PART II

I

Miss Ley returned to England at the end of February. Unlike the most of her compatriots, she did not go abroad to see the friends with whom she spent much time at home; and though Bella and Herbert Field were at Naples, Mrs. Murray in Rome, she took care systematically to avoid them. Rather was it her practice to cultivate chance acquaintance, for she thought the English in foreign lands betrayed their idiosyncrasies with a pleasant and edifying frankness. In Venice, for example, or at Capri, the delectable isle, romance might be seized as it were in the act, and all manner of oddities were displayed with a most diverting effrontery. In those places you meet middle-aged pairs, uncertainly related, whose vehement adventures startled the decorum of a previous generation. You discover how queer may be the most conventional, how ordinary the most eccentric. Miss Ley, with her discreet knack for extracting confidence, after her own staid fashion enjoyed herself immensely. She listened to the strange confessions of men who for their souls’ sake had abandoned the greatness of the world, and now spoke of their past zeal with indulgent irony; of women who for love had been willing to break down the very pillars of heaven, and now shrugged their shoulders in amused recollection of passion long since dead.

“Well, what have you fresh to tell me?” asked Frank, having met Miss Ley at Victoria, when he sat down to dinner in Old Queen Street.

“Nothing much. But I’ve noticed that when pleasure has exhausted a man he’s convinced that he has exhausted pleasure; then he tells you gravely that nothing can satisfy the human heart.”

But Frank had more important news than this, for Jenny, a week before, was delivered of a still-born child, and had been so ill that it was thought she could not recover. Now, however, the worst was over, and if nothing untoward befell she might be expected slowly to regain health.

“How does Basil take it?” asked Miss Ley.

“He says very little. He’s grown silent of late, but I’m afraid he’s quite heart-broken. You know how enormously he looked forward to the baby.”

“D’you think he’s fond of his wife?”

“He’s very kind to her. No one could have been gentler than he after the catastrophe. I think she was the more cut up of the two. You see, she looked upon it as the reason of their marriage—and he’s been doing his best to comfort her.”

“I must go down and see them. And now tell me about Mrs. Castillyon.”

“I haven’t set eyes on her for ages.”

Miss Ley observed Frank with deliberation. She wondered if he knew of the affair with Reggie Bassett, but, though eager to discuss it, would not risk to divulge a secret. In point of fact, he was familiar with all the circumstances, but it amused him to counterfeit ignorance that he might see how Miss Ley guided the conversation to the point she wanted. She spoke of the Dean of Tercanbury, of Bella and her husband; then, as though by chance, mentioned Reggie. But the twinkling of Frank’s eyes told her that he was laughing at her stratagem.

“You brute!” she cried. “Why didn’t you tell me all about it, instead of letting me discover the thing by accident?”

“My sex suggests to me certain elementary notions of honour, Miss Ley.”

“You needn’t add priggishness to your other detestable vices. How did you know they were carrying on in this way?”

“The amiable youth told me. There are very few men who can refrain from boasting of their conquests, and certainly Reggie isn’t one of them.”

“You don’t know Hugh Kearon, do you? He’s had affairs all over Europe, and the most notorious was with a foreign Princess who shall be nameless. I think she would have bored him to death if he hadn’t been able to flourish ostentatiously a handkerchief with a royal crown in the corner and a large initial.”

Miss Ley then gave her account of the visit to Rochester, and certainly made of it a very neat and entertaining story.

“And did you think for a moment that this would be the end of the business?” asked Frank, ironically.

“Don’t be spiteful because I hoped for the best.”

“Dear Miss Ley, the bigger blackguard a man is, the more devoted are his lady-loves. It’s only when a man is decent and treats women as if they were human beings that he has a rough time of it.”

“You know nothing about these things, Frank,” retorted Miss Ley. “Pray give me the facts, and the philosophical conclusions I can draw for myself.”

