Part I.

I

All her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number of impecunious cousins, using her bank balance like the scorpions of Rehoboam to chastise them; and, like many another pious creature, for their souls’ good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured in the Evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her connections should seek salvation according to her own lights, and with harsh tongue and with bitter gibe made it her constant business to persuade them of their extreme unworthiness. She arranged lives as she thought fit, and ventured not only to order the costume and habits, but even the inner thought of those about her; the Last Judgment could have no terrors for any that had faced her searching examination. She invited to stay with her in succession various poor ladies who presumed on a distant tie to call her Aunt Eliza, and they accepted her summons, more imperious than a royal command, with gratitude by no means unmixed with fear, bearing the servitude meekly as a cross which in the future would meet due testamentary reward.

Miss Dwarris loved to feel her power. During these long visits—for in a way the old lady was very hospitable—she made it her especial object to break the spirit of her guests, and it entertained her hugely to see the mildness with which were borne her extravagant demands, the humility with which every inclination was crushed. She took a malicious pleasure in publicly affronting persons, ostensibly to bend a sinful pride, or in obliging them to do things which they peculiarly disliked. With a singular quickness for discovering the points on which they were most sensitive, she attacked every weakness with blunt invective till the sufferer writhed before her raw and bleeding; no defect, physical or mental, was protected from her raillery, and she could pardon as little an excess of avoirdupois as a want of memory. Yet with all her heart she despised her victims, she flung in their face insolently their mercenary spirit, vowing that she would never leave a penny to such a pack of weak fools; it delighted her to ask for advice in the distribution of her property among charitable societies, and she heard with unconcealed hilarity their unwilling and confused suggestions.

With one of her relations only Miss Dwarris found it needful to observe a certain restraint—for Miss Ley, perhaps the most distant of her cousins, was as plain-spoken as herself, and had besides, a far keener wit, whereby she could turn rash statements to the utter ridicule of the speaker. Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent spirit; she looked upon her, in fact, with a certain degree of affection and not a little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee, appeared really to enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her greater urbanity, readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged victorious; it confounded, but at the same time almost amused, the elder lady that a woman so much poorer than herself, with no smaller claim than others to the coveted inheritance, should venture not only to be facetious at her expense, but even to carry war into her very camp. Miss Ley, really not grieved to find someone to whom without prickings of conscience she could speak her whole mind, took a grim pleasure in pointing out to her cousin the poor logic of her observations or the foolish unreason of her acts. No cherished opinion of Miss Dwarris was safe from satire; even her Evangelicism was laughed at, and the rich old woman, unused to argument, was easily driven to self-contradiction; and then—for the victor took no pains to conceal her triumph—she grew pale and speechless with rage. The quarrels were frequent, but Miss Dwarris, though it was a sharp thorn in her flesh that the first advances must be made by her, in the end always forgave. Yet at last it was inevitable that a final breach should occur. The cause thereof, characteristically enough, was very trivial.

Miss Ley, accustomed, when she went abroad for the winter to let her little flat in Chelsea, had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to return to England while her tenants were still in possession, and had asked Miss Dwarris whether she might stay with her in Old Queen Street. The old tyrant, much as she hated her relatives, hated still more to live alone; she needed someone on whom to vent her temper, and through the illness of a niece, due to spend March and April with her, had been forced to pass a month of solitude. She wrote back, in the peremptory fashion which even with Miss Ley she could not refrain from using, that she expected her on such and such a day by such and such a train. It is not clear whether there was in the letter anything to excite in Miss Ley a contradictory spirit, or whether her engagements really prevented it, but at all events she answered that her plans made it more convenient to arrive on the day following and by a different train. Miss Dwarris telegraphed that unless her guest came on the day and at the hour mentioned in her letter she could not send the carriage to meet her, to which the younger lady replied concisely: “Don’t!”

“She’s as obstinate as a pig,” muttered Miss Dwarris, reading the telegram, and she saw in her mind’s eye the thin smile on her cousin’s mouth when she wrote that one indifferent word. “I suppose she thinks she’s very clever.”

Her hostess greeted Miss Ley, notwithstanding, with a certain grim affability reserved only for her; she was at all events the least detestable of her relations, and, though neither docile nor polite, at least was never tedious. Her conversation braced Miss Dwarris, so that with her she was usually at her best, and sometimes, forgetting her overbearing habit, showed herself a sensible and entertaining woman of not altogether unamiable disposition.

“You’re growing old, my dear,” said Miss Dwarris when they sat down to dinner, looking at her guest with eyes keen to detect wrinkles and crow’s-feet.

“You flatter me,” Miss Ley retorted; “antiquity is the only excuse for a woman who has determined on a single life.”

“I suppose, like the rest of them, you would have married if anyone had asked you.”

Miss Ley smiled.

“Two months ago an Italian Prince offered me his hand and heart, Eliza.”

“A Papist would do anything,” replied Miss Dwarris. “I suppose you told him your income and he found he’d misjudged the strength of his affections.”

“I refused him because he was so virtuous.”

“I shouldn’t have thought at your age you could afford to pick and choose, Polly.”

“Allow me to observe that you have an amiable faculty for thinking of one subject at one time in two diametrically opposed ways.”

Miss Ley was a slender woman of middle size; her hair, very plainly arranged, beginning to turn gray, and her face, already much wrinkled, by its clear precision of feature indicating a comfortable strength of character; her lips, thin but expressive, mobile, added to this appearance of determination. She was by no means handsome, and had certainly never been pretty, but her carriage was not without grace nor her manner without fascination. Her eyes were very bright, and so shrewd as sometimes to be almost disconcerting: without words they could make pretentiousness absurd; and most affectations, under that searching glance, part contemptuous, part amused, willingly hid themselves. Yet, as Miss Dwarris took care to remind her, she was not without her own especial pose, but it was carried out so admirably, with such a restrained, comely decorum, that few observed it, and such as did found not the heart to condemn: it was the perfect art that concealed itself. To execute this æsthetic gesture, it pleased Miss Ley to dress with the greatest possible simplicity, usually in black, and her only ornament was a Renaissance jewel of such exquisite beauty that no museum would have disdained to possess it: this she wore around her neck attached to a long gold chain, and she fingered it with pleasure, to show, according to her plain-spoken relative, the undoubted beauty of her hands. Her well-fitting shoes and the elaborate open-work of her silk stockings suggested also a not unreasonable pride in a shapely foot, small and high of instep. Thus attired, when she had visitors, Miss Ley sat in an Italian straight-backed chair of oak, and delicately carved, which was placed between two windows against the wall; and she cultivated already a certain primness of manner which made very effective the audacious criticism of life wherewith she was used to entertain her friends.

Two mornings after her arrival in Old Queen Street, Miss Ley announced her intention to go out. She came downstairs with a very fashionable parasol, a purchase on her way through Paris.

“You’re not going out with that thing?” cried Miss Dwarris, scornfully.

“I am indeed.”

“Nonsense; you must take an umbrella. It’s going to rain.”

“I have a new sunshade and an old umbrella, Eliza. I feel certain it will be fine.”

“My dear, you know nothing about the English climate. I tell you it will pour cats and dogs.”

“Fiddlesticks, Eliza!”

“Polly,” answered Miss Dwarris, her temper rising, “I wish you to take an umbrella. The barometer is going down, and I have a tingling in my feet, which is a sure sign of wet. It’s very irreligious of you to presume to say what the weather is going to be.”

“I venture to think that meteorologically I am no less acquainted with the ways of Providence than you.”

“That, I think, is not funny, but blasphemous, Polly. In my house I expect people to do as I tell them, and I insist on your taking an umbrella.”

“Don’t be absurd, Eliza!”

Miss Dwarris rang the bell, and when the butler appeared ordered him to fetch her own umbrella for Miss Ley.

“I absolutely refuse to use it,” said the younger lady, smiling.

“Pray remember that you are my guest, Polly.”

“And therefore entitled to do exactly as I like.”

Miss Dwarris rose to her feet, a massive old woman of commanding presence, and stretched out a threatening hand.

“If you leave this house without an umbrella, you shall not come into it again. You shall never cross this threshold so long as I am alive.”

Miss Ley cannot have been in the best of humours that morning, for she pursed her lips in the manner already characteristic of her, and looked at her elderly cousin with a cold scorn most difficult to bear.

“My dear Eliza, you have a singularly exaggerated idea of your importance. Are there no hotels in London? You appear to think I stay with you for pleasure rather than to mortify my flesh. And really the cross is growing too heavy for me, for I think you must have quite the worst cook in the Metropolis.”

“She’s been with me for five-and-twenty years,” answered Miss Dwarris, two red spots appearing on her cheeks, “and no one has ventured to complain of the cooking before. If any of my guests had done so, I should have answered that what was good enough for me was a great deal too good for anyone else. I know that you’re obstinate, Polly, and quick-tempered, and this impertinence I am willing to overlook. Do you still refuse to do as I wish?”

“Yes.”

Miss Dwarris rang the bell violently.

“Tell Martha to pack Miss Ley’s boxes at once, and call a four-wheeler,” she cried, in tones of thunder.

“Very well, Madam,” answered the butler, used to his mistress’ vagaries.

Then Miss Dwarris turned to her guest, who observed her with irritating good-humour.

“I hope you realize, Polly, that I fully mean what I say.”

“All is over between us,” answered Miss Ley mockingly, “and shall I return your letters and your photographs?”

Miss Dwarris sat for a while in silent anger, watching her cousin, who took up the _Morning Post_ and with great calmness read the fashionable intelligence. Presently the butler announced that the four-wheeler was at the door.

“Well, Polly, so you’re really going?”

“I can hardly stay when you’ve had my boxes packed and sent for a cab,” replied Miss Ley mildly.

“It’s your own doing; I don’t wish you to go. If you’ll confess that you were headstrong and obstinate, and if you’ll take an umbrella, I am willing to let bygones be bygones.”

“Look at the sun,” answered Miss Ley.

And, as if actually to annoy the tyrannous old woman, the shining rays danced into the room and made importunate patterns on the carpet.

“I think I should tell you, Polly, that it was my intention to leave you ten thousand pounds in my will. This intention I shall, of course, not now carry out.”

“You’d far better leave your money to the Dwarris people. Upon my word, considering that they’ve been related to you for over sixty years, I think they thoroughly deserve it.”

“I shall leave my money to whom I choose,” cried Miss Dwarris, beside herself; “and if I want to, I shall leave every penny of it in charity. You’re very independent because you have a beggarly five hundred a year, but apparently it isn’t enough for you to live without letting your flat when you go away. Remember that no one has any claims upon me, and I can make you a rich woman.”

Miss Ley replied with great deliberation.

“My dear, I have a firm conviction that you will live for another thirty years to plague the human race in general, and your relations in particular. It is not worth my while, on the chance of surviving you, to submit to the caprices of a very ignorant old woman, presumptuous and overbearing, dull and pretentious.”

Miss Dwarris gasped and shook with rage, but the other proceeded without mercy.

“You have plenty of poor relations—bully them. Vent your spite and ill-temper on those wretched sycophants, but, pray, in future spare _me_ the infinite tediousness of your conversation.”

Miss Ley had ever a discreet passion for the rhetorical, and there was a certain grandiloquence about the phrase which entertained her hugely. She felt that it was unanswerable, and with great dignity walked out. No communication passed between the two ladies, though Miss Dwarris, peremptory, stern, and Evangelical to the end, lived in full possession of her faculties for nearly twenty years. She died at last in a passion occasioned by some trifling misdemeanour of her maid; and, as though a heavy yoke were removed from their shoulders, her family heaved a deep and unanimous sigh of relief.

They attended her funeral with dry eyes, looking still with silent terror at the leaden coffin which contained the remains of that harsh, strong, domineering old woman; then, nervously expectant, begged the family solicitor to disclose her will. Written with her own hand, and witnessed by two servants, it was in these terms:

“I, Elizabeth Ann Dwarris, of 79 Old Queen Street, Westminster, spinster, hereby revoke all former wills and testamentary dispositions, made by me, and declare this to be my last will and testament. I appoint Mary Ley, of 72 Eliot Mansions, Chelsea, to be the executrix of this my will, and I give all my real and personal property whatsoever to the said Mary Ley. To my great-nephews and great-nieces, to my cousins near and remote, I give my blessing, and I beseech them to bear in mind the example and advice which for many years I have given them. I recommend them to cultivate in future strength of character and an independent spirit. I venture to remind them that the humble will never inherit this earth, for their reward is to be awaited in the life to come, and I desire them to continue the subscriptions which, at my request, they have so long and generously made to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews and to the Additional Curates Fund. “In witness whereof, I have set my hand to this my will the 4th day of April, 1883.

“Elizabeth Ann Dwarris.”

To her amazement, Miss Ley found herself at the age of fifty-seven in possession of nearly three thousand pounds a year, the lease of a pleasant old house in Westminster, and a great quantity of early Victorian furniture. The will was written two days after her quarrel with the eccentric old woman, and the terms of it certainly achieved the three purposes for which it was designed: it occasioned the utmost surprise to all concerned; it heaped coals of fire on Miss Ley’s indifferent head; and caused the bitterest disappointment and vexation to all that bore the name of Dwarris.

II

It did not take Miss Ley very long to settle in her house. To its new owner, who hated modernity with all her heart, part of the charm lay in its quaint old fashion: built in the reign of Queen Anne, it had the leisurely, spacious comfort of dwelling-places in that period, with a hood over the door that was a pattern of elegance, wrought-iron railings, and, to Miss Ley’s especial delight, extinguishers for the link-boys’ torches.

The rooms were large, somewhat low-pitched, with wide windows overlooking the most consciously beautiful of all the London parks. Miss Ley made no great alterations. An epicurean to her finger-tips, for many years the passion for liberty had alone disturbed the equanimity of her indolent temper. But to secure freedom, entire and absolute freedom, she was ever ready to make any sacrifice: ties affected her with a discomfort that seemed really akin to physical pain, and she avoided them—ties of family or of affection, ties of habit or of thought—with all the strenuousness of which she was capable. She had taken care never in the course of her life to cumber herself with chattels, and once, with a courage in which there was surely something heroic, feeling that she became too much attached to her belongings—cabinets and exquisite fans brought from Spain, Florentine frames of gilded wood and English mezzotints, Neapolitan bronzes, tables and settees discovered in out-of-the-way parts of France—she had sold everything. She would not risk to grow so fond of her home that it was a pain to leave it; she preferred to remain a wayfarer, sauntering through life with a heart keen to detect beauty, and a mind, open and unbiassed, ready to laugh at the absurd. So it fitted her humour to move with the few goods which she possessed into her cousin’s house as though it were but a furnished lodging, remaining there still unfettered; and when Death came—a pagan youth, twin brother to Sleep, rather than the grim and bony skeleton of Christian faith—ready to depart like a sated reveller, smiling dauntlessly and without regret. A new and personal ordering, the exclusion of many pieces of clumsy taste, gave Miss Ley’s drawing-room quickly a more graceful and characteristic air: the _objets d’art_ collected since the memorable sale added a certain grave delicacy to the arrangement; and her friends noticed without surprise that, as in her own flat, the straight, carved chair was set between two windows, and the furniture deliberately placed so that from it the mistress of the house, herself part of the æsthetic scheme, could command and manipulate her guests.

No sooner was Miss Ley comfortably settled than she wrote to an old friend and distant cousin, Algernon Langton, Dean of Tercanbury, asking him to bring his daughter to visit her new house; and Miss Langton replied that they would be pleased to come, fixing a certain Thursday morning for their arrival. Miss Ley greeted her relatives without effusion, for it was her whim to discourage manifestations of affection; but notwithstanding the good-humoured, polite contempt with which it was her practice to treat the clergy in general, she looked upon her cousin Algernon with real esteem.

He was a tall old man, spare and bent, with very white and a pallid, almost transparent, skin; his eyes cold and blue, but his expression singularly gentle. There was a dignity in his bearing, and at the same time an infinite graciousness which reminded you of those famous old ecclesiastics whose names have cast for ever a certain magnificent renown upon the English Church; he had a good deal of the polished breeding which made them, whatever their origin, gentlemen and courtiers, and, like theirs, his Biblical erudition was perhaps less noteworthy than his classical attainments. And if he was a little narrow, unwilling to consider seriously modern ways of thought, there was an æsthetic quality about him and a truly Christian urbanity which attracted admiration, and even love. Miss Ley, a student of men, who could observe with interest the most diverse tendencies, (for to her sceptical mind no way of life nor method of thought was intrinsically more valuable than another,) was pleased with his stately, candid simplicity, and used with him a forbearance which was not customary to her.

“Well, Polly,” said the Dean, “I suppose now you are a woman of property you will give up your wild-goose chase after the unattainable. You will settle down and become a respectable member of society.”

“You need not insist that my hair is grayer than when last you saw me, and my wrinkles more apparent.”

At this time Miss Ley, who had altered little in the last twenty years, resembled extraordinarily the portrait-statue of Agrippina in the museum at Naples. She had the same lined face, with its look of rather scornful indifference for mundane affairs, and that well-bred distinction of manner which the Empress had acquired through the command of multitudes, but Miss Ley, more finely, through the command of herself.

“But you’re right, Algernon,” she added, “I am growing old, and I doubt whether I should have again the courage to sell all my belongings. I do not think I could face the utter loneliness in which I rejoiced when I felt I had nothing I could call my own but the clothes on my back.”

“You had quite a respectable income.”

“For which the saints be praised! No one can think of freedom who has less than five hundred a year; without that, life is a mere sordid struggle for daily bread.”

The Dean, hearing that luncheon would not be ready till two, went out, and Miss Ley was left alone with his daughter. Bella Langton had reached that age when she could by no stretch of courtesy be described as a girl, and her father but lately, somewhat to her dismay, had composed a set of Latin verses on her fortieth birthday. She was not pretty, nor had she the graceful dignity which made the Dean so becoming a figure in the cathedral chapter: somewhat squarely built, her hair, of a pleasant brown, was severely arranged; her features were too broad and her complexion rather oddly weather-beaten, but her gray eyes were very kindly, and her expression singularly good-humoured. Following provincial fashions in somewhat costly materials, she dressed with the serviceable plainness affected by the pious virgins who congregate in cathedral cities, and the result was an impression of very expensive dowdiness. She was obviously a capable woman who could be depended upon in any emergency. Charitable in an unimaginative, practical way, she was a fit and competent leader for the philanthropy of Tercanbury, and, fully conscious of her importance in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, ruled her little clerical circle with a firm but not unkindly hand. Notwithstanding her warm heart and truly Christian humility, Miss Langton had an intimate conviction of her own value; for not only did her father hold a stately office, but he came from good county stock of no small distinction, whereas it was notorious that the Bishop was a man of no family, and his wife had been a governess. Miss Langton would have given her last penny to relieve the sick wife of some poor curate, but would have thought twice before asking her to call at the Deanery; her charitable kindness was bestowed on all and sundry, but the ceremonies of polite society she practised only with persons of quality.

“I’ve asked various people to meet you at dinner to-night,” said Miss Ley.

“Are they nice?”

“They’re not positively disagreeable. Mrs. Barlow-Bassett is bringing her son, who pleases me because he’s so beautiful. Basil Kent is coming, a barrister; I like him because he has the face of a knight in an early Italian picture.”

“You always had a weakness for good-looking men, Mary,” answered Miss Langton, smiling.

“Beauty is quite the most important thing in the world, my dear. People say that the masculine appearance is immaterial, but that is because they are foolish. I know men who have gained all the honour and glory of the earth merely through a fine pair of eyes or a well-shaped mouth. . . . Then I have asked Mr. and Mrs. Castillyon; he is a member of Parliament and very dull and pompous, but just the sort of creature who would amuse you.”

While Miss Ley spoke a note was brought in.

“How tiresome!” she cried, having read. “Mr. Castillyon writes to say he cannot leave the House to-night till late. I wish they wouldn’t have autumn sessions. It’s just like him to think such a nonentity as himself is indispensable. Now I must ask someone to take his place.”

She sat down and hurriedly wrote a few words.

“My dear Frank, “I beseech you to come to dinner to-night at eight, and since when you arrive your keen intelligence will probably suggest to you that I have not asked nine people on the spur of the moment, I will confess that I invite you merely because Mr. Castillyon has put me off at the last minute. But if you don’t come I will never speak to you again.

“Yours ever, “Mary Ley.”

She rang the bell, and told a servant to take the letter immediately to Harley Street.

“I’ve asked Frank Hurrell,” she explained to Miss Langton. “He’s a nice boy—people remain boys till they’re forty now, and he’s ten years less than that. He’s a doctor, and by way of being rather distinguished; they’ve lately made him assistant-physician at St. Luke’s Hospital, and he’s set up in Harley Street waiting for patients.”

“Is he handsome?” asked Miss Langton, smiling.

“Not at all, but he’s one of the few persons I know who really amuses me. You’ll think him very disagreeable, and you’ll probably bore him to extinction.”

With this remark, calculated to put the younger woman entirely at her ease, Miss Ley sat down again at the window. The day was warm and sunny, but the trees, yellow and red with the first autumnal glow, were heavy still with the rain that had fallen in the night. There was a grave, sensuous passion about St. James’s Park, with its cool, smooth water just seen among the heavy foliage, and its well-tended lawns; and Miss Ley observed it in silence, with a vague feeling of self-satisfaction, for prosperity was a comfortable thing.

“What would be a suitable present for a poet?” asked Miss Langton suddenly.

“Surely a rhyming dictionary,” answered her friend, smiling. “Or a Bradshaw’s Guide to indicate the æsthetic value of common-sense.”

“Don’t be absurd, Mary, I really want your advice. I know a young man in Tercanbury who writes poetry,”

“I never knew a young man who didn’t. You’re not in love with a pale, passionate curate, Bella?”

“I’m in love with no one,” answered Miss Langton, with the shadow of a blush. “At my age it would be ridiculous. But I should like to tell you about this boy. He’s only twenty, and he’s a clerk in the bank there.”

“Bella!” cried Miss Ley, with mock horror. “Don’t tell me you’re philandering with a person who isn’t _county_. What would the Dean say? And for heaven’s sake take care of poetical boys; at your age a woman should offer daily prayers to her Maker to prevent her from falling in love with a man twenty years younger than herself. That is one of the most prevalent diseases of the day.”

“His father was a linen-draper at Blackstable, who sent him to Regis School, Tercanbury. And there he took every possible scholarship. He was going to Cambridge, but his people died, and to earn his living he was obliged to go into the bank. He’s had a very hard time.”

“But how on earth did you make his acquaintance? No society is so rigidly exclusive as that of a cathedral town, and I know you refuse to be introduced to anyone till you have looked him out in the _Landed Gentry._

Miss Ley, singularly unprejudiced, ridiculed her cousin hugely for this veneration of the county family; and though her own name figured in Burke’s portentous she concealed the fact as something rather discreditable. To her mind the only advantage of a respectable ancestry was that with a whole heart she could ridicule the claims of blood.

“He was never introduced to me,” answered Bella unwillingly. “I made friends with him by accident.”

“My dear, that sounds very improper. I hope at least he rescued you in a carriage accident, which appears to be one of Cupid’s favourite devices. He always was an unimaginative god, and his methods are dreadfully commonplace. . . . Don’t say the young man accosted you in the street!”

Bella Langton could not have told Miss Ley the whole story of her acquaintance with Herbert Field, for the point of it lay to some extent in her own state of mind, and that she but vaguely understood. She had arrived at that embarrassment which comes to most unmarried women, when youth is already passed and the monotonous length of middle age looms drearily before them. For some time her round of duties had lost its savour, and she seemed to have done everything too often: the days exasperated her in their similarity. She was seized with that restlessness which has sent so many, nameless or renowned, sailing like stout Cortez across unknown seas, and others, no fewer, on hazardous adventures of the spirit. She looked with envy now at the friends, her contemporaries, who were mothers of fair children, and not without difficulty overcame a nascent regret that for her father’s sake, alone in the world and in all practical concerns very helpless, she had foregone the natural joys of women. These feelings much distressed her, for she had dwelt always in a world of limited horizon, occupied with piety and with good works; the emotions that tore her heart-strings seemed temptations of the devil, and she turned to her God for a solace that came not. She sought to distract her mind by unceasing labour, and with double zeal administered her benevolent institutions; books left her listless, but setting her teeth with a sort of angry determination, she began to learn Greek. Nothing served. Against her will new thoughts forced themselves upon her; and she was terrified, for it seemed to her no woman had ever been tormented by such wild, unlawful fancies. She reminded herself in vain that the name of which she was so proud constrained her to self-command, and her position in Tercanbury made it a duty, even in her inmost heart, to serve as an example to lesser folk.

And now Miss Langton took no pleasure in the quiet close where before she had delighted to linger; the old cathedral, weather-beaten, gray and lovely, no longer gave its accustomed message of resignation and of hope. She took to walking far into the country, but the meadows, bespangled with buttercups in spring, the woods, with their autumnal russet, but increased her uneasiness; and most willingly she went to a hill from which at no great distance could be seen the shining sea, and for a moment its immensity comforted her restless heart. Sometimes at sundown over the slate gray of the western clouds was spread a great dust of red gold that swept down upon the silent water like the train of a goddess of fire; and presently, thrusting through sombre cumuli, like a Titan breaking his prison walls, the sun shone forth, a giant sphere of copper. With almost a material effort it seemed to push aside the thronging darkness, filling the whole sky with brilliancy; and then over the placid sea was stretched a broad roadway of unearthly fire, upon which might travel the mystical, passionate souls of men, endlessly, to the source of the deathless light, Bella Langton turned away with a sob and walked back slowly the way she came. Before her in the valley the gray houses of Tercanbury clustered about the tall cathedral, but its ancient beauty pressed her heart with bands of pain.

Then came the spring: the fields were gay with flowers, a vernal carpet whereon with delicate feet might walk the angels of Messer Perugino, and she could bear the agony no longer; in every hedgerow, on every tree, the birds sang with infinite variety, singing the joy of life and the beauty of the rain and the glorious sunshine. They told her one and all that the world was young and beautiful, but the time of man so short that every hour of it must be lived as though it were the last.

When a friend asked her to spend a month in Brittany, sick of her inaction, she accepted eagerly. To travel might ease her aching heart, and the fatigue of the journey allay that springing of the limbs which made her feel apt for hazardous undertakings. Alone the two ladies wandered along that rugged coast. They stayed at Carnac, but the mysterious antique stones suggested only the nothingness of life; man came and went, with hope and longing, and left the signs of his dim faith to be a mystery to succeeding ages; they went to Le Faouet, where the painted windows of the ruined church of Saint Fiacre gleam like precious stones: but the restful charm of these scenes had no message for a heart thirsting for life and the love that quickens. They passed to the famous calvaries of Plougastel and Saint Thégonnec; and those grim crosses, with their stone processions, (the effort at beauty of a race bowed down by the sense of sin), oppressed her under that gray western sky with dismay: they suggested only death and the grave’s despair, but she was full of expectation, of longing for she knew not what. It seemed to her as though, she knew not how, she were sailing on that dark silent sea of which the mystics speak, where the common rules of life availed not. Travel gave her nothing that she sought, but increased rather her unquiet; her hands itched for work to do, and she went back to Tercanbury.

III

At last, one afternoon of that very summer, after the vesper service in the cathedral. Miss Langton, wandering listlessly towards the door, saw a young man seated at the back of the nave; it was late, so that he and she seemed to possess that vast building by themselves. With glowing eyes he stared into vacancy, as though his own thoughts blinded him to the Gothic loveliness about him, and his eyes were singularly dark. His hair was fair, and his face, womanlike in its transparent delicacy of skin, was thin and oval. Presently a verger went to him saying that the attention cathedral would be closed, and as he rose, paying no other attention to the man’s words, he passed within a yard of Bella, but in his abstraction saw her not. She thought no more of him, but on the following Saturday, going, as her habit, to the afternoon service, she saw the youth again, seated as before in the furthermost part of the nave, well away both from sightseers and from devout. A curiosity she did not understand impelled her to remain there rather than go into the choir, separated from the nave by an elaborate screen, where by right of her dignity a seat was reserved for her not far from her father’s decanal stall.

The boy, for he was little more, this time was reading a book, which she noticed was written in verse; now and again, with a smile, he threw back his head, and she imagined he repeated to himself a line that pleased him.

The service began, softened by distance so that the well-known forms gained a new mystery; the long notes of the organ pealed reverberating along the vaulted roof, or wailed softly, like the voice of a young child, among the lofty columns. At intervals the choir gave a richer depth to the organ music, and it was so broken and deadened by obstructing stone that it sounded vaguely like the surging of the sea. Presently this ceased, and a tenor’s voice, the pride of the cathedral, rang out alone; and as though the magic sound had power over all material obstacles, the melody of the old-fashioned anthem—her father loved the undecorated music of a past age—rose towards heaven in a sobbing prayer. The book fell from the young man’s hand, and an eager look came into his face as he drank in the silver harmonies; his face was transfigured with ecstasy so that it resembled the face of some pictured saint glorified by a mystic vision of the celestial light. And then, falling on his knees, he buried his face in his hands, and Bella saw that with all his soul he prayed to a God that gave men ears to hear and eyes to see the beauty of the world. What was there in the sight that made her own heart beat with a new emotion?

