imaginations--to both; in different ways, and different degrees.

And what was happening? Simply a natural, irresistible discrimination, which was like the slow inflooding of the tide through the river mouth it forces. Tatham's letters were all pleasure. Not a word of wooing in them. He had given his word, and he kept it. But the unveiling of a character so simple, strong, and honest, to the eyes of this girl of four-and-twenty, conveyed of itself a tribute that could not but rouse both gratitude and affection in Lydia. She did her best to reward him; and so far her "ideas" had worked.

Faversham's letters, on the other hand, from the governing event of the day, had now become a pain and a distress. The exultant and exuberant self-confidence of the earlier correspondence, the practical dreams on paper which had stirred her enthusiasm and delight--they came, it seemed to her, to a sudden and jarring end, somewhere about the opening of September. The change was evidently connected with the return of Mr. Melrose from abroad just at that time. The letters grew rambling, evasive, contradictory. Doubt and bitterness began to appear in them. She asked for facts about his work, and they were not given her. Instead the figure of Melrose rose on the horizon, till he dominated the correspondence, a harsh and fantastic task-master, to whose will and conscience it was useless to appeal.

When two months of this double correspondence had gone by, and in the absence of Lydia's usual friends and correspondents from the Pengarth neighbourhood, no other information from the north had arrived to supplement Faversham's letters, Susy, who was in the Tyrol with a friend, might have drawn ample "copy," from her sister's condition, had she witnessed it. Lydia was most clearly unhappy. She was desperately interested, and full of pity; yet apparently powerless to help. There was a tug at her heart, a grip on her thoughts, which increased perpetually. Faversham wrote to her often like a guilty man; why, she could not imagine. The appeal of his letters to her had begun to shake her nerves, to haunt her nights. She longed for the October day when Green Cottage would be free from its tenants, and she once more on the spot.

With the second week of October, Lady Tatham returned to Duddon. Tatham would have been with her, but that he was detained, grumbling, by a political demonstration at Newcastle. Never had he felt political speech-making so tedious. But for a foolish promise to talk drivel to a crowd of people who knew even less about the subject than he, he might have been spending the evening with Lydia. For the strangers in Green Cottage had departed, and Lydia was again within his reach.

The return to Duddon after an absence had never lost its freshness for Victoria. Woman of fifty as she was, she was still a bundle of passions, in the intellectual and poetic sense. The sight of her own fells and streams, the sound of the Cumbrian "aa's," and "oo's," the scurrying of the sheep among the fern, the breath of the wind in the Glendarra woods, the scent of moss and heather--these things rilled her with just the same thrills and gushes of delight as in her youth. Such thrills and gushes were for her own use only; she never offered them for inspection by other people.

She had no sooner looked at her letters, and chatted with her housekeeper, on the day of her return, than clothed in her oldest gown and thickest shoes, she went out wandering by herself through the October dusk; ravished by the colour in which autumn had been wrapping the Cumbrian earth since she had beheld it last; the purples and golds and amethysts, the touches of emerald green, the fringes of blue and purple mist; by the familiar music of the streams, which is not as the Scotch music; and the scents of the hills, which are not as the scents of the Highlands. Yet all the time she was thinking of Harry and Lydia Penfold; trying to plan the winter, and what she was to do.

It was dark, with a rising moon when she got back to Duddon. The butler, an old servant, was watching for her in the hall. She noticed disturbance in his manner.

"There are two ladies, my lady, in the drawing-room."

"Two ladies!--Hurst!" The tone was reproachful. Victoria did not always suffer her neighbours gladly, and Hurst knew her ways. The first evening at home was sacred.

"I could not help it, my lady. I told them you were out, and might not be in till dark. They said they must see you--they had come from Italy--and it was most important."

"From Italy!" repeated Victoria, wondering--"who on earth--Did they give their name?"

"No, my lady, they said you'd know them quite well."

Victoria hurried on to the drawing-room. Two figures rose as she entered the room, which was only lit by the firelight; and then stood motionless.

Victoria advanced bewildered.

"Will you kindly tell me your names?"

"Don't you remember me, Lady Tatham?" said a low, excited voice.

Victoria turned on an electric switch close to her hand, and the room was suddenly in a blaze of light. She looked in scrutinizing astonishment at the figure in dingy black, standing before her, and at a girl, looking about sixteen--deathly pale--who seemed to be leaning on a chair in the background.

That strange, triangular face, with the sharp chin, and the abnormal eyes--where, in what dim past, had she seen it before? For some seconds memory wrestled. Then, old and new came together; and she recognized her visitor.

"Mrs. Melrose!" she said, in incredulous amazement. The woman in black came nearer, and spoke brokenly--the bitter emotion beneath gradually forcing its way.

"I am in great distress--I don't know what to do. My daughter and I are starving--and I remembered you'd come to see me--that once--at Threlfall. I knew all about you. I've asked English people often. I thought perhaps you'd help me--you'd tell me how to make my husband do something for me--for me--and for his daughter! Look at her"--Netta paused and pointed--"she's ill--she's dropping. We had to hurry through from Lucca. We couldn't afford to stop on the way. We sold everything we had; some people collected a hundred francs for us; and we just managed to buy our tickets. Felicia didn't want to come, but I made her. I couldn't see her die before my eyes. We've starved for months. We've parted with everything, and I've written to Mr. Melrose again and again. He's never answered--till a few weeks ago, and he said if we troubled him again he'd stop the money. He's a bad, bad man."

Shaking, her teeth chattering, her hands clenched at her side, the forlorn creature stared at Victoria. She was not old, but she was a wreck; a withered, emaciated wreck of the woman Victoria had once seen twenty years before.

Victoria, laying a gentle hand upon her, drew an armchair forward.

"Sit down, please, and rest. You shall have food directly. I will have rooms got ready. And this is your daughter?"

She went up to the girl who stood shivering like her mother, and speechless. But her proud black eyes met Victoria's with a passion in them that seemed to resent a touch, a look. "She ought to be lovely!" thought Victoria; "she is--if one could feed and dress her."

"You poor child! Come and lie down."

She took hold of the girl and guided her to a sofa. When they reached it, the little creature fell half fainting upon it. But she controlled herself by an astonishing effort, thanked Victoria in Italian, and curling herself up in a corner she closed her eyes. The white profile on the dark sofa cushion was of a most delicate perfection, and as Victoria helped to remove her hat she saw a small dark head covered with short curls like a boy's.

Netta Melrose looked round the beautiful room, its pictures, its deep sofas and chairs, its bright fire, and then at the figures of Victoria and the housekeeper in the distance. Victoria was giving her orders. The tears were on Netta's cheeks. Yet she had the vague, ineffable feeling of one just drawn from the waves. She had done right. She had saved herself and Felicia.

Food was brought, and wine. They were coaxed to eat, warmed and comforted. Then Victoria took them up through the broad, scented passages of the beautiful house to rooms that had been got ready for them.

"Don't talk any more to-night. You shall tell me everything to-morrow. My maid will help you. I will come back presently to see you have everything you want."

Felicia, frowning, wished to unpack their small hand-bag, with its shabby contents, for herself. But she was too feeble, and the maid, in spite of what seemed to the two forlorn ones her fine clothes and fine ways, was kind and tactful. Victoria's wardrobe was soon laid under contribution; beautiful linen, and soft silken things she possessed but seldom wore, were brought out for her destitute guests.

Victoria came in to say good-night. Netta looked at the stately woman, the hair just beginning to be gray, the strong face with its story of fastidious thought, of refined and sheltered living.

"You're awfully good to us. It's twenty years!--" Her voice failed her.

"Twenty years--yes, indeed! since I drove over to see you that time! Your daughter was a little toddling thing."

"We've had such a life--these last few years--oh, such an awful life! My old father's still alive--but would be better if he were dead. My mother depended on us entirely--she's dead. But I'll explain everything--everything."

It was clear, however, that till sleep had knit up the ravelled nerves of the poor lady, no coherent conversation was possible. Victoria hastened to depart.

"To-morrow you shall tell me all about yourself. My son will be home to-morrow. We will consult him and see what can be done."

Mother and daughter were left alone. Felicia rose feebly to go to her own room, which adjoined her mother's. She was wearing a dressing-gown of embroidered silk--pale blue, and shimmering--which Victoria's maid had wrapped her in, after the child's travelling clothes, thread-bare and mud-stained, had been taken off. The girl's tiny neck and wrists emerged from it, her little head, and her face from which weariness and distress had robbed all natural bloom. What she was wearing, or how she looked, she did not know and did not care. But her mother, in whom dress had been for years a passion never to be indulged, was suddenly--though all her exhaustion--enchanted with her daughter's appearance.

"Oh, Felicia, you look so nice!"

She took up the silk of the dressing-gown and passed it through her fingers covetously; then her tired eyes ran over the room, the white bed standing ready, the dressing-table with its silver ornaments and flowers, the chintz-covered sofas and chairs.

"Why shouldn't we be rich too?" she said angrily. "Your father is richer than the Tathams. It's a wicked, wicked shame!"

Felicia put her hand to her head.

"Oh, do let me go to bed," she said in Italian.

Netta put her arm round her, supporting her. Presently they passed a portrait on the wall, an enlarged photograph of a boy in cricketing dress.

Underneath it was written:

"_Harry. Eton Eleven. July 189---_."

Felicia for the first time showed a gleam of interest. She stopped to look at the picture.

"Who is it?"

"It must be her son, Lord Tatham."

The girl's sunken eyes seemed to drink in the pleasant image of the English boy.

"Shall we see him?"

"Of course. To-morrow. Now come to bed!"

Felicia's head was no sooner on the pillow than she plunged into sleep. Netta, on the other hand, was for a long time sleepless. The luxury of the bed and the room was inexpressibly delightful and reviving to her. Recollections of a small bare house in the Apuan Alps above Lucca, and of all that she and Felicia had endured there, ran through her mind, mingled with visions of Threlfall as she had known it of old, its choked passages--the locked room from which she had stolen the Hermes--the great table in Edmund's room with its litter of bric-à-brac--Edmund himself....

She trembled; alternately desperate, and full of fears. The thought that Melrose was only a few miles from her--that she was going to face and brave him after all these years--turned her cold with terror. And yet misery had made her reckless.

"He _shall_ provide for us!" She gathered up her weak soul into this supreme resolve. How wise she had been to follow the sudden impulse which had bade her appeal to the Tathams! Were they not her kinsfolk by marriage?

They knew what Edmund was! They were kind and powerful. They would protect her, and take up her cause. Edmund was now an old man. If he died, who else had a right to his money but she and Felicia? Oh! Lady Tatham would help them; she'd see them righted! Cradled in that hope, Netta Melrose at last fell asleep.

XIV

Tatham arrived at Duddon by the earliest possible train on the following morning.

On crossing the hall he perceived in the distance a very slight thin girl, dressed in black, coming out of his mother's sitting-room. When she saw him she turned hurriedly to the stairs and ran up, only pausing once on the first landing to flash upon him a singularly white face, lit by singularly black eyes. Then she disappeared.

"Who is that lady?" he asked of Hurst in astonishment.

"Her ladyship expects you, my lord," replied Hurst evasively, throwing open the door of the morning-room. Victoria was disclosed; pacing up and down, her hands in the pockets of her tweed jacket. Tatham saw at once that something had happened.

She put her hands on his shoulders, kissed him, and delivered her news. She did so with a peculiar and secret zest. To watch how he took the fresh experiences of life, and to be exultantly proud and sure of him the while, was all part of her adoration of him.

"Melrose's wife and daughter! Great Scot! So they're not dead?" Tatham stood amazed.

"He seems to have done his best to kill them. They're starved--and destitute. But here they are."

"And why in the name of fortune do they come to us?"

"We are cousins, my dear--and I saw her twenty years ago. It isn't a bad move. Indeed the foolish woman might have come before."

"But what on earth can we do for them?"

The young man sat down bewildered, while his mother told the story, piecing it together from the rambling though copious narrative, which she had gathered that morning from Netta in her bed, where she had been forced to remain, at least for breakfast.

After her flight, Melrose's fugitive wife had settled down with her child in Florence, under the wing of her own family. But they were a shiftless, importunate crew, and, in the course of years, every one of them came more or less visibly to grief. Her sisters married men of the same dubious world as themselves, and were always in difficulties. Netta's eldest brother got into trouble with the bank where he was employed, and another brother, as a deserter from the army, had to make his escape to South America. The father, Robert Smeath, had found it more and more difficult to earn anything on which to keep his belongings, and as a picture dealer seemed to have fallen into bad odour with the Italian authorities, for reasons of which Netta could give no account.

"And how much do you think Mr. Melrose allowed his wife and child?" asked Victoria, her eyes sparkling. "_Eighty pounds a year_!--on which in the end the whole family seem to have lived. Finally, the mother died, and Mr. Smeath got into some scrape or other--I naturally avoided the particulars--which involved pledging half Mrs. Melrose's allowance for five years. And on the rest--forty pounds--she and her daughter, and her old father have been trying to live for the last two. You never heard such a story! They found a small half-ruined villa in the mountains north of Pisa, and there they somehow existed. They couldn't afford nursing or doctoring for the old father; they were half starved; the mother and daughter have both actually worked in the vineyards; and, of course, they had no servant. You should see the poor woman's hands! Then she began to write to her husband. No reply--for eighteen months, no reply--till just lately, an intimation from the Florentine bank, that if any more similar letters were addressed to Mr. Melrose the allowance would be stopped."

"Old fiend!" cried Tatham, "now we'll get at him!"

Victoria went on to describe how, at last, an English family who had taken one of the old villas on the Luccan Alps for the summer had come across the forlorn trio. They were scandalized by the story, and they had impressed on Mrs. Melrose that she and her daughter had a legal right to suitable maintenance from her husband. Urged by them--and starvation--Netta had at last plucked up courage. The old father was left in the charge of a _contadino_ family, a small loan was raised for them to which the English visitors contributed, and the mother and daughter started for home.

"But without us, or some one else to help her," said Victoria, "she would never--never!--get through the business. Her terror of Melrose is a perfect disease. She shakes if you mention his name. That was what made her think of me--and that visit I paid her. Poor thing! she was rather pretty then. But it was plain enough what their relations were. Well, now, Harry, it's for you to say. But my blood's up! I suggest we see this thing through!"

The door slowly opened as she spoke, and two small figures came in silently, closing it behind them. There they stood, a story in themselves; Netta, with the bearing and the dress of a shabby little housekeeper; the girl ghastly thin, her shoulder-blades cutting her flimsy dress, blue shadows in all the hollows of the face, but with extraordinary pride of bearing, and extraordinary possibilities of beauty in the modelling of her delicate features, and splendid melancholy eyes. Tatham could not help staring at her. She was indeed the disinherited princess.

Then he walked up to them, and shook hands with boyish heartiness.

"I say, you do look pumped out! But don't you worry too much. My mother and I'll see what can be done. We'll set the lawyers on, if there's nothing else. It's a beastly shame, anyway! But now, you take it easy. We'll look after you. Sit down, won't you? Mother's chairs are the most comfortable in the house!"

He installed them; and then at once took the serious, business air, which still gave his mother a pleasure which was half amusement. Felicia, sitting in a corner behind her mother's sofa, could not take her eyes from him. The tall, fair English youth, six foot two, and splendidly developed, the pink of health, modesty, and kindly courtesy, was different from all other beings that had ever swum into her view. She watched him close and furtively--his features, his dress, his gestures; comparing the living man in her mind with the photograph upstairs, and so absorbed in her study of him that she scarcely heard a word of the triangular discussion going on between her mother, Tatham, and Victoria. The whole time she was drinking in impressions, as of a god-like creature, all beneficence.

After an hour's cross-examination of the poor, shrinking Netta, Tatham's blood too was up; he was eager for the fray. To attack Melrose was a joy; made none the less keen by the reflection that to help these two helpless ones was a duty. Lydia's approval, Lydia's sympathy were certain; he kindled the more.

"All right!" he said, rising. "Now I think we are agreed on the first step. Faversham is our man. I must see Faversham at once, and set him to work! If I find him, I will report the result to you, Mrs. Melrose--so far--by luncheon time."

He departed, to ring up the Threlfall office in Pengarth and inquire whether Faversham could be seen there. Victoria left the room with him.

"Have you forgotten these rumours of which Undershaw wrote you?"

"What, as to Faversham? No, I have not forgotten them. But I shan't take any notice of them. He can't accept anything for himself till these two have got their due! What right has he to Melrose's property at all?" said the young man indignantly.

* * * * *

The mother and son had scarcely left the room when Netta turned to her daughter with trembling lips.

"I haven't"--half whispering--"told them anything about the Hermes!"

"It was no theft!" said Felicia passionately. "I would tell anybody!"

Netta was silent, her face working with unspoken fear. Suddenly, Felicia said in her foreign English, pronounced with a slight effort, and very precisely:

"That is a very beautiful young man!"

Netta was startled.

"Lord Tatham? Not at all, Felicia. He is very nice, but I do not even call him good-looking."

"He is a very beautiful young man," repeated Felicia with emphasis, "and I am going to marry him!"

"Felicia! for heaven's sake--do not show your mad ways here!" cried Netta, white with new alarm.

For the first time for many, many days Felicia smiled. She got up and went to a glass that hung on the wall. Taking one of the sidecombs from her curls, she began to pull them out, winding them round her tiny fingers, making more of them, and patting them back into place, till her head was one silky mass of ripples. Then she looked at herself.