“Well, Reggie has a natural aptitude for dealing with the sex. I heard all about your excursion to Rochester, and went so far as to assure him that you wouldn’t tell his mamma. He perceived that he hadn’t cut a very heroic figure, so he mounted the high horse, and full of virtuous indignation, for a month took no notice whatever of Mrs. Castillyon. Then she wrote most humbly begging him to forgive her; and this, I understand, he graciously did. He came to see me, flung the letter on the table, and said: ‘There, my boy, if anyone asks you, say that what I don’t know about women ain’t worth knowing.’ Two days later he appeared with a gold cigarette-case!”

“What did you say to him?”

“‘One of these days you’ll come the very devil of a cropper.’”

“You showed wisdom and emphasis. I hope with all my heart he will.”

“I don’t imagine things are going very smoothly,” proceeded Frank. “Reggie tells me she leads him a deuce of a life, and he’s growing restive. It appears to be no joke to have a woman desperately in love with you. And then he’s never been on such familiar terms with a person of quality, and he’s shocked by her vulgarity. Her behaviour seems often to outrage his sense of decorum.”

“Isn’t that like an Englishman! He cultivates propriety even in the immoral.”

Then Miss Ley asked Frank about himself, but they had corresponded with diligence, and he had little to tell. The work at Saint Luke’s went on monotonously—lectures to students three times a week, and out-patients on Wednesday and Saturday. People were beginning to come to his consulting-room in Harley Street, and he looked forward, without great enthusiasm, to the future of a fashionable physician.

“And are you in love?”

“You know I shall never permit my affections to wander so long as you remain single,” he answered, laughing.

“Beware I don’t take you at your word and drag you by the hair of your head to the altar. Have I no rival?”

“Well, if you press me, I will confess.”

“Monster, what is her name?”

“_Bilharzia hæmatobi._”

“Good heavens!”

“It’s a parasite I’m studying. I think authorities are all wrong about it. They’ve not got its life-history right, and the stuff they believe about the way people catch it is sheer footle.”

“It doesn’t sound frightfully thrilling to me, and I’m under the impression you’re only trumping it up to conceal some scandalous amour with a ballet-girl.”

Miss Ley’s visit to Barnes seemed welcome neither to Jenny nor to Basil, who looked harassed and unhappy, and only with a visible effort assumed a cheerful manner when he addressed his wife. Jenny was still in bed, very weak and ill, but Miss Ley, who had never before seen her, was surprised at her great beauty; her face, whiter than the pillows against which it rested, had a very touching pathos, and, notwithstanding all that had gone before, that winsome, innocent sweetness which has occasioned the comparison of English maidens to the English rose. The observant woman noticed also the painful, questioning anxiety with which Jenny continually glanced at her husband, as though pitifully dreading some unmerited reproach.

“I hope you like my wife,” said Basil, when he accompanied Miss Ley downstairs.

“Poor thing! She seems to me like a lovely bird imprisoned by fate within the four walls of practical life, who should by rights sing careless songs under the open skies. I’m afraid you’ll be very unkind to her.”

“Why?” he asked, not without resentment.

“My dear, you’ll make her live up to your blue china teapot. The world might be so much happier if people wouldn’t insist on acting up to their principles.”

Mrs. Bush had been hurriedly sent for when Jenny’s condition seemed dangerous, but in her distress and excitement had sought comfort in Basil’s whisky bottle to such an extent that he was obliged to beg her to return to her own home. The scene was not edifying. Surmising an alcoholic tendency, Kent, two or three days after her arrival, locked the sideboard and removed the key. But in a little while the servant came to him.

“If you please, sir, Mrs. Bush says, can she ’ave the whisky; she’s not feelin’ very well.”

“I’ll go to her.”

Mrs. Bush sat in the dining-room with folded hands, doing her utmost to express on a healthy countenance maternal anxiety, indisposition, and ruffled dignity. She was not vastly pleased to see her son-in-law instead of the expected maid.

“Oh, is that you, Basil?” she said. “I can’t find the sideboard key anywhere, and I’m that upset I must ’ave a little drop of something.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you, Mrs. Bush. You’re much better without it.”

“Oh, indeed!” she answered, bristling. “P’raps you know more about me inside feelings than I do myself. I’ll just trouble you to give me the key, young man, and look sharp about it. I’m not a woman to be put upon by anyone, and I tell you straight.”