And when he sat once more on his chair there was a look in his face of exquisite content, and a smile of happiness trembled on his lips, so that Bella turned sick with envy. What power was there in his soul that gave a magic colour to things that left her, for all her striving, still untouched? She waited till he walked slowly out, and, seeing him nod to the verger at the door, asked who he was.

“I don’t know, miss,” was the answer; “he comes here every Saturday and Sunday regular. But he never goes into the choir. He just sits there in the corner where no one can see him, and reads a book. I don’t interfere with him, because he’s very quiet and respectful.”

Bella could not tell why she thought so often of the fair-haired youth who had never so much as noticed her presence, nor why, on the Sunday that followed, she went again to the nave awaiting his appearance. Observing him more closely, she noticed the slimness of his figure and the shapely length of his hands, which seemed to touch things with a curious delicacy; once their eyes met, and his were blue like the summer sea in Italy, and deep. A somewhat nervous woman, she would never have ventured to address a stranger, but the candid simplicity of his expression, in which strangely there was also a certain appealing pathos, overcame her shyness, overcame also her sense of the impropriety of making friends with a person about whom she knew nothing. Some hidden intuition told her that she was arrived at a turning-point in her life, and courage now was needed to seize with both hands a new happiness; and as though the very stars were favourable there had occurred to her a way to scrape acquaintance. Excited, for it seemed very adventurous, she waited impatiently for Saturday, and then, asking her favourite verger for his keys, after the service went boldly to the youth whose name even she did not know.

“Would you like me to take you over the cathedral?” she asked without a word of introduction. “We can go round alone, and it’s very pleasant without the chatter of vergers and the hurry of a crowd.”

He blushed to the very roots of his hair when she spoke, but then smiled charmingly.

“It’s very kind of you,” he answered; “I’ve wanted to do that always.”

His voice was pleasant and low, and he showed no surprise whatever; but all the same Bella, now somewhat startled by her own audacity, thought it needful to explain why she ventured the suggestion.

“I’ve seen you here very often, and it struck me that you would like to see the cathedral at its best. But I’m afraid you must put up with me.”

He smiled again, and appeared now to take note of her for the first time. Bella, looking straight in front of her, felt his eyes rest thoughtfully on her face, and suddenly she seemed to herself old and lined and dowdy.

“What book is that you have?” she asked, to break the silence.

Without speaking he gave it her, and she saw it was a little collection, evidently much read, for the binding scarcely held the leaves together, of Shelley’s lyrical poems.

Bella unlocked the gate that led into the apse, and locked it again behind her.

“Isn’t it delightful to feel one’s self alone here?” he cried, and with springing step and smiling eyes walked forwards.

At first he was a little shy, but presently the spirit of the place, with its dark chapels and stone knights recumbent, the tracery of its jewelled windows, loosened his tongue, and he poured forth his boyish enthusiasm with a passion that astonished Bella. His delight communicated itself to her so that she found a new enchantment in the things she knew so well; his glowing poetic fervour seemed to gild the old walls with magic sunshine; and, as if those prisoned stones were strangely thrown open to heaven, they gained something of the outer freshness of green lawns and flowers and leafy trees: the warm breath of the west wind stole among the Gothic columns, lending a new splendour to the ancient glass, and to the groinery a more living charm. The boy’s cheeks were flushed with excitement, and Bella’s heart beat as she listened, enchanted with his pleasure; he gesticulated a good deal, and under the movements of his long exquisite hands, (her own, for all her well-bred ancestry, were short, thick-set and ungraceful,) the past of the mighty church rose before her, so that she heard the clank of steel when knights in armour marched over the still flags, and saw with vivid eyes that historic scene when the gentlemen of Kent in gally hose and doublet, the ladies with ruff and farthingale, assembled to praise the God of storm and battle because Howard of Effingham had scattered the armada of King Philip.

“Now let’s go into the cloister,” he said eagerly.

They sat on a stone parapet looking out on the cool green sward where in time past Augustine monks had wandered meditative; there was a dainty gracefulness about the arcade, with the slender columns, their capitals delicately carved, recalling somewhat the cloisters of Italy, which, notwithstanding their cypress-trees and their crumbling decay, suggest a peaceful happiness rather than the Northern sense of stricken sin. The boy, though he knew the magic of the South only from books and pictures, was quick to catch the impression, and his face expressed a rather pitiful longing. When Bella told him she had travelled in Italy, he questioned her eagerly, and his young enthusiasm gave a warmth to her answers which with any other, fearing to be ridiculous, she would carefully have suppressed. But the scene before them was very lovely; in massive splendour the tall central tower looked down upon them, and its stately beauty entered their souls, so that the youth, though he had never seen the monasteries of Tuscany, was comforted. They sat for a while in silence.

“You must be a very important person,” he said at last, turning to her, “or we should never be allowed to remain so long.”

“I dare say to a verger I am,” she answered, smiling. “It must be late.”

“Won’t you come and have tea with me?” he asked. “I have rooms just opposite the cathedral gate.” Then, catching Bella’s look, he added with a smile: “My name is Herbert Field, and I’m eminently respectable.”

She hesitated, for it seemed odd to drink tea with a youth whom she had never seen before, but she was mortally afraid of seeming prudish; and a visit to his rooms, whereby she might learn more about him, would add a finish to the adventure. Finally her sense decided her that living life, not mere existence, for once lay under her hand.

“Do come,’ he said; “I want to show you my books.”

And with a little persuasive motion he touched her hand.

“I should like it very much.”

He took her to a tiny room over a chemist’s shop, simply furnished as a study, with a low ceiling and panelled walls: these were decorated with a few photographs of pictures by Pietro Perugino, and there were a good many books.

“It’s rather poky, I’m afraid, but I live here, so that I can always see the gateway. I think it’s one of the finest things in Tercanbury.”

He made her sit down while he boiled water and cut bread-and-butter. Bella, at first somewhat intimidated by the novelty of the affair, was a little formal; but the boy’s manifest delight in her presence affected her so that she became gay and light-hearted. Then he displayed a new side of his character: the rather strenuous passion for the beautiful was momentarily put aside and he showed himself quite absurdly boyish. His laughter rang out joyously, and, feeling less shy now that Miss Langton was his guest, he talked unrestrainedly of a hundred topics that sprang up one after another in his mind.

“Will you have a cigarette?” he asked when they had finished their tea, and, on Bella’s laughing refusal: “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you? I can talk better.”

He drew their chairs to the open window, so that they could look at the massive masonry before them, and, as though he had known Bella all his life, chattered on. But when at last she rose to go, his eyes grew suddenly grave and sad.

“I shall see you again, shan’t I? I don’t want to lose you now I’ve found you so strangely.”

Really he was asking Miss Langton to make an assignation, but by now the Dean’s daughter had thrown all caution to the winds.

“I dare say we shall meet sometime in the cathedral.”

Womanlike, though she meant to grant all he desired, she would not give in too quickly.”

“Oh, that won’t do,” he insisted. “I can’t wait a week before seeing you again.”

Bella smiled at him while he looked eagerly into her eyes, holding her hand very firmly, as though till she made promise he would never let it go.

“Let’s take a walk in the country to-morrow,” he said.

“Very well,’ she replied, telling herself that there could be no harm in going with a boy twenty years younger than herself, “I shall be at the Westgate at half-past five.”

But the evening brought counsels of prudence, and Miss Langton wrote a note to say that she had forgotten an engagement, and was afraid she could not come. Yet it left her irresolute, and more than once she reproached herself because from sheer timidity she would cause Herbert Field the keenest disappointment. She told herself sophistically that perhaps, owing to the Sunday delivery, the letter had not reached him, and, fearing he would go to the Westgate and not understand her absence, persuaded herself that it was needful to go there and explain in person why she could not take the promised walk.

The Westgate was an ancient, handsome pile of masonry which in the old days had marked the outer wall of Tercanbury, and even now, though on one side houses had been built, a road to the left led directly into the country. When Bella arrived, somewhat early, Herbert was already waiting for her, and he looked peculiarly young in his straw hat.

“Didn’t you get a note from me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling. “Then why did you come?”

“Because I thought you might change your mind. I didn’t altogether believe in the engagement. I wanted you so badly that I fancied you couldn’t help yourself. I felt you must come.”

“And if I hadn’t?”

“Well, I should have waited. . . . Don’t be horrid. Look at the sunshine calling us. Yesterday we had the gray stones of the cathedral; to-day we’ve got the green fields and the trees. Don’t you feel the west wind murmuring delicious things?”

Bella looked at him, and could not resist the passionate appeal of his eyes.

“I suppose I must do as you choose,” she answered.

And together they set off. Miss Langton, convinced that her interest was no less maternal than when she gave jellies to some motherless child, knew not that Dan Cupid, laughing at her subterfuge, danced gleefully about them and shot his silver arrows. They sauntered by a gentle stream that ran northward to the sea, shaded by leafy willows; and the country on that July afternoon was fresh and scented: the cut hay, drying, gave out an exquisite perfume, and the birds were hushed.

“I’m glad you live in the Deanery,” he said; “I shall like to think of you seated in that beautiful garden.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

“No; but I can imagine what it is like behind that old wall, the shady lawns and the roses. There must be masses of roses now.”

The Dean was known as an enthusiast for that royal flower, and his blossoms at the local show were the wonder of the town. They went on, and soon, half unconsciously, as though he sought protection from the hard world, Herbert put his arm in hers, Bella blushed a little, but had not the heart to withdraw; she was strangely flattered at the confidence he showed. Very discreetly she questioned him, and with perfect simplicity he told of his parents’ long struggle to give him an education above their state.

“But, after all,” he said “I’m not nearly so wretched as I thought I would be. The bank leaves me plenty of time, and I have my books and I have my hopes.”

“What are they?”

“Sometimes I write verse,” he answered, blushing shyly.

“I suppose it’s ridiculous, but it gives me great happiness; and who knows?—someday I may do something that the world will not willingly let die.”

Later on, when Bella rested on a stile and Herbert stood by her side, he looked up at her, hesitating.

“I want to say something to you, Miss Langton, but I’m rather afraid. . . . You won’t drop me now, will you? Now that I’ve found a friend, I can’t afford to lose her. You don’t know what it means to me having someone to talk to, someone who’s kind to me. Often I feel dreadfully alone. And you make all the difference in my life; this last week everything has seemed changed.”

She looked at him earnestly. Did he think he made no difference in hers? She could not tell what stirred her when those blue appealing eyes asked so irresistibly for what she was most willing to give.

“My father is going into Leanham on Wednesday,” she answered presently. “When your work is over, will you come and have tea in the Deanery garden?”

She felt herself ten times rewarded by the look of pleasure that flashed across his face.

“I shall think of nothing else till then.”

And Miss Langton found that her restless anxiety had strangely vanished; life now was no longer monotonous, but sparkled with magic colour, for an absorbing interest had arisen which made the daily round a pleasure rather than a duty. She repeated to herself all the charming inconsequent things the boy had said, finding his conversation agreeably different from the clerical debates to which she was used. They cultivated a refined taste in the chapter, and the Archdeacon’s second wife had written a novel, which only her exalted station and an obvious moral purpose saved from excessive indecency. The Minor Canons talked with gusto of the Royal Academy. But Herbert spoke of books and pictures as though art were a living thing, needful as bread and water to his existence; and Bella, feeling that her culture, somewhat ostentatiously pursued as an element of polite breeding, was very formal and insipid, listened with complete humility to his simple ardour.

On Wednesday, almost handsome in summer muslin and a large hat, she went into the garden, where the tea-things were laid under a leafy tree. Miss Ley would have smiled cruelly to notice the care with which the Dean’s daughter arranged her position to appear at her best. The privacy, the garden’s restful beauty, brought out all Herbert’s boyishness, and his pleasant laughter rang across the lawns, rang like silver music into Bella’s heart. Watching the shadows lengthen, they talked of Italy and Greece, of poets and of flowers; and presently, weary of seriousness, they talked sheer light-hearted nonsense.

“You know, I can’t call you Mr. Field,” said Bella, smiling. “I must call you Herbert.”

“If you do I shall call you Bella.”

“I’m not sure if you ought. You see, I’m almost an old fossil, and it’s quite natural that I should use your Christian name.”

“But I won’ t let you assume any airs of superiority over me, I want you to be absolutely a companion, and I don’t care twopence if you’re older than I am. Besides, I shall always think of you as Bella.”

She smiled again, looking at him with tender eyes.

“Well, I suppose you must do as you like,” she answered.

“Of course.”

Then quickly he took both her hands, and, before she realized what he was about, kissed them.

“Don’t be foolish,’ cried Bella, withdrawing them hurriedly, and she reddened to her very hair.

When he saw her discomfort, boylike, he burst into a shout of laughter.

“Oh, I’ve made you blush.”

His blue eyes sparkled, and he was delighted with his little wickedness. He did not know that afterwards, in her room, Bella, the kisses still burning on her hands, wept bitterly as though her heart would break.

IV

When Miss Ley entered her drawing-room she found the punctual Dean already dressed for dinner, very distinguished in silk stockings and buckled shoes, and presently Bella appeared, attired with sombre magnificence in black satin.

“I went to Holywell Street this morning to look round the book-shops,” said the Dean, “but Holywell Street is pulled down. London isn’t what it was, Polly. Each time I come I find old buildings gone and old friends scattered.”

With melancholy he thought of the pleasant hours he had spent fingering second-hand books, and the scent of musty volumes rose to his nostrils. The new shops to which the Jewish vendors had removed no longer had the old dusty nonchalance, the shelves were too spick and span, the idle lounger apparently less welcome.

Mrs. Barlow-Bassett and her son were announced. She was a tall woman of handsome presence, with fine eyes and a confident step; her gray hair, abundant and curling, recalled in its elaborate arrangement the fashion of the eighteenth century, and her manner of dress, suggested by the modes of that time, gave her somewhat the look of a sitter for Sir Joshua Reynolds. Her movements were characterized by a kind of obstinate decision, and she bore herself with the fine uprightness of a woman bred when deportment was still a part of maidenly education. She was immensely proud of her son, a tall strapping fellow of two-and-twenty, with black hair no less fine than his mother’s, and with singularly beautiful features. Big-boned but unmuscular, very dark, his large brown eyes, straight nose and olive skin, his full sensual mouth, made him a person of striking appearance; and of this he was by no means unconscious. He was a good-humoured, lazy creature, languid as an Oriental houri, unscrupulous, untruthful, whom his mother by an exacting adoration had forced into insincerity. Left a widow of means, Mrs. Barlow-Bassett had devoted her life to the upbringing of this only son, and was pleased to think that hitherto she had kept him successfully from all knowledge of evil. She meant him to and in her a friend and confidant as well as a mother, and boasted that from her he had never kept a single action nor a single thought.

“I want to talk to Mr. Kent this evening, Mary,” she said. “He’s a barrister, isn’t he? And we’ve just made up our minds that Reggie had better go to the Bar.”

Reggie, who, notwithstanding the attraction of a splendid uniform, had no inclination for the restraints of a military career, and disdained the commercial walk in which his father had earned a handsome fortune, was quite content to put up with the more gentlemanly side of the law. He knew vaguely that a vast number of dinners must be eaten, a prospect to which he looked forward with equanimity; and afterwards saw himself, becomingly attired in wig and gown, haranguing juries to the admiration of the world in general.

“You’re going to sit next to Basil,” answered Miss Ley; “Frank Hurrell is to take you down.”

“I’m sure Reggie will do well at the Bar, and I can keep him with me in London. You know, he’s never given me a moment’s anxiety, and sometimes I do feel proud that I’ve kept him so good and pure. But the world is full of temptations, and he’s so extraordinarily good-looking.”

“He is very handsome,” returned Miss Ley, pursing her lips.

She thought her knowledge of character must be singularly at fault if Reggie was the virtuous creature his mother imagined. The sensuality of his face suggested no great distaste for the sins of the flesh, and the slyness of his dark eyes no excessive innocence.

Basil Kent and Dr. Hurrell, meeting on the doorstep, came in together. It was Frank Hurrell whom Miss Ley, somewhat exacting in these matters, had described as the most amusing person she knew. His breadth of shoulder and solid build were too great for his height, and he had reason to envy Reggie Bassett’s length of leg; nor was his face handsome, for his brows were too heavy and his jaw too square, but the eyes were expressive, mocking sometimes or hard, at others very soft, and there was a persuasiveness in his deep resonant voice of which he well knew the power. A small black moustache concealed the play of a well-shaped mouth and the regularity of his excellent teeth. He impressed you as a strong man, of no very easy temper, who held himself in admirable control. Silent with strangers, he disconcerted them by an unwilling frigidity of manner, and though his friends, knowing that at all times he could be depended upon, were eager in his praise, acquaintance often accused him of superciliousness. To be popular with all and sundry he took no sufficient pains to conceal his impatience of stupidity, and though Miss Ley thought his conversation interesting, others to whom for some reason he was not attracted found him absent and taciturn.

An extremely reserved man, few knew that Frank Hurrell’s deliberate placidity of expression masked a very emotional temperament. In this he recognised a weakness and had schooled his face carefully to betray no feeling; but the feeling all the same was there, turbulent and overwhelming, and he profoundly mistrusted his judgment which could be drawn so easily from the narrow path of reason. He kept over himself unceasing watch, as though a dangerous prisoner were in his heart ever on the alert to break his chains. He felt himself the slave of a vivid imagination, and realized that it stood against the enjoyment of life which his philosophy told him was the only end of existence. Yet his passions were of the mind rather than of the body, and his spirit urged his flesh constantly to courses wherein it found nothing but disillusion. His chief endeavour was the search for truth, and somewhat to Miss Ley’s scorn, (for she rested easily in a condition of satisfied doubt, her attitude towards life indicated by a slight shrug of the shoulders,) he strove after certainty with an eagerness which other men reserve for love or fame or opulence. But all his studies were directed at the last to another end; convinced that the present life was final, he sought to make the completest use of its every moment; and yet it seemed preposterous that so much effort, such vast time and strange concurrence of events, the world and man, should tend towards nothing. He could not but think that somewhere a meaning must be discernible, and to find this examined science and philosophy with an anxious passion that to his colleagues at St. Luke’s, worthy craftsmen who saw no further than the slide on their microscope’s, would have seemed extraordinary and almost insane.

But it would have required an imaginative person to discover in Dr. Hurrell at that moment trace of a conflict as vehement as any passionate disturbance of more practical people. He was in high good-humour, and while they waited for the remaining guests talked to Miss Ley.

“Isn’t it charming of me to come?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she replied; “it’s very much nicer for a greedy person like you to eat my excellent dinner than to nibble an ill-cooked chop in your own rooms.”

“How ungrateful! At all events, as a stopgap I have no duties to my neighbour, and may devote myself entirely to the pleasures of the table.”

“Like a friend of mine—people weren’t so polite forty years ago, and much more amusing—who, when his neighbour made some very foolish remark, shouted at her: ‘Go on with your soup, madam!’”

“Tell me who else is coming,” said Frank.

“Mrs. Castillyon, but she’ll be monstrously late. She thinks it fashionable, and the _County_ in London has to take so many precautions not to seem provincial. Mrs. Murray is coming.”

“D’you still want me to marry her?”

“No,” replied Miss Ley, laughing, “I’ve given you up. Though it wasn’t nice of you to abuse me like a pickpocket because I offered you a handsome widow with five thousand a year.”

“Think of the insufferable bore of marriage, and in any case Heaven save me from an intellectual wife. If I marry at all, I’ll marry my cook.”

“I wish you wouldn’t make my jokes, Frank. . . . But as a matter of fact, unless I’m vastly mistaken, Mrs. Murray has made up her mind to marry our friend Basil.”

“Oh!” said Frank.

Miss Ley noticed a shadow cross his eyes, and examined his expression sharply.

“Don’t you think it would be a very suitable thing if she did?”

“I have no views on the subject,” returned Frank.

“I wonder what you mean by that. Basil is poor and handsome and clever, and Mrs. Murray has always had an inclination for literary men. That’s the worst of marrying a cavalryman—it leads you to attach so much importance to brains.”

“Was Captain Murray an absolute fool?”

’My dear Frank, you don’t ask if a guardsman has intelligence, but whether he can play polo. Captain Murray did two wise things in his life: he made a will leaving his wife a large fortune, and then promptly departed to a place where stupidity is apparently no disadvantage.”

Miss Ley, for Bella’s peculiar edification, had invited also the most fashionable cleric in London, the Rev, Collinson Farley, Vicar of All Souls, Grosvenor Square, and it amused her to see the look of Frank Hurrell, who detested him, when this gentleman was announced. Mr. Farley was a man of middle size, with iron-gray hair carefully brushed, and a rather fine head; his well-manicured hands were soft and handsome, adorned with expensive rings. He was an amateur of good society, and could afford, such were his fascinations, to be very careful in his choice of friends; a coronet no longer dazzled a man who realized how hollow was earthly rank beside earthly riches. Poverty he could excuse only in a duchess, for there is in the strawberry leaves, even when, faded and sere, they wreathe the wrinkled brow of a dowager, something which inspires respect in the most flippant. His suave manner and intelligent conversation had gained him powerful friends when he was but a country rector, and through their influence the opportunity came at last to move to a sphere where his social talents met their due appreciation. Ecclesiastical dignity, like the sins of the fathers, may descend to the third and fourth generation, and obviously a man whose grandfather was a bishop could not lack decorum; something was surely due to a courteous person who had been actually born in an episcopal palace.

Mrs. Castillyon, as her hostess predicted last to arrive, at length appeared.

“I hope I’m not late, Miss Ley,” she said, putting out both hands with a pretty little gesture of appeal.

“Not very,” replied her hostess. “Knowing that you make a point of being unpunctual, I took care to ask you for half an hour earlier than anyone else.”

In solemn procession the company marched down to the dining-room, and Mr. Farley surveyed the table with satisfaction.

“I always think a well-dressed table one of the most truly artistic sights of our modern civilization,” he remarked to his neighbour.

And his eyes wandered round the dining-room, in the furniture of which he observed a comforting but discreet opulence. Mr. Farley had known the house in Miss Dwarris’ lifetime, and noticed now that a portrait of her no longer hung in its accustomed place.

“I see you have removed that excellent picture of the former occupant of this house, Miss Ley,” he said, with a graceful wave of his white and jewelled hand.

“I couldn’t bear that she should watch me eat three meals a day,” replied his hostess. “I have a vivid recollection of her dinners: she fed me on husks and acorns, like the prodigal son, and regaled me with accounts of the torment that awaited me in an after-life.”

The Dean smiled gravely. He looked upon Miss Ley with a kind of affectionate disapproval; and though often he rebuked her for the books she read or for the flippancy of her conversation, took always in good part the irony with which she met his little sermons.

“You’re very uncharitable, Polly,” he said. “Of course Eliza was a difficult person to live with, but she exacted no more from others than she exacted from herself. I always admired her strong sense of duty; it was very striking at the present time when everyone lives entirely for pleasure.”

“We may not be so virtuous as our fathers, Algernon,” answered Miss Ley, “but we’re very much easier to live with. After all, forty years ago people were positively insufferable: they spoke their minds, which is a detestable habit; their temper was abominable, and they drank more than was good for them. I always think my father was typical of his period. When he flew into a passion he called it righteous anger, and when I did anything to which he objected he suffered from—virtuous indignation. D’you know that till I was fifteen I was never allowed to taste butter, which was thought bad both for my figure and my soul? I was brought up exclusively on dripping and Jeremy Taylor. The world was a hazardous path beset with gins and snares; and at every turn and corner were immature volcanoes from which arose sulphurous fumes of hell-fire.”

“It was an age of tyranny and vapours,” said Frank. “of old gentlemen who were overbearing and young ladies who swooned.”

“I’m sure people aren’t so good as they used to be,” said Mrs. Bassett, glancing at her son, who was much engrossed in a conversation with Mrs. Castillyon.

“They never were,” answered Miss Ley.

“The perverseness of men would have made an infidel of me,” added the Dean, in his sweet grave voice, “but for the counteracting impression of Divine providence in the works of Nature.”

Meanwhile Reggie Bassett enjoyed his dinner far more than he expected. He found himself next to Mrs. Castillyon, and on sitting down proceeded to examine her with some effrontery. A rapid glance had told her that the boy was handsome, and when she saw what he was about, to give him opportunity at his leisure to observe her various graces, she began to talk volubly with her other neighbour. But presently she turned to Reggie.

“Well, is it satisfactory?” she asked.

“What?”

“Your inspection.”

She smiled brightly, flashing a quick, provoking look into his fine dark eyes.

“Quite,” he answered, with a smile, not in the least disconcerted. “My mother is already thinking that Miss Ley oughtn’t to have let me sit by you.”

Mrs. Castillyon was a vivacious creature, small and dainty like a shepherdess in Dresden china, excitable and restless, who spoke with a loud, shrill voice; and with a quick, nervous gesture, constantly threw herself back in her chair to laugh boisterously at what Reggie said. And finding he could venture very far indeed without fear of offence, the model youth told her little scabrous stories in a low, suave voice, staring meanwhile into her eyes with the shameless audacity of a man conscious of his power. It is the fascination-look of the lady-killer, and its very impudence appears to be half its charm; the rake at heart feels that here modest pretences are useless, and with unhidden joy descends from the pedestal upon which the folly of man has insisted on placing her. Mrs. Castillyon’s face was thin and small, overpowdered, with rather high cheek-bones, her hair, intricately dressed, had an unnatural fairness; but this set Reggie peculiarly at his ease, for he had enough experience of the sex to opine that women who used such artifices were always easier to get on with than the others. He thought his neighbour quite pretty, notwithstanding her five-and-thirty years; and the somewhat faded look of a thin blonde was counterbalanced by the magnificence of her jewels and the splendour of her gown: this was cut so low that Bella from the other side of the table naïvely wondered how on earth it was kept on at all.

When the men were left to smoke, Reggie, helping himself to a third glass of port, drew his chair to Hurrell’s.

“I say, Frank,” he exclaimed, “that was a nice little woman next to me, wasn’t it?”

“Had you never met Mrs. Castillyon before?”

“Never! Regular ripper, ain’t she? By Jove! I thought this dinner would be simply deadly—politics and religion, and all that rot. The mater always makes me come, because she says there’s intellectual conversation. My God!”

Frank laughed at the idea of Mrs. Barlow-Basset combining instruction with amusement for her son at Miss Ley’s dinner-table.

“But Mrs. Castillyon’s a bit of all right, I can tell you. Little baggage! And she don’t mind what you say to her. . . . Why, she isn’t like a lady at all.”

“Is that a great recommendation?”

“Well, ladies ain’t amusing, are they?” You talk to ’em of the Academy and all that sort of rot, and you’ve got to take care you don’t swear. Ladies may be all very well to marry, but upon my soul, for giving you a good time I prefer them a bit lower in the scale.”

A little later, on the stairs, when they were going up to the drawing-room, Reggie slipped his arm through Frank’s.

“I say, old man, don’t give me away if my mater thanks you for asking me to dinner on Saturday.”

“But I haven’t. Neither have I the least desire that you should dine with me on that day.”

“Good Lord! d’you think I want to come—and talk about bugs and beetles all the evening? Not much! I’m going to dine with a little girl I know—typewriter, my boy, and a real love touch. Stunning little thing, I can tell you.”

“But I don’t see why, because you wish to entertain a young person connected with typewriting, I should imperil my immortal soul.”

Reggie laughed.

“Don’t be an ass, Frank; you might help me. You don’t know how utterly rotten it is to have a mother like mine who wants to keep me tied to her apron-strings. She makes me tell her everything I do, and of course I have to fake up some yarn. The only thing in it is that she’ll swallow any damned lie I tell her.”

“You can tell her lies till you’re blue in the face,” said Frank, “but I don’t see why the devil I should.”

“Don’t be a beast, Frank. You might help me just this once. It won’t hurt you to say I’m grubbing with you. The other night, by Jove! I nearly gave the show away. You know she always waits up for me. I told her I should be working late with my crammer, and went to the Empire. Well, I met a lot of chaps there and got a bit squiffy. There would have been a shindy if she’d noticed it, but I managed to pull myself together a bit, and said I’d got the very deuce of a headache. And next day I heard her tell someone that I was next door to a teetotaler.”

They reached the drawing-room and Frank found himself close to Mrs. Bassett.

“Oh, Dr. Hurrell,” she said, “I want to thank you so much for asking Reggie to dinner on Saturday. He’s been working so hard that I think a little relaxation will do him good. And his tutor keeps him sometimes till past eleven—it can’t be good for him, can it? The night before last he was so tired when he came in that he could scarcely get up the stairs.”

“I’m delighted that Reggie should care to come and dine with me sometimes,” answered Frank, somewhat grimly.

“I’m always glad to think he’s with you. It’s so important that a young man should have really trustworthy friends, and I feel sure your influence is good for him.”

Reggie, listening to this, gave Frank a very slow and significant wink, then went off with a light heart to resume his conversation with Mrs. Castillyon.

V

Presently all Miss Ley’s guests, except Frank Hurrell, bade her good-night, and he showed no intention of following their example.