"I must have a new dress at once!" she said peremptorily.

"I don't know where you'll get it!" cried Netta--"you foolish child!"

"The young man will give it me." And still before the glass, she gave a little bound, like a kitten. Then she ran back to her mother, took Netta's face in her hands, dashed a kiss at it, and subsided, weak and gasping, on to a sofa. When Victoria reappeared Felicia was motionless as before, but there was a first streak of colour in her thin, cheeks, and a queer brightness in her eyes.

Faversham was sitting in his Pengarth office, turning over the morning's post. He had just ridden in from the Tower. Before him lay a telephone message taken down for him by his clerk, before his arrival:

"Lord Tatham will be at Mr. Faversham's office by 12:30. He wishes to speak to Mr. Faversham on important business."

Something, no doubt, to do with the right-of-way proceedings to which Tatham was a party; or, possibly, with a County Council notice which had roused Melrose to fury, to the effect that some Threlfall land would be taken compulsorily for allotments under a recent Act, if the land were not provided by arrangement.

"Perfectly reasonable! And every complaint that Tatham will make--if he has come to complain--will be perfectly reasonable. And I shall have to tell him to go to the devil!"

He sat pen in hand, staring at the paper on his desk, his mind divided between a bitter disgust with his day's work and the consciousness of a deep central resolve, which that disgust did not affect, and would not be allowed to affect. He was looking harassed, pale, and perceptibly older. No doubt his general health had not yet fully recovered from his accident. But those who disliked in him a certain natural haughtiness, said that he had now more "side on" than ever.

A bell below warned him of Tatham's arrival. He hurriedly took out papers from various drawers, and arranged them on the office table. They related to the matter on which he thought Tatham might wish to confer with him.

His door opened.

"Hullo, Faversham! Hope you're quite strong," said the incomer.

"All right, thank you." The two men shook hands. "You've been doing Scotland as usual?"

"Two months of it. Beastly few birds. Not at all sorry to come back. Well, now--I've got something very surprising to talk to you about. I say"--he looked round him--"we shan't be disturbed?"

Faversham rose, gave a telephone order and resumed his seat.

"Who do you think we've got staying at Duddon?"

"I haven't an idea. Have a cigarette?"

"Thanks. Has Melrose ever talked to you about his wife and daughter?"

Faversham stared, took a whiff at his cigarette, and put it down.

"Are you her to tell me anything about them?"

"They are staying at Duddon at this moment," said Tatham, watching his effect; "arrived last night--penniless and starving."

Faversham flushed.

"You're sure they are the right people?" he said after a pause.

Tatham laughed.

"My mother remembers Mrs. Melrose twenty years ago; and the daughter, if it weren't that she's little more than skin and bone, would be the image of Melrose--on a tiny scale. Now, look here! this is their story."

The young man settled down to it, telling it just as it had been told to him, until toward the end a tolerably hot indignation forced its way, and he used some strong language with regard to Melrose, under which Faversham sat silent.

"I've no doubt he's told you the same lies he's told everybody else!" exclaimed Tatham, after waiting a little for comments that were slow in coming.

"I was quite aware they were alive," said Faversham, slowly.

"You were, by Jove!"

"And I have already appealed to Melrose to behave reasonably toward them."

"Reasonably! Good heavens!" Tatham had flushed in his turn. "A man is bound to behave rather more than 'reasonably'--toward his daughter, anyway--I don't care what the mother had done. I tell you the girl's a real beauty, or will be, when she's properly fed and dressed. She's a girl anybody might be proud of. And there he's been wallowing in wealth, while his child has been starving. And threatening to stop their wretched allowance! Well, you know as well as I, what public opinion will be, if these facts get about. Public opinion is pretty strong already. But, by George, when this is added to the rest! Can't you persuade him to behave himself before it all gets into the papers? It will get into them of course. There the poor things are, and we mean to stand by them. There must be a proper provision for the wife--that the courts can get out of him. And as to the girl--why, she is his heiress!--and ought to be acknowledged as such."

Tatham turned suddenly, as he spoke, and fixed a pair of very straight blue eyes on his companion.

"Mr. Melrose is not bound to make her his heir," said Faversham quietly.

"Not bound! I daresay. But who else is there? He's not very likely to leave it to any of _us_," said Tatham with a grin. "And he's not the kind of gentleman to be endowing missions. Who is there?" he repeated.

"Mr. Melrose will please himself," said Faversham, coldly. "Of that we may be sure. Now then--what is it exactly that these ladies have come to ask?" he continued, in a sharp businesslike tone. "You are aware of course that Mrs. Melrose left her husband of her own free will--without any provocation?"

"You won't get a judge to believe that very easily--in the case of Melrose! Anyway she's done nothing criminal. And she's willing, poor wretch! to go back to him. But if not, she asks for a maintenance allowance, suitable to his wealth and position, and that the daughter should be provided for. _You_ can't surely refuse to support us so far?"

Tatham had insensibly stiffened in his chair. His manner which at first, though not exactly cordial, had still been that of the college friend and contemporary, had unconsciously, in the course of the conversation, assumed a certain tone of authority, as though there spoke through him the force of a settled and traditional society, of which he knew himself to be one of the natural chiefs.

To Faversham, full of a secret bitterness, this second manner of Tatham's was merely arrogance. His own pride rose against it, and what he felt it implied. Not a sign of that confidence in the new agent which had been so freely expressed at Duddon a couple of months before! His detractors had no doubt been at work with this jolly, stupid fellow, whom everybody liked. He would have to fight for himself. Well, he would fight!

"I shall certainly support any just claim," he said, as Tatham rose, "but I warn you that Mr. Melrose is ill--he is very irritable--and Mrs. Melrose had better not attempt to spring any surprises on him. If she will write me a letter, I will see that it gets to Mr. Melrose, and I will do my best for her."

"No one could ask you to do any more," said Tatham heartily, repenting himself a little. "They will be with us for the present. Mrs. Melrose shall write you a full statement and you will reply to Duddon?"

"By all means."

"There are a good many other things," said Tatham--uncertainly--as he lingered, hat in hand--"that you and I might discuss--Mainstairs, for instance! I ought to tell you that my mother has just sent two nurses there. The condition of things is simply appalling."

Faversham straightened his tall figure.

"Mainstairs is a deadlock. Mr. Melrose won't repair the cottages. He intends to pull them down. He has given the people notice, and he is receiving no rent. They won't go. I suppose the next step will be to apply for an ejectment order. Meanwhile the people stay at their own peril. There you have the whole thing."

"I hear the children are dying like flies."

"I can do nothing," said Faversham.

Again a shock of antagonism passed through the two men. "Yes, you can!" thought Tatham; "you can resign your fat post, and your expectations, and put the screw on the old man, that's what you could do." Aloud he said:

"A couple of thousand pounds, according to Undershaw, would do the job. If you succeed in forcing them out, where are they to go?"

"That's not our affair."

Tatham caught up his hat and stick, and abruptly departed; reflecting indeed when he reached the street, that he had not been the most diplomatic of ambassadors on Mrs. Melrose's behalf.

Faversham, after some ten minutes of motionless reflection, heavily returned to his papers, ordering his horse to be ready in half an hour. He forced himself to write some ordinary business letters, and to eat some lunch, and immediately after he started on horseback to find his way through the October lanes to the village of Mainstairs.

A man more harassed, and yet more resolved, it would have been difficult to find. For six weeks now he had been wading deeper and deeper into a moral quagmire from which he saw no issue at all--except indeed by the death of Edmund Melrose! That event would solve all difficulties.

For some time now he had been convinced, not only that the mother and daughter were living, but that there had been some recent communication between them and Melrose. Various trifling incidents and cryptic sayings of the old man, not now so much on his guard as formerly, had led Faversham to this conclusion. He realized that he himself had been haunted of late by the constant expectation that they might turn up.

Well, now they had turned up. Was he at once to make way for them, as Tatham clearly took for granted?--to advise Melrose to tear up his newly made will, and gracefully surrender his expectations as Melrose's heir to this girl of twenty-one? By no means!

What is the claim of birth in such a case, if you come to that? Look at it straight in the face. A child is born to a certain father; is then torn from that father against his will, and brought up for twenty years out of his reach. What claim has that child, when mature, upon the father--beyond, of course, a claim for reasonable provision--unless he chooses to acknowledge a further obligation? None whatever. The father has lived his life, and accumulated his fortune, without the child's help, without the child's affection or tendance. His possessions are morally and legally his own, to deal with as he pleases.

In the course of life, other human beings become connected with him, attached to him, and he to them. Natural claims must be considered and decently satisfied--agreed! But for the disposal of a man's superfluities, of such a fortune as Melrose's, there is no law--there ought to be no law; and the English character, as distinct from the French, has decided that there shall be no law. "If his liking, or his caprice even," thought Faversham passionately, "chooses to make me his heir, he has every right to give, and I to accept. I am a stranger to him; so, in all but the physical sense, is his daughter. But I am not a stranger to English life. My upbringing and experience--even such as they are--are better qualifications than hers. What can a girl of twenty, partly Italian, brought up away from England, hardly speaking her father's tongue, do for this English estate, compared to what I could do--with a free hand, and a million to draw on? Whom do I wrong by accepting what a miraculous chance has brought me--by standing by it--by fighting for it? No one--justly considered. And I will fight for it--though a hundred Tathams call me adventurer!"

So much for the root determination of the man; the result of weeks of excited brooding over wealth, and what can be done with wealth, amid increasing difficulties and problems from all sides.

His determination indeed did not protect him from the attacks of conscience; of certain moral instincts and prepossessions, that is, natural to a man of his birth and environment.

The mind, however, replied to them glibly enough. "I shall do the just and reasonable thing! As I promised Tatham, I shall look into the story of these two women, and if it is what it professes to be, I shall press Melrose to provide for them."

Conscience objected: "If he refuses?"

"They can enforce their claim legally, and I shall make him realize it."

"Can you?" said Conscience. "Have you any hold upon him at all?"

A flood of humiliation, indeed, rushed in upon him, as he recalled his effort, while Melrose was away in August, to make at least some temporary improvement in the condition of the Mainstairs cottages--secretly--out of his own money--by the help of the cottagers themselves. The attempt had been reported to Melrose by that spying little beast, Nash, and peremptorily stopped by telegram--"Kindly leave my property alone. It is not yours to meddle with."

And that most abominable scene, after Melrose's return to the Tower! Faversham could never think of it without shame and disgust. Ten times had he been on the point of dashing down his papers at Melrose's feet, and turning his back on the old madman, and his house, forever. It was, of course, the thought of the gifts he had already accepted, and of that vast heritage waiting for him when Melrose should be in his grave, which had restrained him--that alone; no cynic could put it more nakedly than did Faversham's own thoughts. He was tied and bound by his own actions, and his own desires; he had submitted--grovelled to a tyrant; and he knew well enough that from that day he had been a lesser and a meaner man.

But--no silly exaggeration! He straightened himself in his saddle. He was doing plenty of good work elsewhere, work with which Melrose did not trouble himself to interfere; work which would gradually tell upon the condition and happiness of the estate. Put that against the other. Men are not plaster saints--or, still less, live ones, with the power of miracle; but struggling creatures of flesh and blood, who do, not what they will, but what they can.

And suddenly he seemed once more to be writing to Lydia Penfold. How often he had written to her during these two months! He recalled the joy of the earlier correspondence, in which he had been his natural self, pleading, arguing, planning; showing all the eagerness--the sincere eagerness--there was in him, to make a decent job of his agency, to stand well with his new neighbours--above all with "one slight girl."

And her letters to him--sweet, frank, intelligent, sympathetic--they had been his founts of refreshing, his manna by the way. Until that fatal night, when Melrose had crushed in him all that foolish optimism and self-conceit with which he had entered into the original bargain! Since then, he knew well that his letters had chilled and disappointed her; they had been the letters of a slave.

And now this awful business at Mainstairs! Bessie Dobbs, the girl of eighteen--Lydia's friend--who had been slowly dying since the diphtheria epidemic of the year before, was dead at last, after much suffering; and he did not expect to find the child of eight, her little sister, still alive. There were nearly a score of other cases, and there were three children down with scarlet fever, besides some terrible attacks of blood-poisoning--one after childbirth--due probably to some form of the scarlet fever infection, acting on persons weakened by the long effect of filthy conditions. What would Lydia say, when she knew--when she came? From her latest letter it was not clear to him on what day she would reach home. After making his inspection he would ride on to Green Cottage and inquire. He dreaded to meet her; and yet he was eager to defend himself; his mind was already rehearsing all that he would say.

A long lane, shaded by heavy trees, made an abrupt turning, and he saw before him the Mainstairs village--one straggling street of wretched houses, mostly thatched, and built of "clay-lump," whitewashed. In a county of prosperous farming, and good landlords, where cottages had been largely rebuilt during the preceding century, this miserable village, with various other hamlets and almost all the cottages attached to farms on the Melrose estate, were the scandal of the countryside. Roofs that let in rain and wind, clay floors, a subsoil soaked in every possible abomination, bedrooms "more like dens for wild animals than sleeping-places for men and women," to quote a recent Government report, and a polluted water supply!--what more could reckless human living, aided by human carelessness and cruelty, have done to make a hell of natural beauty?

Over the village rose the low shoulder of a grassy fell, its patches of golden fern glistening under the October sunshine; great sycamores, with their rounded masses of leaf, hung above the dilapidated roofs, as though Nature herself tried to shelter the beings for whom men had no care; the thatched slopes were green with moss and weed; and the blue smoke wreaths that rose from the chimneys, together with the few flowers that gleamed in the gardens, the picturesque irregularity of the houses, and the general setting of wood and distant mountain, made of the poisoned village a "subject," on which a wandering artist, who had set up his canvas at the corner of the road, was at the moment, indeed, hard at work. There might be death in those houses; but out of the beauty which sunshine strikes from ruin, a man, honestly in search of a few pounds, was making what he could.

To Faversham's overstrung mind the whole scene was as the blood-stained palace of the Atreidae to the agonized vision of Cassandra. He saw it steeped in death--death upon death--and dreaded of what new "murder" he might hear as soon as he approached the houses. For what was it but murder? His conscience, arguing with itself, did not dispute the word. Had Melrose, out of his immense income, spent a couple of thousand pounds on the village at any time during the preceding years, a score of deaths would have been saved, and the physical degeneracy of a whole population would have been prevented.

* * * * *

Heavens! that light figure in Dobbs's garden, talking with the old shepherd--his heart leapt and then sickened. It was Lydia.

A poignant fear stirred in him. He gave his horse a touch of the whip, and was at her side.

"Miss Penfold!--you oughtn't to be here! For heaven's sake go home!"

Lydia, who in the absorption of her talk with the shepherd had not heard his approach, turned with a start. Her face was one of passionate grief--there were tears on her cheek.

"Oh, Mr. Faversham--"

"The child?" he asked, as he dismounted.

"She died--last night."

"Aye, an' there's another doon--t' li'le boy--t' three-year-old," said old Dobbs sharply, straightening himself on his stick, at sight of the agent.

"The nurses are here?" said Faversham after a pause.

"Aye," said the shepherd, turning toward his cottage, "but they can do nowt. The childer are marked for deein afore they're sick." And he walked away, his inner mind shaken with a passion that forbade him to stay and talk with Melrose's agent.

Two or three labourers who were lounging in front of their houses came slowly toward the agent. It was evident that there was unemployment as well as disease in the village, and that the neighbouring farms, where there were young children, were cutting themselves off, as much as they could, from the Mainstairs infection, by dismissing the Mainstairs men.

Faversham meanwhile again implored Lydia to go home. "This whole place reeks with infection. You ought not to be here."

"They say that nothing has been done!"

Her tone was quiet, but her look pierced.

"I tried. It was impossible. The only thing that could be done was that the people should go. They are under notice. Every single person is here in defiance of the law. The police will have to be called in."

"And where are we to goa, sir!" cried one of the men who had come up. "Theer's noa house to be had nearer than Pengarth--yo' know that yoursen--an' how are we to be waakin' fower mile to our work i' t' mornin', an' fower mile back i' t' evening? Why, we havena got t' strength! It isna exactly a health resort--yo' ken--Mainstairs!"

"I'll tell yo' where soom on us might goa, Muster Faversham," said another older man, removing the pipe he had been stolidly smoking; "theer's two farmhouses o' Melrose's, within half a mile o' this place--shut oop--noabody there. They're big houses--yan o' them wor an' owd manor-house, years agone. A body might put oop five or six families in 'em at a pinch. Thattens might dëa for a beginnin'; while soom o' these houses were coomin' doon."

Lydia turned eagerly to Faversham.

"_Couldn't_ that be done--some of the families with young children that are not yet attacked?" Her eyes hung on him.

He shook his head. He had already proposed something of the sort to Melrose. It had been vetoed.

The men watched him. At last one of them--a lanky youth, with a frowning, ironic expression and famous as a heckler at public meetings--said with slow emphasis:

"There'll coom a day i' this coontry, mates, when men as treat poor foak like Muster Melrose, 'ull be pulled off t' backs of oos an' our like. And may aa live to see 't!"

"Aye! aye!" came in deep assent from the others, as they turned away. But one white and sickly fellow looked back to say:

"An' it's a graat pity for a yoong mon like you, sir, to be doin' Muster Melrose's dirty work--taakin' o' the police--as though yo' had 'em oop your sleeve!"