“I’m very sorry, but I think you’ve had quite enough to drink. Jenny may want you, and you would be wise to keep sober.”

“D’you mean to insinuate that I’ve ’ad more than I can carry?”

“I wouldn’t go quite so far as that,” he answered, smiling.

“Thank you for nothing,” cried Mrs. Bush indignantly. “And I should be obliged if you wouldn’t laugh at me, and I must say it’s very ’eartless with me daughter lying ill in her bedroom. I’m very much upset, and I did think you’d treat me like a lady; but you never ’ave, Mr. Kent—no, not even the first time I come here. Oh, I ’aven’t forgot, so don’t you think I ’ave. A sixpenny ’alfpenny teapot was good enough for me; but when your lady-friend come in out pops the silver, and I don’t believe for a moment it’s real silver. Blood’s all very well, Mr. Kent, but what I say is, give me manners. You’re a nice young feller, you are, to grudge me a little drop of spirits when me poor daughter’s on her death-bed. I wouldn’t stay another minute in this ’ouse if it wasn’t for ’er.”

“I was going to suggest it would be better if you returned to your happy home in Crouch End,” answered Basil, when the good woman stopped to take breath.

“Were you, indeed! Well, we’ll just see what Jenny ’as to say to that. I suppose my daughter is mistress in ’er own ’ouse.”

Mrs. Bush started to her feet and made for the door, but Basil stood with his back against it.

“I can’t allow you to go to her now. I don’t think you’re in a fit state.”

“D’you think I’m going to let you prevent me? Get out of my way, young man.”

Basil, more disgusted than out of temper, looked at the angry creature with a cold scorn which was not easy to stomach.

“I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Bush, but I think you’d better leave this house at once. Fanny will put your things together. I’m going to Jenny’s room, and I forbid you to come to it. I expect you to be gone in half an hour.”

He turned on his heel, leaving Mrs. Bush furious but intimidated. She was so used to have her own way that opposition took her aback, and Basil’s manner did not suggest that he would easily suffer contradiction. But she made up her mind, whatever the consequences, to force her way into Jenny’s room, and there set out her grievance. She had not done repeating to herself what she would say when the servant entered to state that, according to her master’s order, she had packed the things. Jenny’s mother started up indignantly, but pride forbade her to let the maid see she was turned out.

“Quite right, Fanny! This isn’t the ’ouse that a lady would stay in; and I pity you, my dear, for ’aving a master like my son-in-law. You can tell ’im, with my compliments, that he’s no gentleman.”

Jenny, who was asleep, woke at the slamming of the front-door.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Your mother has gone away, dearest. D’you mind?”

She looked at him quickly, divining from knowledge of her parent’s character that some quarrel had occurred, and anxious to see that Basil was not annoyed. She gave him her hand.

“No; I’m glad. I want to be alone with you. I don’t want anyone to come between us.”

He bent down and kissed her, and she put her arms round his neck.

“You’re not angry with me because the baby died?”

“My darling, how could I be?”

“Say that you don’t regret having married me.”

Jenny, realizing by now that Basil had married her only on account of the child, was filled with abject terror; his interests were so different from hers (and she had but gradually come to understand how great was the separation between them) that the longed-for son alone seemed able to preserve to her Basil’s affection. It was the mother he loved, and now he might bitterly repent his haste, for it seemed she had forced marriage upon him by false pretences. The chief tie that bound them was severed, and though with meek gratitude accepting the attentions suggested by his kindness, she asked herself with aching heart what would happen on her recovery.

Time passed, and Jenny, though ever pale and listless, grew strong enough to leave her room. It was proposed that in a little while she should go with her sister for a month to Brighton. Basil’s work prevented him from leaving London for long, but he promised to run down for the week-end. One afternoon he came home in high spirits, having just received from his publishers a letter to say that his book had found favour, and would be issued in the coming spring. It seemed the first step to the renown he sought. He found James Bush, his brother-in-law, seated with Jenny, and, in his elation, greeted him with unusual cordiality; but James lacked his usual facetious flow of conversation, and wore, indeed, a hang-dog air, which at another time would have excited Basil’s attention. He took his leave at once, and then Basil noticed that Jenny was much disturbed. Though he knew nothing for certain, he had an idea that the family of Bush came to his wife when they were in financial straits, but from the beginning had decided that such inevitable claims must be satisfied. He preferred, however, to ignore the help which Jenny gave, and when she asked for some small sum beyond her allowance, handed it without question.