“You don’t want to go to bed yet, do you?” she asked the Dean. “Let us go into the library.”

Here Frank took from a drawer his pipe, and helping himself from a tobacco-jar placed in readiness, sat down. Miss Ley, noticing Bella’s slight look of surprise, explained.

“Frank keeps a pipe here and makes me buy his favourite tobacco. It’s one of the advantages of old age that you can sit into the small hours of the morning and talk with young men.”

But when he too was gone, Miss Ley, an old-fashioned hostess solicitous for her guests’ comfort, accompanied Bella to her room.

“I hope you enjoyed my little party,” she said.

“Very much,” replied Bella. “But why do you ask Mrs. Castillyon? She’s dreadfully common, isn’t she?”

“My dear,” answered Miss Ley ironically, “her husband is a most important person—in Dorsetshire, and her own family has a whole page in the _Gentleman’s Bible_ or the _Landed Gentry_.”

“I shouldn’t have thought she was county,” said Bella seriously; “she seemed to me very vulgar.”

“She is very vulgar,” answered Miss Ley, “but it’s the sort of vulgarity which is a mark of the highest breeding. To talk too loud and to laugh like a bus-driver, to use the commonest slang and to dress outrageously, are all signs of the _grande dame_. Often in Bond Street I see women with painted cheeks and dyed hair dressed in a manner which even a courtesan would think startling, and I recognise the leaders of London fashion. . . . Good-night. Don’t expect to see me at breakfast; that is a meal which only the angels of heaven should eat in company.”

Miss Langton sat down as though she had no wish to go to bed.

“Don’t go just yet. I want to know all about Mr. Kent.” Miss Ley, following her friend’s example, made herself comfortable in an armchair. Once Miss Dwarris asserted that a virtuous person as a matter of discipline should do every day two things which he disliked, whereupon Miss Ley answered flippantly that then she must be on the direct road to everlasting happiness, for within the twenty-four hours she invariably performed a brace of actions which she thoroughly detested: she got up, and she went to bed. Now, therefore, in no hurry to go to her own room, she proceeded to tell Miss Langton what she knew of Basil Kent. In truth it was not strange that he had attracted Bella’s attention, for his appearance was unusual; he managed to wear the conventional evening dress of an Englishman with becoming grace, but one felt, such was his romantic air, he should by rights have borne the armour of a Florentine knight. His limbs were slender and well made, his hands white and comely, and his brown curly hair, worn somewhat long, set off the fine colour of his face; the dark eyes, thin cheeks, and full sensual mouth were set into a passionate wistfulness of expression which recalled again those faces in early Italian pictures wherein the spirit and the flesh seem ever to fight a restless battle—to them the earth is always beautiful, rich with love and warfare, with poetry and deep blue skies, but yet everywhere is disillusion also, and the dark silence of the cloister, even amid the painted turbulence of court or camp, whispers its irresistible appeal. None looking at Basil Kent could imagine that any great ease of life awaited him; through his brown eyes appeared a soul at the same time sensual and ascetic, impulsive and chivalrous, yet so sensitive that the storms and buffets of the world, to which inevitably he exposed himself, must assault him with double violence.

“Well, he’s the son of Lady Vizard,” said Miss Ley.

’What!” cried Bella, “you don’t mean the woman about whom there was that dreadful case five years ago?”

“Yes. He was then at Oxford, where Frank and he were bosom friends. It was through Frank that I first knew him. His father, a cousin of the present Kent of Ouseley, died when he was a child, and Basil was brought up by his grandmother, for his mother married Lord Vizard very shortly after her husband’s death. Even now she’s a beautiful woman. In those days she was perfectly gorgeous; her photograph was in all the shop-windows—her prime coincided with the fashion for young men to buy the portraits of celebrated beauties they did not know, and the chastest women thought it no shame for their pictures to be exposed in every stationer’s shop or to decorate the chimneypiece of a platonic counter-jumper. At that time Lady Vizard’s doings were minutely chronicled in the papers that concern themselves with such things, and her parties were thronged with all the fashion of London. She was to be seen at every race-meeting surrounded by admirers; of course she had a box at the opera, and at Homburg attracted the most august attention.”

“Did Mr. Kent ever see her?” asked Bella.

“He used to spend part of his holidays with her, and she dazzled him as she dazzled everyone else, Frank told me that Basil simply worshipped his mother; he has always had a passion for beauty, and was immensely proud of her magnificent appearance, I used at one time occasionally to meet her at parties, and she struck me as one of the most splendid, majestic women I ever saw; one felt that something like that most have looked Madame de Montespan.”

“Was she fond of her son?”

“In her way. Naturally she didn’t want him bothering around her. She kept her youth marvellously. Lord Vizard was younger than herself, and she didn’t much care to produce a boy who was very nearly grown up. So she was quite pleased that old Mrs. Kent, whom she detested, should look after him. But when he came to stay she filled his pockets with money, took him to the play every night and thoroughly amused him. I dare say she too was pleased with his good looks, for at sixteen he must have been more beautiful than a Greek ephebe. But if ever he showed any signs of inconvenient attachment, I doubt whether Lady Vizard encouraged him. From Harrow he went to Oxford, and Frank, who is a very acute observer, told me that then Basil was a peculiarly innocent boy, absurdly open and frank, who never kept a secret from anybody, and said without thinking, ingenuously, everything that came into his head. Of course scandal for a good many years had been busy with Lady Vizard; her extravagance was notorious, and Vizard was known to be neither rich nor generous; but his wife did everything that cost a great deal of money, and her emeralds were obviously worth a fortune. Even Basil cannot have helped seeing how many masculine friends she had, though perhaps when he was spending with her the occasional week to which he looked forward so intensely, she took pains that nothing too flaunting should come to his eyes; and when strange gentlemen slipped sovereigns into his hand he pocketed them under the impression that his own merit had earned them. And now I must go to bed.”

Miss Ley, with a tantalizing smile, rose from her chair, but Bella stopped her.

“Don’t be cattish, Mary. You know I want to hear the rest of the story.”

“Are you aware that it’s past one o’clock?”

“I don’t care, you must finish it now.”

Miss Ley, having created this small diversion, sat down again, proceeding, not at all against her will, with the recital.

“Basil’s only vanity was his mother, and he talked of her incessantly, taking a manifest pride in her social success and the admiration which everywhere she excited; he would have staked his life on her immaculate character, and when the crash came he was simply overwhelmed. You remember the case; it was one of those in which a prudish English public takes keen delight. Every placard announced in huge letters that for the especial delectation of the middle classes a divorce in high life was being fought at the Law Courts in which there were no less than four co-respondents. It appeared that Lord Vizard, chiefly because he was frightened of his wife’s extravagance, had at last filed a petition in which he named Lord Ernest Torrens, Colonel Roome, Mr. Norman Wynne and somebody else. The pair evidently had not for some time enjoyed great connubial felicity, for Lady Vizard brought a counter-petition, accusing her husband of philandering with her own maid and with a certain Mrs. Platter, a lady who inhabited a flat in Shaftesbury Avenue. The case was fought on both sides with the greatest acrimony, and a crowd of witnesses testified to behaviour which one at least hopes is unusual in the houses of the great. But of course you read the details in the _Church Times_, Bella.”

“I remember it was reported in the _Standard_,” answered Miss Langton, “but I read nothing.”

“Virtuous creature!” said Miss Ley, with a thin smile. ’The average Englishman would never keep his respect for titled persons if the reports of proceedings in the Divorce Court did not periodically give him some insight into their private life. . . . Anyhow, the things of which Lord and Lady Vizard accused one another were enough to make the hair of a suburban paterfamilias stand right on end.”

Miss Ley paused for a moment, and then with calm deliberation, as though she had given this matter the attention of a lifetime and carefully weighed all sorts, proceeded.

“A divorce, you know, can be managed in two ways—respectably, when both parties are indifferent or afraid and no more is said than is essential for the non-intervention at a subsequent stage of that absurd gentleman, the King’s Proctor; and vindictively, when in their eagerness to bespatter the person whom at some previous period they solemnly vowed to love to the end of their days, they care not how much mud is thrown at themselves. Lady Vizard made a practice of detesting her husbands, and she loathed the second far more because he had not the grace to die like the first, four years after the marriage. His penuriousness, ill-temper, insobriety were dragged into the light of day; and he brought servants to testify to his wife’s most private habits, produced letters which he had intercepted, and subpœnaed tradesmen to swear by whom accounts for jewellery and clothes had been settled. Lord Vizard engaged the cleverest criminal lawyer of the time, and for two days his wife with unparalleled wit, courage, and resource bore a cross-examination which would have ruined a weaker woman. It was partly on this account, because they admired the good fight she made, partly because it seemed impossible that such an imposing creature should have done the quite odious things of which the husband accused her, but still more because they thought there was precious little to choose between kettle and pot, that the jury found the charges not proven; and Lady Vizard in a manner remained mistress of the position. The rest you can guess for yourself.”

“No, I can’t, Mary. Go on.”

“No word had reached Basil that proceedings were to be taken, and his first knowledge of the affair came with the morning paper and his eggs and bacon. He could scarcely believe his eyes, and he read the report with incredulity changing quickly to dismay and horror. The news dazed and crushed him. A hundred trifles he had seen but never noticed came to his mind, and he knew that his mother was no better than the painted harlot who sells her body for a five-pound note.”

“But how d’you know all this, Mary?” asked Bella doubtfully. “You’re not inventing it, are you?”

“I read the papers,” answered Miss Ley, with some asperity. “Frank told me a good deal, and my common-sense the rest. I flatter myself I have a certain knowledge of human nature, and if Basil didn’t feel what I tell you, he should have. But I shall never finish my story if you keep on interrupting me.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Bella humbly. “Pray go on.”

“Frank, you know, is somewhat older than Basil, and at that time was in Oxford, taking his M.B. He found the poor boy overcome with shame, anxious like a stricken beast to hide himself from all strange eyes. But Frank is made of sterner stuff; he persuaded him to go about as though nothing had happened, and even to dine in hall as usual. What for the one would not have been so very difficult to the other was unendurable. Basil imagined that everyone stared at him as though he were a thing unclean; he had bragged a good deal of his wonderful parent, and he thought now that all his words must be scornfully repeated. The papers continued their edifying story; witnesses told shameful things; and Basil, haggard and sleepless, could not conceal his torment. Frank had set him an ordeal beyond his strength, and without a word to anyone he fled to London. After the trial he went to see Lady Vizard, but what happened then I do not know. He never returned to Oxford. At that time they were recruiting for the Imperial Yeomanry, and Basil, passing by chance through St. James’s Park, saw the men drilling. He wished to get out of England, where everyone seemed to point at him with scorn, and here was an opportunity; he enlisted, and a month later sailed for South Africa.”

“As a trooper?” asked Miss Langton.

“Yes. I believe he distinguished himself, for they offered him a commission, but this he refused and was given instead the Medal for Distinguished Conduct in the Field. He remained there three years, and did not return to England till the last batch of Yeomanry was brought home. Then he settled down to read for the Bar, and was called last year.”

Does he ever see his mother, d’you know?”

I believe never. He has a small income, about three hundred a year, and on that in a modest way is able to live. I think he has only gone to the Bar as a sort of form, for he means to write. You probably never saw the little book of South African sketches which he brought out last year—impressions of scenery and studies of character. It had no particular success, but to my mind showed a good deal of promise; I remember an account of some battle about which there was an uncommon swing and dash. He’s working at a novel now, and I dare say some day will write a very clever book.”

“D’you think he’ll ever be famous?”

Miss Ley shrugged her shoulders.

“You know, to achieve great success in literature you must have a certain coarseness in your composition, and that I don’t think Basil has. Really to move and influence men you must have complete understanding, and you can only get that if you have in you something of the common clay of humanity. . . . But now I really must go to bed. You’re such a chatterbox, Bella, I believe you would keep me up all night.”

This was somewhat hard on Miss Langton, who for an hour had barely opened her mouth.

VI

But while the two ladies thus discussed him, Basil Kent stood on the bridge over the ornamental water in St. James’s Park, and looked thoughtfully at that scene than which perhaps there is none more beautiful in the most beautiful of all cities, London: the still water, silvered by the moon, the fine massing of the trees, and the Foreign Office, pompous and sedate, formed a composition as perfect and no less formally elaborate than any painted by Claude Lorrain. The night was warm and balmy, the sky clear; and the quiet was so delightful, notwithstanding the busy hum of Piccadilly, where, at that hour, all was gaiety and frolic, that it reminded Basil of some restful, old-fashioned town in France. His heart beat with a strange elation, for he knew at last, without possibility of doubt, that Mrs. Murray loved him. Before, though he could not be unaware that she saw him with pleasure and listened to his conversation with interest, he had not the audacity to suppose a warmer feeling; but when they met that evening he surprised a blush while she gave her hand, and this had sent the blood running to his own cheeks. He took her down to dinner, and the touch of her fingers on his arm burnt him like fire. She spoke but little, yet listened to his words with a peculiar intensity as though she sought in them some hidden meaning, and when his eyes met hers seemed to shrink back almost in fear. But at the same time her look had a strange, expectant eagerness, as though she had heard the promise of some excellent thing, and awaited it vehemently, yet half afraid.

Basil recalled Mrs. Murray’s entrance into the drawing-room, and his admiration for the grace of her bearing and the fine sweep of her long dress. She was a tall woman, as tall as himself, with a certain boyishness of figure that lent itself to a sinuous distinction of line; her hair was neither dark nor fair, the eyes gray and tender, but her smile was very noticeable for a peculiar sweetness that marked an attractive nature. And if there was no precise beauty in her face, its winsome expression, the pallor of her skin, gave it a fascinating grave sadness reminiscent of the women of Sandro Botticelli: there was that same inscrutable look of melancholy eyes which suggested a passionate torment repressed and hidden, and she had that very grace of gesture which one is certain was theirs. But to Basil Mrs. Murray’s greatest charm was the protecting fondness, as though she were ready to shield him from all the world’s trouble, which he felt in her; it made him at once grateful, proud, and humble. He longed to take in his own those caressing hands and to kiss her lips; he felt already round his neck the long white arms as she drew him to her heart with an affection half maternal.

Mrs. Murray had never looked handsomer than that night when she stood in the hall, holding herself very erect, and spoke with Basil while waiting for her carriage. Her cloak was so beautiful that the young man remarked on it, and she, flushing slightly with pleasure because he noticed, looked down at the heavy brocade as splendid as some material of the eighteenth century.

“I bought the stuff in Venice,” she said, “but I feel almost unworthy to wear it. I couldn’t resist it because it’s exactly like a gown worn by Catherine Cornaro in a picture in one of the galleries.”

“Only you could wear it,” answered Basil, with flashing eyes. “It would overwhelm anyone else.”

She smiled and blushed, and bade him good-night.

Basil Kent was much changed from the light-hearted youth whom Frank had known at Oxford, for at that time he gave himself carelessly, like a leaf to the wind, to every emotion; and a quick depression at the failure of something in which he was interested would be soon followed by a boisterous joy. Life seemed very good then, and without after-thought he could rejoice in its various colour, in its ceaseless changing beauty; it was already his ambition to write books, and with the fertile, rather thin invention of youth, he scribbled incessantly. But when he learned with shame and with dismay that the world was sordid and vile, for his very mother was unchaste, he felt he could never hold up his head again. Yet, after the first nausea of disgust, Basil rebelled against his feeling; he loved that wretched woman better than anyone, and now his place was surely by her side. It was not for him to judge nor to condemn, but rather in her shameful humiliation to succour and protect. Could he not show his mother that there were finer things in life than admiration and amusement, jewels and fine clothes? He made up his mind to go to her and take her away to the Continent, where they could hide themselves; and perhaps this might be a means to draw closer together his mother and himself, for, notwithstanding his blind admiration, Basil had suffered a good deal because he could never reach her very heart.

Lady Vizard still inhabited her husband’s house in Charles Street, and it was thither on the day after the case had been dismissed that Basil hurried. He expected to find her cowering in her room, afraid of the light of day, haggard and weeping; and his tender heart, filled only with pity, bled at the thought of her distress. He would go to her and kiss her, and say: “Here am I, mother. Let us go away together where we can start a new life. The world is wide and there is room even for us. I love you more than ever I did, and I will try to be a good and faithful son to you.”

He rang the bell, and the door was opened by the butler he had known for years.

“Can I see her ladyship at once, Miller?” he said.

“Yes, sir. Her ladyship is still at luncheon. Will you go into the dining-room.”

Basil stepped forward, but caught sight of several hats on the hall-table.

“Is anyone here?” he asked with surprise.

But before the butler could answer there was a shout of laughter from the adjoining room. Basil started as though he had been struck.

“Is her ladyship giving a party?”

“Yes, sir.”

Basil stared at the butler with dismay, unable to understand; he wished to question him, but was ashamed. It seemed too monstrous to be true. The very presence of that servant seemed an outrage, for he too had given evidence at the hateful trial. How could his mother bear the sight of that unctuous, servile visage? Miller, seeing the horror in the young man’s eyes and the pallor of his cheek, looked away with a vague discomfort.

“Will you tell her ladyship that I am here, and should like to speak to her? I’ll go into the morning-room. I suppose no one will come there?”

Basil waited for a quarter of an hour before he heard the dining-room door open, and several people, talking loudly and laughing, walk upstairs. Then his mother’s voice rang out, clear and confident as ever it had been:

“You must all make yourselves comfy, I’ve got to see somebody, and I forbid anyone to go till I come back.”

In a moment Lady Vizard appeared, a smile still on her lips, and the suspicion which Basil during that interval had vainly combated now was changed to naked certainty. Not at all downcast was she nor abashed, but alert as ever, neither less stately nor less proud than when last he saw her. He expected to find his mother in sackcloth and ashes, but behold! she wore a gown by Paquin, the flaunting audacity of which only she could have endured. Very dark, with great flashing eyes and magnificent hair, she had the extravagant flamboyance, the opulence of colour of some royal gipsy. Her height was unusual, her figure splendid, and holding herself admirably, she walked with the majesty of an Eastern queen.

“How nice of you to come, dear boy!” she cried, with a smile showing her beautiful teeth. “I suppose you want to congratulate me on my victory. But why on earth didn’t you come into the dining-room? It was so amusing. And you really should begin to _décrasser_ yourself a little.” She put forward her cheek for Basil to kiss, (this was surely as much as could be expected from a fond though fashionable mother,) but he stepped back. Even his lips grew pale.

“Why didn’t you tell me that this action was coming?” he asked hoarsely.

Lady Vizard gave a little laugh, and from a box on the table took a cigarette.

“_Voyons, mon cher_, I really didn’t think it was your business.”

Lighting a cigarette, she blew into the air two neat smoke-rings, and watched her son with somewhat contemptuous amusement.

“I didn’t expect to find you giving a party to-day.”

“They insisted on coming, and I had to do something to celebrate my triumph.” She laughed lightly. “_Mon Dieu!_ you don’t know what a narrow shave it was. Did you read my cross-examination? It was that which saved me.”

“Saved you from what?” cried Basil sternly, two lines of anger appearing between his brows. “Has it saved you from shameful dishonour? Yes, I read every word. At first I couldn’t believe it was true.”

“_Et après?_” asked Lady Vizard calmly.

“But it was true; there were a dozen people to prove it. Oh God, how could you! I admired you more than anyone else in the world. . . . I thought of your shame, and I came here because I wanted to help you. Don’t you understand the horrible disgrace of it? Oh, mother, mother, you can’t go on like this! Heaven knows I don’t want to blame you. Come away with me, and let us go to Italy and start afresh. . . .”

In the midst of his violent speech he was stopped by the amusement of Lady Vizard’s cold eyes.

“But you talk as if I’d been divorced. How absurd you are! In that case it might have been better to go away for a bit, yet even then I should have faced it. But d’you think I’m going to run away now? _Pas si bête, mon petit!_”

“D’you mean to say you’re going to stay here when everyone knows what you are—when they’ll point at you in the street, and whisper to one another foul stories? And however foul they are, they’ll be true.”

Lady Vizard shrugged her shoulders.

“_Oh, que tu m’assomes!_” she said scornfully, justly proud of her French accent. “You know me very little if you think I’m going to hide myself in some pokey Continental town, or add another tarnished reputation the _declassée_ society of Florence. I mean to stay here. I the opera, at the races, everywhere. I’ve got some good friends who’ll stick to me, and you’ll see in a couple of years I shall pull through. After all, I’ve done little more than plenty of others, and if the _bourgeois_ knows a good deal about me that he didn’t know before—_je m’en bats l’oeil_. I’ve got rid of my pig of a husband, and, for that the whole thing was almost worth it. After all, he knew what was going on; he only rounded on me because he was afraid I spent too much.”

“Aren’t you ashamed?” asked Basil, in a low voice. Aren’t you even sorry?”

“Only fools repent, my dear. I’ve never done anything in my life that I wouldn’t do over again—except marry the two men I did.”

“And you’re just going to remain here as if nothing had happened?”

“Don’t be foolish, Basil,” answered Lady Vizard ill-temperedly. “Of course, I’m not going to stay in this particular house. Ernest Torrens has rather a nice little shanty vacant in Curson Street, and he’s offered to lend it me.”

“But you wouldn’t take it from him, mother. That would be too infamous. For God’s sake, don’t have anything more to do with these men.”

“Really, I can’t throw over an old friend just because my husband makes him a co-respondent.”

Basil went up to her, and placed his hands on her shoulders.

“Mother, you can’t mean all you say. I dare say I’m stupid and awkward—I can’t say what I have in my mind. Heaven knows, I don’t want to preach to you, but isn’t there something in honour and duty and cleanliness and chastity, and all the rest of it? Don’t be so hard on yourself. What does it matter what people say? Leave all this and let us go away.”

“_T’es ridicule, mon cher_, said Lady Vizard, her brow darkening. “If you have nothing more amusing to suggest than that, we might go to the drawing-room. . . . Are you coming?”

She walked towards the door, but Basil intercepted her.

“You shan’t go yet. After all, I’m your son, and you’ve got no right to disgrace yourself.”

“And what will you do, pray?”

Lady Vizard smiled now in a manner that suggested no great placidity of temper.

“I don’t know, but I shall find something. If you haven’t the honour to protect yourself, I must protect you.”

“You impudent boy, how dare you speak to me like that!” cried Lady Vizard, turning on him with flashing eyes. “And what d’you mean by coming here and preaching at me? You miserable prig! I suppose it runs in your family, for your father was a prig before you.”

Basil looked at her, anger taking the place of every other feeling; pity now had vanished, and he sought not to hide his indignation.

“Oh, what a fool I was to believe in you all these years! I would have staked my life that you were chaste and pure. And yet when I read those papers, although the jury doubted, I knew that it was true.”

“Of course it was true!” she cried defiantly. “Every word of it, but they couldn’t prove it.”

“And now I’m ashamed to think I’m your son.”

“You needn’t have anything to do with me, my good boy. You’ve got money of your own. D’you think I want a lubberly, ill-bred oaf hanging about my skirts?”

“I know what you are now, and you horrify me. I hope I shall never see you again. I would sooner my mother were a wretched woman on the streets than you!”

Lady Vizard rang the bell.

“Miller,” she said when the butler appeared, as though she had forgotten Basil’s presence, “I shall want the carriage at four.”

“Very well, my lady.”

“You know I’m dining out to-night, don’t you?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Then she pretended to remember Basil, who watched her silently, pale and scarcely able to contain himself.

“You can show Mr. Kent out. Miller. And if he happens call again you can say that I’m not at home.”

With scornful insolence she saw him go, and once again remained mistress of the situation.

Then came three years at the Cape, for Basil, unwilling to return to England, stayed after the expiration of the year for which he had enlisted. At first his shame seemed unendurable, and he brooded over it night and day; but when the distance increased between him and Europe, when at length he set foot on African soil, the load of dishonour grew lighter to bear. His squadron was quickly sent up-country, and the hard work relieved his aching mind; the drudgery of a trooper’s lot, the long marches, the excitement and the novelty, exhausted him so that he slept with a soundness he had never known before. Then came the sheer toil of war and its dull monotony; he suffered from hunger and thirst, from heat and cold. But these things drew him closer to the companions from whom at first he had sought to hide himself; he was touched by their rough good-humour, their mutual help, and the sympathy with which they used him in sickness; his bitterness towards mankind in general diminished when he saw human good-fellowship face to face with actual hardship; and when at last he found himself in battle, though he had looked forward to it with horrible anxiety, fearing that he might be afraid, Basil felt a great exhilaration which made life most excellent to live. For then vice and squalor and ugliness vanished away, and men stood before one another in primeval strength, the blood burning in their veins, and Death walked between contending hosts; and where Death is there can be nothing petty, sordid, nor mean.

But finally the idea came to Basil that it was not brave to remain there in concealment. For such talents as he had the Cape offered no scope, and he made up his mind to return to London, holding up his head proudly, and there show what stuff he was made of. He felt more self-reliant because he knew he could withstand cheerfully fatigue and want; and the medal on his breast proved that he lacked not courage.

Back at length in London, he entered his name at Lincoln’s Inn, and while arranging for publication a little series of sketches he had written during the war, worked hard at law. Though the storm through which he passed had left him somewhat taciturn, with a leaning towards introspection, at bottom Basil was no less open-hearted and sanguine than before, and he entered upon this new phase with glowing hopes. But sometimes his chambers in the Temple seemed very lonely. He was a man who yearned for domestic ties; a woman’s hands busied about him, the rustle of a dress or the sound of a loving voice were necessities of his nature. And now it seemed the last bitterness of his life would be removed, for Mrs. Murray offered just that affection which he needed, and still somewhat distrustful of himself, he looked for support to her strength.

Then, in the midst of his thought, Basil frowned, for on a sudden there had arisen in his mind a form which in his new-born joy he had momentarily forgotten. Leaving the bridge, he wandered to the greater darkness of the Mall, his hands behind him; and for a long time walked up and down beneath the trees, perplexed and downcast. It was very late, and there was scarcely a soul about; on the seats homeless wretches lay asleep, huddled in grotesque attitudes, and a policeman stealthily crept along behind them.

Some months before, Basil, instead of lunching in hall, went by chance into a tavern in Fleet Street, and there saw behind the bar a young girl whose extreme beauty at once attracted his attention. Her freshness was charming in that tawdry place, gray with London smoke notwithstanding the gaudiness of its decoration; and though not a man to gossip with barmaids over his refreshment, in this case he could not resist a commonplace remark. To this the girl answered rather saucily, (a public-house is apparently an excellent school for repartee,) and her bright smile gave a new witchery to the comely face. Interested and a little thrilled, for there was none on whom sheer beauty made a greater impression, Basil told Frank Hurrell, then resident physician at St. Luke’s, that he had found in Fleet Street of all places the loveliest woman in London, The doctor laughed at his friend’s enthusiasm, and one day when they were passing, Basil, to justify himself, insisted on going again to the _Golden Crown_. Then once or twice he went alone, and the barmaid, beginning to recognise him, gave a little friendly nod of greeting. Basil had ever something of a romantic fancy, and his quick imagination decked the pretty girl with whimsical conceits: he dignified her trade by throwing back the date, and seeing in her a neat-footed maid who gave sack to cavaliers and men-at-arms; she was Hebe pouring nectar for the immortal gods; and when he told her this with other fantastic inventions, the girl, though she did not altogether comprehend, reddened as the grosser compliments of the usual frequenters of the bar—accredited admirers—had no power to make her. Basil thought he had never seen anything more captivating than that blush.

And then he began to visit the _Golden Crown_ more frequently—at tea-time, when there were fewest people. The pair grew friendly; and they discussed the weather, the customers, and the news of the day. Basil found that half an hour passed very pleasantly in her company, and perhaps he was a little flattered because the barmaid set greater store on his society than on that of the other claimants to her attention. One afternoon, going somewhat later than usual, he was delighted with the bright look that lit her face like sunshine on his appearance.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming, Mr. Kent.”

By now she used his name, and hers he found was Jenny Bush.

“Would you have minded if I hadn’t?”

“A bit.”

At that moment the second barmaid of the _Golden Crown_ came to her.

“It’s your evening out to-night, isn’t it, Jenny?”

“Yes, it is.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Jenny; “I haven’t made any plans.”

A customer came in, and Jenny’s friend shook hands with him.

“Same as usual, I suppose?” she said.

“Would you like to come to the play with me?” asked Basil lightly. “We’ll have a bit of dinner first, and then go wherever you like.”

The suggestion flashed across his mind, and he spoke the words without thinking. Jenny’s eyes sparkled with pleasure.

“Oh, I should like it. Come and fetch me here at seven, will you?”

But then came in a somewhat undersized young man, with obviously false teeth and a jaunty air. Basil vaguely knew that he was engaged to Jenny, and on most days he might be seen making sheep’s eyes across the bar, and drinking innumerable whiskies-and-soda.

“Coming out to dinner, Jenny?” he said. “I’ll stand you a seat at the Tivoli if you like.”

“I’m afraid I can’t to-night, Tom,” she answered, blushing slightly. “I’ve made other arrangements.”

“What arrangements?”

“A friend has promised to take me to the theatre.”

“Who’s that?” answered the man, with an ugly look.