"Haven't I done what I could for you?" cried Faversham, stung by the reproach, and its effect on Lydia's face.

"Aye--mebbe--but it's nowt to boast on." The man, middle aged but prematurely old, stood still, trembling from head to foot. "My babe as wor born yesterday, deed this mornin'; an' they say t' wife 'ull lig beside it afore night."

There was a sombre silence. Faversham broke it. "I must see the nurses," he said to Lydia; "but again, I beg of you to go! I will send you news."

"I will wait for you. Don't be afraid. I won't go indoors."

He went round the houses, watched by the people, as they stood at their doors. He himself was paying two nurses, and now Lady Tatham had sent two more. He satisfied himself that they had all the stores which Undershaw had ordered; he left a donation of money with one of them, and then he returned to Lydia.

They walked together in silence; while a boy from the village led Faversham's horse some distance in the rear. All that Faversham had meant to say had dropped away from him. His planned defence of himself could find no voice.

"You too blame me?" he said, at last, hoarsely.

She shook her head sadly.

"I don't know what to think. But when we last met--you were so hopeful--"

"Yes--like a fool. But what can you do--with a madman."

"Can you bear--to be still in his employ?"

She looked up, her beautiful eyes bright and challenging.

"Mainstairs is not the whole estate. If I'm powerless here--I'm not elsewhere--"

She was silent. He turned upon her.

"If _you_ are to misunderstand and mistrust me--then indeed I shall lose heart!"

The feeling, one might almost say the anguish, in his dark, commanding face moved her strangely. Condemnation and pity--aye, and something else than pity--struggled within her. For the first time Lydia began to know herself. She was strangely shaken.

"I will try--and understand," she said in a voice that trembled.

"All my power of doing anything depends on it!" he said, passionately. "I can say truly that things would have been infinitely worse if I had not been here. And I have worked like a horse to better them--before you came."

She was silent. His appeal to her as to his judge hurt her poignantly. Yet what could she do or say? Her natural longing was to console; but where were the elements of consolation? _Could_ anything be worse than what she had seen and heard?

The mingled emotion which silenced her, warned her not to continue the conversation. She perceived the opening of a side-lane leading back to the river and the Keswick road.

"This is my best way, I think," she said, pausing, and holding out her hand. "The pony-cart is waiting for me at Whitebeck."

He looked at her in distress, yet also in anger. A friend might surely have stood by him more cordially, believed in him more simply.

"You are at home again? I may come and see you."

"Please! We shall want to hear."

Her tone was embarrassed. They parted almost coldly.

Lydia walked quickly home, down a sloping lane from which the ravines of Blencathra, edge behind edge, chasm beyond chasm, were to be seen against the sunset, and all the intermediate landscape--wood, and stubble, and ferny slope--steeped in stormy majesties of light. But for once the quick artist sense was shut against Nature's spectacles. She walked in a blind anguish of self-knowledge and self-scorn. She who had plumed herself on the poised mind, the mastered senses!

She moaned to herself.

"Why didn't he tell me--warn me! To sell himself to that man--to act for him--defend him--apologize for him--and for those awful, awful things! An agent must."

And she thought of some indignant talk of Undershaw, which she had heard that morning.

Her moral self was full of repulsion; her heart was torn. Friend? She owned her weakness, and despised it. Turning aside, she leant a while against a gate, hiding her face from the glory of the evening. Week by week--she knew it now!--through that frank interchange of mind with mind, of heart with heart, represented by that earlier correspondence, still more perhaps through the checks and disappointments of its later phases, Claude Faversham had made his way into the citadel.

The puny defences she had built about the freedom of her maiden life and will lay in ruins. Her theories were scattered like the autumn leaves that were scuddering over the fields. His voice, the very roughened bitterness of it; his eyes, with their peremptory challenge, their sore accusingness; the very contradictions of the man's personality, now delightful, now repellent, and, breathing through them all, the passion she must needs divine--of these various impressions, small and great, she was the struggling captive. Serenity, peace were gone.

Meanwhile, as Faversham rode toward the Tower, absorbed at one moment in a misery of longing, and the next in a heat of self-defence, perhaps the strongest feeling that finally emerged was one of dismay that her abrupt leave-taking had prevented him from telling her of that other matter of which Tatham's visit had informed him. She must hear of it immediately, and from those who would judge and perhaps denounce him.

Nevertheless, as he dismounted at the Tower, neither the burden of Mainstairs, nor the fear of Lydia's disapproval, nor the agitation of the news from Duddon, had moved him one jot from his purpose. A man surely is a coward and a weakling, he thought, who cannot grasp the "skirts of happy chance," while they are there for the grasping; cannot take what the gods offer, while they offer it, lest they withdraw it forever.

Yet, suppose, that by his own act, he raised a moral barrier between himself and Lydia Penfold which such a personality would never permit itself to pass?

His vanity, a touch of natural cynicism, refused, in the end, to let him believe it. His hope lay in a frank wrestle with her, a frank attack upon her intelligence. He promised himself to attempt it without delay.

XV

The day following the interview between Tatham and Faversham was a day of expectation for the inmates of Duddon. On the evening before, Tatham with much toil had extracted a more or less, coherent statement from Netta Melrose, persuading her to throw it into the form of an appeal to her husband. "If we can't do anything by reasoning, why then we must try pressure," he had said to her, in his suavest County Council manner; "but we won't talk law to begin with." The statement when finished and written out in Netta's childish hand was sent by messenger, late in the evening, within a covering letter to Faversham, written by Tatham.

Tatham afterward devoted himself till nearly midnight to composing a letter to Lydia. He had unaccountably missed her that afternoon, for when he arrived at the cottage from Pengarth she was out, and neither Mrs. Penfold nor Susy knew where she was. In fact she was at Mainstairs, and with Faversham. She had mistaken a phrase in Tatham's note of the morning, and did not expect him till later. He had waited an hour for her, under the soft patter of Mrs. Penfold's embarrassed conversation; and had then ridden home, sorely disappointed, but never for one instant blaming the beloved.

But later, in the night silence, he poured out to her all his budget: the arrival of the Melroses; their story; his interview with Faversham; and his plans for helping them to their rights. To a "friend" it was only allowed, besides, to give restrained expression to his rapturous joy in being near her again, and his disappointment of the afternoon. He thought over every word, as he wrote it down, his eyes sometimes a little dim in the lamp-light. The very reserve imposed upon him did but strengthen his passion. Nor could young hopes believe in ultimate defeat.

At the same time, the thought of Faversham held the background of his mind. Though by now he himself cordially disliked Faversham, he was quite aware of the attraction the new agent's proud and melancholy personality might have for women. He had seen it working in Lydia's case, and he had been uncomfortably aware at one time of the frequent references to Faversham in Lydia's letters. It was evident that Faversham had pushed the acquaintance with the Penfolds as far as he could; that he was Lydia's familiar correspondent, and constantly appealing for help to her knowledge of the country folk. An excellent road to intimacy, as Tatham uneasily admitted, considering Lydia's love for the people of the dales, and her passionate sympathy with the victims of Melrose's ill-deeds.

Ah! but the very causes which had been throwing her into an intimacy with Faversham must surely now be chilling and drawing her back? Tatham, the young reformer, felt an honest indignation with the failure of Claude Faversham to do the obvious and necessary work he had promised to do. Tatham, the lover, knew very well that if he had come back to find Faversham the hero of the piece, with a grateful countryside at his feet, his own jealous anxiety would have been even greater than it was. For it was great, argue with himself as he might. A dread for which he could not account often overshadowed him. It was caused perhaps by his constant memory of Faversham and Lydia on the terrace at Threlfall--of the two faces turned to each other--of the sudden fusion as it were of the two personalities in a common rush of memories, interests, and sympathies, in which he himself had no part....

He put up his letter on the stroke of midnight, and then walked his room a while longer, struggling with himself and the passion of his desire; praying that he might win her. Finally he took a well-worn Bible from a locked drawer, and read some verses from the Gospel of St. John, quieting himself. He never went to sleep without reading either a psalm or some portion of the New Testament. The influence of his Eton tutor had made him a Christian of a simple and convinced type; and his mother's agnosticism had never affected him. But he and she never talked of religion.

Nothing arrived from Threlfall the following day during the morning. After luncheon, Victoria announced her intention of going to call on the Penfolds.

"You can follow me there in the motor," she said to her son; "and if any news comes, bring it on."

They were in the drawing-room. Netta, white and silent, was stretched on the sofa, where Victoria had just spread a shawl over her. Felicia appeared to be turning over an illustrated paper, but was in reality watching the mother and son out of the corners of her eyes. Everything that was said containing a mention of the Penfolds struck in her an attentive ear. The casual conversation of the house had shown her already that there were three ladies--two of them young--who were living not far from Duddon, and were objects of interest to both Lady Tatham and her son. Flowers were sent them, and new books. They were not relations; and not quite ordinary acquaintances. All this had excited a furious curiosity in Felicia. She wished--was determined indeed--to see these ladies for herself.

"You will hardly want to go out," said Victoria gently, standing by Netta's sofa, and looking down with kind eyes on the weary woman lying there.

Netta shook her head; then putting out her hand she took Victoria's and pressed it. Victoria understood that she was waiting feverishly for the answer from Threlfall, and could do nothing and think of nothing till it arrived.

"And your daughter?" She looked round for Felicia.

"I wish to drive in a motor," said Felicia, rising and speaking with a decision which amused Victoria. Pending the arrival from London of some winter costumes on approval, Victoria's maid had arranged for the little Italian a picturesque dress of dark blue silk, from a gown of her mistress', by which the emaciation of the girl's small frame was somewhat disguised; while the beauty of the material, and of the delicate embroideries on the collar and sleeves, strangely heightened the grace of her curly head, and the effect of her astonishing eyes, so liquidly bright, in a face too slight for them.

In forty-eight hours, even, of comfort and cosseting her elfish thinness had become a shade less ghastly; and the self-possession which had emerged from the state of collapse in which she had arrived amazed Victoria. A week before, so it appeared, she had been earning a franc a day in the vineyard of a friendly _contadino_. And already one might have thought her bred in castles. She was not abashed or bewildered by the luxuries of Duddon, as Netta clearly was. Rather, she seemed to seize greedily and by a natural instinct upon all that came her way--motors, pretty frocks, warm baths in luxurious bathrooms, and the attentions of Victoria's maid. Victoria believed that she had grasped the whole situation with regard to Threlfall. She was quite aware, it seemed, of the magnitude of her father's wealth; of all that hung upon her own chances of inheritance; and of the value, to her cause and her mother's, of the support of Duddon. Her likeness to her father came out hour by hour, and there were moments when the tiny creature carried herself like a Melrose in miniature.

Victoria's advent was awaited at Green Cottage, she having telephoned to Mrs. Penfold in the morning, with something of a flutter. Her visits there had not been frequent; and this was the first time she had called since Tatham's proposal to Lydia. That event had never been avowed by Lydia, as we have seen, even to her mother; Lydia and Victoria had never exchanged a word on the subject. But Lydia was aware of the shrewd guessing of her family, and she did not suppose for one moment that Lady Tatham was ignorant of anything that had happened.

Mrs. Penfold, scarcely kept in order by Susy, was in much agitation. She felt terribly guilty. Lady Tatham must think them all monsters of ingratitude, and she wondered how she could be so kind as to come and see them at all. She became at last so incoherent and tearful that Lydia prepared for the worst, while Susy, the professed psychologist, revelled in the prospect of new "notes."

But when Victoria arrived, entering the cottage drawing-room with her fine mannish face, her stately bearing, and her shabby clothes, the news she brought seized at once on Mrs. Penfold's wandering wits, and for the moment held them fast. For Victoria, whose secret object was to discover, if she could, any facts about Lydia's doings and feelings during the interval of separation, that might throw light upon her Harry's predicament, made it cunningly appear that she had come expressly to tell her neighbours of the startling event which was now agitating Duddon, as it would soon be agitating the countryside.

Mrs. Penfold--steeped in long years of three-decker fiction--sat entranced. The cast-off and ill-treated wife returning to the scene of her misery--with the heiress!--grown up--and beautiful: she saw it all; she threw it all into the moulds dear to the sentimentalist. Victoria demurred to the adjective "beautiful"; suggesting "pretty--when we have fed her!" But Mrs. Penfold, with soft, shining eyes, already beheld the mother and child weeping at the knees of the Ogre, the softening of the Ogre's heart, the opening of the grim Tower to its rightful heiress, the happy ending, the marriage gown in the distance.

"For suppose!"--she turned gayly to her daughters for sympathy--"suppose she were to marry Mr. Faversham! And then Mr. Melrose can have a stroke, and everything will come right!"

Lydia and Susy smiled dutifully. Victoria sat silent. Her silence checked Mrs. Penfold's flow, and brought her back, bewildered to realities; to the sad remembrance of Lydia's astonishing and inscrutable behaviour. Whereupon her manner and conversation became so dishevelled, in her effort to propitiate Lady Tatham without betraying either herself or Lydia, that the situation grew quickly unbearable.

"May I see your garden?" said Victoria abruptly to Lydia. Lydia rose with alacrity, opened the glass door into the garden, and by a motion of the lips only visible to Susy appealed to her to keep their mother indoors.

A misty October sun reigned over the garden. The river ran sparkling through the valley, and on the farther side the slopes and jutting crags of the Helvellyn range showed ghostly through the sunlit haze.'

A few absent-minded praises were given to the phloxes and the begonias. Then Victoria said, turning a penetrating eye on Lydia:

"You heard from Harry of the Melroses' arrival?"

"Yes--this morning."

Bright colour rushed into Lydia's cheeks. Tatham's letter of that morning, the longest perhaps ever written by a man who detested letter-writing, had touched her profoundly, caused her an agonized searching of conscience. Did Lady Tatham blame and detest her? Her manner was certainly cool. The girl's heart swelled as she walked along beside her guest.

"Everything depends on Mr. Faversham," said Victoria. "You are a friend of his?" She took the garden chair that Lydia offered her.

"Yes; we have all come to know him pretty well."

Lydia's face, as she sat on the grass at Lady Tatham's feet, looking toward the fells, was scarcely visible to her companion. Victoria could only admire the beauty of the girl's hair, as the wind played with it, and the grace of her young form.

"I am afraid he is disappointing all his friends," she said gravely.

"Is it his fault?" exclaimed Lydia. "Mr. Melrose must be mad!"

"I wonder if that excuses Mr. Faversham?"

"It's horrible for him!" said Lydia in a low, smothered voice. "He _wants_ to put things right?"

It was on the tip of Victoria's tongue to say, "Does he too write to you every day?" but she refrained.

"If he really wants to put things right, why has he done nothing all these seven weeks?" she asked severely. "I saw Colonel Barton this morning. He and Mr. Andover are in despair. They felt such confidence in Mr. Faversham. The state of the Mainstairs village is too terrible! Everybody is crying out. The Carlisle papers this week are full of it. But there are scores of other things almost as bad. Mr. Faversham rushes about--here, there, and everywhere--but with no result, they tell us, as far as any of the real grievances are concerned. Mr. Melrose seems to be infatuated about him personally; will give him everything he wants; and pays no attention whatever to his advice. And you know the latest report?"

"No." Lydia's face was bent over the grass, as she tried to aid a bumble-bee which was lying on its back.

"It is generally believed that Mr. Melrose has made him his heir."

Lydia lifted a face of amazement, at first touched strangely with relief. "Then--surely--he will be able to do what he wants!"

"On the contrary. His silence has been bought--that's what people say. Mr. Melrose has bribed him to do his work, and defend his iniquities."

"_Oh!_ Is that fair?" The humble-bee was so hastily poked on to his legs that he tumbled over again.

"Well, now, we shall test him!" said Victoria quietly. "We shall see what he does with regard to Mrs. Melrose and her daughter. Harry will have told you how he went to him yesterday. We had a telephone message this morning to say that a letter would reach us this afternoon from Mr. Faversham. Harry will bring it on here; and I asked him to bring Felicia Melrose with him in the car. We thought you would be interested to see her."

There was a pause. At last Lydia said slowly:

"How will you test Mr. Faversham? I don't understand."

"Unless the man is an adventurer," said Victoria, straightening her shoulders, "he will, of course, do his best to put this girl--who is the rightful heiress--into her proper place. What business has he with Mr. Melrose's estates?"

Lady Tatham spoke with imperious energy.

Lydia's eyes showed an almost equal animation.

"May he not share with her? Aren't they immense?"

"At present he takes everything--so they say. It looks ugly. A complete stranger--worming himself in a few weeks or months into an old man's confidence--and carrying off the inheritance from a pair of helpless women! And making himself meanwhile the tool of a tyrant!--aiding and abetting him in all his oppressions!"

"Oh, Lady Tatham! no, no!" cried Lydia--the cry seemed wrung from her--"I--we--have only known Mr. Faversham this short time--but _how_ can one believe--"

She paused, her eyes under their vividly marked eyebrows painfully searching the face of her companion.

Victoria said to herself, "Heavens!--she _is_ in love with him--and she is letting Harry sit up at nights to write to her!"

Her mother's heart beat fast with anger. But she held herself in hand.

"Well; as I have said, we shall soon be able to test him," she repeated, coldly; "we shall soon know what to think. His letter will show whether he is a man with feeling and conscience--a gentleman--or an adventurer!"