“Why was Jimmie here at this hour?” he asked, carelessly, thinking him bound on some such errand. “I thought he didn’t leave his office till six.”

“Oh, Basil, something awful has happened. I don’t know how to tell you. He’s sacked.”

“I hope he doesn’t want us to keep him,” answered Basil, coldly. “I’m very hard up this year, and all the money I have I want for you.”

Jenny braced herself for a painful effort. She looked away, and her voice trembled.

“I don’t know what’s to be done. He’s got into trouble. Unless he can find a hundred and fifteen pounds in a week, his firm are going to prosecute.”

“What on earth d’you mean, Jenny?”

“Oh, Basil, don’t be angry. I was so ashamed to tell you, I’ve been hiding it for a month; but now I can’t any more. Something went wrong with his accounts.”

“D’you mean to say he’s been stealing?” asked Basil, sternly; and a feeling of utter horror and disgust came over him.

“For God’s sake, don’t look at me like that,” she cried, for his eyes, his firm-set mouth, made her feel a culprit confessing on her own account some despicable crime. “He didn’t mean to be dishonest. I don’t exactly understand, but he can tell you how it all was. Oh, Basil, you won’t let him be sent to prison! Couldn’t he have the money instead of my going away?”

Basil sat down at his desk to think out the matter, and resting his face thoughtfully on his hands, sought to avoid Jenny’s fixed, appealing gaze. He did not want her to see the consternation, the abject shame, with which her news oppressed him. But all the same she saw.

“What are you thinking about, Basil?”

“Nothing particular. I was wondering how to raise the money.”

“You don’t think because he’s my brother I must be tarred with the same brush?”

He looked at her without answering. It was certainly unfortunate that his wife’s mother should drink more than was seemly, and her brother have but primitive ideas about property.

“It’s not my fault,” she cried, with bitter pain, interrupting his silence. “Don’t think too hardly of me.”

“No, it’s not your fault,” he answered, with involuntary coldness. “You must go away to Brighton all the same, but I’m afraid it means no holiday in the summer.”

He wrote a cheque, and then a letter to his bank begging them to advance a hundred pounds on securities they held.

“There he is,” cried Jenny, hearing a ring. “I told him to come back in half an hour.”

Basil got up.

“You’d better give the cheque to your brother at once. Say that I don’t wish to see him.”

“Isn’t he to come here any more, Basil?”

“That is as you like, Jenny. If you wish, we’ll pretend he was unfortunate rather than—dishonest; but I’d rather he didn’t refer to the matter. I want neither his thanks nor his excuses.”

Without answering Jenny took the cheque. She would have given a great deal to fling her arms gratefully round Basil’s neck, begging him to forgive, but there was a hardness in his manner which frightened her. All the evening he sat in moody silence, and Jenny dared not speak. His kiss when he bade her good-night had never been so frigid, and unable to sleep, she cried bitterly. She could not understand the profound abhorrence with which he looked upon the incident. To her mind it was little more than a mischance occasioned by Jimmie’s excessive sharpness, and she was disposed to agree with her brother that only luck had been against him. She somewhat resented Basil’s refusal to hear any defence, and his complete certainty that the very worst must be true.

A few days later, coming unexpectedly, Kent found Jenny in earnest conversation with her brother, who had quite regained his jaunty air, and betrayed no false shame at Basil’s knowledge of his escapade.

“Well met, ’Oratio!” he cried, holding out his hand. “I just come in on the chance of seeing you. I wanted to thank you for that loan.”

“I’d rather you didn’t speak of it.”

“Why, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I ’ad a bit of bad luck, that’s all. I’ll pay you back, you know. You needn’t fear about that.”