“That’s my business, isn’t it?” answered Jenny.

“Well, if you won’t tell me, I’m off.”

“I’m not stopping you, am I?”

“Just give me a Scotch-and-soda, will you? And look sharp about it.”

The man spoke impudently, wishing to remind Jenny that she was there to carry out his orders. Basil reddened, and with some sharpness was about to say that he would be discreet to use greater politeness, when Jenny’s eyes stopped him. Without a word she gave the clerk what he asked for, and the three of them remained silent.

Presently the new-comer finished his liquor and lit a cigarette. He glanced suspiciously at Basil, and opened his mouth to make an observation, but catching the other’s steady look, thought better of it.

“Good-night then,” he said to Jenny.

When he was gone Basil asked her why she had not thrown him over; it would have been better than to vex her lover.

“I don’t care,” cried Jenny; “I’m about sick of the airs he gives himself. I’m not married to him yet, and if he won’t let me do as I like now he can just take himself off.”

They dined at a restaurant in Soho, and Basil, in high spirits over the little adventure, was amused with the girl’s delight. It did his heart good to cause such pleasure, and perhaps his satisfaction was not lessened by the attention which Jenny’s comeliness attracted. She was rather shy, but when Basil strove to entertain her laughed very prettily and flushed: the idea came to him that he would much like to be of use to her, for she seemed to have a very agreeable nature; he might give her new ideas and a view of the beauty of life which she had never known. She wore a hat, and he morning dress, so they took seats in the back-row of the dress circle at the Gaiety; but even this was unwonted luxury to Jenny, accustomed to the pit or the upper boxes. At the end of the performance she turned to him with dancing eyes.

“Oh, I have enjoyed myself,” she cried. “I like going out with you much more than with Tom; he’s always trying to save money.”

They took a cab to the _Golden Crown_, where Jenny shared a room with the other barmaid.

“Will you come out with me again?” asked Basil.

“Oh, I should love to. You’re so different from the other men who come to the bar. You’re a gentleman, and you treat me—as if I was a lady. That’s why I first liked you, because you didn’t go on as if I was a lump of dirt: you always called me Miss Bush. . . .”

“I’d much rather call you Jenny.”

“Well, you may,” she answered, smiling and blushing. All those fellows who hang about the bar think they can do anything with me. You never tried to kiss me like they do.”

“It’s not because I didn’t want to, Jenny,” answered Basil, laughing.

She made no reply, but looked at him with smiling mouth and tender eyes; he would have been a fool not to recognise the invitation. He slipped his arm round her waist and touched her lips, but he was astonished at the frank surrender with which she received his embrace, and the fugitive pressure turned into a kiss so passionate that Basil’s limbs tingled. The cab stopped at the _Golden Crown_, and he helped her out.

“Good-night.”

Next day, when he went to the public-house, Jenny blushed deeply, but she greeted him with a quiet intimacy which in his utter loneliness was very gratifying. It caused him singular content that someone at last took an interest in him. Freedom is all very well, but there are moments when a man yearns for someone to whom his comings and goings, his health or illness, are not matters of complete indifference.

“Don’t go yet,” said Jenny; “I want to tell you something.”

He waited till the bar was clear.

“I’ve broken off my engagement with Tom,” she said then. “He waited on the other side of the street last night and saw us go out together. And this morning he came in and rounded on me. I told him if he didn’t like it he could lump it. And then he got nasty, and I told him I wouldn’t have anything more to do with him.”

Basil looked at her for a moment silently.

“But aren’t you fond of him, Jenny?”

“No; I can’t bear the sight of him. I used to like him well enough, but it’s different now. I’m glad to be rid of him.”

Basil could not help knowing it was on his account that she had broken off the engagement. He felt a curious thrill of power, and his heart beat with elation and pride, but at the same time he feared he was doing her some great injury.

“I’m very sorry,” he murmured. “I’m afraid I’ve done you harm.”

“You won’t stop coming here because of this?” she asked, anxiously watching his doubtful face.

His first thought was that a sudden rupture might be best for both of them, but he could not bear that on his account pain should darken those beautiful eyes, and when he saw the gathering tears he put it aside hastily.

“No, of course not. If you like to see me I’m only too glad to come.”

“Promise that you’ll come every day.”

“I’ll come as often as I can.”

“No, that won’t do. You must come every day.”

“Well, I will.”

He was touched by her eagerness, for he must have been a dolt not to see that Jenny cared a good deal for him, but introspective though he was, never asked himself what were his own feelings. He wished to have a good influence on her, and vowed she should never through him come to any harm. She was very unlike his notion of the ordinary barmaid, and he thought it would be simple to lead her to some idea of personal dignity; he would have liked to take her away from that rather degrading occupation, placing her where she could learn more easily: her character, notwithstanding three years at the _Golden Crown_, was very ingenuous, but in those surroundings she could not for ever remain unspoilt, and it would have seemed a justification of his friendship if he could put her in the way to lead a more beautiful life. The most obvious result of these deliberations was that Basil presently made it a practice to take Jenny on her free evenings to dinner and to the play.

As for her, she had never known anyone like the young barrister who impressed her by the courtesy of his manner and the novelty of his conversation: though often she did understand the things he said, she was flattered nevertheless, and, womanlike, simulated a comprehension which made Basil think her less uneducated than she really was. At first she was intimidated by the grave stateliness of his treatment, for she was accustomed to less respect, and he could not have used a duchess with more polite decorum; but insensibly admiration and awe passed into love, and at last into blind adoration of which Basil not for a moment dreamed. She wondered why since that first night he had never kissed her, but at parting merely gave his hand; in three months she had advanced only so far as to use his Christian name.

At length the spring came. Along Fleet Street and the Strand flower-women offered for sale gay vernal blossoms, and baskets gave a dash of colour to the City’s hurrying gray. There were days when the very breath of the country, bland and generous, seemed to blow down the crowded thoroughfare, uplifting weary hearts despondent with long monotonous toil: the sky was blue, and it was same sky that overhung green meadows and trees bursting into leaf. Sometimes towards the west bevies of cloud, dazzling in the sunshine, were piled upon one another, and at sundown, all rosy and golden, would fill the street with their effulgence, so that the smoky vapours took a gorgeous opalescence, and the heart beat with sheer delight of this goodly London town.

One balmy night in May, when the air was suave and fragrant, so that the heavy step was lightened and the tired mind eased by a strange sad gaiety, Jenny dined with Basil at the little restaurant in Soho where now they were well known. Afterwards they went to a music-hall, but the noise and the glare on that sweet night were unendurable; the pleasant darkness of the streets called to them, and Basil soon proposed that they should go from that place of tedium. Jenny agreed with relief, for the singers left her listless, and an unquiet emotion, which she had never known, made her heart throb with indescribable yearning. As they passed into the night she looked at Basil for a moment with wide-open eyes, in which, strangely mingled, were terror and the primitive savagery of some wild thing.

“Let’s go on the Embankment,” she whispered. “It’s quiet there.”

They looked at the silent flowing river and at the warehouses of the Surrey side, uneven against the starlit sky. From one of these gleamed like a malevolent eye one solitary light, and it gave mystery to that square mass of dingy brick, suggesting some grim story of lawless passion and crime. It was low-tide, and below the stone wall was a long strip of shining mud; but Waterloo Bridge, with its easy arches, was oddly dapper, and its lights, yellow and white, threw gay reflections on the water. Near at hand, outlined vaguely by their red lamps, were moored three barges; and there was a weird magic about them, for, notwithstanding their present abandonment, they spoke of strenuous life and passion and toil; for all their squalid brutality there was romance in the hard, strong men who dwelt there on the widening river, travelling on an eternal pilgrimage to the salt sea and the open.

They wandered slowly towards Westminster Bridge, and the lights of the Embankment in their sinuous line were strangely reflected, so that a forest was seen on the river of fiery piles on which might have been built a mystic, invisible city. But the short walk wearied them, though the night was sweet with the savour of springtime, and their limbs were heavy as lead.

“I can’t walk back,” said Jenny; “I’m too tired.”

“Let us take a cab.”

Basil hailed a passing hansom, and they got in. He gave the address in Fleet Street of the _Golden Crown_. They did not speak, but the silence told them things more significant than ever words had done. At last, in a voice not her own, as though speech were dragged from her, Jenny broke the oppressive stillness.

“Why have you never kissed me since that first night, Basil?”

She did not look at him, and he made no sign that he heard, but she felt the trembling of his limbs. Her throat grew hot and dry, and a horrible anxiety seized her.

“Basil!” she said hoarsely, insisting on an answer.

“Because I didn’t dare.”

She could count now the throbbing of that torturer in her breast, and the cabman seemed to drive as for a wager. They sped along the Embankment, and it was very dark.

“But I wanted you to,” she said fiercely.

“Jenny, don’t let us make fools of ourselves.”

But as though his words were from the mouth only, and a stronger power mastered him, even as he spoke he sought her lips; and because he had resisted so long their sweetness was doubly sweet. With a stifled gasp like a wild beast, she flung her arms about him, and the soft fragrance of her body drove away all thoughts but one: mindless of the passers-by, he pressed her eagerly to his heart. He was mad with her fair, yielding beauty and the passion of her surrender, mad with that never-ending kiss, than which in his whole life he had never known a greater rapture. And his heart trembled like a leaf trembling before the wind.

“Will you come back to my rooms, Jenny?” he whispered.

She did not answer, but drew herself more closely to him. He lifted the trap in the roof of the hansom and told the cabman to drive to the Temple.

For a week, for a month even, feeling stronger and braver because this woman had given him her love, Basil enjoyed a very ecstasy of pride; he faced the world with greater assurance, and life possessed a spirit and a vigour which were quite new to him. But presently the romantic adventure gained the look of a somewhat vulgar intrigue, and when he recalled his ideal of an existence, spotless and pure, given over to noble pursuits, he was ashamed. This love of his was nothing more than a passing whim of which the knell sounded with its gratification, and he saw with dismay that Jenny had given herself to him body and soul: on her side it was a deathless passion compared with which his attachment was very cold. Each day fanned the flames in her heart, so that he became a necessity of her existence, and if by chance he was too busy to see her an anxious letter came, pitiful in its faulty spelling and clumsy expression, imploring him to visit her. Jenny was exacting, and he resigned himself to going every day to the _Golden Crown_, though that bar grew ever more distasteful. The girl was quite uneducated, and the evenings they spent together—for now, instead of going to a theatre, Jenny passed her leisure in Basil’s rooms—went rather heavily; he found it sometimes hard work to make conversation. He realised that he was manacled hand and foot with fetters that were only more intolerable because they consisted of nothing more substantial than the dread of causing pain. He was a man who bore uneasily an irregular attachment of this sort, and he asked himself what could be the end; a dozen times he made up his mind to break with Jenny, but coming to the point, when he saw how dependent she was upon his love, had not the courage. For six months, degraded to a habit, the connection went on.

But it was only by reminding himself constantly that he was not free that Basil abated his nascent love for Mrs. Murray, and he imagined that his feeling towards her was different from any he had known before. His desire now was overwhelming to break from the past that sullied him, and thenceforward to lead a fresher, more wholesome life: cost what it might, he must finish with Jenny. He knew that Mrs. Murray meant to winter abroad, and there was no reason why he, too, should not go to Italy; there he might see her occasionally, and at the end of six months, with a free conscience, ask her to be his wife.

Thinking he saw the way more clearly before him, Basil ceased his lonely promenade and walked slowly into Piccadilly. After the stir and restless movement of the day, the silence there, unnatural and almost ghostly, seemed barely credible; and the great street, solemn and empty and broad, descended in a majestic sweep with the tranquillity and ease of some placid river. The air was pure and limpid, but resonant, so that a solitary cab on a sudden sent the whole place ringing, and the emphatic trot of the horse clattered with long reverberations. The line of electric lights, impressive by their regularity, self-asserting and staid, flung their glare upon the houses with an indifferent violence, and lower down threw into distinctness the straight park railing and the nearer trees, outlining more sombrely the leafy darkness beyond. And between, outshone, like an uneven string of discoloured gems twinkled the yellow flicker of the gas-jets. Everywhere was silence, but the houses, white except for the gaping windows, had a different silence from the rest; for in their sleep, closed and bolted, they lined the pavement helplessly, disordered and undignified, as though without the busy hum of human voices and the hurrying of persons in and out they had lost all significance.

VII

On the following Sunday Basil Kent and Hurrell lunched with Miss Ley, and there met Mr. and Mrs. Castillyon, who came early in the afternoon. The husband of this lively lady was a weighty man, impressive by the obesity of his person and the commonplace of his conversation; his head was bald, his fleshy face clean-shaven, and his manner had the double pomposity of a landed proprietor and a member of Parliament. It seemed that Nature had taken a freakish revenge on his dulness when she mated him with such a sprightly person as his wife, who, notwithstanding his open adoration, treated him with impatient contempt. Mr. Castillyon might have been sufferable had he been as silent as he was tedious; but he had an interminable flow of conversation, and now, finding the company somewhat overwhelmed by his appearance, seized the opportunity to air opinions which should more properly have found utterance in that last refuge of dullards and bores, the House of Commons.

But in a little while, at the butler’s heels, Reggie, with the stealthiness of a sleek cat, slouched into the room. He was pale after Saturday’s amusement, but very handsome. Miss Ley, rising to welcome him, intercepted a glance at Mrs. Castillyon, and, seeing in that lady’s eye a malicious twinkle, was convinced that the pair had arranged this meeting. But though it amused the acute woman that an assignation should be made in her house, she would not have given Mrs. Castillyon further occasion to exercise her wiles if the member of Parliament had not bored her into a bad temper. And really Emily Bassett exaggerated the care she took of her son; it irritated Miss Ley that anyone should be so virtuous as Reggie was thought to be.

“Paul,” said Mrs. Castillyon, “Mr. Bassett has heard that you’re going to speak in the House to-morrow, and he would so much like to hear you. . . . My husband—Mr. Barlow-Bassett.”

“Really! How did you hear that?” asked Mr. Castillyon, delighted.

It was part of Reggie’s ingenuity that he never lied in haste to repent at leisure. For one moment he meditated, then fixed his eyes firmly on Frank to prevent a contradiction.

“Dr. Hurrell told me.”

“Of course I shall be delighted if you’ll come,” pursued the orator. “I shall speak just before dinner. Won’t you dine afterwards? I’m afraid the dinner they give you is very bad.”

“He won’t mind that after he’s heard you speak, Paul,” said Mrs. Castillyon.

A faint smile flickered on her lips at the success of this manœuvre. Mr. Castillyon turned blandly to Miss Ley, with the little shake of his whole body which announced a display of eloquence. Frank and Basil immediately jumped up and bade Miss Ley farewell; they walked together towards the Embankment, and for awhile neither spoke.

“I wanted to talk to you, Frank,” said Basil at last. “I’m thinking of going abroad for the winter.”

“Are you? What about the Bar?”

“I don’t mind about that. After all, I have enough to live on, and I mean to have a shot if I can do any real good as a writer. Besides, I want to break with Jenny, and I can think of no kinder way to do it.”

“I think you’re very wise.”

“Oh, I wish I hadn’t got into this mess, Frank. I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid she’s grown a good deal fonder of me than I ever thought she would, and I don’t want to cause her pain. I can’t bear it when I think of the wretchedness she’ll suffer—and yet we can’t go on as we are.”

Frank remained silent, with compressed lips and a stern look on his face. Basil divined the unspoken censure, and burst out passionately.

“Oh, I know I oughtn’t to have given way. D’you think I’ve not bitterly regretted? I never thought she’d take it any more seriously than I did. And, after all, I’m a man like any other. I have passions as other men have. I suppose most men in my place would have done as I did.”

“I didn’t venture to reproach you, Basil,” said Frank dryly.

“I meant to do only good to the girl. But I lost my head. After all, if we were all as cool at night as we are in the morning. . . .”

“Life would be a Sunday-school,” interrupted Frank.

At that moment they were near Westminster Bridge, and a carriage passed them. They saw that in it sat Mrs. Murray, and she bowed gravely; Basil reddened and looked back.

“I wonder if she’s on the way to Miss Ley.”

“Would you like to go back and see?” asked Frank coldly.

He looked sharply at Basil, who flushed again, and then threw off his momentary hesitation.

“No,” he answered firmly; “let us go on.”

“Is it on account of Mrs. Murray that you wish to throw over Jenny?”

“Oh, Frank, don’t think too hardly of me. I hate the ugly sordid vulgarity of an intrigue. I wanted to lead a cleaner life than most men because of my—because of Lady Vizard; and when I’ve been with Jenny I’m disgusted with myself. If I’d never seen Mrs. Murray, I should still do all I could to finish.”

“Are you in love with Mrs. Murray?”

“Yes,” answered Basil, after a moment’s pause.

“D’you think she cares for you?”

“The other night I felt sure of it, but now again I’m doubtful. Oh, I want her to care for me. I can’t help it, Frank, this is quite a different love from the other; it lifts me up and supports me. I don’t want to seem a prig, but when I think of Mrs. Murray I can’t imagine anything unworthy. And I’m proud of it because my love for her is almost spiritual. If she does care for me and will marry me, I think I may do some good in the world. I fancied that if I went away for six months Jenny would gradually think less of me—I think it’s better to drift apart than just to break cruelly at once.”

“It would certainly be less painful to you,” said Frank.

“And when I’m free I shall go to Mrs. Murray, tell her the whole story, and ask her to marry me.”

Basil lived in a pleasant court of the Temple to which, notwithstanding the sordid contentions of its daily life, the old red houses and the London plane-trees, with their leafy coolness, gave a charm full of repose. His rooms, on the top floor, were furnished simply, but with the taste of a man who cared for beautiful things. The ladies of Sir Peter Lely, with their sweet artificial grace, looked down in mezzotint from the panelled walls, and the Sheraton furniture gave a delicate austerity to the student’s room.

Frank filled his pipe, but they had not been long seated, when there came a knock at the door.

“I wonder who the dickens that is?” said Basil. “I don’t often have visitors on Sunday afternoon.”

He went into the tiny passage and opened. Frank heard Jenny’s voice.

“Can I come in, Basil? Is anyone there?”

“Only Frank,” he answered, leading the way in.

Jenny was arrayed in Sabbath garments, the colours of which to the doctor’s eye seemed a little crude; the bright bow in her black hat contrasted violently with a fawn jacket, but her beauty was such as to overcome all extravagance of costume. She was rather tall, handsomely made, with the rounded hips and full breasts of a passionate woman; her features were chiselled with the clean perfection of a Greek statue, and no duchess could have had a shorter lip or a more delicate nose; her pink ears were more exquisite than the shells of the sea. But it was her wonderful colouring which chiefly attracted notice, with the rich magnificence of her hair, the brilliant eyes, and the creamy perfection of her skin. Her face had a girlish innocence which was very captivating, and Frank, observing her with critical gaze, could not deny that Mrs. Murray by her side, notwithstanding all the advantages of dress and manner, would have been reduced to insignificance.

“I thought you were going home this afternoon,” said Basil.

“No, I couldn’t manage it. I came here immediately after we closed at three, but you weren’t in. I was so afraid that you wouldn’t come before six o’clock.”

It was very clear that Jenny wished to talk with Basil, and Frank, deliberately knocking out the ashes of his pipe, rose to go. His host accompanied him downstairs.

“Look here, Basil,” said Frank; “if I were you I’d take this opportunity to tell Jenny that you’re going away.”

“Yes, I mean to. I’m glad she’s come. I wanted to write to her, but I think that would be funking it. Oh, I hate myself because I must cause her so much pain.”

Frank walked away. Disposed at first to envy Basil his good fortune, he had cursed his fate because pretty girls never fell desperately enamoured of him: it would certainly have been a bore, and to him more than to another an insufferable slavery, but yet the marked abstention was not flattering. Now, however, on his way to the club, wanted by no one, with no claims on him of any sort, he congratulated himself cynically because fair ladies kept their smiles for persons more fascinating than himself.

When Basil returned to his room, he found that Jenny had not, as usual, taken off her hat, but stood by the window looking at the door. He went to kiss her, but she drew back.

“Not to-day, Basil. I’ve got something to say to you.”

“Well, take off your things first, and make yourself comfortable.”

It occurred to him that Jenny had perhaps quarrelled with her employer at the _Golden Crown_, or wished to reproach him because for a couple of days he had not seen her, and, lighting his pipe, he answered with careless gaiety. He did not see that she looked at him strangely, but when she spoke there was such tragic anguish in her tone that he was startled.

“I don’t know what I should have done if I’d not found you in to-day.”

“Good heavens, Jenny! what’s the matter?”

Her voice broke with a sob.

“I’m in trouble, Basil.”

The tears cut his heart, and very tenderly he put his arms round her; but again she withdrew.

“No, please don’t sit near me, or I shall never have the courage to tell you.”

She stood up, drying her eyes, and walked up and down.

“I wanted to see you this morning, Basil. I came to your door, and then I was afraid to knock. So I went away again. And then this afternoon, when I couldn’t make you hear, I thought you’d gone away, and I couldn’t have borne another night of it.”

“Tell me quickly what it is, Jenny.”

A horrible fear seized him, and his cheeks grew pale as hers. She watched him with anxious eyes.

“I’ve not been feeling very well these last few days,” she whispered, “and yesterday I went to the doctor. He told me I was going to have a child.”

And then, hiding her face, she sobbed bitterly, Basil’s heart sank within him, and when he looked at that wretched girl, bowed down with fear and shame, he was filled with remorse. If he had never regretted before, he regretted now, with all his soul.

“Don’t cry, Jenny; I can’t bear it.”

She looked up hopelessly, and the ugliness of that fair face, pain-distraught, tortured him. He was all confused, and many an impulse madly skeltered through his brain: he, too, feared, but at the same time, above all and overmastering, was a wonderful elation because he would be the father of a living child. His pulse throbbed with pride, and like a miracle a sudden love mysteriously burnt op his heart; he took Jenny in his arms and kissed her more passionately than he had ever done before.

“Oh, don’t, for God’s sake; it’s nothing to you,” she cried, trying to tear herself away. “But what about me? I wish I was dead. I’d always been straight till I knew you.”

He could bear her agony no longer, and the thought which had come to him immediately now grew irresistible. There was one way to dry those tears, one way alone to repair that wrong, and a rising flood of passion made it very easy. His whole soul demanded one definite course, uplifting him and crushing every nascent objection; but his heart beat painfully when he spoke, for he was taking an irretrievable step, and God only knew what would be the end.

“Don’t cry, darling; it’s not so bad as all that,” he said. “We’d better get married at once.”

With a little gasp Jenny’s sobs were stilled, and quite motionless, looking down, she clung to Basil like a thing from which all life was gone. The words sank into her mind slowly, and she puzzled over them as though they were said in a language she barely understood; and then, still silent, she began to tremble.

“Say that again, Basil,” she whispered, and after a pause: “Did you mean it? Can you bring yourself to marry me?”

She stood up and looked at him, dishevelled and beautiful, a tragic figure in whose unutterable woe was a most noble pathos.

“I’m only a barmaid, Basil.”

“You’re the mother of my child, and I love you,” he answered gravely. “I’ve always longed to have children, Jenny, and you’ve made me very proud and very happy.”

Her eyes shone with tears, and into her anxious, terror-stricken face came a look of such ecstatic happiness that Basil felt himself ten times rewarded.

“Oh, Basil, you are good. You do mean it, don’t you? And I shall be with you always?”

“Did you think so badly of me as to suppose I would throw you over now?”

“Oh, I was afraid. You’ve cared for me less of late, and I’ve been so unhappy, Basil, but I didn’t dare show it. At first I hadn’t the courage to tell you, because I thought you’d be angry. I knew you wouldn’t let me starve, but you might just have given me money and told me to go.”

He kissed her hands, aflame as never before with her radiant beauty.

“I didn’t know I loved you so much,” he cried.

She sank into his arms with a sob, but it was a sob now of uncontrollable passion, and avid of love she sought his lips.

Basil had in his passage a little gas-stove, and presently, with a charming housewifely grace, Jenny set about making the tea: languorous and happy, she was proud to do things for him, and insisted, while she prepared, that he should sit still and smoke.

“I wish we needn’t keep a servant, Basil, so as I might wait on you.”

“You mustn’t go back to that beastly bar.”

“I can’t leave them in a hole, you know. I shall have to give a week’s notice.”

“Then give it at once, and as soon as you’re free we’ll be married.”

“Oh, I shall be so happy!” she sighed with rapture.

“Now, look here: we must be sensible and talk over things. You know I’m not very well-to-do. I’ve only got three hundred a year.”

“Oh, that’s lots,” she cried. “Why, dad has never had more than three-ten a week.”

Basil smiled doubtfully, for his tastes were expensive, and he had never been able satisfactorily to make ends meet. But he persuaded himself that two persons could live more economically than one; he would give serious attention to his law, and had no doubt that in time he would earn an income. While he waited for briefs he might write. They could afford a little house in the suburbs at Barnes or Putney, and, so as not to be extravagant, for their honeymoon would merely go to Cornwall for a fortnight. After that he must set to work immediately.

“Ma will be surprised when I tell her I’m going to get married,” said Jenny, laughing. “You must come down and see them.”

Though a brother in the City sometimes came to the _Golden Crown_, Basil had never made acquaintance with any of Jenny’s relations; he knew that they lived at Crouch End.

“I wouldn’t have gone back to them if you hadn’t said you’d marry me, Basil. Ma would have turned me out of doors. I was frightened to go down to-day in case she suspected something.” Suddenly, a doubt rising in her mind, she turned to him quickly. “You do mean it, don’t you? You won’t go back on me now?”

“Of course not, you foolish child. Don’t you think I shall be proud to have so beautiful a wife?”

Jenny was obliged to go a little before six, at which hour the _Golden Crown_ opened its doors to thirsty Christians; and Basil, having accompanied her thither, walked on to consider this new state of his affairs. The capacity to stand quite alone, careless of praise or censure, is very rare among men, and he, temperamentally lacking confidence in himself, felt at that moment a most urgent need for advice and sympathy; but Frank was inaccessible, and he could not disturb Miss Ley again that day. He went to his club and wrote a note asking if he might see her the following morning.

He slept uneasily, and getting up later than usual, had scarcely finished breakfast, when an answer came to say that she would be pleased to walk with him at eleven in St. James’s Park. He fetched her punctually. They sauntered for a while, looking at the wild-fowl, and Basil, hesitating, spoke of indifferent subjects; but Miss Ley, noting his unusual gravity, surmised that he had a difficult communication to make.

“Well, what is it?” she asked point-blank, sitting down.

“Only that I’m going to be married.”

Her thoughts at once went to Mrs. Murray, and she wondered when Basil could have found opportunity for his declaration.

“Is that all?” she cried, smiling. “It’s a very proper proceeding for young things, but surely you need not look so serious over it.”

“I’m going to marry a Miss Bush.”

“Who on earth is she? I’ve never heard of her,” answered the good lady, turning to him with surprise; but a dim recollection flashed across her mind. “Wasn’t it a certain Jenny Bush that Frank told me you had discovered somewhere and vowed was the loveliest creature in the world?” She gave him a long and searching look. “I suppose you’re not going to marry a barmaid from a public-house in Fleet Street?”

“Yes,” he answered quietly.

’But why?”

“Presumably because I’m in love with her.”

“Nonsense! A susceptible youth falls in love with a dozen girls, but in a country where monogamy is enforced by Act of Parliament, it is impracticable to marry them all.”

“I’m afraid I can give you no other reason.”

“You might really have made that interesting announcement by letter,” returned Miss Ley dryly.

He looked down with a discouraged air, and for a while was silent.

“I must talk it over with someone,” he burst out at length. “I’m so utterly alone, and I have no one to help or advise me. . . . I’m marrying Jenny because I must I’ve known her for some time—the whole thing was sordid and hateful—and yesterday after I left you she came to my rooms. She was half hysterical, poor thing, she hardly knew what she was saying, and she told me . . . .”

“What you very well might have foreseen,” interrupted Miss Ley.

“Yes.”

Miss Ley meditated, slowly drawing her initials with the point of her parasol in the gravel, and Basil stared at her anxiously.

“Are you sure you’re not making a fool of yourself!” she asked finally. “You’re not in love with her, are you?”

“No.”

“Then you have no right to marry her. Oh, my dear boy, you don’t know how tiresome marriage is sometimes, even with persons of the same class and inclinations. I’ve known so many people in my life, and I’m convinced that marriage is the most terrible thing in the world unless passion makes it absolutely inevitable. And I hate and abhor with all my soul those fools who strive to discredit and ignore that.”

“If I don’t marry Jenny she’ll kill herself. She’s not like an ordinary barmaid. Until I knew her she was perfectly straight. It means absolute ruin to her.”

“I think you exaggerate. After all, it’s not much more than a very regrettable incident due to your—innocence; and there’s no need for desperate courses or histrionics. You will behave lite a gentleman, and take proper care of the girl. She can go into the country till the whole thing is over, and when she comes back no one will be the wiser nor she very much the worse.”

“But it isn’t a matter of people knowing; it’s a matter of honour.”

“Isn’t it rather late in the day to talk of morality? I don’t see where precisely the honour came in when you seduced her.”