There was silence. Lydia was thinking passionately of Mainstairs and of the deep tones of a man's voice--"If _you_ condemn and misunderstand me--then indeed I shall lose heart!"

A humming sound could be heard in the far distance.

"Here they are," said Lady Tatham rising. Victoria's half-masculine beauty had never been so formidable as it was this afternoon. Deep in her heart, she carried both pity for Harry, and scorn for this foolish girl walking beside her, who could not recognize her good fortune when it cried out to her.

They hastened back to the drawing-room; and at the same moment Tatham and Felicia walked in.

Felicia advanced with perfect self-command, her small face flushed with pink by the motion of the car. In addition to the blue frock, Victoria's maid had now provided her with a short cape of black silk, and a wide straw hat, to which the girl herself had given a kind of tilt, a touch of audacity, in keeping with all the rest of her personality.

As she came in, she glanced round the room with her uncannily large eyes--her mother's eyes--taking in all the company. She dropped a little curtsey to Mrs. Penfold, in whom the excitement of this sudden appearance of Melrose's daughter had produced sheer and simple dumbness. She allowed her hand to be shaken by Lydia and Susy, looking sharply at the former; while Susy looked sharply at her. Then she subsided into a corner by Lady Tatham. It was evident that she regarded herself as under that lady's particular protection.

"Well?" said Lady Tatham in an eager aside to her son. She read his aspect as that of a man preoccupied.

Tatham shrugged his shoulders with a glance at Felicia. Victoria whispered to Lydia: "Will you tell your mother I want to speak a few words to Harry on business?"

Mother and son passed into the garden together.

"A declaration of war!" said Tatham, as he handed a letter to her. "I propose to instruct our solicitors at once."

Victoria read hastily. The writing was Faversham's. But the mind expressed was Melrose's. Victoria read him in every line. She believed the letter to have been simply dictated.

"DEAR LORD TATHAM:

"I have laid Mrs. Melrose's statement before Mr. Melrose. I regret to say that he sees no cause to modify the arrangements made years ago with regard to his wife, except that, in consideration of the fact that Miss Melrose is now grown up, he will add £20 yearly to Mrs. Melrose's allowance, making it £100 a year. Provision will be made for the continuance of this allowance to Mrs. Melrose till her death, and afterward to the daughter for her lifetime; _on condition that_ Mr. Melrose is not further molested in any way. Otherwise Mr. Melrose acknowledges and will acknowledge no claim upon him whatever.

"I am to add that if Mrs. Melrose is in difficulties, it is entirely owing to the dishonest rapacity of her family who have been living upon her. Mr. Melrose is well acquainted with both the past and recent history of Mr. Robert Smeath, who made a tool of Mrs. Melrose in the matter of a disgraceful theft of a valuable bronze from Mr. Melrose's collection--"

"The Hermes!" cried Victoria. "She has never said one word to me about it."

"Miss Melrose has been telling me the story," said Tatham, smiling at the recollection. "By George, that's a rum little girl! She glories in it. But she says her mother has been consumed with remorse ever since. Go on."

"And if any attempt is made to blackmail or coerce Mr. Melrose, he will be obliged, much against his will, to draw the attention of the Italian police to certain matters relating to Mr. Smeath, of which he has the evidence in his possession. He warns Mrs. Melrose that her father's career cannot possibly bear examination.

"I regret that my reply cannot be more satisfactory to you.

"Believe me,

"Yours faithfully,

"CLAUDE FAVERSHAM."

Victoria had turned pale.

"How _abominable_! Why, her father is bedridden and dying!"

"So I told Faversham--like a fool. For it only--apparently--gives Melrose a greater power of putting on the screw. Well, now look here--here's something else." He drew another letter from his pocket, and handed it to her.

Victoria unfolded a second note from Faversham--marked "confidential," and written in evident agitation.

"MY DEAR TATHAM:

"I am powerless. Let me implore you to keep Mrs. Melrose quiet! Privately a great deal may be done for her. If she will only trust herself to me, in my private capacity, I will see that she is properly supplied for the future. But she will simply bring disaster on herself if she attempts to force Melrose. She--and you--know what he is. I beg of you to be guided--and to guide her--as I advise."

"An attempt, you see, to buy us off," said Tatham scornfully. "I propose to take the night train from Pengarth this evening, and consult old Fledhow to-morrow morning."

"Old Fledhow," _alias_ James Morton Fledhow, solicitor, head of one of that small group of firms which, between them, have the great estates of England in their pigeon-holes, had been the legal adviser of the Tatham family for two generations. Precipitation is not the badge of his tribe; but Victoria threw herself upon this very natural and youthful impulse, before even it could reach "old Fledhow."

"My dear Harry, be cautious! What did Mrs. Melrose say? Of course you showed her the letter?"

Tatham candidly admitted that he hardly knew what Mrs. Melrose had said. The letter had thrown her into a great state of agitation, and she had cried a good deal. "Poor pápa, poor pápa!" pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, seemed to have been all that she had been able to articulate.

"You know, Harry, there may be a great deal in it?" Victoria's countenance showed her doubts.

"In the threat about her father? Pure bluff, mother!--absolute bluff! As for the bronze--a wife can't steal from her husband. And under these circumstances!--I should like to see a British jury that would touch her!"

"But she admits that half the proceeds went to her father."

"Twenty years ago?" Tatham's shrug was magnificent. "I tell you he'll get no change out of that!"

"But he hints at other things?"

"Bluff again! Why the man's helpless in his bed!"

"I suppose even dying can be made more unpleasant by the police," said Victoria. She pondered, walking thoughtfully beside a rather thwarted and impatient youth, eager to play the champion of the distressed in his own way; and that, possibly, from more motives than one. Suddenly her face cleared.

"I will go myself!" she said, laying her hand on her son's arm.

"Mother!"

"Yes! I'll go myself. Leave it to me, Harry. I will drive over to Threlfall to-morrow evening--quite alone and without notice. I had some influence with him once," she said, with her eyes on the ground.

Tatham protested warmly. The smallest allusion to any early relation between his mother and Melrose was almost intolerable to him. But Lady Tatham fought for her idea. She pointed out again that Melrose might very well have some information that could be used with ghastly effect even upon a dying man; that Netta was much attached to her father, and would probably not make up her mind to any drastic step whatever in face of Melrose's threats.

"I don't so much care about Mrs. Melrose," exclaimed Tatham. "We can give her money, and make her comfortable, if it comes to that. But it's the girl--and the hideous injustice of that fellow there--that Faversham--ousting her from her rights--getting the old man into his power--boning his property--and then writing hypocritical notes like that!"

He stood before her, flushed and excited; a broad-shouldered avenger of the sex, such as any distressed maiden might have been glad to light upon. But again Victoria was aware that the case was not as simple as it sounded. However, she was no less angry than he. Mother and son were on the brink of making common cause against a grasping impostor; who was not to be allowed to go off--either with money that did not belong to him, or with angelic sympathies that still less belonged to him. Meanwhile on this point, whatever may have been in their minds, they said on this occasion not a word. Victoria pressed her plan. And in the end Tatham most reluctantly consented that she should endeavour to force a surprise interview with Melrose the following day.

They returned to the little drawing-room where Felicia Melrose, it seemed, had been giving the Penfolds a difficult half hour. For as soon as the Tathams had stepped into the garden, she had become entirely monosyllabic; after a drive from Duddon at Harry Tatham's side, during which, greatly to her host's surprise, she had suddenly and unexpectedly found her tongue, talking, in a torrent of questions, all the way, insatiably.

Mrs. Penfold, on her side, could do little but stare at "the heiress of Threlfall." Susy, studying her with shining eyes, tried to make her talk, to little purpose.

But Lydia in particular could get nothing out of her. It seemed to her that Felicia looked at her as though she disliked her. And every now and then the small stranger would try to see herself in the only mirror that the cottage drawing-room afforded; lengthening out her long, thin neck, and turning her curly head stealthily from side to side like a swan preening. Once, when she thought no one was observing her, she took a carnation from a vase near her--it had been sent over from Duddon that morning!--and put it in her dress. And the next moment, having pulled off her glove, she looked with annoyance at her own roughened hand, and then at Lydia's delicate fingers playing with a paper-knife. Frowning, she hastily slipped her glove on again.

As soon as Tatham and his mother reappeared, she jumped up with alacrity, a smile breaking with sudden and sparkled beauty on her pinched face, and went to stand by Victoria's side, looking up at her with eager docility and admiration.

Victoria, however, left her, in order to draw Lydia into a corner beside a farther window.

"I am sorry to say Harry has received a very unsatisfactory letter from Mr. Faversham."

"May I ask him about it?"

"He wants to tell you. I am carrying Miss Melrose back with me. But Harry will stay."

Words which cost Victoria a good deal. If what she now believed was the truth, how monstrous that her Harry should be kept dangling here! Her pride was all on edge. But Harry ruled her. She could make no move till his eyes too were opened.

Meanwhile, on all counts, Faversham was the enemy. To that _chasse_ first and foremost, Victoria vowed herself.

* * * * *

"Well, what do you think of her?" said Tatham, good-humouredly, as he raised his hat to Felicia and his mother disappearing in the car. "She's more alive to-day; but you can see she has been literally starved. That _brute_ Melrose!"

Lydia made some half audible reply, and with a view to prolonging his _tête-à-tête_ with her, he led her strolling along the road, through a golden dusk, touched with moonrise. She followed, but all her pleasant self-confidence with regard to him was gone; she walked beside him, miserable and self-condemned; a theorist defeated by the incalculable forces of things. How to begin with him--what line to take--how to undo her own work--she did not know; her mind was in confusion.

As for him, he was no sooner alone with her than bliss descended on him. He forgot Faversham and the Melroses. He only wished to talk to her, and of himself. Surely, so much, "friendship" allowed.

He began, accordingly, to comment eagerly on her letters to him, and his to her, explaining this, questioning that. Every word showed her afresh that her letters had been the landmarks of his Scotch weeks, the chief events of his summer; and every word quickened a new remorse. At last she could bear it no longer. She broke abruptly on his talk.

"Mayn't I know what's happened at Threlfall? Your mother told me--you had heard."

He pulled himself together, while many things he would rather have forgotten rushed back upon him.

"We're no forrader!" he said impatiently. "I don't believe we shall get a brass farthing out of Melrose, if you ask me; at least without going to law and making a scandal; partly because he's Melrose, and that sort--sooner die than climb down, and the rest of it--but mostly--"

He broke off.

"Mostly?" repeated Lydia.

"I don't know whether I'd better go on. Faversham's a friend of yours."

Tatham looked down upon her, his blunt features reddening.

"Not so much a friend that I can't hear the truth about him," said Lydia, smiling rather faintly. "What do you accuse him of?"

He hesitated a moment; then the inner heat gathered, and flashed out. Wasn't it best to be frank?--best for her, best for himself?

"Don't you think it looks pretty black?" he asked her, breathing quick; "there he is, getting round an old man, and plotting for money he's no right to! Wouldn't you have thought that any decent fellow would sooner break stones than take the money that ought to have been that girl's--that at least he'd have said to Melrose 'provide for her first--your own child--and then do what you like for me.' Wouldn't that have been the honest thing to do? But I went to him yesterday--told him the story--he promised to look into it--and to use his influence. We sent him a statement in proper form, a few hours later. It's horrible what those two have suffered! And then, to-day--it's too dark for you to read his precious letter, but if you really don't mind, I'll tell you the gist of it."

He summarized it--quite fairly--yet with a contempt he did not try to conceal. The girl at his side, muffled in a blue cloak, with a dark hood framing the pale gold of the hair, and the delicate curves of the face, listened in silence. At the end she said:

"Tell me on what grounds you think Mr. Melrose has left his property to Mr. Faversham?"

"Everybody believes it! My Carlisle lawyers whom I saw this morning are convinced of it. Melrose is said to have spoken quite frankly about it to many persons."

"Not very strong evidence on which to condemn a man so utterly as you condemn him," said Lydia, with sudden emotion. "Think of the difficulty of his position! May he not be honestly trying to steer his way? And may not we all be doing our best to make his task impossible, putting the worst construction--the very worst!--on everything he does?"

There was silence a moment. Tatham and Lydia were looking into each other's faces; the girl's soul, wounded and fluttering, was in her eyes. Tatham felt a sudden and choking sense of catastrophe. Their house of cards had fallen about them, and his stubborn hopes with it. She, with her high standards, could not possibly defend--could not possibly plead--for a man who was behaving so shabbily, so dishonourably, except--for one reason! He leapt indignantly at certainty; although it was a certainty that tortured him.

"There is evidence enough!" he said, in a changed voice. "I don't understand how you can stick up for him."

"I don't," she said sadly, "not if it's true. But I don't want to believe it. Why should one want to believe the worst, you and I, about anybody?"

Tatham kept an explosive silence for a moment, and then broke out hoarsely:

"Do you remember, we promised we'd be real friends?--we'd be really frank with each other? I've kept my bargain. Are you keeping it? Isn't there something you haven't told me!--something I ought to know?"

"No, nothing!" cried Lydia, with sudden energy. "You misunderstand--you offend me."

She drew her breath quickly. There were angry tears in her eyes, hidden by the hood.

A gust of passion swept through Tatham, revealing his manhood to itself. He stopped, caught her hands, and held them fiercely, imprisoned against his breast. She must needs look up at him; male strength compelled; they stood motionless a few seconds under the shadows of the trees.

"If there _is_ nothing--if I _do_ misunderstand--if I'm wrong in what I think--for God's sake listen to me--give me back my promise. I can't--I can't keep it!"

He stooped and kissed the fingers he held, once, twice, repeatedly; then turned away, shading his eyes with his hand.

Lydia said, with a little moan:

"Oh, Harry!--we've broken the spell."

Tatham recovered himself with difficulty.

"Can't you--can't you ever care for me?" The voice was low, the eyes still hidden.

"We oughtn't to have been writing and meeting!" cried Lydia, in despair. "It was foolish, wrong! I see it now. I ask your pardon. We must say good-bye, Harry--and--oh!--oh!--I'm so sorry I let you--"

Her voice died away.

In the distance of the lane, a labourer emerged whistling from a gate, with his dog. Tatham's hands dropped to his sides; they walked on together as before. The man passed them with a cheerful good-night.

Tatham spoke slowly.

"Yes--perhaps--we'd better not meet. I can't--control myself. And I should go on offending you."

A chasm seemed to have opened between them. They turned and walked back to the gate of the cottage. When they reached it, Tatham crushed her hand again in his.

"Good-bye! If ever I can do anything to serve you--let me know! Good-bye!--dearest--_dearest_ Lydia." His voice sank and lingered on the name. The lamp at the gate showed him that her eyes were swimming in tears.

"You'll forgive me?" she said, imploringly.

He attempted a laugh, which ended in a sound of pain. Then he lifted her hand again, kissed it, and was gone; running--head down--through the dimness of the lane.

Meanwhile, wrapped in the warm furs of the motor, Felicia and Lady Tatham sped toward Duddon.

Felicia was impenetrably silent at first; and Victoria, who never found it easy to adapt herself to the young, made no effort to rouse her. Occasionally some passing light showed her the girl's pallid profile--slightly frowning brow, and pinched lips--against the dark lining of the car. And once or twice as she saw her thus, she was startled by the likeness to Melrose.

When they were halfway home, a thin, high voice struck into the silence, deliberately clear:

"Who is the Signorina Penfold?"

"Her mother is a widow. They have lived here about two years."

"She is not pretty. She is too pale. I do not like that hair," said Felicia, viciously.

Victoria could not help an unseen smile.

"Everybody here thinks her pretty. She is very clever, and a beautiful artist," she said, with slight severity.

The gesture beside her was scarcely discernible. But Victoria thought it was a toss of the head.

"Everybody in Italy can paint. It is as common--as common as lizards! There are dozens of people in Lucca who can paint--a whole villa--ceilings, walls--what you like. Nobody thinks anything at all about them. But Italian girls are very clever also! There were two girls in Lucca--Marchesine--the best family in Lucca. They got all the prizes at the Licéo, and then they went to Pisa to the University; and one of them was a Doctor of Law; and when they came home, all the street in which they lived and their _palazzo_ were lit up. And they were very pretty too!"

"And you--did you go to the Licéo, Felicia?"

"No! I had never any education--none, none, _none_! But I could get it, if I wanted," said the voice, defiantly.

"Of course you could. I have asked your mother to stay with us till Christmas. You might get some lessons in Carlisle. We could send you in."

Felicia, however, made no response to this at all, and Victoria felt that her proposal had fallen flat. But, after a minute or two, she heard:

"I should like--to learn--to _ride_!"

Much emphasis on the last word; accompanied by nodding of the fantastic little head.

"Well, we shall see!" laughed Victoria, indulgently.

"And then--I would go out--with Lord Tatham!" said Felicia. "Oh, but he is too _divine_ on horseback! There were some Italian cavalry officers at Lucca. I used to run to the window every time to see them pass by. But he is nobler--he is handsomer!"

Victoria, taken by surprise, wondered if it would not be well to administer a little snubbing to compliments so unabashed. She tried. But Felicia interrupted her:

"Do you not admire him--your son?" she said eagerly, slipping up close to Victoria. "Can he jump and swim rivers--on his horse--and come down mountains--on his haunches--like our _cavalleria_? I am certain he can!"

"He can do most things on a horse. When the hunting begins, you will see," said Victoria, smiling in spite of herself.