He gave a voluble account of the affair, proving how misfortune may befall the deserving, and what a criminal complexion the most innocent acts may wear. Basil, against his will admiring the fellow’s jocose effrontery, listened with chilling silence.

“You need not excuse yourself,” he said at length. “My reasons for helping you were purely selfish. Except for Jenny, it would have been a matter of complete indifference to me if you had been sent to prison or not.”

“Oh, that was all kid. They wouldn’t have prosecuted. Don’t I tell you they had no case. You believe me, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“What d’you mean by that?” asked James, angrily.

“We won’t discuss it.”

The other did not answer, but shot at Basil a glance of singular malevolence.

“You can whistle for your money, young feller,” he muttered, under his breath. “You won’t get much out of me.”

He had but small intention of paying back the rather large sum, but now abandoned even that. During the six months since Jenny’s married life he had never been able to surmount the freezing politeness with which Basil used him. He hated him for his supercilious air, but needing his help, took care, though sometimes he could scarcely keep his temper, to preserve a familiar cordiality. He knew his brother-in-law would welcome an opportunity to forbid him the house, and this, especially now that he was out of work, he determined to avoid. He stomached the affront as best he could, but solaced his pride with the determination sooner or later to revenge himself.

“Well, so long,” he cried, with undiminished serenity; “I’ll be toddling.”

Jenny watched this scene with some alarm, but with more irritation, since Basil’s frigid contempt for her brother seemed a reflection on herself.

“You might at least be polite to him,” she said, when Jimmie was gone.

“I’m afraid I’ve pretty well used up all my politeness.”

“After all, he is my brother.”

“That is a fact I deplore with all my heart,” he answered.

“You needn’t be so hard on him now he’s down. He’s no worse than plenty more.”

Basil turned to her with flaming eyes.

“Good God, don’t you realize the man’s a thief! Doesn’t it mean anything to you that he’s dishonest? Don’t you see how awful it is that a man—”

He broke off with a gesture of disgust. It was the first quarrel they had ever had, and a shrewish look came to Jenny’s face, her pallor gave way to an angry flush. But quickly Basil recovered himself. Recollecting his wife’s illness and her bitter disappointment at the poor babe’s death, he keenly regretted the outburst.

“I beg your pardon, Jenny. I didn’t mean to say that. I should have remembered you were fond of him.”

But since she did not answer, looking away somewhat sulkily, he sat down on the arm of her chair and stroked her wonderful rich tresses.

“Don’t be cross, darling. We won’t quarrel, will we?”

Unable to resist his tenderness, tears came to her eyes, and passionately she kissed his caressing hands.

“No, no,” she cried. “I love you too much. Don’t ever speak angrily to me; it hurts so awfully.”

The momentary cloud passed, and they spoke of the approaching visit to Brighton. Jenny was to take lodgings, and she made him promise faithfully that he would come every Saturday. Frank had offered a room in Harley Street, and while she was away Basil meant to stay with him.

“You won’t forget me, Basil?”

“Of course not! But you must hurry up and get well and come back.”

When at length she set off, and Basil found himself Frank’s guest, he could not suppress a faint sigh of relief. It was very delightful to live again in a bachelor’s rooms, and he loved the smell of smoke, the untidy litter of books, the lack of responsibility. There was no need to do anything he did not like, and, for the first time since his marriage he felt entirely comfortable. Recalling his pleasant rooms in the Temple, and there was about them an old-world air which amiably fitted his humour, he thought of the long conversations of those days, the hours of reverie, the undisturbed ease with which he could read books; and he shuddered at the poky villa which was now his home, the worries of housekeeping, and the want of privacy. He had meant his life to be so beautiful, and it was merely sordid.

“There are advantages in single blessedness,” laughed the doctor, when he saw Basil after breakfast light his pipe, and putting his feet on the chimney-piece, lean back with a sigh of content.

But he regretted his words when he saw on the other’s mobile face a look of singular wistfulness. It was his first indication that things were not going very well with the young couple.

“By the way,” Frank suggested, presently, “would you care to come to a party to-night? Lady Edward Stringer is giving some sort of function, and there’ll be a lot of people you know.”