“I dare say I’ve been an utter cad,” he answered humbly; “but I see a plain duty before me, and I must do it.”

“You talk as though such things had never happened before,” pursued Miss Ley.

“Oh yes, I know they happen every day. If the girl gives way, so much the worse for her; it’s no business of the man’s. Let her go on the streets, let her go to the devil, and be hanged to her.”

Miss Ley, pursing her lips, shrugged her shoulders. She wondered how he proposed to live, since his income was quite insufficient for the necessities of a family, and he was peculiarly unsuited to the long drudgery of the Bar. She knew the profession termed “literary” well enough to be aware that in it little money could be earned. Basil lacked the journalistic quickness, and it took him two years to write a novel for which he would probably not get more than fifty pounds; and his passion for the analysis of mental states offered small chance of lucrative success. Besides, he was extravagant, and would hate to pinch and spare: nor had he occasion ever to learn the difficult art of getting a shilling’s-worth of goods for twelve coppers.

“I suppose you’ve realized that people will cut your wife,” Miss Ley added.

“Then they will cut me too.”

“But you’re the last man in the world to give up these things. There’s nothing you enjoy more than dinner-parties and visits to country houses. Women’s smiles are all important to you.”

“You talk of me as if I were a tame cat,” he returned, smiling. “After all, I’m only trying to do my duty. I made an awful mistake, and heaven knows how bitterly I’ve regretted it. But now I see the way clearly before me, and whatever the cost, I must take it.”

Miss Ley looked at him sharply, and her keen gray eyes travelled over his face in a minute examination.

“Are you sure you don’t admire a little too much your heroic attitude?” she asked, and in her voice was a stinging coldness at which Basil winced. “Nowadays self-sacrifice is a luxury which few have the strength to deny themselves; people took to it when they left off sugar because it was fattening, and they sacrifice themselves wantonly, from sheer love of it, however worthless the object. In fact, the object scarcely concerns them; they don’t care how much they harm it so long as they can gratify their passion.”

“When I asked Jenny to marry me, and saw the radiant joy in her poor, tear-stained face, I knew I’d done the right thing. Ah, what does it matter if I’m wretched, so long as I can make her happy!”

“I wasn’t thinking of your wretchedness, Basil. I was thinking that you had done that girl harm enough already without marrying her. . . . D’you think she’ll be anything but utterly miserable? You’re only doing this from selfishness and cowardice, because you love your self-esteem and you’re afraid to give pain.”

This point of view was new to Basil, but it seemed unreasonable. He put it hastily aside.

“All this time you’ve not thought of the child, Miss Ley,” he said slowly. “I can’t let the child skulk into the world like a thief. Let him go through life with an honest name; it’s hard enough without marking him with a hideous stigma. And, after all, I’m proud to be the father of a living child. Whatever I suffer, whatever we both suffer, it will be worth it for that.”

“When are you to be married?” asked Miss Ley, after a pause.

“I think this day week. You won’t abandon me, Miss Ley, will you?”

“Of course not?” she answered, smiling gently. “I think you’re a fool, but then most people are. They never realize that they have only one life, and mistakes are irreparable. They play with it as though it were a game of chess in which they could try this move and that, and when they get in a muddle, sweep the board clear and begin again.”

“But life is a game of chess in which one is always beaten. Death sits on the other side of the board, and for every move he has a counter-move, for all your deep-laid schemes a parry.”

They walked back to Old Queen Street, both occupied with their thoughts, and at her door Miss Ley gave Basil her hand. He hesitated a little, but forced himself to speak.

“There’s one thing more. Miss Ley: I fancied—that Mrs. Murray . . . . I dare say I was wrong, but I shouldn’t like her to think too ill of me.”

“I’m afraid you must put up with that,” replied Miss Ley sharply. “There was nothing in the way of an engagement between you?”

“Nothing.”

“I shall see her in a day or two, and I’ll tell her that you’re going to be married.”

“But what will she think of me?”

“I suppose you don’t want her to know the truth?”

“No. I told you only because I felt I must talk it over with someone. Of all persons, I least wish Mrs. Murray to know.”

“Then you must let her think as she chooses. Good-bye.”

“Have you nothing more to say to me than that?” he asked despairingly.

“My dear, if you can suffer all things, you may venture all things.”

VIII

Miss Ley found the Dean alone in the library, for the Langtons returned to Tercanbury that afternoon, and Bella was spending her last morning at the Stores.

“You know, Algernon, in this world it’s the good who do all the harm,” remarked Miss Ley, sitting down. “The bad carry off their wrong-doing with a certain dash which lessens the iniquity, and common-sense robs their vice of sting; but there’s no reasoning with a man conscious of his own rectitude.”

“That is a very subversive doctrine,” answered the Dean, smiling.

“Only the wicked should sin, for experience teaches them moderation, and little hurt befalls. But when the virtuous slip from the narrow path they flounder hopelessly, committing one error after another in the effort to right themselves by the methods of virtue. Under like circumstances they injure all concerned far more desperately than the entirely vicious, because they won’t face the fact that a different code is applicable.”

“Pray tell me the reason of this harangue.”

“A young friend of mine has done a foolish thing, and means to cap it with another. He came to me just now ostensibly for advice, but in reality that I might applaud his magnanimity.”

Without giving names, Miss Ley told her cousin Basil’s story.

“My first curacy was at Portsmouth,” the Dean said when she finished, “and I was then very intolerant of evil, very eager to right the wrong. I remember one of my parishioners got into a similar trouble, and for the child’s sake as well as for the woman’s I insisted that the man should marry. I practically dragged them to the altar by the hair of their heads, and when I had properly legalized the position felt I had done a good day’s work: six months afterwards the man cut his wife’s throat and was duly hanged. If I hadn’t been so officious two lives might have been spared.”

“Mrs. Grundy is a person of excellent understanding, who does not in the least deserve the obloquy with which she is now regarded. She does not mind if a man is a little wild, and if he isn’t thinks him rather a milksop; but with admirable perspicacity she realizes that for the woman a straighter rule is needed: if _she_ falls Mrs. Grundy, without the smallest qualm, will give the first push into the pit. Society is a grim monster, somnolent apparently, so that you think you can take every kind of liberty; but all the time he watches you, he watches slily, and when you least expect it puts out an iron hand to crush you.”

“I hope Bella won’t be late,” said the Dean; “we haven’t too much time after luncheon to catch our train.”

“Society has made its own decalogue, a code just fit for middling people, who are neither very good nor very bad; but the odd thing is it punishes you just as severely if you act above its code as if you act below.”

“Sometimes it makes a god of you when you’re dead.”

“But it takes precious good care to crucify you when you’re alive, Algernon.”

Soon after this Bella came in, and when the Dean went upstairs, told Miss Ley that on her bookseller’s advice she had purchased for Herbert Field the two portly tomes of Dowden’s _Life of Shelley_.

“I hope soon he’ll have enough poetry to make a little volume,” said Bella, “and then I shall ask him if I may arrange for publication. I wonder if Mr. Kent will help me to find a publisher.”

“You will find a bank balance your best friend there, my dear,” answered Miss Ley.

Basil announced the approaching marriage to his solicitor, for his small fortune was held in trust, and his mother’s signature was needed for various documents. In a day or two the following letter reached him.

“CHER ENFANT. “I find that you mean to be married, and I desire to give you my maternal blessing. Do come to tea to-morrow and receive it in due form. You have sulked with me quite long enough, and the masculine boudeur is always a trifle ridiculous. In case it has escaped your memory I venture to remind you that I am—your mother.

“Yours affectionately, “MARGUERITE VIZARD.”

“P.S.—It is one of the ironies of nature, that though a man, if his father is canaille, may console himself with the thought that this relationship is always a little uncertain, with regard to his mother he can lay no such flattering unction to his soul.”

Lady Vizard was shrewd when she prophesied that a couple of years would suffice for her to regain the place in society due to her beauty, wealth, and distinction. None knew better that her position after the trial was precarious, and it required much tact to circumvent the many pitfalls. She was aware that the two best stepping-stones for social aspirants are philanthropy and the Church of Rome, but the astute creature did not think her state so desperate as to need conversion, and a certain assiduity in charitable pursuits offered all that was requisite. Lady Vizard made a dead-set for respectability in the person of a tedious old lady, whose rank and opulence gave her unlimited credit with the world, and whose benevolence made her an easy tool. Lady Edward Stringer was a little old woman with false teeth and a bright chestnut wig, always set awry; and, though immensely dull, managed to assemble in her drawing-rooms everyone in London of real importance. A relation of Lord Vizard, she had quarrelled with him desperately, and it was but natural that his wife should pour her troubles into a willing ear. Now, when she chose, Lady Vizard could assume a manner so flattering that few could resist it: she had an agile tongue and so good a memory for the lies she told that she was never caught tripping; she unfolded the story of her matrimonial unhappiness with such pathetic skill that Lady Edward, touched, promised to do everything to help her. She appeared at the old lady’s parties, was seen with her in all places where fashion congregates; and presently the world concluded it could well afford to know an amusing woman who suffered from no lack of money.

When Basil arrived, obedient to her summons, he found his mother seated in that favourite attitude in which she had been painted; and the portrait, by its daring colour the sensation of its season, hung behind her to show how little in ten years the clever woman had changed. By her side were the inevitable cigarettes, smelling-salts, and a French novel which on its appearance lately had excited a prosecution. Lady Vizard held a stall at a forthcoming bazaar, and it was not altogether without satisfaction that she read at that moment the prospectus in which her name figured on a list whereof the obvious respectability was highly imposing.

Tall and statuesque, she wore her gowns with a flaunting extravagance rather than with the simplicity, often bordering on slovenliness, of most of her countrywomen. She had no desire to conceal from masculine gaze the sinuous outlines of her splendid figure, and dressed, with the bold effrontery of the sensual woman, to draw attention to her particular anatomy rather than to conceal it. Nor was she strange to the intricate art of _maquillage:_ the average Englishwoman who paints her face, characteristically feeling it a first step in the descent to Avernus, paints it badly. She can never avoid the idea that cosmetics are a little wicked or a little vulgar, and a tiny devil, cloven-footed and betailed, lurks always at the bottom of her rouge-pot. Then, perversely, the plunge once taken, to reassure herself she very distinctly exaggerates. Lady Vizard used all the artifices known to the wise, but so cleverly that the result was admirable: even her hair, which to most of her sex is a block of stumbling, was dyed in complete harmony with her eyes and complexion, so that the gross male intelligence was often deceived. Her eyebrows were perfect, and the pencilled line at her eyelashes gave her flashing eyes a greater intensity; the cosmetic on her lips was applied with an artist’s hand, and her mouth was no less beautiful than Cupid’s bow.

Lady Vizard had not seen her son for five years, and she noted the change in him with interest but without emotion.

“Let me give you some tea,” she said. “By the way, why didn’t you come and see me on your return from the Cape?”

“You forget that you gave Miller orders not to admit me.”

“You shouldn’t have taken that _au grand serieux;_ I dismiss my maid every time she does my hair badly, but she’s been with me for years. I forgave you in a week.”

Their eyes met, and they realized that the position between them was unchanged. Lady Vizard shrugged her shoulders.

“I asked you to come to-day because I thought you might have grown more tolerant in five years. Apparently you are one of those men who never learn.”

Even a year before Basil would have answered that he hoped never to grow tolerant of dishonour, but now, ashamed, he sat in silence. His effort was to assume the air of polite indifference which his mother used so easily. He foresaw her next question, and it tortured him that he must expose part at least of his secret to that scornful woman; yet, just because it was so distasteful, he meant to answer openly.

“And whom are you going to marry?”

“No one you have ever heard of,” he answered, smiling.

“Do you wish to make a secret of the fortunate creature’s name?”

“Miss Bush.”

“That doesn’t sound very distinguished, does it? Who is her father?”

“He’s in the City.”

“Rich?” ’

“Very poor.”

Lady Vizard looked at her son keenly, then with a peculiar expression leaned forward.

“Pardon me if I ask, but is she what your tedious grandmother called a gentlewoman?”

“She’s a barmaid in Fleet Street,” he answered defiantly.

Without hesitation came the next question, in a ringing voice.

“And when do you expect the _accouchement?_”

A blow could not have taken him more aback. The blood rushed to his cheeks, and he sprang to his feet. Her eyes rested on him with cool scorn, and confounded by her penetration, he found nothing to say.

“I’m right, am I? Virtue has had a fall, apparently. Ah, _mon cher_, I’ve not forgotten the charming things you said to me five years ago. Have you? Don’t you remember the eloquence with which you spoke of chastity and honour? And you called me a name—which well-conducted sons don’t usually apply to their mothers; but I take it your wife will have no fewer claims to it than I?”

“If I have lust in my blood, it’s because I have the misfortune to be your son,” he cried fiercely.

I can’t help admiring you when I remember the unctuous rectitude with which you acted the upright man, you were playing your little game all the time. But, _franchement_, your little game rather disgusts me. I don’t like these hole-and-corner tricks with barmaids.”

“I dare say I did wrong, but I mean to make amends.”

“Of all fools, the saints preserve me from the fool who repents. If you can’t sin like a gentleman, you’d really better be virtuous. A gentleman doesn’t marry a barmaid because he’s seduced her—unless he has the soul of a counter-jumper. And then you dared come to me with your impudent sermons!”

At the recollection her eyes flashed, and she stood over Basil like some wrathful, outraged goddess.

“What do you know of life and the fiery passion that burns in my veins? You don’t know what devils tear at my breast. How can you judge me? But what do I care! I’ve had a good time in my day, and I’m not finished yet; and after all, if you weren’t such a prig, you’d see that I’m a better sort than most women, for I’ve never deserted a friend nor hit an enemy that was down.”

This she said with an angry vehemence, fluently as though she had often uttered the words to herself, and now at last found the opportunity for which she had waited. But quickly she regained that cutting irony of manner which she well knew was most effective.

“And when I grow old I shall go into the Catholic Church and finish my days in the odour of sanctity.”

“Have you anything more to say to me?” asked Basil coldly.

“Nothing,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders. “You were born to make a fool of yourself. You’re one of those persons who are doomed to mediocrity because you haven’t the spirit to go to the devil like a man. Go away and marry your barmaid. I tell you that you disgust me.”

Blind with rage, his hands clenched, Basil turned to the door, but before he reached it the butler announced Lord de Capit, and a tall fair youth entered. Basil gave him an angry glare, for he could well imagine what were the relations between his mother and the wealthy peer. Lord de Capit looked after him with astonishment.

“Who is that amiable person?” he asked.

Lady Vizard gave a little, irritated laugh.

“A foolish creature. He doesn’t interest me.”

“One of my predecessors?”

“No, of course not,” answered Lady Vizard, amused. “Give me a kiss, child.”

Profoundly despondent, Basil walked back to the Temple, and when he came to his door it was opened by Jenny. He remembered then that she had promised to come that afternoon to hear the final arrangements for their marriage, which was to take place at a registry office.

“I met my brother Jimmie in the Strand, Basil,” she said,” “and I’ve brought him up to see you.”

Going in, he found a weedy youth seated on the table, with dangling legs. He had sandy hair, a clean-shaven, sharp face, and pale eyes. Much commoner than his sister, he spoke with a pronounced Cockney accent, and when he smiled, showing small, discoloured teeth, had an expression of rather odious cunning. He was dressed in the height of fashion—for City sportsmen, with a rakish bowler, a check suit, and a bright violet shirt: he flourished a thin bamboo cane.

“How do?” he said, nodding to Basil. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m afraid I’ve kept you waiting,”

“Don’t apologize,” Mr. Bush answered cheerfully. “I can’t stay long, because I’m a business man, but I thought I’d better just pop in and say ’ow d’ye do to my future brother-in-law. I’m a chap as likes to be cordial.”

“It’s very kind of you,” said Basil politely.

“My! He was surprised when I told him I was going to marry you, Basil,” cried Jenny, with a little laugh of pleasure.

“Now then, don’t mind me,” said James. “Give ’im a slobber, old tart.”

“Go on, Jimmie; you are a caution!”

“Oh, I see you re bashful Well, I’ll be toddling.”

“Won’t you have some tea before you go?” asked Basil.

“Bless you, I don’t want to disturb you canary birds. And I’m not much of an ’and at tea; I leave that to females. I like something stronger myself.”

“That’s Jimmie all over,” cried his sister, amused.

“I have some whisky, Mr. Bush,” said Basil, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh, blow the Mister and blow the Bush. Call me Jimmie. I can’t stand ceremony. We’re both of us gentlemen. Now mind you, I’m not a feller to praise myself, but I will say this—I am a gentleman. That’s not self-praise, is it?”

“Dear me, no. Mere statement of fact.”

“It’s a thing you can’t ’elp, so what’s the good of being proud about it? If I meet a chap in a pub, and he wants to stand me a drink, I don’t ask ’im if he’s a lord.”

“But you just take it.”

“Well, you’d do the same yourself, wouldn’t you?”

“I dare say. May I offer you some whisky now?”

“Well, if you are so pressing. My motto is: Never refuse a gargle. They say it’s good for the teeth.”

Basil poured out.

“Hold hard, old man,” cried James. “You needn’t be too generous with the soda. Well, ’ere’s luck!”

He emptied his glass at a gulp and smacked his lips.

“There are no flies about that, I lay. Now I’ll be toddling.”

Basil did not press him to stay, but by way of speeding the parting guest, offered a cigar. James took and examined it.

“_Villar y Villar!_” he exclaimed. ’That’s all right. How much do they run you in a ’undred?”

“I really don’t know what they cost. They were given to me.” Basil struck a match. ’Won’t you take the label off?”

“Not if I know it,” said James, with much decision. I don’t smoke a _Villar y Villar_ every day, and when I do I smoke it with the label on. . . . Well, so long. See you later, old tart.”

When he was gone Jenny turned to her lover.

“Kiss me. . . . There! Now I can sit down quietly and talk. How d’you like my brother?”

“I scarcely know him yet,” answered Basil cautiously.

“He’s not a bad sort when you do, and he can make you laugh. He’s just like my mother.”

“Is he?” cried Basil, with some vivacity. “And is your father like that too?”

“Well, you know, pa’s not had the education that Jimmie’s had. Jimmie was at a boarding-school at Margate. You were at a boarding-school, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was at Harrow.”

“Ah, you don’t get the fine air at Harrow that you do at Margate.”

“No,” said Basil.

“Come and sit by me, ducky. . . . I’m so glad we’re I alone. I should like to be alone with you all my life. You do love me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Much?”

“Yes,” he repeated, smiling.

She gave him a long, searching glance, and her eyes suddenly darkened. She looked away.

“Basil, I want to say something to you, and it’s dreadfully hard.”

“What is it, darling?”

He put his arm round her waist and drew her towards him.

“No, don’t do that,” she said, getting up and moving away. “Please stay where you are. I can’t say it if I look at you.”

He paused, wondering what was in her mind. She spoke brokenly, as though by an effort almost beyond her strength.

“Are you sure you love me, Basil?”

“Quite sure,” he answered, trying to smile.

“Because I don’t want to be married out of pity or anything like that. If you’re only doing it because you think you ought, I’d rather go on as I am.”

“But why d’you say this now, Jenny?”

“I’ve been thinking it over. The other day when you offered to marry me I was so happy I couldn’t think it out. But I love you so much that I’ve seen things quite differently since then. I don’t want to hurt you. I know I’m not the sort of woman you ought to marry, and I can’t help you to get on.”

Her voice trembled, but she forced herself to continue, and Basil, motionless, listened to her gravely. He could not see her face.

“I want to know if you really care for me, Basil. If you don’t, you’ve only got to say so, and we’ll break it off. After all, I’m not the first girl that’s got into trouble; I could easily manage, you know.”

For one moment he hesitated, and his heart beat painfully. Miss Ley’s cold advice, his mother’s scorn, recurred to him: the girl herself offered an opportunity, and would it not, after all, be best to seize it?

His freedom stood before him, and he exulted; a few easy words might destroy that horrible nightmare, and he could start life afresh, wiser and better. But Jenny turned round, and in her sad, beautiful eyes he saw a mortal anxiety; in the sickening anguish of her expectation she could scarcely breathe. He had not the strength to speak.

“Jenny, don’t torture yourself,” he said brokenly. “And you torture me, too. You know I love you, and I want to marry you.”

“Straight?”

“Yes.”

She sighed deeply, and heavy tears fell down her cheeks. For a while she remained silent.

“You’ve saved my life, Basil,” she said at last. “I made up my mind that if you didn’t want to marry me I’d do away with myself.”

“What nonsense you talk!”

“I mean it. I couldn’t have faced it. I’d fixed it all up in my head—I should have waited till it was dark, and then I’d have gone over the bridge.”

“I will do my best to be a good husband to you, Jenny,” he said.

But when Jenny left him, Basil, utterly bowed down, surrendered himself to an uncontrollable depression. It came to his mind that Miss Ley had likened existence to a game of chess, and now bitterly he recalled each move that he should have played differently: again and again the result hung as on a balance, so that if he had acted otherwise everything would have gone right; but each time the choice appeared to matter so little one way or the other, and it was not till afterwards that he saw the fateful consequence. Every move was irretrievable, but at the moment seemed strangely unimportant; it was not a fair game, for the issue was hidden constantly by a trivial mask. And then it appeared to him as though, alter all, he had never had a choice in the matter; he felt himself powerless in the hand of a greater might, and Fate, for once grown ghastly visible, directed each step as though he were a puppet. Now life before him loomed black and cheerless, and even his child, the thought of which had been his greatest strength, offered no solace.

“Oh, what shall I do?” he moaned—“what shall I do?” He remembered with a shudder Jenny’s threat of suicide, and he knew that she would have carried it out, unhesitating; a sudden impulse seized him in just such a manner to finish with all that doubt and misery. But then, setting his teeth, he sprang up.

“I won’t be such a funk,” he cried savagely. “Alter all, I’ve made my bed and I must lie on it.”

IX

A few days later Basil was married, and Frank, who had assisted him in the rather sordid proceedings of the registry office, going back to his rooms, found Reggie Bassett comfortably lounging in an armchair, with his long legs on another. By his side were Frank’s cigarettes and the whisky-and-soda.

“I see you make yourself at home, my friend.”

“I was passing this way and I hadn’t got anything particular to do, so I thought I’d look in: my mamma thinks your society good for me. Got your wedding over?”

“What do you know about it?” asked Frank sharply.

“More than you think, my boy,” answered Reggie, with a grin. “The mater told me as a solemn warning. She says Kent’s married a barmaid, and it’s the result of keeping bad company and going to pubs. What did he do it for?”

“If I were you I’d mind my own business, Reggie.”

“If it’s because she’s in the family way, he’s a bally ass. If I got in a mess like that, I’d see the lady shot before I married her.”

“I have some work to do, my friend,” said Frank shortly. “You would show discretion if you took yourself off.”

“All right! I’ll just have another drink,” he answered, helping himself to the whisky. “I’m going out to tea with Mrs. Castillyon.”

Frank pricked up his ears, but said nothing. Reggie looked at him, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and winked.

“Smart work, ain’t it—considering I’ve only known her a fortnight. But that’s the right way with women—rush ’em, I saw she was smitten the first time we met, so I made a dead-set for her. I knew she was all right, so I just told her what I wanted; by Jove, she is a little baggage! I’ve come to the conclusion I like ladies, Frank; you don’t have to beat about the bush. You just come to the point at once, and there’s no blasted morality about them.”

“You’re a philosopher, Reggie.”

“You think I’m rotting, but I’m not. I’ll read you the letter she wrote me. By the way, I’m going to give her your address—in case the mater stops anything.”

“If letters come for you here, my friend, they shall be promptly returned to the postman.”

“You are a low blackguard; it wouldn’t hurt you,” said Reggie crossly. “But if you think that’ll stop her writing, it won’t, as I shall just have them sent to my crammer’s. I say, I must read you this; it’s rather funny.”

Reggie took from his pocket a letter on which Frank recognised Mrs. Castillyon’s large writing.

“Don’t you think it’s playing it rather low down to show the private letters which a woman has written you?”

“Rot!” cried Reggie, with a laugh. “If she didn’t want anyone to see them, she oughtn’t to have written.”

With manifest pride he read parts of an epistle which would have left the President of the Divorce Court few doubts as to the relations between the happy pair. The wretched woman’s love tickled his vanity, and to him the pleasure lay chiefly in boasting of it: he uttered with rolling emphasis certain expressions of endearment.

“‘Yours till death,’” he finished. “Good Lord, what rot women write! and the funny thing is that it’s always the same rot. But there’s not much doubt about this, is there? She’s as far gone as she can be.”

“Amiable youth!” said Frank. “Does your mother know that you have struck up an acquaintance with Mrs. Castillyon?”

“Rather! At first the mater thought her a bit vulgar, but she looked her up in the _Landed Gentry_, and when she found out her grandfather was a lord she thought it must be all right. The mater’s a bit of a snob, you know—her governor was in the City, and she’s got it into her head that the Castillyons will ask us down to Dorsetshire. By Gad, if they do I’ll make things hum.”

Reggie looked at his watch.

“I shall have to be scooting, or I shall be late for tea.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“Yes, but I can let that wait. You see, I’m not going up for the exam next time. The mater gave me the fees, and I blued them, so I shall just tell her that I’ve got through. It’ll be all right in the end.”

“Isn’t that very dishonest?”

“Why?” asked Reggie, with surprise. “She keeps me so devilish short, and I must have money somehow. It’ll all be mine when she pegs out, so it can’t matter, you know.”

“And what about the little lady you dined with on Saturday?”

“Oh, I’ve chucked her. I think Mrs. Castillyon will be more economical. She’s got lots of tin, and I’m blowed if I see why a man should always be expected to fork out for women.”

“You’re trying to reconcile two contradictory things, my boy—love and economy.”

Reggie marched off to Bond Street, and finding that Mrs. Castillyon was not yet arrived, began to walk up and down; but having waited half an hour, he grew annoyed, and it was with no smiling countenance that he met the pretty little lady when at length she drove up. “Have I kept you waiting?” she asked airily.

“Yes, you have,” he answered.

“It’s good for you.”

She tripped in, and they ordered tea.

“I can’t possibly eat those cakes,” she said. “Tell them to bring some more.”

The next plateful was as little to her taste, and she called for a third.

“I think I like the first lot best, after all,” she said, when these were produced.

“You might have taken one of them straight away, instead of disturbing the whole place,” exclaimed Reggie, very peevish himself, but peculiarly impatient of that defect in others.

“That woman has nothing else to do: why shouldn’t I disturb her? And she was very impudent; I have a good mind to report her.”

“If you do, I shall go and say that she was nothing of the sort.”

“This is a disgusting place; I can’t think why you suggested it. Anyhow, I’ll have some sweets to make up.”

Looking round, she saw a box of chocolates, elaborately decorated with ribands and artificial violets.

“You can get those for me, I love sweets—don’t you?”

“Yes, when somebody else pays for them.”

She threw back her head and laughed boisterously, so that people turned round and looked. Reggie grew vexed.

“I wish you wouldn’t make such a row. Everyone’s staring at you.”

“Well, let them! Give me a cigarette.”

“You can’t smoke here.”

“Why not? There’s a woman over there smoking.”

“Yes, but she’s no better than she should be.”

“Nonsense! It’s Lady Vizard. It’s only your friends in Piccadilly who are always thinking of propriety; they’re so afraid of not behaving like ladies, and you can always tell them because they’re so prim.”

Mrs. Castillyon, powdered and scented, was dressed in the most outrageous taste, but no one could have been more fashionable; and she displayed uncommon sagacity when she said that her flaunting manners alone distinguished her from persons of easy virtue. She looked across at Lady Vizard, no less strikingly attired, but with a sort of flamboyant discretion which marked the woman of character: she sat with the young Lord de Capit, and Mrs. Castillyon told Reggie the latest scandal about the pair.

“You know she’s Mr. Kent’s mother, don’t you? By the way, is it true he married a creature off the streets?”

“Yes,” said Reggie. “Silly ass!”

He gave a vivid account of the affair according to his lights. Unaccountably, for Frank and Miss Ley, both highly discreet, alone knew the circumstances, Basil’s adventure in a very elaborate form was current among all his friends.

“I say, Reggie, will you come to the play to-morrow? Lady Paperleigh’s got a box for _The Belle of Petersburg_, and she’s asked me to bring my man.”

“Am I your man?” asked Reggie.

“Why not?”

“It sounds bally vulgar. I should have thought it meant your valet.”

At this Mrs. Castillyon laughed as she spoke at the top of her voice, so that people, to Reggie’s confusion, again turned round.

“How prim you are! Is it your mamma’s bringing-up, Reggie? She’s rather an old frump, you know.”

“Thanks!”

“But I intend to ask her down to Jeyston for Christmas. We’re going to have a house-party, and I mean to get Miss Ley and Dr. Hurrell. I don’t like him much, but Miss Ley won’t come without him. Pity she’s not younger, isn’t it? They could talk philosophy to more purpose then. They say she has a passion for young men; I wonder what she does with them. D’you think she was very gay in her youth?”

“She’s a regular ripper, I know that,” answered Reggie, remembering the frequent tips which in his school-days the generous creature had slipped into his hand.