"Tell me, please, what is the hunting? And about the shooting, too. Lord Tatham told me--this afternoon--some ladies shoot. Oh, but I will learn to shoot! I swear it--yes! Now tell me!"

Thus attacked, the formidable Victoria capitulated. She was soon in the midst of stories of her Harry, from his first pony upward. And she had not gone far before a tiny hand slipped itself into hers and nestled there; moving and quivering occasionally, like a wild bird voluntarily tame. And when the drive ended, Victoria was quite sorry to lose its lithe softness.

XVI

Victoria very soon perceived that a crisis had come and gone. She had been accustomed for a while before they went to Scotland to send about once a week a basket of flowers and fruit from the famous gardens of Duddon, with her "kind regards" to Mrs. Penfold. The basket was generally brought into the hall, and Tatham would slip into it the new books or magazines that seemed to him likely to attract the cottage party. He had always taken a particular pleasure in the dispatch of the basket, and in the contrivance of some new offering of which it might be the bearer. Victoria, on the other hand, though usually a lavish giver, had taken but a grudging part in the business, and merely to please her son.

On the day following the visit to the cottage, the basket, in obedience to a standing order, lay in the hall as usual, heaped with a gorgeous mass of the earliest chrysanthemums. Victoria observed it--with an unfriendly eye--as she passed through the hall on her way to breakfast.

Harry came up behind her, and she turned to give him her morning kiss.

"Please don't send it," he said abruptly, pointing to the basket. "It wouldn't be welcome."

She started, but made no reply. They went into breakfast. Victoria gave the butler directions that the flowers should be sent to the Rectory.

After breakfast she followed Tatham into the library. He stood silent a while by the window, looking out, his hands in his pockets; she beside him, leaning her head against his arm.

"It's all over," he said at last; "we decided it last night."

"What's over, dear old boy?"

"I broke our compact--I couldn't help it--and we saw it couldn't go on."

"You--asked her again?"

He nodded. "It's no good. And now it only worries her that I should hang about. We can't--even be friends. It's all my fault."

"You poor darling!" cried his mother indignantly. "She has played with you abominably."

He flushed with anger.

"You mustn't say that--you mustn't think it, mother! All these weeks have been--to the good. They haven't been the real thing. But I shall always have them--to remember. Now it's done with."

Silence fell upon them again, while their minds went back over the history of the preceding six months. Victoria felt very bitter. And so, apparently, in his own way, did he. For he presently said, with a vehemence which startled her:

"I'd sooner be shot than see her marry that fellow!"

"Ah! you suspect that?"

"It looks like it," he said reluctantly. "And unless I'm much mistaken, he's a mean cad! But--for her sake--we'll make sure--we'll give him every chance."

"It is of course possible," said Victoria grudgingly, "that he has honestly tried to do something for the Melroses."

"I daresay!" said Tatham, with a shrug.

"And it is possible also that if he is the heir, he means to make it up to Felicia, when he comes into it all."

Tatham laughed.

"To throw her a spare bone? Very likely. But how are we to know that Melrose won't bind him by all sorts of restrictions? A vindictive old villain like that will do anything. Then we shall have Faversham calmly saying, 'Very sorry I can't oblige you! But if I modify the terms of the will in your favour, I forfeit the estates.' Besides isn't it monstrous--damnable--that Melrose's daughter should owe to _charity_--the charity of a fellow who had never heard of Melrose or Threlfall six months ago--what is her _right_--her plain and simple right?"

Victoria agreed. All these ancestral ideas of family maintenance, and the practical rights dependent on family ties, which were implied in Harry's attitude, were just as real to her as to his simpler mind. Yet she knew very well that Netta and Felicia Melrose were fast becoming to him the mere symbols and counters of a struggle that affected him more intimately, more profoundly than any crusading effort for the legal and moral rights of a couple of strangers could possibly have done.

Lydia had broken with him, and his hopes were dashed. Why? Because another man had come upon the scene whose influence upon her was clear--disastrously clear.

"If he were a decent fellow--I'd go out of her life--without a word. But he's a thievish intriguer!--and I don't intend to hold my hand till I've brought him out in his true colours before her and the world. Then--if she chooses--with her eyes open--let her take him!" It was thus his mother imagined his thought, and she was not far from the truth. And meanwhile the sombre changes in the boyish face made her own heart sore. For they told of an ill heat of blood, and an embittered soul.

At luncheon he sat depressed and silent, doing his duty with an effort to his mother's guests. Netta also was in the depths. She had lost the power of rapid recuperation that youth gave to Felicia, and in spite of the comforts of Threlfall her aspect was scarcely less deplorable than when she arrived. Moreover she had cried much since the delivery of the Threlfall letter the day before. Her eyes were red, and her small face disfigured. Felicia, on the other hand, sat with her nose in the air, evidently despising her mother's tears, and as sharply observant as ever of the sights about her--the quietly moving servants, the flowers, and silver, the strange, nice things to eat. Tatham, absorbed in his own thoughts, did not perceive how, in addition, she watched the master of the house; Victoria was uncomfortably aware of it.

After luncheon Tatham took up a Bradshaw lying on a table in the panelled hall, where they generally drank coffee, and looked up the night mail to Euston.

"I shall catch it at Carlisle," he said to his mother, book in hand. "There will be time to hear your report before I go."

She nodded. Her own intention was to start at dusk for Threlfall.

"Why are you going away?" said Felicia suddenly.

He turned to her courteously:

"To try to straighten your affairs!"

"That won't do us any good--to go away." Her voice was shrill, her black eyes frowned. "We shan't know what to do--by ourselves."

"And it's precisely because I also don't know exactly what to do next, that I'm going to town. We must get some advice--from the lawyers."

"I hate lawyers!" The girl flushed angrily. "I went to one in Lucca once--we wanted a paper drawn up. Mamma was ill. I had to go by myself. He was a brute!"

"Oh, my old lawyer is not a brute," said Tatham, laughing. "He's a jolly old chap."

"The man in Lucca was a horrid brute!" repeated Felicia. "He wanted to kiss me! There was a vase of flowers standing on his desk. I threw them at him. It cut him. I was so glad! His forehead began to bleed, and the water ran down from his hair. He looked so ugly and silly! I walked all the way home up the mountains, and when I got home I fainted. We never went to that man again."

"I should think not!" exclaimed Tatham, with disgust. For the first time he looked at her attentively. An English girl would not have told him that story in the same frank, upstanding way. But this little elfish creature, with her blazing eyes, friendless and penniless in the world, had probably been exposed to experiences the English girl would know nothing of. He did not like to think of them. That beast, her father!

He was going away, when Felicia said, her curly head a little on one side, her tone low and beguiling:

"When you come back, will you teach me to ride? Lady Tatham said--perhaps--"

Tatham was embarrassed--and bored--by the request.

"I have no doubt we can find you a pony," he said evasively, and taking up the Bradshaw he walked away.

Felicia stood alone and motionless in the big hall, amid its Gainsboroughs and Romneys, its splendid cabinets and tapestries, a childish figure in a blue dress, with crimson cheeks, and compressed lips. Suddenly she ran up to a mirror on the wall, and looked at herself vindictively.

"It is because you are so ugly," she said to the image in the glass. "Ugh, you are so ugly! And yet I can't have yellow hair like that other girl. If I dyed it, he would know--he would laugh. And she is all round and soft; but my bones are all sticking out! I might be cut out of wood. Ah"--her wild smile broke out--"I know what I'll do! I'll drink _panna_--cream they call it here. Every night at tea they bring in what would cost a _lira_ in Florence. I'll drink a whole cup of it!--I'll eat pounds of butter--and lots, lots of pudding--that's what makes English people fat. I'll be fat too. You'll see!" And she threw a threatening nod at the scarecrow reflected in the tortoise-shell mirror.

The October evening had fallen when Tatham put his mother into the motor, and stood, his hands in his pockets--uncomfortable and disapproving--on the steps of Duddon, watching the bright lights disappearing down the long avenue. What could she do? He hated to think of her in the old miser's house, browbeaten and perhaps insulted, when he was not there to protect her.

However she was gone, on what he was certain would prove a futile errand, and he turned heavily back into the house.

The head keeper was waiting in the inner hall, in search of orders for a small "shoot" of neighbours on the morrow, planned some weeks before.

"Arrange it as you like, Thurston!" said Tatham hurriedly, as he came in sight of the man, a magnificent grizzled fellow in gaiters and a green uniform. "I don't care where we go."

"I thought perhaps the Colley Wood beat, my lord--"

"Yes, capital. That'll do. I leave it to you. Sorry I can't stay to talk it over. Good-night!"

"There's a pair of foxes, my lord, in the Nowers spinney that have been doing a shocking amount of damage lately...."

But the door of the library was already shut. Thurston went away, both astonished and aggrieved. There were few things he liked better than a chat with the young fellow whom he had taught to hold a gun; and Tatham was generally the most accessible of masters and the keenest of sportsmen, going into every detail of the shooting parties himself, with an unfailing spirit.

Meanwhile Victoria was speeding eastward in her motor along the Pengarth road. Darkness was fast rushing on. To her left she saw the spreading waste of Flitterdale Common, its great stretches of moss livid in the dusk: and beyond it, westward, the rounded tops and slopes of the range that runs from Great Dodd to Helvellyn. Presently she made out, in the distance, looking southward from the high-level road on which the car was running, the great enclosure of Threlfall Park, on either side of the river which ran between her and Flitterdale; the dim line of its circling wall; its scattered woods; and farther on, the square mass of the Tower itself, black above the trees.

The car stopped at a gate, a dark and empty lodge beside it. The footman jumped down. Was the gate locked?--and must she go round to Whitebeck, and make her attack from that side? No, the gate swung open, and in sped the car.

Victoria sat upright, her mood strung to an intensity which knew no fears. It was twenty years since she had last seen Edmund Melrose, and it was thirty years and more since she had rescued her sister from his grasp, and the duel between herself and him had ended in her final victory.

How dim they seemed, those far-off days!--when for some two or three years, either in London or in Paris, where her father was Ambassador, she had been in frequent contact with a group of young men--of young "bloods"--conspicuous in family and wealth, among whom Edmund Melrose was the reckless leader of a dare-devil set. She thought of a famous picture of the young Beckford, by Lawrence, to which Melrose on the younger side of forty had been frequently compared. The same romantic beauty of feature, the same liquid depth of eye, the same splendid carriage; and, combined with these, the same insolence and selfishness. There had been in Victoria's earlier youth moments when to see him enter a ballroom was to feel her head swim with excitement; when to carry him off from a rival was a passionate delight; when she coveted his praise, and dreaded his sarcasm. And yet--it was perfectly true what she had said to Harry. She had never been in love with him. The imagination of an "unlessoned girl" had been fired; but when the glamour in which it had wrapped the man had been torn away by the disclosure of some ugly facts concerning him; when she broke with him in disgust, and induced others to break with him; it was not her feelings, not her heart, which had suffered.

Nevertheless, so complex a thing is a woman, that as Victoria Tatham drew nearer to the Tower, and to Melrose, she felt herself strangely melting toward him--a prey to pity and the tears of things. She alone in this countryside had been a witness of his meteor like youth; she alone could set it beside his sordid and dishonoured age.

What did she hope to do with him? The plight of his wife and daughter had roused her strongest and most indignant sympathy. The cry of wrong or injustice had always found her fiercely responsive. Whatever an outsider could do to help Melrose's local victims she had done, not once but many times. Her mind was permanently in revolt against him, both as a man and a landlord. She had watched and judged him for years. Yet, now that yet another of his misdeeds was to bring her again into personal contact with him, her pulse quickened; some memory of the old ascendency survived.

It was a still and frosty evening. As the motor drew up in the walled enclosure before the Tower, the noise of its brakes echoed through the profound silence in which the Tower was wrapped. No sign of life in the dark front; no ray of light anywhere from its shuttered windows.

Yet, to her astonishment, as she alighted, and before she had rung the bell, the front door was thrown open, and Dixon with a couple of dogs at his heels ran down the steps.

At sight however of the veiled and cloaked lady who had descended from the motor, the old man stopped short, evidently surprised. With an exclamation Victoria did not catch, he retreated to the threshold of the house.

She mounted rapidly, not noticing that a telegraph boy on a bicycle had come wheeling into the forecourt behind her.

"Is Mr. Melrose at home?"

As she threw back her veil, Dixon stared at her in dumb amazement. Then she suddenly perceived behind him a tall figure advancing. She made a few steps forward through the dimly lighted hall, and found herself within a foot of Edmund Melrose himself.

He gave a start--checked himself--and stood staring at her. He wore spectacles, and was leaning on a stick. She had a quick impression of physical weakness and decay.

Without any visible embarrassment she held out her hand.

"I am lucky to have found you at home, Mr. Melrose. Will you give me twenty minutes' conversation on some important business?"

"Excuse me!" he said with a profound bow, and a motion of the left hand toward the stick on which he supported himself--"or rather my infirmities."

Victoria's hand dropped.

His glittering eyes surveyed her. Dixon approached him holding out a telegram.

"Allow me," said Melrose, as he tore open the envelope and perused the message. "Ah! I thought so! You were mistaken, Lady Tatham--for another visitor--one of those foreign fellows who waste so much of my time--coming to see a few little things of mine. Shut the door, Dixon--the man has missed his train. Now, Lady Tatham!--you have some business to discuss with me. Kindly step this way."

He turned toward the gallery. Victoria followed, and Dixon was left in the hall, staring after them in a helpless astonishment.

The gallery lit by hanging lamps made a swift impression of splendid space and colour on Lady Tatham as she passed through it in Melrose's wake. He led the way without a word, till he reached the door of his own room.

She passed into the panelled library which has been already described in the course of this narrative. On this October evening, however, its aspect was not that generally presented by Melrose's "den." Its ordinary hugger-mugger had been cleared away--pushed back into corners and out of sight. But on the splendid French bureau, and on various other tables and cabinets of scarcely less beauty, there stood ranged in careful order a wealth of glorious things. The light of a blazing fire, and of many lamps played on some fifty or sixty dishes and vases from the great days of Italian majolica--specimens of Gubbio, Faenza, Caffagiolo, of the rarest and costliest quality. The room glowed and sparkled with colour. The gold of Italian sunshine, the azure of Italian skies, the purple of Italian grapes seemed to have been poured into it, and to have taken shape in these lustrous ewers and plaques, in their glistering greens and yellows, their pale opalescence, their superb orange and blue. While as a background to the show, a couple of curtains--Venetian cut-velvet of the seventeenth century, of faded but still gorgeous blue and rose--had been hung over a tall screen.

"What marvellous things!" cried Victoria, throwing up her hands and forgetting everything else for the moment but the pleasure of a trained eye.

Melrose smiled.

"Pray take that chair!" he said, with exaggerated deference. "Your visits are rare, Lady Tatham! Is it--twenty years? I regret I have no drawing-room in which to receive you. But Mr. Faversham and I talk of furnishing it before long. You are, I believe, acquainted with Mr. Faversham?"

He waved his hand, and suddenly Victoria became aware of another person in the room. Faversham standing tall and silent, amid the show of majolica, bowed to her formally, and Victoria slightly acknowledged the greeting. It seemed to her that Melrose's foraging eyes travelled maliciously between her and the agent.

"Mr. Faversham and I only unpacked a great part of this stuff yesterday," said Melrose, with much apparent good humour. "It has been shut up in one of the north rooms ever since a sale in Paris at which I bought most of the pieces. Crockett wished to see it" (he named the most famous American collector of the day). "He shall see it. I understand he will be here to-morrow, having missed his train to-day. He will come no doubt with his check-book. It amuses me to lead these fellows on, and then bid them good morning. They have the most infernal assumptions. One has to teach them that an Englishman is a match for any American!"

Victoria sat passive. Faversham took up a pile of letters and moved toward the door. As he opened it, he turned and his eyes met Victoria's. She wavered a moment under the passionate and haughty resentment they seemed to express, no doubt a reflection of the reply to his letter sent him by Harry that morning. Then the door shut and she was alone with Melrose.

That gentleman leant back in his chair observing her. He wore the curious cloaklike garment of thin black stuff, in which for some years past he had been accustomed to dress when indoors; and the skullcap on his silvery white hair gave added force to the still splendid head and aquiline features. A kind of mocking satisfaction seemed to flicker through the wrinkled face; and the general aspect of the man was still formidable indeed. And yet it was the phantom of a man that she beheld. He had paled to the diaphanous whiteness of the Catholic ascetic; his hand shook upon his stick; the folds of the cloak barely concealed the emaciation of his body. Victoria, gazing at him, seemed to perceive strange intimations and presages, and, in the deep harsh eyes, a spirit at bay.

She began quietly, bending forward:

"Mr. Melrose, I have come to speak to you on behalf of your wife."

"So I imagined. I should not allow any one else, Lady Tatham, to address me on the subject."

"Thank you. I resolved--as you see--to appeal once more to our old--"

"Friendship?" he suggested.

"Yes--friendship," she repeated, slowly. "It might have been called so--once."

"Long ago! So long ago that--I do not see how anything practical can come of appealing to it," he said, pointedly. "Moreover, the manner in which the friendship was trampled on--by you--not once, but twice, not only destroyed it, but--if I may say so--replaced it."