“I’ve been nowhere since my marriage,” Basil answered, irresolutely.

“I shall be seeing the old thing to-day. Shall I ask if I can bring you?”

“It would be awfully good of you. By Jove, I should enjoy it.” He gave a laugh. “I’ve not had evening clothes on for six months.”

II

Lady Edward Stringer said she would be delighted to see Basil that evening, and Frank, whose toilet was finished in a quarter of an hour, with scornful amusement watched the care wherewith the young man dressed. At last, with a final look at the glass, he turned round.

“You look very nice indeed,” said the doctor ironically.

“Shut up!” answered Basil, reddening; but it was evident all the same that he was not displeased with his appearance.

They dined at Frank’s very respectable club, surrounded by men of science with their diverting air of middle-aged school-boys, and soon after ten drove off to Kensington. Basil hated the economy which since his marriage he had been forced to practise, and the signs of wealth in Lady Edward’s house were very grateful to him. A powdered footman took his hat, another seized his coat; and after the cramped stuffiness of the villa at Barnes it pleased him hugely to walk through spacious and lofty rooms, furnished splendidly in the worst Victorian manner. Lady Edward, her fair wig more than usually askew, dressed in shabby magnificence, with splendid diamonds round her withered neck, gave him the indifferent welcome of a fashionable hostess, and turned to the next arrival. Moving on, Basil found himself face to face with Mrs. Murray.

“Oh, I _am_ glad to see you!” he cried, enthusiastic and surprised. “I didn’t know you were back. Come and sit down, and tell me all you’ve seen.”

“Nonsense! I’m not going to say a word. You must give me all the news. I see your book is announced.”

Basil was astonished to find how handsome she was. He had thought of her very frequently, against his will, but the picture in his mind had not that radiant health nor that spirited vitality. Rather had his imagination exaggerated the likeness to a Madonna of Sandro Botticelli, dwelling on the sad passion of her lips and the pallid oval of her languid face. To-night her vivacity was enchanting; the gray eyes were full of laughter, and her cheeks delightfully flushed. He looked at her beautiful hands, recognising the rings, and at the picturesque splendour of her gown. The favourite scent which vaguely clung to her recalled the past with its pleasant intercourse, and he remembered her drawing-room in Charles Street where they had sat so often talking of charming things. His heart ached, and he knew that for all his efforts he loved her no less than that night before his marriage when he became convinced that she also cared.

“I don’t believe you’re listening to a word I say,” she cried.

“Yes, I am,” he answered, “but the sound of your voice intoxicates me. It has all the music of Italy, I haven’t heard it for such ages.”

“When did I see you last?” she inquired, remembering perfectly well, but curious to know his answer.

“You were driving near Westminster Bridge one Sunday afternoon, but I’ve not spoken to you since the Thursday before that, I remember the cloak you wore then. Have you still got it?”

“What a memory!”

She laughed flippantly, but there was triumph in her eyes; for he seemed to have forgotten completely the visit to Barnes, and his recollection was only of their mutual love.

“I often think of the long talks we used to have,” he said. “Except for you, I should never have written my book.”

“Ah, yes, before you married, wasn’t it?”

She uttered the words carelessly, with a smile, but she meant to wound; and Basil’s face grew on a sudden deathly pale, an inexpressible pain darkened his eyes, and his lips trembled. Mrs. Murray observed him with a cruel curiosity. Sometimes in her anger she had prayed for an occasion of revenge for all the torture she had suffered, and this was the beginning. She hated him now, she told herself—she hated him furiously. At that moment she caught sight of Mr. Farley, the fashionable parson, and smiled. As she expected, he came forward.

“Did you get a letter from me?” she asked, holding out her hand.

“Thanks so much. I’ve already written to accept.”

Her question was not without malice, for she wished Basil to understand that she had sent Mr. Farley some invitation. Unwillingly, the younger man rose from her side, and the vicar of All Souls’ took the vacant place. As Basil sauntered away, sore at heart, she addressed the new-comer with a flattering, though somewhat unusual, cordiality.