“I’m sure there was something,” expostulated Mrs. Castillyon, “or she wouldn’t have lived so long in Italy.”

“My mother thinks her about the straightest woman she’s ever known.”

“I wish you wouldn’t keep thrusting your mother down my throat, Reggie. It’s bad enough having to put up with Paul’s, without getting yours as well. I suppose I shall have to ask that old cat for Christmas: she’s awful, as rich as they make ’em, and she’ll get on with your mother first-rate. Let’s go; I’m sick of this hole.”

When Reggie asked for the bill, he found the box of chocolates cost fifteen shillings, and preferring to spend his money exclusively on himself, was consequently none too pleased. Mrs. Castillyon had kept the cab, and offered to drive her cavalier to Grosvenor Gardens, where she was going for a second tea.

’I’ve had a good time,” she said, when they arrived. “You’d better give the driver five bob. Good-bye, Reggie. Mind you’re not late to-morrow. Where shall we dine?”

“I don’t mind as long as it’s cheap,” he said, ruefully handing the cabman five shillings.

“Oh, I’ll stand you a dinner,” said Mrs. Castillyon.

“All right,” he answered, his face brightening. “Let’s go to the _Carlton_, then.”

Mrs. Castillyon skipped into the house, and Reggie, who hated walking, to save money trudged sulkily home to Sloane Gardens: Frank showed much wisdom when he asserted that love and economy went seldom hand-in-hand.

“It’s cost me over a quid,” he muttered. “I could have dined Madge three times for that, and I’m blowed if she’s so damned vulgar as that little baggage.”

But next day he met her in the _Carlton_ vestibule, and they sat down to dinner. The waiter brought him a wine-card.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked.

“Something fizzy.”

This entirely agreed with Reggie’s ideas, and since he was not to pay the bill, he took care to order the champagne he liked best, which was by no means the least expensive. Flattering himself on his educated palate, he drank the wine with added satisfaction because the price was high. Mrs. Castillyon, overpowdered, with somewhat the look of a faded rose arranged under careful lights in a shop window to delude the purchaser that it had still its first freshness, was in high spirits: pleased with her own appearance and with that of the handsome youth in front of her, languid and sensual as the waking Adam of Michaelangelo, she talked very quickly in an excessively loud voice. Reggie’s spirits rose with the intoxicating liquor, and his doubts whether an amour with a woman of distinction was quite worth while, were soon dissipated; looking at the costly splendour of her gown, the boy’s flesh tingled, and his eyes rested with approval on the diamonds about her neck and in her yellow hair. It was a new sensation to dine with a well-dressed, rich woman in a crowded restaurant, and he felt himself with pride a very gay Lothario.

Handing something, he touched her fingers.

“Don’t,” she said, “you give me the shivers;” and seeing the effect she created, Mrs. Castillyon displayed all her arts and graces.

“Confound this theatre! I wish we weren’t bound to go to it.”

“But we are. Lady Paperleigh is going with her man, and we’ve got to chaperon her.”

It pleased Reggie to sit in a box with a person of title, and he knew it would gratify his mother.

“Why don’t they make your hubby a Baronet?” he asked ingenuously.

“My mother-in-law won’t fork out. You see, Paul ain’t what you might call a genius—he’d love a handle to name, but the price has gone up lately, and a baronetcy is one of the few things you have to pay for money down.

Reggie’s appetite was large, and he went through the long dinner with huge satisfaction. When they arrived at dessert, he lit a cigarette and gave a sigh of contented repletion.

“Yet people say the pleasures of the intellect are higher than the pleasures of the table,” he sighed.

He looked at Mrs. Castillyon with heavy eyes, and since, like most men, love arose in his heart as an accompaniment to the satisfactory process of digestion, he gave her a peculiarly sensual smile.

“I say, Grace, don’t you think you could come away for a week-end somewhere?”

“Oh, I couldn’t risk it. It would be too dangerous.”

“Not if we go somewhere quiet. It would be a beano!”

Her heart beat quickly, and under those handsome, lazy eyes she felt a curious defaillance; his hand rested on the table, large, soft and smooth, and the sight of it sent through her an odd thrill.

“Paul’s going up to the North to speak next month,” she said. “That’s our chance, isn’t it?”

The risk fascinated her, and the whim for Reggie grew on a sudden to an ardent passion for which she was willing to venture all things.

“I say, I’ve got an idea,” she whispered, with sparkling eyes. “Let’s go to Rochester. Don’t you remember, Basil Kent spoke of it the other day? I could easily say I was going down to see the view or whatever it is. I believe it’s a dull hole, and nobody goes there but Americans.”

“All right,” he said. “That’ll do A1.”

“Now we must be getting off. Call for the bill.”

Mrs. Castillyon felt for her pocket; then, throwing back her head, gave a little shriek of laughter.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve forgotten my purse. You’ll have to pay, after all. D’you mind?”

“Fortunately the mater gave me a fiver this morning,” he answered, without enthusiasm, and when he doled out the shining sovereigns, added to himself: “By Jove, I’ll punish her for this some time.”

Arriving at the theatre, they found Lady Paperleigh was not yet come and since they did not know the number of her box, were obliged to wait in the entrance. They waited for nearly half an hour, during which Mrs. Castillyon grew every moment more peevish.

“It’s perfectly disgusting and awfully rude of her,” she cried for the tenth time. “I wish I hadn’t come, and I wish to goodness you wouldn’t stand there looking bored. Can’t you say something to amuse me?”

“I should have thought you could wait for a few minutes without getting into a beastly temper.”

“I shall take care to serve that woman as she has served me. I suppose she’s eating somewhere with her wretched man. Why don’t you pay for the box so that we can go in?”

“Why should I? They’ve asked us, and we must hang about till they choose to turn up.”

“If you cared for me the least bit, you wouldn’t refuse to do things I asked you.”

“If you’ll ask for something reasonable I’ll do it.”

Reggie had a very pretty little temper of his own, which his fond mother’s upbringing had never taught him to restrain; and seeing that Mrs. Castillyon raged with impatience, he assumed an exaggerated calm which was far more irritating than if he had fussed or fumed. The lady busied herself with sharp tongue to pierce his thick hide of indifference, and abused him roundly. In a little while without more ado he answered her in kind.

“If you’re not satisfied with me I’ll go. D’you think you’re the only woman in the world? I’m about sick of your vixenish temper. Good Lord, if this is what a married man has to put up with, God save me from marriage!”

They sat without speaking, and through her powder Mrs. Castillyon’s cheeks glowed angrily; but when at length Lady Paperleigh appeared, accompanied by a strapping youth with military airs, Mrs. Castillyon greeted her with smiles and soft words, vowing that they had only that very moment arrived. Reggie, less accustomed to the ways of polite society, could not conceal his ill-humour, and shook hands in sulky silence.

After the performance Reggie put Mrs. Castillyon into a cab, but he would not shake hands, and there was a malevolent scowl on his handsome face which singularly disturbed her; for what at first had seemed but a passing fancy was now unaccountably changed into a desperate passion. She had the soul of a trollop, and for years had flirted more or less seriously with one man after another; but it was chiefly admiration she sought and someone to go about with her and pay for little extravagances; and though several had taken the matter in earnest, she always kept her head, and was careful to drop them when they grew troublesome. But now, driving away alone, there was a dull and hungry pain in her heart; she was tormented by the anger of those handsome eyes, and remembered sorrowfully the hurried kiss he had given her the day before in the cab.

“Supposing he doesn’t come back,” she whispered, with a painful sob.

She was a little frightened also, knowing herself in the power of a dissolute, selfish boy who cared nothing for her. Any woman would have served his purpose as well, for she saw with bitter clearness that he was merely dazzled by her wealth and her diamonds. He liked to dine at her house, and it pleased his vanity to embrace a woman in expensive clothes. But she had not the temperament to make a fight for freedom, and gave herself up to this love weakly, careless into what abyss of shame and misery it led. Going to her room, she wrote a pitiful letter to Reggie, and those with whom in time past she had cruelly played, seeing this utter abasement, might have felt abundantly revenged.

“Don’t be angry with me, darling; I can’t bear it. I love you with all my heart and soul. I’m sorry that I was horrid this evening, but I couldn’t help it, and I will try to keep my temper. Write and say you forgive me, because my head is throbbing and my heart is aching for you. “I love you—I love you—I love you.

“GRACE.”

She folded the letter, and was about to put it in an envelope, when an idea crossed her mind. For all her flippancy, Mrs. Castillyon had a good deal of observation; it had not escaped her notice that Reggie hated to spend money. She went to a drawer and took out a ten-pound note, which with a postscript she enclosed.

“I’m sorry I hadn’t my purse to-night, and I’ve only got this note here. Please take what I owe you out of it, and with the change you might buy yourself a tie-pin. I wanted to give you a little present, but I’m afraid of getting something you won’t like. Please say you’re not cross with me for asking you to see about it yourself.”

The youth read the letter with indifference, but when he came to the last lines blushed, for his mother had instilled into him certain rules of honour, and against his will, he could not escape the notion that it was the most discreditable thing possible to accept money from a woman. For a moment he felt sick with shame, but the note was crisp and clean and inviting. His fingers itched.

His first impulse was to send it back, and he sat down at his writing-table. But when he came to put the note in an envelope, he hesitated and looked at it again.

“After all, what with the dinner and tea yesterday, she owes me a good deal of it, and I shall spend it on her if I keep it. She’s so rich, it means nothing to her.”

Then he had an inspiration.

“I’ll put the balance on a horse, and if it comes in I’ll give her the tenner back. If it doesn’t—well, it’s not my fault.”

He pocketed the note.

X

The Kents spent their honeymoon in a fisherman’s cottage at Carbis Water, the very name of which, romantic and muflical, enchanted Basil’s ear; and from their window the cliff, grown over with odorous broom, tumbled lazily to the edge of the coloured sea. There was an amiable simplicity about the old man from whom they hired rooms, and Basil delighted to hear his long stories of the pilchard fishery, of storms that had strewn the beach with wreckage, and of fierce battles fought between the fishers of St. Ives and the foreigners from Lowestoft. He told of the revivals which burned along the countryside, calling sinners to repentance, and how himself on a memorable occasion had found salvation; now he confessed his late-found faith with savage ardour, but notwithstanding made the most he could out of the strangers in his house! And the tall, gaunt figure of that ancient seaman, with furrowed cheeks and eyes bleared with long scanning of the sea, seemed a real expression of that country—wild with its deserted mines, yet tender; barren, yet with the delicate colour of a pastel. To Basil, weary with the conflicting emotions of the last month, it had a restful charm unrivalled by the distincter glories of more southern lands.

One afternoon they walked up a hill to see the local curiosity, a gravestone which crowned its summit, and Basil wandered on while Jenny, indifferent and tired, sat down to test. He sauntered through the furze, saffron and green, and the heather rich with the subdued and decorous richness of an amethyst: some child had gathered a bunch of this and thrown it aside, so that it lay on the grass dying, faded purple, like a symbol of the decay of an imperial power. For a reason that escaped him, it recalled to Basil’s mind that most poetical of prose-writers, the divinely simple weaver of words, Jeremy Taylor, and he repeated to himself that sad, passionate phrase used in the _Holy Dying:_ “Break the beds, drink your wine, crown your head with roses and besmear your curled locks with nard; for God bids you to remember death.”

Standing on the brink, he overlooked the valley of the sea—Hale in the distance, with its placid river, like some old Italian town coloured and gay even under that sombre heaven. The sky was gray and overcast, and the clouds, pregnant with rain, swept over the hill-top like the gauzy drapery of some dying pagan spirit, lingering solitary among the grotesque shapes of Christian legend. There was a line of dead trees on the crest of the hill, and Basil, visiting this place earlier in the year, had found them then incongruous with the summer, a hideous darkness against the joyous colour of the Cornish June. But now all Nature drew into harmony with them, and they stood, gnarled and leafless, with a placid silence, as though in a sense of the eternity of things they felt a singular content. The green leaves and the flowers were vanity, ephemeral as the butterflies and the light breeze of April, but they were changeless and constant. Dead ferns lay all about, brown as the earth, and they were the first of the summer plants to go, chilled to death by the mild wind of September. The silence was so great that Basil seemed to hear the wings of the rooks as they beat the air, flying overhead from field to field, and in his mind, curiously, he listened to the voice of London calling. Basil peculiarly enjoyed his solitude, for he was used to be much alone, and the constant companionship since his marriage at times proved irksome. He began to plan out his future. There was no reason why Jenny should not be induced to a wider view of things than she then possessed; she was by no means a fool, and little by little, with patience on his side, she might gain interest in the things that interested him: it would be wonderful to disclose a human soul to its own beauty. But his enthusiasm was short-lived, for, walking down the hillside, he found Jenny asleep, her head thrown back and her hat slouched over one eye, her mouth open. His heart sank, for he saw her as he had never seen her before: amid the soft grace of that scene her clothes looked tawdry and crude, and with keen eyes he detected, under her beauty, the commonness of nature for which already he loathed the brother.

But, fearing it would rain, he woke her and proposed that they should go home. She smiled at him lovingly.

“Have you been looking at me asleep? Had I got my mouth open?”

“Yes.”

“I must have looked a sight.”

“Where did you buy your hat?” he asked.

“I made it myself. Don’t you like it?”

“I wish it weren’t so very bright.”

“Colours suit me,” she answered. “They always did.”

The Cornish drizzle hovered over the earth, all-penetrating like human sorrow, and at length, with the closing day, the rain fell. In the mist and in the night the country sank into darkness. But in Basil’s heart was a greater darkness, and already, after one short week, he feared that the task he had confidently undertaken was beyond his strength.

On their return to London Basil moved such furniture as he possessed into the little house he had taken in Barnes. He liked the old-fashioned High Street of that place because it had preserved a certain village simplicity, and the common made up for the dreary look of the long row of villas in which was his own: the builder, careful of his invention, had placed on each side fifty small houses so alike that they were distinguishable only by their numbers and the grandiloquent names on the fanlight. For two or three weeks the young couple were engaged in putting things to rights, and then Basil settled to the monotonous life he liked because it gave most opportunity for work. He went away every morning early to chambers, where he devilled for the “silk” in whose room he sat, waiting for briefs that came not, and about five took the train back to Barnes; then followed a stroll along the tow-path with Jenny, and after dinner he wrote till bed-time. Basil felt now a certain quiet satisfaction in his marriage; his affairs settled for good, and he could surrender himself to his literary ambition. Apparently there was a magic in the nuptial tie, since there arose within him by degrees a sober but deep affection for Jenny; he was flattered by her adoration, and touched at the humility wherewith she did his bidding. With all his heart he looked forward to the birth of their child. They talked of him incessantly for both were convinced that it must be a son, and they never tired of discussing what to do with him, how he should wear his hair, when be breeched, and where go to school. When Basil pictured the beautiful woman nursing her child—and she had never been lovelier than then—his pulse throbbed with thankfulness and pride; and he chid himself because he had ever hesitated to marry her or for a moment during the honeymoon bitterly regretted his rashness.

Jenny was radiantly happy. She was of indolent temper, and it delighted her, after the bondage of the _Golden Crown_, to do nothing from morning till night. It was very amusing to have at her beck and call a servant who called her “ma’am,” and hugely satisfactory to watch her work while she sat idly. She was proud also of the little house and the furniture, and dusted the pictures with greater complacency because she thought them rather ugly; Basil said they were very beautiful, and she knew they cost a lot of money. In the same way Jenny admired her husband all the more because she neither understood his ideas nor sympathized with his ambitions. She worshipped him like a dog his master. It was a daily torment when he went to town, and invariably she accompanied him to the door to see the last of him: when he was due to return, she listened with held breath for his step on the pavement, and sometimes in her impatience walked to meet him.

Basil had not the amiable gift of taking people as they are, asking no more from them than they can give; but rather sought to mould after his own ideas the persons with whom he came in contact. Jenny’s taste was deplorable, and the ignorance which had not been unbecoming to the pretty barmaid in the wife was a little distressing. In accordance with a plan of unconscious education whereby, like powder in jam, Jenny might acquire knowledge without realizing it, Basil gave her books to read; and though she took them obediently, his choice, perhaps, was not altogether happy, for alter a diligent quarter of an hour she would mostly drop the volume, and for the rest of the morning chat familiarly with the maid-of-all-work. If, however, at any time she yearned for literary pabulum, she much preferred to buy a novelette at the station bookstall, but took care to hide it when Basil came in; and once he found by chance a work entitled _Rosamund’s Revenge_, explained that it belonged to the servant. For one penny Mrs. Kent could get a long and blood-curdling romance, the handsome, aristocratic hero of which bore an unusual similarity to Basil, while the peerless creature for whom doughty deeds were so fearlessly performed was none other than herself; under the mattress in the spare bedroom she kept her favourite story, wherein a maid of high degree nobly sacrificed herself, and Jenny’s heart beat fast when she thought how willingly under similar circumstances she would have risked her life for Basil. Ignorant of all this, Kent talked frequently of the books himself had given her, but in his enthusiasm was apt to be so carried away as not to notice how small her knowledge thereof remained.

“I wish you’d read me your book, Basil,” she said one evening. “You never tell me anything about it.”

“It would only bore you, darling.”

“D’you think I’m not clever enough to understand it?”

“Of course not! If you’d like me to, I shall be only too pleased to read you bits of it.”

“I’m so glad you’re a novelist. It’s so uncommon, isn’t it? And I _shall_ be proud when I see your name in the papers. Read me some now, will you?”

No writer, however violent his protests, really dislikes being asked to read an unpublished book; it is the child of his heart, and has still the glamour which, when it is coldly set up in type and bound in cloth, will be utterly destroyed. Basil especially needed sympathy, for he was distrustful of himself, and could work better when someone expressed admiration for his efforts. It had been his ardent hope that Jenny would take interest in his writing, and it was only from diffidence that hitherto he had said little about it.

The idea of his novel, the scene of which was Italy in the early sixteenth century, came to him one day in the National Gallery soon after his return from South Africa, when his mind, fallow after the long rest from artistic things, was peculiarly sensitive to the impression of beauty. He wandered among the pictures, visiting old favourites, and the sober quiet of that place filled his soul with a greater elation than love or wine; he recalled the moment often for its singular happiness, spiritual and calm, yet very fruitful. At last he came to that portrait of an Italian nobleman by Moretto, which to an imaginative mind seems to express the whole spirit of the later Renaissance. It fitted his mood strangely. He thought that to make lovely patterns was the ultimate end of the painter’s art, and noticed with keen appreciation the decorative effect of the sombre colouring and of the tall man, leaning, melancholy and languid, in that marble embrasure. Nameless through the ages, he stood in an attitude that was half weariness and half affectation; and his restrained despair was reflected by the tawny landscape of the background, blank like the desert places of the spiritual life; the turquoise sky even was cold and sad. The date was given, 1526, and he wore the slit sleeves and hose of the period; (the early passion for the New Birth was passed already; or Michaelangelo was dead, and Cæsar Borgia rotted in far Navarre;) the dark cerise of his parti-coloured dress was no less mournful than the black, but against it gleamed the delicate cambric of his shirt and ruffles. One hand, ungloved, rested idly on the pommel of his long sword, the slender, delicate hand, white and soft, of a gentleman and student. On his head he wore a strange-shaped hat, part buff, part scarlet, with a medallion on the front of St. George and the Dragon.

The face haunted Basil, paler by reason of the dark beard; and out of it looked wistfully the eyes, as though sight were weariness and the world had naught to offer but disillusion. Presently, brooding over the character which seemed there expressed, he invented a story, and to work it out for some months, steeping himself in the poets and historians of the period, spent much time in the British Museum. At last he began actually to write. Basil wished to describe Italian society at that time, its profound disenchantment after the vigorous glow with which it had welcomed the freedom of mind when the fall of Constantinople threw open to the human intellect a new horizon; and devised a man who waged life as though it were a battle, vehemently, seeking to enjoy every moment, and now, finding all things vain, looked back with despair because the world had nothing more to offer. Acquainted with the courts of princes and the tents of condottieri, he had experienced every emotion, fought bloodily, loved and intrigued, written poetry and talked platonism. The incidents of this career were stirring, but Basil referred to them only so much as was necessary to explain the state of mind, for he desired to show his scorn of commonplace by eschewing sensation and giving merely detailed analyses of a spiritual condition.

His theme gave opportunity for the elaborate style Basil affected, and he began to read, emphasizing the rhythm of his sentences and rejoicing in their music. His vocabulary, chosen from the Elizabethans, was rich and sonorous, and the beauty of certain words intoxicated him. But at last he stopped suddenly.

“Jenny?” he said.

No answer came, and he saw that she was fast asleep. Taking care not to disturb her, he put aside the book and rose from his chair. It was not worth while to ask him to read if she could not keep awake, and with some vexation he went to his desk. But his sense of humour came the rescue.

“What a fool I am!” he cried, with a laugh. “Why should I think it would interest her?”

Yet Mrs. Murray had listened to that same chapter with most flattering attention, and afterwards was loud in its praise. Basil remembered that Molière read comedies to his cook, and if she was not amused rewrote them. By that test he should have destroyed his novel; but then impatiently he told himself that he wrote, not for the many, but for a chosen few.

No longer feeling him near her, Jenny presently awoke.

“Well, I never! I haven’t been to sleep, have I?”

“Snoring!”

“’ I am sorry. Did I disturb you?”

“Not at all,”

“I couldn’t help it. I felt so drowsy with you reading. I did enjoy it, Basil.”

“It’s something to write a book which is a soporific,” he answered, smiling grimly.

“Do read me some more, I’m wide awake now, and it was beautiful.”

“I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll do a little work.”

A few days later Jenny’s mother, who had seen neither Basil nor the house, paid them a visit. She was a stout woman with a determined manner, and wore a black satin dress so uneasily as to suggest it was her Sunday best; it gave her a queer feeling that the days had got mixed, and a Sabbath come somehow in the middle of the week. Against Basil’s will, Jenny insisted on keeping for special occasions their nicest things, and when they were alone made tea in an earthenware pot.

“You don’t mind if I don’t get out the silver teapot, ma?” she asked, when they sat down. “We don’t use it every day.”

“No more do I come and see you every day, my dear,” answered Mrs. Bush, gloomily stroking her black satin.

“But I suppose I’m nobody now you’re married. Don’t you sit down at table for tea?”

“Basil likes to have it in the drawing-room,” answered Jenny, pouring milk in the bottom of each cup.

“Well, I think it’s messy. My tea is my best meal; you know that, Jenny.”

“Yes, ma.”

“I always say it looks mean just to have a few pieces of bread-and-butter put on a plate, with the butter just scraped on so as you can’t see it.”

“Basil likes it like that.”

“In my ’ouse I ’ave things my own way. Don’t begin to give way to your ’usband in the ’ouse, my dear, or he’ll presume on it.”

Basil, coming in at this moment, was introduced to the visitor, and Jenny, rather nervously, watched her to see that she behaved nicely! But Mrs. Bush, though somewhat awed by his reserved manner, took care to show that she was a perfect lady, and when she lifted her cup curled her little finger in the most elegant and approved fashion. Basil, after a few polite remarks, lapsed into silence, and the two women for five minutes talked difficultly of trivial subjects. Then a carriage stopped at their door, and in a minute the maid announced—Mrs. Murray.

“I thought you would allow me to call on you,” she said, holding out her hand to Jenny. “I’m an old friend of your husband.”

Jenny blushed, taken aback, but Basil, delighted to see her, shook hands warmly.

“It’s awfully good of you. You’ve just come in time for tea.”

“I’m simply dying for some.”

She sat down, looking very handsome and self-possessed, and Mrs. Bush deliberately examined her gown. But Jenny remembered that they had only the common teapot.

“I’ll just go and get some fresh tea,” she said.

“Fanny will get it, Jenny.”

“Oh no, I must get it myself, and I keep the tea locked up. You know I have to,” she added to Mrs. Murray; “these girls are so dishonest.”

She went out hurriedly, and while she was gone Basil eagerly asked Mrs. Murray how she had found them out.

“It was horrid of you not to write and tell me where you were. Miss Ley gave me your address.”

“Don’t you think it’s an amusing place? You must go into the High Street. Bits of it are so odd and quaint.”

They chattered gaily, almost taming their backs on Mrs. Bush, who watched them with lowering brows. But she often said that she was not a woman to be put upon.

“It’s a fine day, isn’t it?” she interrupted aggressively.

“Beautiful!” said Mrs. Murray, smiling.

And before Mrs. Bush could make another observation Basil asked when she was startling for Italy. Fortunately, at that moment Jenny came in, but her mother noticed with indignation that she brought the silver teapot; she drew herself up very straight and sat in mute anger, a bristling figure of outraged susceptibility. Nor did it escape her that Basil, who till Mrs. Murray ’s arrival had scarcely spoken, now talked volubly; he gave a humorous account of their troubles in moving into the house, but though it appeared to amuse Mrs. Murray hugely, Mrs. Bush could see nothing at all funny in it.

At last the visitor rose.

“I really must fly. Good-bye, Mrs. Kent. You must get your husband to bring you to see me.”

She sailed out, with a rustle of silk, and Basil accompanied her downstairs.

“She’s come in a carriage, ma,” said Jenny, looking from the window.

“I ’ave eyes in my ’ead, my dear,” answered Mrs. Bush.

“Isn’t he aristocratic-looking?” exclaimed the admiring wife.

“Aristocratic is as aristocratic does,” returned her mother severely.

They saw Basil at the door talk with Mrs. Murray and laugh. Then she gave an order to the coachman, who followed them while they walked slowly down the street.

“Well, Jenny!” cried Mrs. Bush, in tones of surprise, horror, and indignation.

“I wonder where they’re going,” said Jenny, looking away.

“You take my advice, my dear, and keep your eyes on that young man. I wouldn’t trust ’im too far if I was you. And you tell him that your ma can see through a brick wall as well as anyone. . . . ’Ad he ever said anything about his lady friend?”

“Oh yes, ma, he’s spoken of her often,” said Jenny uneasily, for as a matter of fact till that day she had never even heard Mrs. Murray’s name.

“Well, you tell ’im you want to hear nothing about her. You must be careful, my dear. I ’ad a rare lot of trouble with your pa when I was first married. But I put my foot down, and let ’im see I wouldn’t stand his nonsense.”

“I wonder why Basil doesn’t come back?”

“And, if you please, he never introduced me to his lady friend. I suppose I’m not good enough.”

“Ma!”

“Oh, don’t talk to me, my dear. I think you’ve treated me very bad, both of you, and it’ll be a long day before I leave my pleasant home in Crouch End to cross this threshold.”

At this Basil returned, and saw at once that Mrs. Bush was much disturbed.

“Hulloa, what’s up?” he asked, smiling.

“It’s no laughing matter, Mr. Kent,” answered the ruffled matron, with dignity. “I’m put out, and I won’t deny it. I do expect to be treated like a lady, and I don’t think Jenny ought to ’ave given me my tea out of a sixpenny ’alfpenny teapot—and you can’t deny that’s what they cost, my dear, because I know as well as you do.”

“We’ll behave ourselves better next time,” said Basil good-humouredly.

“It didn’t take Jenny long to get the silver teapot as soon as your lady friend come in. But I suppose I’m not worth troubling about.”

“I believe tea always tastes much better in earthenware,” remarked Basil mildly.

“Oh yes, I dare say it does,” returned Mrs. Bush ironically. “And to catch sparrows you’ve only got to put a little salt on their tails. Good-afternoon to you.”

“You’re not going yet, ma?”

“I know when I’m not wanted, and you needn’t trouble to show me out, because I know my way and I shan’t steal the umbrellas.”

Basil was in high spirits, and this display of temper vastly amused him.

“Where did you go just now, Basil?” asked Jenny, when her mother had stalked defiantly out of the house.

“I just showed Mrs. Murray the High Street, I thought it would amuse her.”

Jenny did not answer. Basil had discussed with the unexpected visitor the progress of his book, and thinking still of the pleasant things she said to him, paid no attention to his wife’s silence. All the evening she scarcely spoke, but it struck her that Basil had never been more cheerful; during dinner he laughed and joked, without caring that she was irresponsive; and afterwards sat down to work. Inspiration flowed in upon him, and he wrote easily and quickly. Jenny, pretending to read, watched him through her eyelashes.

XI

About a week after Basil’s marriage, Miss Ley found on her breakfast-table the following letter from Bella;

“MY DEAREST MARY, “I have been very anxious lately about my friend Herbert Field, and I want you to do me a great favour. You know that he is not very strong, and some time ago he caught a horrid cold which he seems quite unable to shake, off. He refuses to take proper care of himself, and he looks very ill and thin. Our doctor has been attending him, but he grows no better, and I am dreadfully alarmed. I don’t know what I should do if anything happened to him. At last I have been able to persuade him to come to London to see a specialist. Do you think Dr. Hurrell would look at him if I brought Mr. Field up next Saturday? Of course I would pay the ordinary fees, but there is no need that Herbert should know this. He can manage to get away early on Saturday morning, if you will get me an appointment we would drive straight to Dr. Hurrell. May we come to luncheon with you afterwards?