His hollow eyes burned upon her. Wrapped in his cloak, his white hair gleamimg amid the wonderful ewers and dishes, he had the aspect of some wizard or alchemist, of whom a woman might ask poison for her rival, or a philter for her lover. Victoria, fascinated, was held partly by the apparition before her, partly by an image--a visualization in the mind. She saw the ballroom in that splendid house, now the British Embassy in Paris, and once the home of Pauline Borghese. She saw herself in white, a wreath of forget-me-nots in her hair. She has just heard, and from a woman friend, a story of lust and cruelty in which Edmund Melrose was the principal actor. He comes to claim her for a dance; she dismisses him, in public, with a manner and in words that scathe--that brand. She sees his look of rage, as of one struck in the face--she feels again the shudder passing through her--a shudder of release, horror passing into thanksgiving.

But--what long tracts of life since then!--what happiness for her!--what decay and degeneracy for him! A pang of sheer pity, not so much for him as for the human lot, shot through her, as she realized afresh to what evening of life he had come, from what a morning.

At any rate her manner in reply showed no resentment of his tone.

"All these things are dead for both of us," she said quietly.

He interrupted her.

"You are right--or partly right. Edith is dead--that makes it easier for you and me to meet."

"Yes. Edith is dead," she said, with sudden emotion. "And in her last days she spoke to me kindly of you."

He made no comment. She resumed:

"I desire, if I can--and if you will allow me--to recall to you the years when we were cousins and friends together--blotting out all that has happened since. If you remember--twenty years ago, when you and your wife arrived to settle here, I then came to ask you to bury the feud between us, and to let us meet again at least as neighbours and acquaintances. You refused. Then came the breakdown of your marriage. I was honestly sorry for it."

He smiled. She was quite conscious of the mockery in the smile; but she persevered.

"And now, for many years, I have not known--nobody here has known, whether your wife was alive or dead. Suddenly, a few days ago, she and your daughter arrived at Duddon, to ask me to help them."

"Precisely. To make use of you, in order to bring pressure to bear on me! I do not mean to lend myself to the proceeding!"

Victoria flushed.

"In attempting to influence me, Mrs. Melrose, I assure you, had no weapon whatever but her story. And to look at her was to see that it was true. She admits--most penitently--that she was wrong to leave you--" "And to rob me! You forget that."

Victoria threw back her head. He remembered that scornful gesture in her youth.

"What did that matter to you? In this house!"

She looked round the room, with its contents.

"It did matter to me," he said stubbornly. "My collections are the only satisfaction left to me--by you, Lady Tatham--and others. They are to me in the place of children. I love my bronzes--and my marbles--as you--I suppose--love your son. It sounds incredible to you, no doubt"--the sneer was audible--"but it is so."

"Even if it were so--it is twenty years ago. You have replaced what you lost a hundred times."

"I have never replaced it. And it is now out of my reach--in the Berlin Museum--bought by that fellow Jensen, their head man, who goes nosing like a hound all over Europe--and is always poaching in my preserves."

Victoria looked at him in puzzled amazement. Was this mad, this childish bitterness, a pose?--or was there really some breakdown of the once powerful brain? She began again--less confidently.

"I have told you--I repeat--how sorry she is--how fully she admits she was wrong. But just consider how she has paid for it! Your allowance to her--you must let me speak plainly--could not keep her and her child decently. Her family have been unfortunate; she has had to keep them as well as herself. And the end of it is that she--and your child--your own child--have come pretty near to starvation."

He sat immovable. But Victoria rose to her task. Her veil thrown back from the pale austerity of her beauty, she poured out the story of Netta and Felicia, from a heart sincerely touched. The sordid years in Florence, the death of Netta's mother, the bankruptcy of her father, the bitter struggle amid the Apuan Alps to keep themselves and their wretched invalid alive--she described them, as they had been told to her, not rhetorically, for neither she nor Netta Melrose was capable of rhetoric, but with the touches and plain details that bring conviction.

"They have been _hungry_--for the peasants' food. Your wife and child have had to be content day after day with a handful of bread and a _salata_ gathered from the roadside; while every franc they could earn was spent upon a sick man. Mrs. Melrose is a shadow. I suspect incurable illness. Your little daughter arrived fainting and emaciated at my house. But with a few days' rest and proper food she has revived. She is young. She has not suffered irreparably. One sees what a lovely little creature she might be--and how full of vivacity and charm. Mr. Melrose--you would be proud of her! She is like you--like what you were, in your youth. When I think of what other people would give for such a daughter! Can you possibly deny yourself the pleasure of taking her back into your life?"

"Very easily! Your sentimentalism will resent it; I assure you, nevertheless, that it would give me no pleasure whatever."

"Ah, but consider it again," she pleaded, earnestly. "You do not know what you are refusing--how much, and how little. All that is asked is that you should acknowledge them--provide for them. Let them stay here a few weeks in the year--what could it matter to you in this immense house?--or if that is impossible, at least give your wife a proper allowance--you would spend it three times over in a day on things like these"--her eye glanced toward a superb ewer and dish, of _verre églomisée_, standing between her and Melrose--"and let your daughter take her place as your heiress! She ought to marry early--and marry brilliantly. And later--perhaps--in her children--"

Melrose stood up.

"I shall not follow you into these dreams," he said fiercely. "She is not my heiress--and she never will be. The whole of my property"--he spoke with hammered emphasis--"will pass at my death to my friend and agent and adopted son--Claude Faversham."

He spoke with an excitement his physical state no longer allowed him to conceal. At last--he was defeating this woman who had once defeated him; he was denying and scorning her, as she had once denied and scorned him. That her cause was an impersonal and an unselfish one made no difference. He knew the strength of her character and her sympathies. It was sweet to him to refuse her something she desired. She had never yet given him the opportunity! In the twenty years since they had last faced each other, he was perfectly conscious that he had lost mentally, morally, physically; whereas she--his enemy--bore about with her, even in her changed beauty, the signs of a life lived fruitfully--a life that had been worth while. His bitter perception of it, his hidden consciousness that he had probably but a short time, a couple of years at most, to live, only increased his satisfaction in the "No"--the contemptuous and final "No!" that he had opposed, and would oppose, to her impertinent interference with his affairs.

Victoria sat regarding him silently, as he walked to the mantelpiece, rearranged a few silver objects standing upon it, and then turned--confronting her again.

"You have made Mr. Faversham your heir?" she asked him after a pause.

"I have. And I shall take good care that he does nothing with my property when he inherits it so as to undo my wishes with regard to it."

"That is to say--you will not even allow him to make--himself--provision for your wife and daughter?"

"Beyond what was indicated in the letter to your son? No! certainly not. I shall take measures against anything of the sort."

Victoria rose.

"And he accepts your condition--your bequest to him, on these terms?"

Melrose smiled.

"Certainly. Why not?"

"I am sorry for Mr. Faversham!" said Victoria, in a different voice, the colour sparkling on her cheek.

"Because you think there will be a public opinion against him--that he will be boycotted in this precious county? Make yourself easy, Lady Tatham. A fortune such as he will inherit provides an easy cure for such wounds."

Victoria's self-control began to break down.

"I venture to think he will not find it so," she said, with quickened breath. "In these days it is not so simple to defy the common conscience--as it once was. I fear indeed that Mr. Faversham has already lost the respect of decent men!"

"By becoming my agent?"

"Your tool--for actions--cruel, inhuman things--degrading to both you and him."

She had failed. She knew it! And all that remained was to speak the truth to him, to defy and denounce him.

Melrose surveyed her.

"The ejectment order has been served at Mainstairs to-day, I believe; and the police have at last plucked up their courage to turn those shiftless people out. There, too, I understand, Lady Tatham, you have been meddling."

"I have been trying to undo some of your wrong-doing," she said, with emotion. "And now--before I go--you shall not prevent me from saying that I regard it perhaps as your last and worst crime to have perverted the conscience of this young man! He has been well thought of till now: a decent fellow sprung from decent people. You are making an outcast--a pariah of him. And you think _money_ will compensate him! When you and I knew each other, Edmund"--the name slipped out--"you had a _mind_--one of the shrewdest I ever knew. I appeal to that. It is not so much now that you are wicked or cruel--you are playing the _fool_! And you are teaching this young man to do the same."

She stood confronting him, holding herself tensely erect--a pale, imperious figure--the embodiment of all the higher ideals and traditions of the class to which they both belonged.

In her agitation she had dropped her glove. Melrose picked it up.

"On that I think, Lady Tatham, we will say farewell. I regret I have not been able to oblige you. My wife comes from a needy class--accustomed to manage on a little. My daughter has not been brought up to luxury. Had she remained with me, of course, the case would have been different. But you will find they will do very well on what I have provided for them. I advise you not to waste your pity. And as for Mr. Faversham, he will take good care of himself. He frames excellently. And I hope before long to see him married--to a very suitable young lady."

They remained looking at each other, for a few seconds, in silence. Then Victoria said quietly, with a forward step:

"I bid you good evening."

He stood at the door, his fingers on the handle, his eyes glittering and malicious.

"I should have liked to have shown you some of my little collections," he said, smiling. "That _verre églomisée_, for instance"--he pointed to it--"it's magnificent, though rather decadent. They have nothing like it in London or Paris. Really--you must go?"

He threw the door open, bowing profoundly.

"Dixon!"

A voice responded from the farther end of the corridor.

"Tell her ladyship's car to come round. Excuse my coming to the door, Lady Tatham. I am an old man."

The car sped once more through the gloom of the park. Victoria sat with hands locked on her knee, possessed by the after tremors of battle.

In Melrose's inhuman will there was something demonic, which appalled. The impotence of justice, of compassion, in the presence of certain shameless and insolent forces of the human spirit--the lesson goes deep! Victoria quivered under it.

But there were other elements besides in her tumult of feeling. The tone, the taunting look, with which Melrose had spoken of Faversham's possible marriage--did he, did all the world know, that Harry had been played with and jilted? For that, in plain English, was what it came to. Her heart burnt with anger--with a desire to punish.

The car passed out of the lodge gates. Its brilliant lamps under the trees seemed to strike into the very heart of night. And suddenly, in the midst of the light they made, two figures emerged, an old man carrying a sack, a youth beside him, with a gun over his shoulder.

They were the Brands--father, and younger son. Victoria bent forward with a hasty gesture of greeting. But they never turned to look at the motor. They passed out of the darkness, and into the darkness again, their frowning, unlovely faces, their ragged clothes and stooping gait, illuminated for an instant.

Victoria had tried that very week, at her son's instance, to try and persuade the father to take a small farm on the Duddon estate, Tatham offering to lend him capital. And Brand had refused. Independence, responsibility, could no longer be faced by a spirit so crushed. "I darena' my lady," he had said to her. "I'm worth nobbut my weekly wage. I canna' tak' risks--no more. Thank yo' kindly; but yo' mun let us be!"

XVII

On the morning following her vain interview with Melrose, Victoria, sorely conscious of defeat, conveyed the news of it to the depressed and disprited Netta.

They were in Victoria's sitting-room. Netta sat, a lamentable figure, on the edge of the sofa, twisting her disfigured hands, her black eyes glancing restlessly about her. Ever since she had read Faversham's letter to Tatham she had been an altered being. The threats as to her father, which it contained, seemed to have withered her afresh. All that small and desperate flicker of hope in which she had arrived had died away, and her determination with it. Her consent to Victoria's interview with Melrose had been only obtained from her with difficulty. And now she was all for retreat--precipitate retreat.

"It's no use. I was a fool to come. We must go back. I always told Felicia it would be no use. We'd better not have come. I'll not have papa tormented!"

While she was speaking a footman entered, bringing a telegram for Victoria. It was from Tatham in London.

"Have just seen lawyers. They are of opinion we could not fail in application for proper allowance and provision for both mother and daughter. Hope you will persuade Mrs. Melrose to let us begin proceedings at once. Very sorry for your telegram this morning, but only what I expected."

Victoria read the message to her guest, and then did her best to urge boldness--an immediate stroke. But Netta shook her head despairingly. She could not and would not have her father harassed. Mr. Melrose would do anything--bribe anybody--to get his way. They would have the police coming, and dragging her father to prison. It was not to be thought of.

Victoria tried gently to investigate what skeleton might be lying in the Smeath closet, whereof Mr. Melrose possessed such very useful information. But Netta held her tongue. "Papa had been very unfortunate, and the Government would like to put him in prison if they could. Edmund had been always so cruel to him." Beyond this Victoria could not get.

But the determination of the frail, faded woman was unshakable, although she glanced nervously at her daughter from time to time, as if much more in dread of her opinion than of Victoria's.

Felicia, who had listened in silence to the conversation between her mother and Victoria, turned round from the window in which she was staring, as soon as Lady Tatham seemed to be finally worsted.

"Mother, you promised to stay here till Christmas!"

The voice was imperious. Felicia's manner to her mother indeed was often of an unfilial sharpness, and Victoria was already meditating some gentle discipline on the point.

"Oh, no, Felicia!" said Netta, helplessly, "not till Christmas." Then, remembering herself, she turned toward her hostess: "It's so kind of you, I'm sure."

"Yes, till Christmas!" repeated Felicia. "You know grandpapa's no worse. You know," the girl flushed suddenly a bright crimson, "Lord Tatham sent him money--and he's quite comfortable. _I_ am not going home just yet! I am not going back to Italy--till--I have seen my father!"

She faced round upon Victoria and her mother, her hands on her hips, her breath fluttering.

"Felicia!" cried her mother, "you can't. I tell you--you can't! I should never allow it!"

"Yes, you would, mother! What are you afraid of? He can't kill me. It's ridiculous. I must see my father. I will! He is getting old--he may die. I will see him before I leave England. I don't care whether he gives us the money or not!"

Victoria's bright eyes showed her sympathy; though she did not interfere. But Netta shrank into herself.

"You are always such a wilful child, Felicia! You mustn't do anything without my leave. You'll kill me if you do."

And ashen-pale, she got up and left the room. Victoria glanced at Felicia.

"Don't do anything against your mother's will," she said gently. "You are too young to decide these things for yourself. But, if you can, persuade her to follow Lord Tatham's advice. He is most anxious to help you in the best way. And he does not believe that Mr. Melrose could hurt your grandfather."

Felicia shook her curly head, frowning.

"One cannot persuade mother--one cannot. She is obstinate--oh, so obstinate! If it were me, I would do anything Lord Tatham asked me!--anything in the world."

She stood with her hands behind her back, her slight figure drawn up, her look glowing.

Victoria bent over her embroidery, smiling a little, unseen, and, in truth, not ill pleased. Yet there was something disturbing in these occasional outbursts. For the little Southerner's own sake, one must take care they led to nothing serious. For really--quite apart from any other consideration--Harry never took the smallest notice of her. And who could know better than his mother that his thoughts were still held, still tormented by the vision of Lydia?

Felicia slipped out of a glass door that led to the columned veranda outside. Victoria, mindful of the girl's delicate look, hurried after her with a fur wrap. Felicia gratefully but absently kissed her hand, and Victoria left her to her own thoughts.

It was a sunny day, and although November was well in, there was almost an Italian warmth in this southern loggia where roses were still blooming. Felicia walked up and down, her gaze wandering over the mountain landscape to the south--the spreading flanks and slopes of the high fells, scarlet with withered fern, and capped with new-fallen snow. Through the distant landscape she perceived the line of the stream which ran under Flitterdale Common with its high cliff-banks, and hanging woods, now dressed in the last richness of autumn. That distant wall of trees--behind it, she knew, was Threlfall Tower. Her father--her unkind, miserly father, who hated both her and her mother--lived there.

How far was it? A long way! But she would get there somehow.

"It is my right to see my father!" she said to herself passionately; adding with a laugh which swept away heroics, "After all, he might take a fancy to me in these clothes!"

And she looked down complacently on the pretty tailor-made skirt and the new shoes that showed beneath Victoria's fur cloak. In less than a fortnight her own ambition and the devotion of Victoria's maid, Hesketh, only too delighted to dress somebody so eager to be dressed, for whom the mere operations of the toilette possessed a kind of religious joy, on whom, moreover, "clothes" in the proper and civilized sense of the word, sat so amazingly well--had turned the forlorn little drudge into a figure more than creditable to the pains lavished upon her. Felicia aimed high. The thought and trouble which the young lady had spent, since her arrival, on her hair, her hands, and the minor points of English manners, not to mention the padding and plumping of her small person--which in spite of all her efforts, however, remained of a most sylphlike slimness--by a generous diet of cream and butter, only she and Hesketh knew. Victoria guessed, and felt a new and most womanish pleasure in the details of her transformation. She realized, poignantly, how pleasant it would have been to dress and spoil a daughter.

All the more, as Felicia, after a first eager grasping at pretty things, as a child holds out covetous hands for toys and sweets, had shown sudden scruples, an unexpected and pretty recoil.

"Don't give me so many things!" she had said, almost with a stamp, the sudden, astonishing tears in her great eyes; when, after the first week, the new clothes began to shower upon her. "I can't help wanting them! I adore them! But I won't be a beggar--no! You will think we only came here for this--to get things out of you. We didn't--we _didn't_.'"

"My dear, won't you give me the pleasure?" Victoria had said, shamefacedly, putting out a hand to stroke the girl's hair. Whereupon Felicia had thrown herself impulsively on her knees, with her arms round the speaker, and there had been a mingled moment of laughter and emotion which had left Victoria very much astonished at herself, and given Hesketh a free hand. Victoria's solitary pursuits, the awkward or stately reserve of her ordinary manner, were deplorably interfered with, indeed, by the advent of this lovely, neglected child, who on her side had fallen passionately in love with Victoria at first sight and seemed to be now rarely happy out of her company.

After which digression we may return for a moment to Felicia on the loggia, admiring her new shoes.

From that passing ecstasy, she emerged resolved.

"We will stay here till Christmas--and--"

But on the rest of her purpose she shut her small lips firmly. Before she turned indoors, however, she gave some attention to the course of a white road in the middle distance, on which she had travelled with Lord Tatham the day he had taken her to Green Cottage. The cottage where the yellow-haired girl lived lay beyond that nearer hill. Ah! but nobody spoke of that yellow-haired girl now. Nobody sent flowers or books. Nobody so much as mentioned her name. It was strange--but singularly pleasing. Felicia raised herself triumphantly on tiptoe, as though she would peer over the hill into the cottage; and so see for herself how the Signorina Penfold took this sudden and complete neglect.

Tatham returned from London the following day, bringing Cyril Boden--who was again on the sick list--with him.

He arrived full of plans for the discomfiture of Melrose, only to be brought up irrevocably against the stubborn resolve which Netta, wrapped in an irritable and tearful melancholy, opposed to them all. She would not hear of the legal proceedings he urged upon her; and it was only on an assurance that nothing could or would be done without her consent, coupled with a good report of her father, that she at last consented to stay at Duddon till the New Year, so that further ways of helping her might be discussed.

Felicia, when the thing was settled, danced about Victoria's room, kissed her mother and ran off at once, with Victoria's permission, to ask the old coachman who ruled the Duddon stables to give her riding-lessons. Victoria noticed that she carefully avoided consulting Tatham in any way about her lessons. Indeed the earlier, half-childish, half-audacious efforts she had made to attract his attention entirely ceased about this time.

And he, as soon as it was evident that Mrs. Melrose would not take his advice, and that legal proceedings must be renounced, felt a natural slackening of interest in his mother's guests. He was perfectly kind and polite to them but Netta's cowardice disgusted him; and it was a personal disappointment to be thus balked of that public campaign against Melrose's enormities which would have satisfied the just and long-baffled feelings of a whole county; and--incidentally--would surely have unmasked a greedy and unscrupulous adventurer.

Meanwhile the whole story of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter had spread rapidly through the neighbourhood. The local papers, now teeming with attacks on Melrose, and the management of the Melrose property, had fastened with avidity on the news of their arrival. "Mrs. Edmund Melrose and her daughter, after an absence of twenty years have arrived in Cumbria. They are now staying at Duddon Castle with Countess Tatham. Mr. Claude Faversham is at Threlfall Tower." These few sentences served as symbols of a dramatic situation which was being discussed in every house of the district, in the farms and cottages no less eagerly than by the Andovers and the Bartons. The heiress of Threlfall was not dead! After twenty years she and her mother had returned to claim their rights from the Ogre; and Duddon Castle, the headquarters of all that was powerful and respected in the county, had taken up their cause. Meanwhile the little heiress had been, it seemed, supplanted. Claude Faversham was in possession at Threlfall, and was being treated as the heir. Mr. Melrose had flatly refused even to see his wife and daughter whom he had left in poverty and starvation for twenty years.

Upon these facts the twin spirit of romance and hatred swooped vulturelike. Any story of inheritance, especially when charm and youth are mixed up with it, kindles the popular mind. It was soon known that Miss Melrose was pretty, and small; though, said report, worn to a skeleton by paternal ill-usage. Romance likes its heroines small. The countryside adopted the unconscious Felicia, and promptly married her to Harry Tatham. What could be more appropriate? Duddon could afford to risk a dowry; and what maiden in distress could wish for a better Perseus than the splendid young man who was the general favourite of the neighbourhood?

As to the hatred of Melrose which gave zest to the tale of his daughter, it was becoming a fury. The whole Mainstairs village had now been ejected, by the help of a large body of police requisitioned from Carlisle for the purpose. Of the able-bodied, some had migrated to the neighbouring towns, some were camped on Duddon land, in some wood and iron huts hastily run up for their accommodation. And thus a village which might be traced in Doomsday Book had been wiped out. For the sick Tatham had offered a vacant farmhouse as a hospital; and Victoria, Mrs. Andover, and other ladies had furnished and equipped it. Some twenty cases of enteric and diphtheria, were housed there, a few of them doomed beyond hope. Melrose had been peremptorily asked for a subscription to the fund raised, and had replied in his own handwriting that owing to the heavy expenses he had been put to by the behaviour of his Mainstairs tenants, as reported to him by his agent, Mr. Faversham, he must respectfully decline. The letter was published in the two local papers with appropriate comments, and a week later an indignation meeting to protest against the state of the Threlfall property, and to petition the Local Government Board to hold an inquiry on the spot, was held in Carlisle, with Tatham in the chair. And everywhere the public indignation which could not get at Melrose, who now, except for railway journeys, never showed himself outside the wall of his park, was beginning to fall upon the "adventurer" who was his tool and accomplice, and had become the supplanter of his young and helpless daughter. Men who four months before had been eager to welcome Faversham to his new office now passed him in the street without recognition. At the County Club to which he had been easily elected, Colonel Barton proposing him, he was conspicuously cut by Barton himself, Squire Andover and many others following suit. "An impostor, and a cad!" said Barton fiercely to Undershaw. "He took me in--and I can't forgive him. He is doing all Melrose's dirty work for him, better than Melrose could do it himself. His letters, for instance, to our Council Committee about the allotments we are trying to get out of the old villain have been devilish clever, and devilish impudent! Melrose couldn't have written them. And now this business of the girl!--and the fortune!--sickening!"

"He is a queer chap," said Undershaw thoughtfully. "I've been as mad with him as anybody--but somehow--don't know. Suppose we wait a bit. Melrose's life is a bad one."

But Barton refused to wait, and went off storming. The facts, he vowed, were more than enough.

The weeks passed on. Duddon knew no longer what Green Cottage was doing. Victoria, at any rate, was ignorant, and forbore to ask--by word of mouth; though her thoughts were one long interrogation on the subject of Lydia, both as to the present and the past. Was she still in correspondence with Faversham, as Victoria now understood from Tatham she had been all the summer? Was she still defending him? Perhaps engaged to him? For a fair-minded and sensible woman, Victoria fell into strange bogs of prejudice and injustice in the course of these ponderings.

In her drives and walks at this time, Victoria generally avoided the neighbourhood of the cottage. But one afternoon at the very end of October, she overtook--walking--a slight, muffled figure in the Whitebeck road, and recognized Susy Penfold. A constrained greeting passed between them, and Lady Tatham learnt that Lydia was away--had been away, indeed, since the day following her last interview with Harry. The very next morning she and her mother had been summoned to London by the grave illness of Mrs. Penfold's elder sister. And there they were still; though Lydia was expected home shortly.

Victoria walked on, with relieved feelings, she scarcely knew why. At any rate there had been no personal contact between Faversham and a charming though foolish girl, during these weeks of popular indignation.

By what shabby arts had the mean and grasping fellow now installed at Threlfall ever succeeded in obtaining a hold over a being so refined, so fastidious and--to all appearances--so high-minded, as Lydia Penfold? To refuse Harry and decline on Claude Faversham! Victoria acknowledged indeed a certain pseudo-Byronic charm in the man. She could not forget the handsome head as she had seen it last at the door of Melrose's library; or the melodramatic black and white of the face, of the small, peaked beard, the dark brows, pale lantern cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes. All the picturesque adventurers of the world betray something, she thought, of a common stamp.

At last one evening, when Tatham was away on county business, and Felicia had gone to bed, Victoria suddenly unburdened herself to Cyril Boden, as they sat one on either side of a November fire, while a southwesterly gale from the high fells blustered and raged outside.

Boden was the confessor of a good many people. Not that he was by any means an orthodox Christian; his ascetic ways had very little to do with any accepted form of doctrine. But there was in him the natural priestly power, which the priest by ordination may have or miss. It was because men and women realized in himself the presence of a travailing, questioning, suffering soul, together with an iron self-repression, that those who suffered and questioned came to him, and threw themselves upon him; often getting more buffeting than balm for their pains; but always conscious of some mysterious attractions in him, as of one who, like Sir Boris, had seen the Grail, but might never tell of the vision.

Victoria was truly attached to him. He had been with her during the days of her husband's sudden illness and death; he had advised her with regard to the passing difficulties of Tatham's school and college days and pointed a way for her through many perplexities of her own. Duddon was as much of a home to him, as he probably possessed in the world. When he had worn himself out with some one or other of the many causes he pursued in South London, working with a sombre passion which had in it very little of the mystical joy or hope which sustain others in similar efforts; when he had scarcely a coat to his back, or a shoe to his feet; when his doctor began to talk of tuberculin tests and the high Alps; then he would wire to Duddon, and come and vegetate under Victoria's wing, for just as many weeks as were necessary to send him back to London restored to a certain physical standard. To watch Harry Tatham's wholesome, kindly, prosperous life, untroubled by any of the nightmares that weighed upon his own, was an unfailing pleasure to a weary man. He loved both Harry and his mother. Nevertheless, as soon as he arrived, both felt him the gadfly in the house. His mind was nothing if not critical. And undoubtedly the sight of easy wealth was an irritation to him. He struggled against it; but sometimes it would out.

As he sat this evening crouched over the fire, his hands spread to the blaze, he looked more frail than usual; a fact which perhaps, half-consciously, affected Victoria and drew out her confidence. His dress suit, primevally old, would scarcely, she reflected, hold together another winter. But how it was to be replaced had already cost her and Harry much thought. There was nobody more personally, fanatically proud than Boden toward his well-to-do friends. His clothes indeed were a matter of tender anxiety in the Duddon household, and Tatham's valet and Victoria's maids did him many small services, some of which he repaid with a smile and a word--priceless to the recipient; and some he was never aware of. When his visits to Duddon first began, the contents of his Gladstone bag used to provide merriment in the servants' hall, and legend said that a young footman had once dared to be insolent to him. Had any one ventured the same conduct now he would have been sent to Coventry by every servant in the house.

It was to this austere, incalculable, yet always attractive listener, that Victoria told the story of Harry and Lydia, of the Faversham adventure, and the Melrose inheritance. If she wanted advice, a little moral guidance for herself--and indeed she did want it--she did not get any; but of comment there was plenty.

"That's the girl I saw here last time," mused Boden, nursing his knee--"lovely creature--with some mind in her face. So she's refused Harry--and Duddon?"

"Which no doubt will commend her to you!" said Victoria, not without a certain bristling of her feathers.

"It does," said Boden quietly. "Upon my word, it was a fine thing to do."

"Just because we happen to be rich?" Victoria's eyelids fluttered a little.

"No! but because it throws a little light on what we choose to call the soul. It brings one back to a faint belief in the existence of the thing. Here is one of the great fortunes, and one of the splendid houses of the world, and a little painting girl who makes a few pounds by her drawings says 'No, thank you!' when they are laid at her feet--because--of a little trifle called love which she can't bring to the bargain. I confess that bucks one up. 'The day-star doth his beams restore.'"

He took up the tongs, and began absently to rebuild the fire. Victoria waited on his remarks with heightened colour.

"Of course I'm sorry for Harry," he said, after a moment, with his queer smile. "I saw there was something wrong when I arrived. But it's salutary--very salutary! Hasn't he had everything in the world he wanted from his cradle? And isn't it as certain as anything can be that he'll find some other charming girl, who'll faint with joy, when he asks her, and give you all the grandchildren you want? And meanwhile we have this bit of the heroic--this defiance of a miry world, cropping up--to help us out of our mud-holes. I'm awfully sorry for Harry--but I take off my hat to the girl."

Victoria's expression became sarcastic.

"Who will ultimately marry," she said, "according to _my_ interpretation of the business, a first-class adventurer--possessed of a million of money--stolen from its proper owners."

"I don't believe it. I've seen her! But, upon my word, what a queer parable it all is! Shall I tell you how it shapes itself to me?" He looked, tongs in hand, at Victoria, his greenish eyes all alive. "I see you all--you, Harry, Faversham, and Melrose, Miss Lydia--grouped round a central point. The point is wealth. You are all in different relations to wealth. You and Harry are indifferent to wealth, because you have always had it. It has come to you without toiling and spinning--can you imagine being without it?--but it has not spoilt you. You sit loose to it; because you have never _struggled_ for it. But I doubt whether the Recording Angel, when it comes to reckoning up, will give you very high marks for your indifference! Dear friend!"--he put out a sudden hand and touched Victoria's--"bear with me! There's one thing you'll hear, if any one does, at the last day--'I was a stranger and ye took me in.'" His eyes shone upon her.

After which, he resumed in his former tone: "Then take Melrose. He too is determined by his relation to wealth. Wealth has just ruined him--burnt him up--made out of him so much refuse for the nether fires. Faversham again! Wealth, the crucial, deciding factor! The testing with him is still going on. He seems, from your account, to be coming out badly. And lastly, the girl--who, like you, is indifferent to wealth, but for different reasons; who probably hates and shrinks from it; like a wild bird that fears the cage. You, my dear lady--you and Harry--have got so used to wealth, its trammels no longer gall you. You carry the weight of it, as the horse of the Middle Ages carried his trappings; it's second nature. And you can enjoy, you can move, you can feel, in spite of it. You have risked your soul, without knowing it; but you have kept your soul! This girl, I take it, is afraid to risk her soul. She is not in love with Harry--worse luck for Harry!--she is in love--remember I have talked to her a little!--with something she calls beauty, with liberty, with an unfettered course for the spirit, with all the lovely, intangible, priceless _best_, which the world holds for its true lovers. Wealth grasping at that best has a way of killing it--as the child kills the butterfly. _That's_ what she's afraid of. As to Faversham"--he got up from his seat, and with his thumbs in his waistcoat began to pace the room--"Faversham no doubt is in a bad way. He's on the road to damnation. Melrose of course is damned and done with. But Faversham? I reserve judgment. If he's in love with that girl, and she with him--I can't make out, however, that you have much reason to think it--but suppose he is, she'll have the handling of him. Shan't we back her?"

He turned with vivacity to his hostess.

Victoria laughed indignantly.

"You may if you like. The odds are too doubtful for me."

"That's because you're Harry's mother!" he said with his sly, but most winning, smile. "Well--there's the parable--writ large. _Mammon!_--how you get it--how you use it--whether you dominate it--or it dominates you. Whether it is the greater curse, or the greater blessing to men--it was the question in Christ's day--it's the question now. But it has never been put with such intensity, as to this generation! As to your particular version of the parable--I wait to see! The tale's not through yet."

XVIII

A few days later, Lady Tatham received a letter, which she opened with some agitation. It was from Lydia in London:

"DEAR LADY TATHAM:

"I have waited some weeks before writing to you, partly because, as Susy I hear has told you, I have been busy nursing my mother's sister, but still more because my heart failed me--again and again.

"And yet I feel I ought to write--partly in justice to myself--partly to ask you to forgive the pain I fear I may have caused you. I know--for he has told me--that Lord Tatham never concealed from you all that has passed between us; and so I feel sure that you know what happened about a month ago, when we agreed that it would be wiser not to meet again for the present.

"I don't exactly want to defend myself. It still seems to me true that, in the future, men and women will find it much more possible to be comrades and friends, without any thought of falling in love or marrying, than they do now; and that it will be a good thing for both. And if it is true, are not some of us justified in making experiments now? Lord Tatham I know will have told you I was quite frank from the beginning. I did not wish to marry; but I meant to be a very true friend; and I wanted to be allowed to love you both, as one loves one's friends, and to share your life a little. And the thing I most wished was that Lord Tatham should marry--some one quite different from myself.

"So we agreed that we would write, and share each other's feelings and thoughts as far as we could. And I hoped that any other idea with regard to me would soon pass out of Lord Tatham's mind. I did--most sincerely; and I think he believes that I did. How good and dear he always was to me!--how much I have learnt from him! And yet I am afraid it was all very blind, and ill-considered--perhaps very selfish--on my part. I did not understand what harm I _might_ do; though I hope with all my heart--and believe--that I have not done anything irreparable. It is very hard for me to regret it; because all my life I shall be the richer and the wiser for having known so good a man; one so true, so unselfish, so high-minded. Women so rarely come to know men, except in marriage, or through books; and your son's character has sweetened and ennobled whole sides of life for me--forever.

"But if--in return--I have given him pain--and you, who love him! I was always afraid of you--but I would have done anything in the world to serve you. Will you let me have a little word--just to tell me that you forgive, and understand. I ask it with a very sore heart--full, full of gratitude to him and to you, for all your goodness."

* * * * *

Victoria was oddly affected by this letter. It both touched and angered her. She was touched by what it said, deeply touched; and angered by what it omitted. And yet how could the writer have said anything more!--or anything else! Victoria admitted that her thoughts had run far beyond what she knew--in any true sense--or had any right to conjecture. Nevertheless the fact in her belief remained a fact, that but for Faversham and some disastrous influence he had gained over her almost at once, Harry would have had his chance with Lydia Penfold. As it was, she had been allowing Harry to offer her his most intimate thoughts and feelings, while she was actually falling in love with his inferior. This was what enraged Victoria. Whatever Cyril Boden might say, it seemed to her maternal jealousy something equivalent to the betrayal of a sacred confidence.