“Yours affectionately, “BELLA LANGTON,”

When Frank came in to tea, as was his habit whenever he had time, Miss Ley showed him the letter, and afterwards wrote back to say that Dr. Hurrell would be pleased to see the invalid at twelve on the following Saturday.

“I don’t suppose he has anything the matter with him,” said Frank, “but I don’t mind having a look. And tell her she can keep her confounded fees.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Frank,” replied Miss Ley.

At the appointed hour Bella and Herbert were shown into his consulting-room. The youth was shy and ill at ease.

“Now, will you go into the waiting-room, Miss Langton?” said Frank. “I’ll send for you later.”

Bella, somewhat impressed by his professional manner, retired, and Frank examined his patient’s face slowly, as though he sought the hidden springs of character. Herbert watched with apprehension the grave man in front of him.

“I don’t think I’ve really got anything much the matter with me; only Miss Langton was anxious.”

“Medical men would starve if they depended only on the diseased,” answered Frank. “You’d better take off your things.”

Herbert reddened at the discomfort of undressing himself before a stranger. The doctor noted the milky whiteness of his skin, and the emaciation of his body, which revealed the entire form of the skeleton; he took the boy’s hand and looked at the long fingers with nails slightly bent over.

“Have you ever spat any blood?”

“No.”

“D’you sweat at night at all?”

“I never used to, but this last week I have a bit.”

“I believe most of your relations are dead, aren’t they?”

“All of them.”

“What did they die of?”

“My father died of consumption, and my sister also.”

Frank said nothing, but his face grew somewhat graver as he heard the bad history. He began to percuss the boy’s chest.

“I can find nothing abnormal there,” he said.

Then he took his stethoscope and listened.

“Say ninety-nine. Now cough. Breathe deeply.”

He went over every inch carefully, but found nothing more than might be due to an attack of bronchitis. But before putting down the stethoscope he applied it again to the apex of the lung, just above the collar-bone.

“Breathe deeply.”

Then very distinctly he heard a slight crackling sound, which the hectic flush on Herbert’s cheeks, the symptoms and the history, had led him to expect. Once more he percussed, more carefully still, and the note was dull. There could be little doubt about the diagnosis.

“You can put on your clothes,” he said, sitting down at his desk to write notes of the case.

Without a word Herbert dressed himself. He waited till the doctor finished.

“Is there anything the matter with me?” he asked.

Frank looked at him gravely.

“Nothing very serious. I’ll talk to Miss Langton if you’ll get her to come here.”

“I’d sooner hear myself, if you don’t mind,” said Herbert, flushing. “I’m not afraid to be told anything.”

“You need not be very much alarmed, you know,” answered Frank in a moment, with a brief hesitation which did not escape Herbert. “You have râles at the right apex. At first I didn’t hear them.”

“What does that mean?” A cold shiver of dread ran through him so that his hands and feet felt horribly cold; there was a slight tremor in his voice when he asked a further question. “Is it the same as my father and my sister?”

“I’m afraid it is,” said Frank.

And the shadow of Death stood suddenly in the room, patient and sinister; and each knew that henceforward it would never leave the young man’s side; it would sit by him at table silently, and lie in his bed at night; and when he read, a long finger would underline the words to remind him that he was a prisoner condemned. When the wind, marching through the country, sang to himself like a strong-limbed ploughboy, Death, whistling in his ears, would mock the tune softly; when he looked at the rising sun which coloured the mist like a chalcedony, purple and rosy and green, Death would snigger at his delight in the sad world’s beauty. An icy hand gripped his heart so that he felt sick with dread and anguish; he could not repress the sob torn from him by bitter agony. Frank was ashamed to look at that boyish face, so frank and fair, distraught with terror, and he cast down his eyes. Then, to hide himself, Herbert went to the window and looked out: opposite, the houses were gray, ugly, and monotonous, and the heavy sky lowered as though verily it would crush the earth; but he saw life like a pageant processioning before him, and the azure heaven more profound than the rich enamel of an old French jewel, the ploughed fields gaining in the sunshine the various colour of the jasper, and the elm-trees more sombre than jade. He was like a man in a deep chasm who scans at noon the stars which those who live in daylight cannot see.

Frank’s voice came to him like a sound from another world.

“I wouldn’t take it too much to heart if I were you. With care you may easily recover, and after all, plenty of people have lived to a ripe old age with tuberculous lungs.”

“My sister was only ill four months, and my father less than a year.”

His pale face expressed no emotion, so that Frank could only divine the fear that made his heart sink; he had seen many take the sentence of death, and knew that in comparison the final agony itself was small indeed. It was the most awful moment in life, and it must have been a cruel god who was not satisfied with that instant of hopeless misery to punish all the sins and follies of mankind: beside it all human suffering, the death of children or the ingratitude of friends, loss of honour or of wealth, sank into insignificance. It was the bitter, bitter cup that each must drink because man had raised himself above the beasts.

Frank rang the bell.

“Ask Miss Langton to be so good as to come here,” he told the servant who answered.

She looked anxiously from Frank to Herbert standing at the window, his back turned; and the two men’s silence, the doctor’s grave constraint, filled her with terrified foreboding.

“Herbert, what’s the matter?” she cried. “What has he told you?”

The boy turned round.

“Only that I shall never do anything in the world now. And I shall die like a dog and leave behind me the sunshine and the blue sky and the trees.”

Bella cried out, and then despair settled in her eyes, and helplessly the tears ran down her cheeks.

“How could you be so cruel?” she said to Frank. “Oh, Herbert, perhaps it’s not true. . . . What’s to be done, Dr. Hurrell? Can’t you save him somehow?”

She sank into a chair and sobbed. The boy placed his hand on her shoulder gently.

“Don’t cry, dear. In my heart of hearts I knew, but I tried not to believe it. After all, it can’t be helped. I shall just have to go through with it like everyone else.”

“It seems so hard and meaningless,” she groaned. “It can’t be true.”

Herbert looked at her without answering, as though her anguish were a curious thing which excited in him no emotion. In a little while, with a sigh, Bella rose to her feet and dried her eyes.

“Come away, Herbert,” she said. “Let us go back to Mary.”

“D’you mind if I go by myself? I feel I can’t talk to anyone just now. I should like to be alone for a bit to think it out.”

“You must do as you choose, Herbert.”

“Good-bye, Dr. Hurrell, and thanks.”

With eager, pain-filled eyes Bella watched him go, and she, too, felt that something strange was in him, so that she dared not thwart his wish; when he spoke there was an inflexion in his voice which she had never heard before. But presently, with a great effort gathering herself together, she turned to Frank.

“Now, will you tell me exactly what should be done?” she said, with an attempt at the decisive manner she used in the conduct of charitable enterprises at Tercanbury.

“First of all get the fact into your head that there is no immediate cause for alarm. I’m afraid there’s no doubt that tubercle is there, but the damage at present is very small. He wants care and proper treatment.... Is he entirely dependent for means upon his occupation?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Is it possible for him to go away? He ought to winter abroad—not only for the climate, but also because new scenes will distract his mind.”

“Oh, I would so gladly pay for him, but he’d never accept a penny from me. Is it his only chance of life?”

“I can’t say that. The human body is a machine which constantly acts counter to expectation; sometimes with every organ diseased it still manages to dodder along.”

Bella did not listen, for suddenly an idea had flashed cross her mind. She blushed furiously, but all the same it seemed excellent; her heart beat madly, and an ecstatic happiness lifted her up. She rose from the chair.

“I dare say I can manage something, after all. I must go and talk to Miss Ley. Good-bye.”

She gave him her hand and left him wondering what had caused in her this sudden change, for the depression had vanished before something which quickened her gait and rendered her step elastic.

“Well, what did Frank tell you?” asked Miss Ley, when she had kissed Bella.

“He says that Herbert has consumption and must spend the winter abroad.”

“I’m very sorry; but is that possible?”

“Only if I take him.”

“My dear, how can you?” cried Miss Ley, astonished.

Bella hesitated and blushed.

“I’m going to ask him to marry me. It’s no good now to counterfeit modesty and all the rest of it. It’s the only way I can save his life, and after all, I love him better than anyone else in the world. When I told you a month ago that it was impossible I should care for a boy almost young enough to be my son, I lied. I fought against it then as something shameful and ridiculous, but I’ve loved him from the very first day I saw him.”

Bella’s vehement seriousness alone prevented Miss Ley from indulging in her usual irony. She carefully repressed the smile which struggled to gain possession of her lips.

“Your father will never consent, my dear,” she said gravely.

“I hope he will when I explain the circumstances. I’m afraid he’ll be dreadfully distressed, but if he refuses I shall remember that I’m a grown woman, capable of judging for myself.”

“I don’t know what he’ll do without you. He’s entirely dependent on you for all his comfort and all his happiness.”

“I’ve served him for forty years. I gave him all my youth, not because it was my duty, but because I loved him. Now someone needs me more than he does. My father is rich; he has a comfortable home, books and friends, and health. Herbert has nothing but me. If I take care of him, I may give him a few more years of life, and if he dies I can soothe his last days.”

Miss Langton spoke rapidly, with such determination that the elder woman saw it was useless to argue; her whole mind was set on this idea, and neither the persuasion of friends nor the entreaties of a father would hinder her.

“And what does the young man say to it?” asked Miss Ley.

“The thought has never entered his head. He looks upon me as a middle-aged woman to whom all things of love are absurd. Sometimes he’s laughed at me because I’m so practical and matter-of-fact.”

“Where is he?”

Before Bella could answer there was a ring at the door, and they heard Herbert ask the butler if Miss Langton had come in.

“There he is!” cried Bella. “Let me go to him now, Mary. He’s going up to the drawing-room. Oh, I feel so dreadfully nervous.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bella,” answered Miss Ley, smiling. “I’ve never seen a woman about to propose marriage to the object of her affections who was quite so self-possessed as you.”

But at the door Miss Langton stopped, and with a very piteous expression looked at her friend.

“Oh, I wish I weren’t so old, Mary. Tell me honestly, am I awfully plain?”

“You’ re a great deal too good for a silly young hobbledehoy, my dear,” said Miss Ley, hiding by roughness of manner something very like a sob. “If he had any sense, he’d have insisted on marrying you three months ago.”

When Bella closed the door. Miss Ley’s eye caught the bronze statue of Narcissus, standing on a pedestal in that eternal attitude of adorable affectation, one long forefinger outstretched, and his listening head bent slightly to one side. She addressed him irritably.

“I wish you wouldn’t look so shocked and puzzled and self-conscious of your beauty. You ought to know that when love and self-sacrifice are combined in the heart of a middle-aged woman, nothing on earth will prevent her from acting like a perfect lunatic. In your day the old maid was unknown, and you can’t possibly understand her emotions, for, extraordinary as it may appear, even old maids are human. And if you are scandalized at this disproportion of ages, know that you are an idiot, ignorant of the elements both of psychology and of physiology. And I myself have adored generations of young men, though the relations between us have invariably remained strictly platonic.’

Narcissus, listening intently to the dying cries of Echo, remained indifferent to Miss Ley’s harangue, and she turned away impatiently.

Entering the drawing-room, Bella found Herbert standing at the window, and he came towards her with a smile. She saw that already he was more collected, and though his face was pale and grave, it bore no longer that disfigurement of fear.

“You didn’t think it unkind of me to leave you to come home by yourself, did you?” he asked gently. “I was a little bothered just then, and I felt if I weren’t alone I should make a fool of myself.”

She took his hand and held it.

“You know that I can never think anything you do unkind. But tell me now if you have decided anything.” She hesitated, but it seemed futile to utter expressions of regret; for at that moment how could they comfort him? “I should like you to know that you can depend on me always.”

“It’s very good of you. I don’t know that there’s anything much to decide. I dare say I shall soon get used to the idea of not looking into the future, but it’ll be rather hard at first, because it was all I had at that dreary bank. I shall stay there as long as I can, and when I grow too ill I must try and get into the hospital. I dare say the Dean will help me to be admitted.”

“Oh, don’t talk like that! It’s too horrible,” cried Bella wretchedly. “Isn’t there anything I can do? I feel so utterly helpless.”

He looked at her for a while.

“Well, yes, there is,” he answered presently. “There’s one thing I wished to ask you, Bella. You’ve been an awfully good friend to me, and now I want you more than ever.”

“I’ll do anything you wish,” she said, with beating heart.

“I’m afraid it’s very selfish. But I don’t want you to go away this winter—in case anything happened. You know my sister died three months after the first symptoms were noticed.”

“I’d do so much more for you than that.”

She placed her hands on his shoulders, and gazed into his blue, sad eyes; searchingly she scrutinized his face, paler than ever and more exquisitely transparent, and his soft mouth, tremulous still with the horror of death. She remembered his mouth and his eyes when they were merry with boyish laughter and his cheeks flushed with excitement at his own gay rhetoric. Then she looked down.

“I wonder if you could bring yourself to marry me.”

Although her eyes were turned away, she knew that he blushed deeply, and hopelessly, full of shame, she dropped her hands. It seemed an intolerable time before he answered.

“I’m not so selfish as all that,” he whispered, his voice trembling.

“Yes, I was afraid the thought would disgust you,” she said, with a sob.

“Bella, how can you say that! Don’t you know that I should have been proud? Don’t you know that you’re the only woman I’ve ever liked? But I won’t let you sacrifice yourself for me. I’ve seen people die of consumption, and I know the ghastliness of it. D’you think I would let you nurse me and do all the odious things that are needful? And you might get ill, too. Oh no, Bella, don’t think me ungrateful, but I couldn’t marry you.”

“D’you think it would be a sacrifice to me?” she asked in tragic tones. “My poor boy, you never saw that I loved you with all my soul, and when you were so happy and careless my heart felt as though it would break because I was old and plain. You’ve forgotten that one day you kissed my hands: it was only a joke to you, but when you’d gone I cried bitterly. You’d never have done it except that you thought I was forty and it couldn’t matter. And when you took my arm sometimes I felt sick with love. And now, I suppose, you utterly despise me.”

She broke down, sobbing; but in a little while impatiently she brushed away her tears and faced him with a sort of despairing pride.

“After, all what am I but a middle-aged woman? I’ve never been even pretty, and my mind is narrow because I’ve lived all my life among paltry things, and I’m stupid and dull. Why should I think you would care to marry me because I love you like a fool?”

“Oh, Bella, Bella, don’t say that. You break my heart.”

“And you thought it was self-sacrifice on my part! I was only asking you because I wanted to be with you every moment—if you fell ill, I couldn’t bear that anyone else should touch you. I’ve been lonely in my life, so dreadfully lonely, and I was making one last bid for happiness.”

She sank into a chair and hid her face, but Herbert, kneeling beside her, took her hands.

“Look at me, Bella.... I thought you only suggested it because you know I ought to leave the bank, and have someone to look after me. I never suspected that you really cared for me. And I’m ashamed because I was blind. But don’t you know that there’s nothing I should like better than to be with you always? Then I should care nothing for my illness, because it would have brought me a greater happiness than I ever dared to hope for. Bella, if you don’t mind that I’m poor and ill and unworthy of you, will you marry me?”

On a sudden she stopped in the middle of her silent crying and a radiant smile chased away the sorrow. For one moment, while she realized the meaning of his words, she looked at him half in doubt; then, bending down, she kissed his hands.

“Oh, my dearest, you’ve made me so happy.”

When at last they went to Miss Ley, Bella’s tear-filled eyes shone with unspeakable bliss; and the elder woman, looking at Herbert, no longer wondered at her cousin’s infatuation, for his face, so candid and sweet, was like the face of a young beautiful saint in an old picture.

XII

It was Frank’s habit after his work at the hospital to have tea with Miss Ley, but when, that afternoon, he arrived at Old Queen Street she was surprised at the pallor of his face, from which shone with unnatural brilliancy the dark eyes. They seemed larger than ever she had seen them, and his harassed look told her that he was suffering: the square jaw was set firmly, as though with strong deliberation he held himself in hand.

“You’re so late,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”

“I’m very tired,” he answered, in a strained voice.

She poured out tea, and while he ate and drank, to give him opportunity to collect himself, read the evening paper. With admirable insight, she, alone of his friends, had divined Frank’s emotional temper; and though never hinting at the knowledge, for she was aware it humiliated him to have so little self-control, could in consequence handle him with very subtle skill. Presently fetching his tobacco, for they sat in the library, he lit his pipe; he blew the smoke from his mouth in heavy clouds.

“Is it very comforting?” asked Miss Ley, smiling.

“Very!”

Waiting till he was ready to speak, she returned to her news-sheet, and though she felt his eyes rest curiously upon her, took no notice.

“I wish to goodness you’d put that paper down,” he cried at last irritably.

With a faint smile she did as he suggested.

“Have you had a very hard day, Frank?”

“Oh, it was awful!” he answered. “I don’t know why, but it all seemed to have a greater meaning for me than ever before. I couldn’t get out of my head the utter misery of that poor boy when I told him his chest was affected.”

“I wish the whole thing weren’t so ordinary,” murmured Miss Ley. “The consumptive poet and the devoted old maid! It’s so fearfully hackneyed. But the gods have no originality; they always make their æsthetic effects by confounding the tragic and the commonplace. . . . I suppose you’re quite certain he has phthisis?”

“I found bacilli in the sputum. Where are they both now?”

“Bella took him back to Tercanbury, and I’ve promised to follow on Monday. She’s going to marry the boy!”

“What!” cried Frank.

“She wants to take him abroad. Don’t you think if he winters in the South Nature will have some chance with him?”

“In nine cases out of ten Nature doesn’t want to cure a man; she wants to put him in his coffin.”

Rising from his chair, Frank walked restlessly up and down the room. On a sudden he stopped short in front of Miss Ley.

“D’you remember your friend Mr. Farley telling us the other day that pain ennobles a man? I should like to conduct him through the wards of a hospital.”

“I have no doubt that when he has a tooth drawn Mr. Farley takes care that gas should be properly administered.”

“I suppose divines can only justify pain by ascribing to it elevation of character,” cried Frank savagely. “If they weren’t so ignorant they’d know it requires no justification. You might as well assert that a danger-signal elevates a train; for, after all, pain is nothing more than an indication by the nerves that the organism is in circumstances hurtful to it.”

“Don’t lecture me, Frank, there’s a dear!” murmured Miss Ley mildly.

“But if that man had seen as much pain as I have he’d know that it doesn’t refine; it brutalizes. It makes, people self-absorbed and selfish—you can’t imagine the frightful egoism of physical suffering—querulous, impatient, unjust, greedy. I could name a score of petty vices that it engenders, but not a single virtue. . . . Oh, Miss Ley, when I look at all the misery of the world I am so thankful I don’t believe in God.”

As though seeking to break through the iron bars of the flesh, like a wild beast unquietly he paced the room.

“For years I’ve toiled night and day to distinguish truth from falsehood; I want to be clear about my actions, I want to walk with sure feet; but I find myself in a labyrinth of quicksands. I can see no meaning in the world, and sometimes I despair; it seems as senseless as a madman’s dream. After all, what does it tend to, the effort and the struggle, hope, love, success, failure, birth, death? Man emerged from savagery merely because he was fiercer than the tiger and more cunning than the ape; and nothing seems to me less probable than that humanity advances to any ideal condition. We believe in progress, but progress is nothing but change!”

“I confess,” interrupted Miss Ley, “that I sometimes ask myself how it benefits the Japanese that they have assumed the tall-hat and the trousers of Western civilization. I wonder if the Malays in their forests or the Kanakas on their islands have cause vastly to envy the London slummer.”

“What does it all end in?” pursued Frank, too much absorbed in his own thoughts to listen, “Where is the use of it? For all my labour I haven’t the shadow of an answer. And even yet I don’t know what is good and what is evil, what is high and what is low; I don’t even know if the words have any sense in them. Sometimes men seem to me cripples ever seeking to hide their deformity, huddled in a stuffy room, lit by one smoky taper; and they crowd together to keep warm, and they tremble at every unexpected sound. And d’you think in the course of evolution it was the best and noblest who survived to propagate their species? It was merely the shrewd, the hard, and the strong.”

“It would bore me dreadfully to be so strenuous, dear Frank,” answered Miss Ley, with a slight shrug of the shoulders. “It was a wise man who said that, with regard to the universe, few questions could be asked and none could be answered. In the end we all resign ourselves to the fact, and we find it possible to eat our dinner with no less satisfaction because at the back of our minds stands continually a discreet mark of interrogation. For my part, I think there is as little justification for ascribing an end to the existence of man as there was for the supposition of the Middle Ages, (pardon me if I seem erudite,) that the heavenly bodies moved in circles because that was the most perfect figure; but I assure you that my night’s rest is not in the least impaired. I, too, went through a stormy period in my youth, and if you’ll promise not to think me tedious I’ll tell you about it.”

“Please do,” said Frank.

He sat down, fixing upon her his piercing eyes, and Miss Ley, as though she had given the matter frequent thought, spoke fluently, with ordered ideas and balanced phrase.

“You know, I was reared on the strictest Evangelical principles to believe certain dogmas on pain of eternal damnation, but at twenty, why I scarcely can tell, all I had learnt fell away from me. Faith presumably is a matter of temperament; good-will has nothing to do with it, and when I look back on my ignorance I am astounded that such ill-considered reasons sufficed to destroy the prejudices of so many years. I was certain then that no God existed; but now I make a point of being certain of nothing: it saves trouble. Besides, each time you make up your mind you rob yourself of a subject for cogitation. But theoretically I cannot help thinking that for a quite reasonable view of life it is necessary to be convinced that no immortality of the soul exists.”

“How can a man lead his life uniformly on the earth if he is disturbed by the thought of another life to come?” broke in Frank eagerly. “God is a force throwing man’s centre of gravity out of his own body.”

“We agreed, Frank, that I was to expound _my_ views,” answered Miss Ley, with some asperity, for interruption she never suffered easily.

“Forgive me,” said Frank, smiling.

“But I agree that your remark, though ill-timed, was not without point,” she proceeded deliberately. “When man is assured that the insignificant planet on which he lives, and the time, are everything so far as he is individually concerned, he can look about him and order himself according to the surroundings. He is a chess-player with his definite number of pieces, capable of definite moves; and none asks why the castle must run straight, but the bishop obliquely. These things are to be accepted, and with these rules, careless of what may befall when the game is finished, the wise man plays—not to win, for that is impossible, but to make a good fight of it. And if he is wise indeed he will never forget that, after all, it is but a game, and therefore not to be taken too seriously.”

Miss Ley paused, thinking it high time to give Frank opportunity for some remark, but since he remained silent she went on slowly.

“I think the most valuable thing I have learnt in my life is that there is so much to say on both sides of every question that there is little to choose between them. It has made me tolerant, so that I can listen with equal interest to you and to my cousin Algernon. After all, how can I tell whether Truth has one shape only, or many? In how many errors does she linger with a smiling face and insufficient raiment; in what contrary and irreconcilable places does she dwell, more wilful than April winds, more whimsical than the Will-o-the-wisp! My art and science is to live. It is an argument of weak men to say that all things are vanity because the pleasure of them is ephemeral: it may console the beggar to look upon the tomb of kings, but then he must be a fool as well. The pleasures of life are illusion, but when pessimists complain that human delights are negligible because they are unreal, they talk absurdly; for reality none knows, and few care about: our only interest is with illusion. How foolish is it to say that the mirage in the desert is not beautiful merely because it is an atmospheric effect!”

“Is life, then, nothing but a voyage which a man takes, bound nowhither and tossed perpetually upon a treacherous sea?”

“Not quite. Storms don’t rage continually, nor is the wind for ever boisterous: sometimes it blows fair and strong, so that the ship leaps forward with animal delight; the mariner exults in his skilful power and in the joy of the limitless horizon. Sometimes the sea is placid like a sleeping youth, and the scented air, balmy and fresh, fills the heart with lazy pleasure. The ocean has its countless mysteries, its thoughts and manifold emotions. Why on earth should you not look upon the passage as a pleasure-trip, whereon the rough weather must necessarily be taken with the smooth—looking regretlessly towards the end, but joyful even amid hurricane or gale in the recollection of happy, easy days? Why not abandon life, saying: I have had evil fortune and good, and the pains were compensated by the pleasures; and though my journey, with all its perils, has led me nowhither, though I return tired and old to the port whence with my many hopes I started, I am content to have lived.”

“And so, for all your experience, your study, and your thought, you’ve found absolutely no meaning,” cried Frank, profoundly discouraged.

“I invented a meaning of sorts; like a critic explaining a symbolical picture, or a school-boy construing a passage he doesn’t at all understand, I at least made the words hang sensibly together. I aimed at happiness, and I think, on the whole, I’ve found it. I lived according to my instincts, and sought every emotion that my senses offered; I turned away deliberately from what was ugly and tedious, fixing my eyes with all my soul on Beauty—seen, I hope, with a discreet appreciation of the Ridiculous. I never troubled myself much with current notions of good and evil, for I knew they were merely relative, but strove always to order my life so that to my eyes at least it should form a graceful pattern on the dark inane.”

Miss Ley stopped, and a whimsical smile flickered across her face.

“But I should tell you that, like Mr. Shandy, who was so long about his treatise on the education of his son that by the time it was finished Tristram’s growth made it useless, I did not formulate my philosophy till it was too late to set much of it in practice.”

“Dinner is served, madam,” said the butler, coming into the room.

“By Jove!” cried Frank, springing up, “I had no idea it was so late.”

“But you’re going to stay? I think you’ll find a place laid for you.”

“I’ve ordered my dinner at home.”

“I’m sure it won’t be so good as mine.”

“I never saw anyone quite so conceited as you about the excellence of your cook, Miss Ley.”

“Just as it is far easier for a man to be a philosopher than a gentleman, my dear, it is less difficult to cultivate a Christian disposition than good cooking.”

They went downstairs, and Miss Ley ordered a bottle of Miss Dwarris’ champagne to be opened. She had a cynical belief in the efficacy of a square meal to relieve most spiritual torments; but besides, heroically—for she was an indolent woman—took pains to amuse her guest. She talked of many things, gaily and tenderly, while Frank, the dinner finished, smoked innumerable pipes. At last Big Ben struck twelve, and cheerful now, resigned to philosophic doubt, he rose to his feet. Frank took both Miss Ley’s hands.

“You’re a jewel of a woman. I was quite wretched when I came, and you’ve put new life into me.”

“Not I!” she cried. “The chocolate souffle and the champagne. I have always observed that the human soul is peculiarly susceptible to the culinary art. Personally, I never feel so spiritual as when I’ve slightly overeaten myself. I wish you wouldn’t squeeze my hands.”

“You’re the only woman I know who’s as interesting to talk to as a man.”

“Faith, and I believe if I were twenty years younger the child would propose to me!”

“You have only to say the word, and I’ll lead you to the altar.”

“I’m a proud woman this day to get an offer of marriage in my fifty-seventh year. But where, my dear, if I married you, would you go to have tea in the afternoon?”

Frank laughed, but in his voice when he answered there was something very like a sob.

“You’re a dear, kind thing. And I’m sure I shall never be half so devoted to any other woman as I am to you.”

The emotion must have been catching, for Miss Ley’s tones had not their usual cold steadiness.

“Don’t be a drivelling idiot, my dear!” she answered, and when the door was closed behind him added to herself, half in irritation: “Bless the boy, I wish I were his mother.”

XIII

Two days later Miss Ley duly travelled down to Tercanbury, and was met at the station by Bella, who told her that, according to their arrangement, no mention had yet been made of the proposed marriage. She had announced merely that Herbert Field, whom she desired to make acquainted with her father, would come to tea that day. The Dean welcomed Miss Ley with joy.

“It’s very gracious and charming of you to shed your light on our provincial darkness, my dear,” he exclaimed, taking her hand.

“Don’t hold my hand, Algernon. I had a proposal of marriage on Saturday night, and I’m palpitating still.”

“Oh, Mary, do tell us all about it,” cried Miss Langton, with delight.

“I shan’t! I told Algernon simply because I notice the average man has no consideration at all for a single woman unless she’s marriageable.”

“But why didn’t you bring your friend, Dr. Hurrell?” asked the Dean. “Only to-day I bought a Latin herbary, written in the seventeenth century, which I’m sure would interest him.”

“As if he’d understand a word of it, my dear Algernon! Besides, I thought it quite enough for you to snatch one brand at a time from the burning.”

“Ah, Polly, I shouldn’t like to stand in your shoes on the Last Day,” he answered, with twinkling eyes.

“I very much doubt if you could get into them,” replied Miss Ley quickly, protruding a small and elegant foot.

“The sin of pride, my dear!” said the Dean, shaking his finger at her. “Pride of all sorts, for not Lucifer himself was more satisfied with the excellence of his understanding.”

“I don’t care, Algernon—if I frizzle, I frizzle,” laughed Miss Ley. “I know I’m no fool, and after all, my gloves _are_ sixes.”

Tea was brought in, and presently Herbert Field made his appearance. The Dean, who liked all young things, shook hands with him warmly.

“I’ve heard about you from Bella. I don’t know why she has never before allowed me to set eyes on you.”

He talked to the boy about his old school, and finding him interested in the antiquities of Tercanbury, gave way to his own enthusiasm. He fetched from his study certain lately-acquired plates of old churches in that city, and Bella watched the pair, the youth’s fair head contrasting with her father’s white hair and benign face, bending over them under the lamp. She was delighted with the friendship that seemed about to spring up between them, and wished with all her heart that they might thus spend many charming evenings interchanging views on books and pictures; while she sat by tending them as though both were her children.

“Now that you’ve broken the ice, you must come again often,” said the Dean, holding the boy’s hand, when Herbert bade him good-bye. “I must show you my library; and, if you’re fond of old books, I dare say there are some I have in duplicate which you might care to have.”

“It’s very kind of you,” answered Herbert, flushing, for the Dean’s old-fashioned courtesy was a little overwhelming, and the stately kindness hard to bear when soon he must distress him so enormously by taking away his daughter.

When Herbert was gone, the Dean said he would return to his study to finish an article he was preparing for a learned magazine on one of the later Roman orators.

“Would you stay a few minutes longer, father?” said Bella; “I have something I wish to talk to you about.”

“Certainly, my dear,” he replied, sitting down. He turned with a quiet smile to Miss Ley. “When Bella used to announce an important communication, my heart sank to my boots, for I always expected she would inform me of her approaching marriage; but I bear it now with equanimity, because it is invariably only to wheedle me into getting a boy into the choir who has every qualification except a voice, or to provide a home for some deserving widow.”

“D’you think I’m too old to marry now?” asked Bella, smiling.

“My dear, for twenty years you’ve refused the most eligible aspirants. Shall we tell Polly about the last one?”

“She wouldn’t tell us.”

“Only two months ago one of our Canons solemnly asked me whether he might pay his addresses to Bella, But she wouldn’t hear of it, because he had seven children by his first wife.”

“He was a singularly dull man into the bargain,” answered Bella.

“Nonsense, my dear; he has a first edition of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_.”

“Did you like Mr. Field?” asked Bella quietly.

“Very much,” answered the Dean. “He seems a quiet, modest young man.”

“I’m glad of that, father, because I’m engaged to be married to him.”

The Dean gasped; the shock was so great that for a moment he could not speak, and then he began to tremble. Miss Langton watched him anxiously.

“It’s impossible, Bella,” he muttered at last. “You must be joking.”

“Why?”

“He’s twenty years younger than you.”

“Yes, that’s true. I should never have thought of marriage only he has consumption. I want to be his nurse more than his wife.”

“But he isn’t a gentleman,” said the Dean, looking at her gravely.

“Father, how can you say that!” cried Bella indignantly, reddening. “I’ve never met anyone with such a gentle soul. He’s all goodness and purity.”

“Women know nothing about such things. They can never tell if a man’s a gentleman or not. What was his father?”

“His father was a tradesman. But kind hearts are more than coronets.”

The Dean tightened his lips. He had recovered now from his surprise, and stood before Bella, stern and cold.

“I dare say. But a kind heart doesn’t make a gentleman. Polly can tell you that as well as I.”

“Quite the biggest scoundrel I ever knew was Lord William Heather,” said Miss Ley reflectively. “He was a cheat and a blackmailer. He had committed every crime, great and mean, and kept out of prison only by miracle and the influence of his family; yet no one for a moment could deny that to his very finger-tips he was a gentleman. I never saw a better in my life. Gentility has nothing whatever to do with the Ten Commandments.”

“Mary, don’t go against me, too,” cried Bella. “I want your help.” She went up to the Dean and took his hands. “Father dear, this isn’t a rash whim of mine. I’ve considered it gravely, and I promise you that my motives are neither low nor unworthy. I would give the world not to cause you pain, and if I do, it’s only because I think my duty here is clear. I beg you to give me your consent, and I beg you to remember that for many years I’ve devoted myself to your comfort.”

The Dean released his hands.

“I didn’t know that you looked upon it as an irksome task,” he answered frigidly, “And why do you suppose this man wants to marry you?” He seized Bella’s arm, and with energy surprising in one of so fragile appearance, led her to the glass. “Look at yourself. Is it natural for a boy to wish to marry a woman old enough to be his mother?” With hard eyes he scrutinized his daughter’s face and the wrinkles about her mouth. “Look at your hands; they’re almost the hands of an old woman. I was mistaken in your friend; he can be nothing better than an unscrupulous fortune-hunter.”

Bella turned away with a groan; she could not understand that her father, gentleness itself, should suddenly be so horribly cruel.

“I know I’m old and plain,” she cried, “and I don’t think a moment that Herbert loves me. He would never have thought of marrying me unless I had asked him. But I can only save his life by taking him abroad.”

For a while the Dean looked down in deep thought.

“If he’s ill and must go abroad, Bella, I will willingly give him all the money he needs.”

“But I love him, father,” she answered, with a blush.

“Do you mean that seriously?”

“Yes.”

Then heavy tears came to his eyes, and ran slowly down his cheeks; the hardness was gone out of his voice when he answered, and it was half choked with sobs.

“Would you leave me alone, Bella? Can’t you wait till I’m dead? I shan’t last very much longer.”

“Oh, father, don’t say that. Heaven knows I don’t want to pain you. It tears my heart to think of leaving you. Let me marry him, and come with us to Italy. We may be very happy all three of us.”

But at this the Dean drew back from Bella’s appealing hands, and brushing away his tears, drew himself up sternly.

“No, I will never do that, Bella. I’ve tried to remember all my life that first of all I’m a Christian minister, but pride of race is in my blood. I’m proud of my stock, and in my small way I’ve sought to add honour to it. By marrying this man you dishonour yourself and you dishonour me. How can you suffer to change the glorious name you bear for that of a miserable little counter-jumper! I have no right to ask you to refrain from marriage because I’m old and helpless, and you’ve made me utterly dependent on you, but I have a right to ask you not to disgrace the name of my family.”

Miss Ley had never before seen such severity in the gentle Dean; an unwonted fire had driven away the delightful sweetness which was his most charming trait, and two red spots burned on his cheeks. His very voice was harsh, and he held himself upright, austere and cold, like some Roman senator conscious of his royal responsibility. But Bella was unmoved.

“I’m very sorry, father, that you should look at it in such a narrow way. I can never think it dishonourable to take the name of the man I love. I’m afraid that if you won’t consent I must still do as I think right.”

He gave her a long and searching look.

“It’s a very grave step absolutely to disobey your father, Bella. I think it’s the first time in your life.”

“I realize that.”

“Then let me tell you that if you leave the Deanery to marry this wretched tradesman, neither you nor he shall ever enter it again.”

“You must do as you think fit, father. I shall follow my husband.”

Slowly the Dean walked out of the room.

“He’ll never change his mind,” said Bella in despair, turning to Miss Ley. “He refused ever to see Bertha Ley because she married a farmer. His manner is so gentle, so sweet, that you might think his heart overflowed with humility, but he’s right when he says pride of race is in his blood. I think I alone know how enormous it is in him.”

“What will you do now?” asked Miss Ley.

“What can I do? It means that I must choose between Herbert and my father; and Herbert needs me most.”

They did not see the Dean again till dinner, when he came down, dressed as was his fastidious habit, with silk stockings and buckled shoes, in the full array of his degree. He sat at the table silently, scarcely eating, and paid no attention to the conversation, forced and trivial, between Bella and Miss Ley. Now and then a heavy tear rolled down his cheek. He was a man of methodical habits, and till ten o’clock always remained in the drawing-room; on this occasion, therefore, as on others, he sat down and took up the _Guardian_, but Bella saw that he did not read, since for an hour his gaze was fixed vacantly on the same place, and now and then he drew out a handkerchief to dry his eyes. When the clock struck he rose, and his face was worn and gray with utter wretchedness.

“Good-night, Polly,” he said. “I hope Bella has seen that you have everything you require.”

He walked towards the door, but Miss Langton stopped him.

“You’re not going without kissing me, father? You know it cuts my heart to make you so unhappy.”

“I don’t think we need discuss the matter again, Bella,” he answered coldly. “As you reminded me, you are of an age to decide your own affairs. I have nothing more to say, but I shall remain steadfast to my resolution.”

He turned on his heels and closed the door behind him; they heard him lock himself in his study.

“He’s never gone to bed without kissing me before,” said Bella painfully. “Even when he stayed out late, he used to come into my room to bid me good-night. Oh, poor man, how frightfully unhappy I’ve made him!”

She looked at Miss Ley with anguish in her eyes.

“Oh, Mary, how hard it is that in this life you can’t do good to one person without hurting another! Duty so often points in two contrary directions, and the pleasure of doing the one duty is so much less than the pain of neglecting the other.”

“Would you like me to speak to your father?”

“You can do no good. You don’t know what immovable determination lies behind his meek and gentle manner.”

The Dean sat at his study table, his face buried in his hands, and when at last he went to bed, could not sleep, but brooded continually over the change that must occur in all his habits. He knew not what he should do without Bella, but could have reconciled himself to the loss if the youth and station of Herbert Field had not to his mind made the union unnatural and outrageous. He was paler than ever next day, bowed and haggard, and went about the house restlessly, silent, avoiding Bella’s compassionate eyes: with an old man’s weakness, he could not restrain the tears of which he was ashamed, and hid himself that he might not excite his daughter’s pity. Miss Ley attempted to reason with him, but no good came; he was by turns obstinate and imploring.

“She can’t leave me now, Polly,” he said. “Can’t she see how old I am, and how much I want her? Let her wait a little. I don’t want to die alone with strange hands to close my eyes.”

“But you’re not going to die, my dear Algernon. Our family to its uttermost branches has two marked characteristics, pig-headedness and longevity; and you’ll live for another twenty years. After all, Bella has done a great deal for you. Don’t you realize that she wants to live her own life for a little? You haven’t noticed the change in her during the last few years; she’s no longer a girl, but a woman of decided views; and when a spinster develops views there’s the devil to pay, my dear. I always think the one duty of human beings is not to hinder their neighbours in fulfilling themselves. Why don’t you change your mind, and go with them to Italy?”

“I would sooner remain solitary to the end of my days,” he cried, with sudden vehemence. “The women of our family have always married gentlemen. You pretend to despise birth, and consider yourself in consequence broad-minded; but I was brought up with the belief that my ancestors had handed down to me an honoured name, and I must sooner die than disgrace it. In all the temptations of my life I’ve remembered that, and if I’ve been too proud of my race I ask God to forgive me.”

He was immovable; and Miss Ley, to whom the point of view seemed quite ridiculous, turned away with a shrug of the shoulders. A special license had been obtained, and on the following Friday, the day fixed for the marriage, Bella with a heavy heart put on a travelling-dress. They were to take the train immediately after the ceremony, catch the afternoon boat to Calais, and thence travel directly to Milan. The Dean, informed by Miss Ley of the arrangements, had said no word. Before starting for church Bella went to her father’s study to bid him good-bye; she wished to make one more effort to soften him and to gain his forgiveness.

She knocked at the door, but no answer came, and turning the handle, she found it locked.

“May I come in, father?” she cried.

“I’m very busy,” he answered, in a trembling voice.

“Please open the door. I’m just going away. Let me say good-bye to you.”

There was a pause, while Bella waited with beating heart.

“Father,” she called again.

“I tell you I’m very busy. Please don’t disturb me.”

She gave a sob and turned away.

“I think nothing makes one so hard as virtue,” she muttered.

Miss Ley was waiting in the hall, and very quietly the two women walked to the church where the marriage was to take place. Herbert stood at the chancel, and when Bella saw his bright smile of welcome she took courage; she could not doubt that she was acting wisely. Miss Ley gave her away. It was a very matter-of-fact ceremony, but afterwards in the vestry Herbert tenderly kissed his bride; then she gave a little hysterical laugh to choke down her tears.

“Thank heaven it’s over!” she said.

The luggage had preceded them to the station, whither they now walked demurely; soon the train arrived, and the happy pair set off on their long journey. But when the Dean knew that his daughter was gone from his house for good and all, he came out of his study; with aching heart he went to her room and noted the loneliness which seemed to fill it; he went to the drawing-room, and that was bare and empty, too. For a while he sat down, and since none could see, surrendered helplessly to his grief; he asked himself to what he could now look forward, and with joined hands prayed that death might soon release him from his utter misery. Presently, taking his hat, he walked through the cloister, thinking in the cathedral he loved so well to gain at least a measure of peace; but in the transept his eye caught the large plate of polished brass on which were graven the names of all the Deans his predecessors: first there were strange Saxon names, half mythical in appearance, and then the sonorous names of Norman priests, names of divines remembered still in the stately annals of the English Church, great preachers, scholars, statesmen; and lastly his own. And the fire came to his cheeks, anger inflamed him, when he thought that his name, not a whit behind the proudest of them all in dignity and honour, must henceforth be utterly shameful.

At luncheon the Dean, exerting himself to shake off his despondency, spoke with Miss Ley of indifferent topics. In a little while she glanced at the clock.

“Bella must be just leaving Dover now,” she said.

“I would rather you didn’t talk to me of her, Polly,” he answered, with a shaking voice which he strove to render firm. “I must try to forget that I ever had a daughter.”

“I believe that the most deep-rooted of human passions is that which makes men cut off their nose to spite their face,” she answered dryly.

Afterwards Miss Ley expressed a wish to drive over to Leanham and Court Leys, and invited the Dean to accompany her, but on his refusal ordered the carriage to be ready at three. For several years she had not seen the house wherein her ancestors, since the time of George II., had been born; nor was it without a discreet emotion that she recognised the well-known fields, the flat marshes, and the shining sea, which at that spot, to her partial eyes, had a peculiar charm not to be found elsewhere. She drove to Leanham Church, and getting the key, walked in to look at the stones and brasses which preserved the memory of her forebears: a new tablet recorded the birth, death, and qualities of Edward Craddock, and underneath a space was left for the name of his widow. She could not repress a sigh when she remembered that herself and Bertha, wife of the said Edward Craddock, would bring that long list to an end: after them the chapter of the Family of Ley would be closed for ever, and the pages of Burke know them no more.

“Algernon can say what he likes,” she muttered, “but they were a dull lot. Families, like nations, only grow interesting in their decadence.”

Driving on, she came to Court Leys, which stood as ever white and square, as though placed upon the ground like a house of cards. Closed since the death of Craddock, husband to her niece, it wore a desolate and forsaken look; the trim and well-mown lawns were choked with weeds, and the flower-beds bare of flowers; the closed gates, the shuttered windows, gave it a sinister appearance, and with a shudder Miss Ley turned away. She bade the coachman go back to Tercanbury, and deep in meditation, paid no more attention to the surrounding scenes. She started at hearing her name called in tones of astonishment, and noticed that Miss Glover, sister to the Vicar of Leanham, was staring after her. She stopped the carriage, and Miss Glover quickly walked up.

“Who ever thought of seeing you, Miss Ley? It’s quite like old times.”

Now, don’t gush, my dear. I’m staying with my cousin at the Deanery, and I thought I would come over and see if Court Leys still stood in its place.”

“Oh, Miss Ley, you must be very much upset. The poor Dean, they say he’s quite broken-hearted! You know young Field’s father was a linen-draper at Blackstable.”

“It looks as if the _mésalliance_ were endemic in my family. You must never be surprised to hear that I have married my butler, a most respectable man.”

“Oh, but poor Edward was different, and he turned out so well. Where is Bertha now? She never writes.”

“I believe she’s in Italy. I mean her to marry Frank Hurrell, the son of old Dr. Hurrell of Ferne.”

“Oh, but, Miss Ley, will she?”

“She’s never set eyes on him yet,” answered Miss Ley, smiling dryly, “But they’d suit one another admirably.”

“Doesn’t it make you feel sad to see the old house shut up?”

“My dear, I take care never to give way to regret, which is nearly as sinful as repentance.”

“I don’t understand you,” answered Miss Glover. “I don’t believe it means anything to you that, as far as ever you can see, it’s Ley land.”

“There you wrong me. I do feel a certain satisfaction in revisiting the place; it makes me so glad that I live somewhere else. But I dare say it’s a fine thing to be in the country on your own land, even if you’re only a woman. I like to feel that my roots are here. When I look round, I can hardly resist the temptation to take off my clothes and roll in a ploughed field.”

“I hope you won’t, Miss Ley,” answered Fanny Glover, somewhat shocked; “it would look so odd.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, my dear,” smiled the other. “You’re so innocent that each time I see you I expect to find wings sprouting on your shoulders.”

“I see you’re just the same as ever.”

“Pardon me, I grow distinctly younger every year. Upon my word, sometimes I don’t feel more than eighteen.”

Then Miss Glover made the only repartee of her life.

“I confess I think you look quite twenty-five, Miss Ley,” she replied with a grim smile.

“You impudent creature!” laughed the other, and, telling the coachman to drive on, with a wave of the hand bade good-bye to Miss Glover, the scenes of her youth, and the fields which seemed part of her very blood and her bones.

Since the Dean somewhat curtly declined her offer to stay longer with him, Miss Ley set out next day for London. But a curious unrest had seized her, and she began much to regret her determination to spend the winter in England; Mrs. Murray was already gone to Rome, and the sight of Bella leaving for the Continent had excited still more in Miss Ley’s veins the travel-fever. She pictured to herself all the little delightful bothers of the Custom House, the mustiness of hotel ’buses, the sweet tediousness of long journeys by train, the grateful discomforts of foreign hostelries; she thought with dazzled eyes of the dingy grayness of Boulogne, and her nostrils inhaled the well-known odours of the port and station. Her nerves tingled with eagerness to forsake her house, her servants, and to plunge into the charming freedom of the idle tourist. But the train she was in stopped at Rochester, and her abstracted gaze fixed suddenly on that scene which, she remembered, Basil Kent had once highly extolled: the sky with its massive clouds was sombre, and its restfulness was mirrored on the fiat surface of the Medway; tall chimneys belched winding smoke, a sinuous pattern against the grayness, and the low factory buildings were white with dust; to the observant there was indeed a decorative quality, recalling in its economy of line, in its subdued and careful colour, the elegance of a Japanese print.

Miss Ley sprang up.

“Give me my dressing-bag,” she said to her astonished maid. “You can go on to London. I shall stay here.”

“Alone, madam?”

“D’you think anyone will run away with me! Be quick, or I shall be taken on.”

She seized her bag, jumped out of the carriage, and when the train steamed away gave a great sigh of relief; it quietened her nerves to be alone in a strange town, where none knew her, and walking downstairs she felt a most curious exhilaration. She surveyed the hotel ’buses, chose the most elaborate, and drove off.

With characteristic wilfulness, Miss Ley set no great store on the more celebrated objects that tourists visited; she had an idea that a work of art could arouse but a limited amount of enthusiasm, and this, with such as were world-renowned, seemed exhausted before ever she came to them. On the Continent, when she visited a fresh town, it was her practice to wander at random, watching the people, and nothing delighted her more than to discover some neglected garden or a decorated doorway, which the good Baedeker, carefully left at home, did not mention. That afternoon, then, in the lamplight, the inhabitants of Rochester might have seen a little old woman, plainly dressed, sauntering idly down the High Street, observing with keen eyes, amused and tolerant, and upborne, evidently, by a feeling of great self-satisfaction. At that moment the house in Old Queen Street seemed a prison, of which the faithful butler was head-gaoler; and the admirable dinner, all prepared, was more abhorrent than skilly and hard bread.

Presently, growing tired, Miss Ley returned to the hotel, and after resting went down to the dining-room. The waiter placed her at a little table, and while waiting for dinner to be brought she played absently with the Renaissance jewel which never left her. It had not yet occurred to her to examine the people who sat in the large room, and now, slowly raising her eyes, she saw fixed upon her, with a terrified expression, those of—Mrs. Castillyon; her face was livid with anxiety. At first Miss Ley did not understand, but then she perceived that Reggie Bassett was there also. No sign of recognition passed between the two women; Mrs. Castillyon looked down, and with scarcely a movement of the lips, spoke to Reggie. He started, and instinctively was about to turn round, but a quick word from his neighbour prevented him. Though seated some way from Miss Ley, they spoke in hurried whispers, as though afraid the very air should hear them. Miss Ley curiously glanced up once more, and once more Mrs. Castillyon’s eyes were hastily lowered. The ghastly pallor of her face was such that Miss Ley thought she would faint. Reggie poured out a tumbler of champagne, which Mrs. Castillyon quickly drank.

“I don’t think they’ll have a very pleasant dinner,” murmured the elderly spinster, repressing a smile. “I wonder why on earth they chose Rochester.”

Then, mentally, she abused Frank for not telling her what she felt certain he very well knew. Indeed, Miss Ley was scarcely less confused than Mrs. Castillyon, for she had no idea there existed such a relationship between the pair as to occasion a visit to the country from Saturday to Monday. But she put two and two together. She pursed her lips when she remembered that Paul Castillyon was at that time in the North of England speaking at a political meeting, and again smiled quietly to herself. She was devoured with eagerness to know how her neighbours would conduct themselves, for it always amused her to see in what manner people acted in untoward circumstances. She appeared not to look at them, but was able, notwithstanding, to note the hurried colloquy, followed by an uneasy silence, with which they finished their meal. It could not be denied that Miss Ley ate her dinner not only with equanimity, but with added zest.

“I didn’t know they cooked so well in English hotels,” she murmured. She called the waiter. “Can you tell me who that lady is at the fifth table from here?”

“Mrs. Barlow, madam. They only arrived this afternoon.”

“And is the gentleman her husband or her son?”

“Her husband, madam, I think.”

“Pray bring me a newspaper.”

Mrs. Castillyon and Reggie were bound to pass her on their way to the door, and Miss Ley, somewhat ill-naturedly, determined to remain where she was. Her sight was good enough for her to notice a look of utter despair on the pretty woman’s face when a _Westminster Gazette_ accompanied the coffee. Miss Ley arranged it in front of her, and was soon engrossed in the perusal of a leading article.

There was no help, and Mrs. Castillyon was obliged to make the best of it. Reggie got up and strolled out, his eyes glued to the floor, with a scowl on his handsome features which indicated that Mrs. Castillyon would suffer for the mischance. But she was bolder; she walked a few steps behind him, uprightly, with a swaying movement of the hips that was habitual to her, and arriving in front of Miss Ley, stopped with a very natural cry of surprise.

“Miss Ley, of all people! How delightful to find you down here!”

She held out her hand with every appearance of joy. Miss Ley smiled coldly.

“I hope I see you well, Mrs. Castillyon.”

“Have you been dining here? How extraordinary that I didn’t see you! But it’s been a day of odd things for me. When I came into the hotel, the first person I ran across was Mr. Bassett. So I asked him to dine with me. It appears he’s staying in the neighbourhood. I wonder you didn’t see him.”

“I did.”

“Why on earth didn’t you come and speak to us? We might all have dined together.”

“What a prodigious fool you must think me, my dear!” drawled Miss Ley, with a mingled expression of scorn and amusement.

At this Mrs. Castillyon started, her face grew on a sudden horribly gray, and her eyes were filled with abject tenor. She had not the strength to continue the pretence on which she had at first counted; she saw, moreover, that it was useless.

“You won’t give me away, Miss Ley,” she whispered, in a tone that fear made scarcely articulate.

“I have no doubt that curiosity is my besetting sin,” answered Miss Ley, “but not indiscretion. Only fools discuss the concrete; the intelligent are more concerned with the abstract.”

“D’you know that Paul’s mother would give half her fortune to know that I was down here with a man? Oh, how glad she’d be of the chance of hounding me down! For God’s sake promise that you’ll never say a word. You don’t want to ruin me, do you?”

“I promise faithfully.”

Mrs. Castillyon gave a sigh of relief that was half a sob of pain. The room was empty except for the waiter clearing away, but she thought he watched suspiciously.

“But now I’m in your power, too,” she groaned. “I wish to God I’d never come here. Why doesn’t that man go away. I feel I could scream at the top of my voice.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” answered Miss Ley quietly.

Valuing nothing so much as self-restraint, she observed Mrs. Castillyon with a certain scorn, for this pitiful exhibition of shame and terror somewhat disgusted her. None was more indifferent to convention than herself, and the marriage tie especially excited her ridicule, but she despised entirely those who disregarded the by-laws of society, yet lacked courage to suffer the results of their boldness: to seek the good opinion of the world, and yet secretly to act counter to its idea of decorum, was a very contemptible hypocrisy. Mrs. Castillyon, divining the sense of Miss Ley’s scrutiny, watched anxiously.

“You must utterly despise me,” she moaned.

“Don’t you think you’d better come back to London with me to-night,” answered Miss Ley, fixing on the terrified woman her cold, stern gray eyes.

Mrs. Castillyon’s buoyant sprightliness had completely disappeared, and she sat before the elder woman haggard and white, like a guilty prisoner before his judge. But at this proposition a faint blush came to her cheeks, and a look of piteous anguish turned down the corners of her mouth.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “Don’t ask me to do that.”

“Why?”

“I daren’t leave him; he’ll go after some of those women in Chatham.”

“Has it come to that already?”

“Oh, Miss Ley, I’ve been so awfully punished. I didn’t mean to go so far. I only wanted to amuse myself—I was so bored; you know what Paul is. Sometimes he was so tedious and dull that I flung myself on my bed and just screamed.”

“All husbands sometimes are tedious and dull,” remarked Miss Ley reflectively, “just as all wives are often peevish. But he’s very fond of you.”

“I think it would break his heart if he knew. I’m so utterly wretched. I couldn’t help myself; I love Reggie with all my soul. And he doesn’t care two straws for me! At first he was flattered because I was what he calls a gentlewoman, but now he only sticks to me because I pay him.”

“What!” cried Miss Ley.

“His mother doesn’t give him enough money, and I manage to help him. He pays all the bills with notes I give, and I pretend to think there’s never any change. Oh, I hate and despise him, and yet if he left me I think I should die.”

Hiding her face in her hands, she wept irresistibly. Miss Ley meditated. In a moment Mrs. Castillyon looked up, clenching her fists.

“And now when I go to him he’ll abuse me like a fishwife because I suggested Rochester. He’ll say it was my fault that we came here. Oh, I wish we’d never come; I knew it was madness. I wish I’d never set eyes on him.”

“But why did you hit upon Rochester?” asked Miss Ley.

“Don’t you remember Basil Kent talked about it? I thought no one ever came here, and Paul said wild-horses wouldn’t drag him. That settled it.”

“Basil must apply his æsthetic theories to less accessible places,” murmured Miss Ley. “For that is why I came also. You know, our place is not far from here, and I’ve been staying at Tercanbury.”

“I forgot that.”

For a little while they remained silent. The hotel dining-room, with most of the lights extinguished, the tables clear but for white table-cloths, was gloomy and depressing. Mrs. Castillyon shuddered as painfully she took in the scene, and dimly felt that this passion, which had seemed so wonderful, in Miss Ley’s eyes must appear most sordid and mean.

“Can’t you help me at all?” she moaned.

“Why don’t you break with Reggie altogether?” asked Miss Ley. “I know him pretty well, and I don’t think he will ever bring you much happiness.”

“I wish I had the strength.”

Miss Ley gently placed her hand on the thin, jewelled fingers of the unhappy woman.

“Let me take you up to London to-night, my dear.”

Mrs. Castillyon looked at her with tear-filled eyes.

“Not to-night,” she begged. “Give me till Monday, and then I’ll break with him altogether.”

“It must be now or never. Don’t you think it had better be now?”

None would have thought that Miss Ley’s cold voice was capable of such persuasive tenderness.

“Very well,” said Mrs. Castillyon, utterly exhausted. “I’ll go and tell Reggie.”

“If he raises any objection, say that I make it a condition of holding my tongue.”

“Much he’ll care!” replied Mrs. Castillyon, with a sob of anger.

She went away, but immediately returned.

“He’s gone,” she said.

“Gone?”

“Without a word. All the things are out of his room. He’s always been a coward, and he’s just run away.”

“And left you to pay the bill. How like dear Reggie!”

“You’re right, Miss Ley: no good can come of the whole thing. This is the end, I’ll drop him. Take me up to London, and I promise you I’ll never see him again. I will try from now to do my duty to Paul.”

Their traps were soon collected, and they caught the last train to town. Mrs. Castillyon sat in the corner of the carriage, her face woebegone and white against the blue cushions; she looked out into the night and never spoke. Her companion meditated.

“I wonder what there is in respectability,” she thought, “that I should take such pains to lead back that woman to its dull, complacent paths. She’s a poor creature, and I don’t suppose she’s worth the trouble; and I haven’t seen Rochester after all. But I must take great care, I’m becoming quite a censor of morals, and soon I shall grow positively tedious.”

She glanced at the pretty woman, looking then so old and worn, the powder on her cheeks emphasizing their wan hollowness. She was crying silently.

“I wonder if that beast Frank knew all the time, and basely kept the secret.”

When at last they drew near London, Mrs. Castillyon roused herself. She turned to her friend with a sort of despairing scorn.

“You’re fond of aphorisms, Miss Ley,” she said. “Here’s one that I’ve found out for myself: One can despise no one so intensely as the person one loves with all one’s heart.”

“Frank can say what he likes,” answered the other, “but there’s nothing like mortal pain for making people entertaining.”

A few days later Miss Ley, who prided herself that she made plans only for the pleasure of breaking them, started for Italy.