Yet clearly she could not say so to Lydia Penfold--nor could Lydia confess it! She wrote as follows:

"MY DEAR MISS PENFOLD:

"It was very kind of you to write to me, I am sure you meant no harm, and I do not pretend to judge another person's conduct by what I might myself have thought wisest or best. But I think we all have to learn that the deepest feelings in life are very sensitive, and very incalculable things; and that the old traditions and conventions respecting them have probably much more to say for themselves than we like to admit--especially in our youth. Men and women in middle life may have true and intimate friendships without any thought of marriage. I doubt whether this is possible for young people, though I know it is the fashion nowadays to behave as though it were. And especially is it difficult--or impossible--where there has been any thought of love--on either side. For love is the great, unmanageable, explosive thing, which cannot be tamed down, at a word, into friendship--not in youth at any rate. The attempt to treat it as a negligible quantity can only bring suffering and misunderstanding.

"But I must not preach to you like this. I am sure you know--now--that what I say has truth in it. Thank you again for the feeling that dictated your letter. Harry is very well and very busy. We hoped to go to London before Christmas, but this most difficult and unhappy affair of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter detains us. Whether we shall obtain justice for them in the end I do not know. At present the adverse influences are very strong--and the indignation of all decent people seems to make no difference. Mr. Faversham's position is indeed difficult to understand.

"Please remember me kindly to your mother and sister. Next year I hope we shall be able to meet as usual. But for the present, as you and Harry have agreed, it is better not."

* * * * *

Victoria was extremely dissatisfied with this letter when she had done it. But she knew very well that Harry would have resented a single harsh word from her toward the misguided Lydia; and she did not know how better to convey the warning that burnt on her lips with regard to Faversham.

* * * * *

Lydia received Victoria's letter on the day of her return to the cottage. Her mother remained in London.

Susy welcomed her sister affectionately, but with the sidelong looks of the observer. Ever since the evening of Lady Tatham's visit when Lydia had come back with white face and red eyes from her walk with Harry Tatham, and when the following night had been broken for Susy by the sound of her sister's weeping in the room next to her, it had been recognized by the family that the Tatham affair had ended in disaster, and that Duddon was henceforth closed to them. Lydia told her mother enough to plunge that poor lady into even greater wonder than before at the hopeless divergence of young people to-day from the ways and customs of their grandmothers; and then begged piteously that nothing more might be said to her. Mrs. Penfold cried and kissed her; and for many days tears fell on the maternal knitting needles, as the fading vision of Lydia, in a countess' coronet, curtesying to her sovereign, floated mockingly through the maternal mind. To Susy Lydia was a little more explicit; but she showed herself so sunk in grief and self-abasement, that Susy had not the heart for either probing or sarcasm. It was not a broken heart, but a sore conscience--a warm, natural penitence, that she beheld. Lydia was not yet "splendid," and Susy could not make anything tragic out of her.

At least, on what appeared. And not even Susy's impatience could penetrate beyond appearance. She longed to say, "Enough of the Tatham affair--now let us come to business. How do you stand with Claude Faversham?" A number of small indications pointed her subtly, irresistibly in that direction. But the strength of Lydia's personality stood guard over her secret--if she had one.

All Susy could do was to give Lydia the gossip of the neighbourhood, which she did--copiously, including the "cutting" of Faversham at the County Club, by Colonel Barton and others. Lydia said nothing.

In the course of the evening, however, a letter arrived for Lydia, brought by messenger from Threlfall Tower. Lydia was alone in the sitting-room; Susy was writing upstairs. The letter ran:

"I hear you have returned to-day. May I come and see you to-morrow afternoon--late?"

To which Lydia replied in her firmest handwriting, "Come by all means. I shall be here between five and six to-morrow." After which she went about with head erect and shining eyes, like one who has secretly received and accepted a challenge. She was going to sift this matter for herself. Since a hurried note reporting the latest news of the Mainstairs victims, which had reached her from Faversham on the morning of her departure for London, she had heard nothing from him; and during her weeks of nursing in a darkened room, she had sounded the dim and perilous ways of her own heart as best she could.

She spent the following day in sketching the Helvellyn range, still radiant under its first snow-cap; sitting warmly sheltered on a southern side of a wall, within sound of the same stream beside which she and Faversham had met for the first time in the spring, amid the splendid light and colour of the May sunset.

And now it was already winter. The fell-sides were red with withered fern; their round or craggy tops showed white against a steely sky; down the withered copses by the stream, the north wind swept; a golden oak showered its dead leaf upon her. Gray walls, purple fells, the brown and silver of the stream, all the mountain detail that she loved--she drew it passionately into her soul. Nature and art--why had she been so faithless to them--she "the earth's unwearied lover?" She was miserably, ironically conscious of her weakness; of the gap between her spring and her autumn.

On her return, she told Susy quietly of her expected visitor. Susy raised her eyebrows.

"I shall give him tea," said Susan, "just to save the proprieties with Sarah." Sarah was the house parlour-maid. "But _then_ you won't need to give me hints."

Susy had departed. Lydia and Faversham sat opposite each other in the little drawing-room.

Lydia's first impression on seeing him had been one of dismay. He looked much older; and a certain remoteness, a cold and nervous manner seemed to have taken the place of the responsive ease she remembered. It began to cost her an effort to remember the emotion of their last meeting in the Mainstairs lane.

But when they were alone together, he drew a long breath, and leaning forward over the table before them, his face propped on his hand, he looked at her earnestly.

"I wonder what you have been hearing about me?"

Lydia made a brave effort, and told him. She repeated to him the gist of what Susan had reported the night before, putting it lightly--apologetically--as though statements so extravagant had only to be made to be disproved. His mind meanwhile was divided between strained attention, and irrepressible delight in the spectacle of Lydia enthroned in her mother's chair, of the pale golden hair rippling back from the broad forehead, and the clear eyes beneath the thin dark arch of the brows, so delicately traced on the white skin; of all the play of gesture and expression that made up her beauty. Existence for him during these weeks of her absence had largely meant expectation of this moment. He had discounted all that she would probably say to him; his replies were ready.

And she no sooner paused than he began an eager and considered defence of himself. A defence which, as he explained, he had intended to make weeks before. He had called the very day after their hurried departure for London; and having missed them, had then decided to wait till they could talk face to face. _Le papier est bête!_ "I had too much to say!"

Well, when he had said it, to what did it amount? He claimed the right to tell the whole story; and began therefore by tracing the steps by which he had become necessary to Melrose; by describing his astonishment when the offer of the agency was made to him; and the sudden rush of plans and hopes for the future. Then, by a swift and effective digression he sketched the character of Melrose, as he had come to know it; the ferocity of the old man's will; his mad obstinacy, in which there was always a touch of fantastic imagination; and those alternations of solitude and excitement, with the inevitable, accompanying defiance of all laws of health, physical and moral, which for years had made up his life.

"Let us remember that he is undoubtedly a sick man. He will tell me nothing of what his doctors say to him. But I put two and two together. I don't believe he can possibly live long. A year or two at most; perhaps much less. When I accepted the agency, I confess I thought his physical weakness would oblige him to put the whole management of the estate into my hands. It has not been so. The mind, the will are iron, whatever the physical weakness may be. He conceives himself as a rock in the Socialist torrent, bound to oppose reforms, and concessions, and innovations, just because they are asked of him by a revolutionary society. He reckons that his life will last out his resistance--his successful resistance--and that he will go down with the flag flying. So that he takes an insane pleasure in disappointing and thwarting the public opinion about him. For it _is_ insane--remember that! The moral state, the moral judgments, are all abnormal; the will and the brain are, so far as his main pursuits are concerned, still superb."

He paused. Her gaze--half-shrinking--was fixed on the face so near to her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have grown harsher and stronger.

"This, of course, is what I discovered as soon as I had taken the agency. I did not know my man when I accepted. I began to know him, as soon as we really came to business. I found him opposed to all reform--incapable even of decent humanity. Very well! Was I to throw up?"

His eyes pierced into hers. Lydia could only murmur: "Go on."

"Suppose I had thrown up!--what would have happened? The estate would have sunk, more and more lamentably, into the power of a certain low attorney who has been Melrose's instrument in all his worst doings for years--and of a pair of corrupt clerks in the local office. Who would have gained? Not a soul! On the contrary, much would have been lost. Heaven knows I have been able to do little enough. But I have done something!--I have done _something_!--that is what people forget."

He looked at her passionately; a distress rising in his eyes, which he could not hide. Was it her silence--the absence of any cheering, approving sound from her?

She lifted her hand, and let it drop.

"Mainstairs!" she said. It was just breathed--a cry of pain.

"Yes--Mainstairs! I know--let us tackle Mainstairs. Mainstairs is a horror--a tragedy. If I had been allowed, I should have set the whole thing right a couple of months ago; I should have re-housed some of the people, closed some of the cottages, repaired others. Mr. Melrose stopped everything. There again--what good could I do by throwing up? I had plenty of humdrum work elsewhere that was not being interfered with--work that will tell in the long run. I left Mainstairs to Melrose; the responsibility was his, not mine. I went on with what I was doing. He and the police--thank heaven!--cleared the place."

"And in the clearing, Mr. Melrose, they say, never lifted a finger to help--did not even give money," said Lydia in the same low, restrained voice, as she looked away from her guest into the fire. "And one sits thinking--of all the _dead_--that might have been saved!"

His frowning distress was evident.

"Do I not feel it as much as any one?" he said, with emotion. "I was helpless!"

There was silence. Then Lydia turned sharply toward him.

"Mr. Faversham! Is it true that Mr. Melrose has made you his heir?"

His face changed.

"Yes--it is true."

"And he has refused to make any provision for his wife and daughter?"

"He has. And more than that"--he looked at her with a defiant candour--"he has tried to bind me in his will to do nothing for them."

"And you have allowed it?"

"I shall soon get round that," he said, scornfully. "There are a thousand ways. Such restrictions are not worth the paper they are written on."

"And meanwhile they are living on charity? And Mr. Melrose, as you say, may last some years. I saw Mrs. Melrose pass this morning in a carriage. She looked like a dying woman."

"I have done my best," he said doggedly. "I have argued--and entreated. To no avail!"

"But you are taking the money"--the quiet intensity of the tone affected him strangely--"the money, that should be theirs--the money which has been wrung--partly--from this wretched estate. You are accepting gifts and benefits from a man you must loathe and despise!"

She was trembling all over. Her eyes avoided his as she sat downcast; her head bent under the weight of her own words.

There was silence. But a silence that spoke. For what was in truth the meaning of this interview--of his pleading--and her agonized, reluctant judgment? No ordinary acquaintance, no ordinary friendship could have brought it about. Things unspoken, feelings sprung from the flying seeds of love, falling invisible on yielding soil, and growing up a man knoweth not how--at once troubled and united them. The fear of separation had grown, step by step, with the sense of attraction and of yearning. It was because their hearts reached out to each other that they dreaded so to find some impassable gulf between them.

He mastered himself with difficulty.

"That is one way of putting it. Now let me put it my way. I am a man who has had few chances in life--and great ambitions--which I have never had the smallest means of satisfying. I may be the mere intriguer that Tatham and his mother evidently think me. But I am inclined to believe in myself. Most men are. I feel that I have never had my opportunity. What is this wealth that is offered me, but an opportunity? There never was so much to be done with wealth--so much sheer _living_ to be got out of it, as there is to-day. Luxury and self-indulgence are the mere abuse of wealth. Wealth means everything nowadays that a man is most justified in desiring!--supposing he has the brains to use it. That at any rate is my belief. It always has been my belief. Trust me--that is all I ask of my friends. Give me time. If Mr. Melrose were to die soon--immediately--I should be able all the quicker to put everything to rights. But if his death is delayed a year or two--my life indeed will be a dog's life"--he spoke with sudden emotion--"but the people on the estate will not be the worse, but the better, for my being there; and in the end the power will come to me--and I shall use it. So long as Melrose lives his wife and daughter can get nothing out of him, whether I am there or not. His obstinacy is immovable, as Lady Tatham has found, and when he dies, their interests will be safe with me."

Lydia had grown very pale. The man before her seemed to her Faversham, yet not Faversham. Some other personality, compounded of all those ugly, sophistic things that lurk in every human character, seemed to be wrestling with, obscuring the real man.

"And the years till this stage comes to an end?" she asked him. "When every day you have to do what you feel to be wrong?--to obey--to be at the beck and call of such a man as Mr. Melrose?--hateful--cruel--tyrannical!--when you must silence all that is generous and noble--"

Her voice failed her.

Faversham's lips tightened. They remained looking at each other. Then Faversham rose suddenly. He stooped over her. She heard his voice, hoarse and broken in her ears:

"Lydia--I love you!--I _love you_--with all my heart!--and all my strength! Don't, for God's sake, let us make believe with each other! And--I believe," he added, after a moment, in a lower tone, "I believe--that you love me!"

His attitude, his manner were masterful--violent. She trembled under it. He tried to take her hand.

"Speak to me!" he said, peremptorily. "Oh, my darling--speak to me! I only ask you to trust to me--to be guided by me--"

She withdrew her hand. He could see her heart fluttering under the soft curves of the breast.

"I can't--I can't!"

The words were said with anguish. She covered her face with her hands.

"Because I won't do what you wish? What is it you wish?"

They had come to the deciding moment.

She looked up, recovering self-control, her heart rushing to her lips.

"Give it up!" she said, stretching out her hands to him, her head thrown back, all her delicate beauty one prayer. "Don't touch this money! It is stained--it is corrupt. You lose your honour in taking it--and honour--is life. What does money matter? The great things that make one happy have nothing to do with money. They can be had for so little! And if one loses them--honour and self-respect--and a clear conscience--how can _money_ make up! If I were to marry you--and we had to live on Mr. Melrose's money--everything in life would be poisoned for me. I should always see the faces--of those dead people--whom I loved. I should hear their voices--accusing. We should be in slavery--slavery to a bad man--and our souls would die--"

Her voice dropped--drowned in the passion of its own entreaty.

Faversham pressed her hands, released them, and slowly straightened himself to his full height, as he stood beside her on the hearthrug. A vision rose and spread through the mind. In place of the little sitting-room, the modest home of refined women living on a slender income, he saw the great gallery at Threlfall with its wonderful contents, and the series of marvellous rooms he had now examined and set in order. Vividly, impressively the great house presented itself to him in memory, in all its recovered grace and splendour; a treasury of art, destined to be a place of pilgrimage for all who adore that lovely record of itself in things subtle and exquisite which the human spirit has written on time. Often lately he had wrung permission from Melrose to take an English or foreign visitor through some of the rooms. He had watched their enthusiasm and their ardour. And mingled with such experience, there had been now for months the intoxicating sense that everything in that marvellous house was potentially his--Claude Faversham's, and would all some day come into his hands, the hands of a man specially prepared by education and early circumstance to enjoy, to appreciate.

And the estate. As in a map, he saw its green spreading acres, its multitude of farms, its possessions of all kind, spoilt and neglected by one man's caprice, but easily to be restored by the prudent care of his successor. He realized himself in the future as its owner; the inevitable place that it would give him in the political and social affairs of the north. And the estate was not all. Behind the estate lay the great untrammelled fortune drawn from quite other sources of wealth; how great he was only now beginning to know.

A great sigh shook him--a sigh of decision. What he had been listening to had been the quixotism of a tender heart, ignorant of life and affairs, and all the wider possibilities open to man's will. He could not yield. In time she must be the one to yield. And she would yield. Let him wait, and be patient. There were many ways in which to propitiate, to work upon her.

He looked down upon her gravely, his dark pointed face quivering a little. Instinctively she drew back. Her expression changed.

"I can't do that." His voice was low but firm. "I feel the call to me. And after all, Melrose has claims on me. To me, personally, his generosity--has been incredible. He is old--and ill. I must stay by him."

Her mind cried out, "Yes--but on your own terms, not his!"

But she did not say it. Her pride came to her aid. She sprang up, a glittering animation flashing back into her face, transforming its softness, its tenderness.

"I understand--I quite understand. Thank you for being so plain--and bearing with my--strange ideas. Now--I don't think we can be of any further use to each other--though--" she clasped her hands involuntarily--"I shall always hope and pray--"

She did not finish. He broke into a cry.

"Lydia! you send me away?"

"I don't accept your conditions--nor you mine. There is no more to be said."

He looked at her sombrely, remorse struggling with his will. But also anger--the anger of a naturally arrogant temperament--that he should find her so resistant.

"If you loved me--"

"Ah--no," she shook her head fiercely, the bright tears in her eyes; "don't let's talk of love! That has nothing to say to it."

She turned, and took up a piece of embroidery lying on a table near. He accepted the indication, turning very white. But still he lingered.

"Is there nothing I could say that would alter your mind?"

"I am afraid--nothing."

She gave him her hand. He scarcely dared to press it; she had become suddenly so strong, so hostile. Her light beauty had turned as it were to fire; one saw the flame of the spirit.

A tumult of thoughts and regrets rushed through him. But things inexorable held him. With a long, lingering look at her, he turned and went.

A little later, Susy entering timidly found Lydia sitting alone in a room that was nearly dark. Some instinct guided her. She came in, took a stool beside her sister, and leant her head against Lydia's knee. Lydia said nothing, but their hands joined, and for long they sat in the firelight, the only sounds, Lydia's stifled sobbing, and the soft crackling of a dying flame.