“_Tiens!_ There’s chaste Lucretia. How on earth did you get here?”

Basil started, and his face grew suddenly cold and hard when at his elbow he heard his mother’s mocking voice.

“Dr. Hurrell brought me,” he answered.

“He showed discretion in bringing you to the dullest house in London, also the most respectable. How is Camberwell, and do you have high tea?”

“My wife is at Brighton,” replied Basil, feeling, as ever, humiliated by Lady Vizard’s banter.

“I didn’t expect she was here. You’re really very good-looking. What a pity it is you’re so absurd!”

She nodded to her son and passed on. Presently she came to Miss Ley, who stood by herself watching with amusement the various throng.

“How d’you do?” said Lady Vizard.

“I had no idea that you remembered me,” answered the other.

“I saw in the paper that you had inherited the fortune of that odious Miss Dwarris. Haven’t you found that lots of people have remembered you since then?” She did not wait for an answer. “Aren’t you a friend of my young hopeful? I’ve just seen him, and I can’t imagine why he dislikes me so much. I suppose he thinks I’m wicked, but I’m not in the least, really. I’m not conscious of ever having committed a sin in my life. I’ve done foolish things and things I regret, but that’s all.”

“It’s very comfortable to have the approval of one’s own conscience,” murmured Miss Ley.

Lord de Capit at that moment advanced to Lady Vizard, and Miss Ley took the opportunity to go to Mrs. Barlow-Bassett, superbly imposing as usual, who was talking with the Castillyons.

“It’s a great comfort to me to know he’s such a good boy,” she heard her saying. “He has no secrets from me, and I can assure you he hasn’t a thought which he needs to hide from anyone.”

“Who is this admirable person?” asked Miss Ley.

“I was thanking Mrs. Castillyon for being so good to Reggie. He’s just of an age when the influence of a woman of the world—a good woman—is so important.”

“Reginald is a compendium of all the virtues,” remarked Miss Ley quietly; “and Mrs. Castillyon is a pattern of charity.”

“You overwhelm me with confusion,” cried the little woman, with the lightest laugh, but only the powder hid a crimson blush of shame.

She managed in a little while to get Miss Ley to herself, and they sat down. Mrs. Castillyon’s manner was so airy and flippant that none could have guessed she dealt tragic issues.

“You must utterly despise me, Miss Ley,” she said.

“Why?”

“I promised you I’d never see Reggie again, and what must you have thought when you heard Mrs. Bassett!”

“At least it saved you the trouble of telling me fibs.”

“I wouldn’t have lied about it. I must have someone to whom I can talk openly. Oh, I’m so unhappy!”

These words also she said with so expressionless a countenance that an onlooker out of earshot would have been persuaded she spoke of most trivial things.

“I did my best,” she went on, “I bore it for a month. Then I couldn’t do without him any longer. I feel like a woman in one of those old stories, under some love-spell so that no power of hers could help her. I suppose you’ll say I’m a fool, but I think Isolde or Phèdre must have had just that same sensation. I haven’t any will and I haven’t any courage, and the worst is that the whole thing’s so absolutely degrading. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t despise me, because I utterly despise myself. And Heaven knows what’ll be the end of it; I feel that something awful will happen. Some day or other Paul is certain to find out, and then it means ruin, and I shall have thrown away everything for such a miserable, poor-spirited cur.”

“Don’t talk so loud,” said Miss Ley, for the other had slightly raised her voice. “D’you think he’d marry you?”

“No; he’s often told me he wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t marry him now; I know him too well. Oh, I wish I’d never seen him. He doesn’t care two straws for me; he knows I’m in his power, and he treats me as if I were a woman off the streets. I’ve been so bitterly punished.”

Her eyes wandered across the room, and she saw Reggie talking to Mrs. Murray.

“Look at him,” she said to Miss Ley. “Even now I would give my soul for him to take me in his arms and kiss me. I wouldn’t mind the danger, I wouldn’t mind the shame, if he only loved me.”

Self-possessed and handsome, immaculately attired, Reggie chatted with the ease of a man of forty; his dark, lustrous eyes fixed on Mrs. Murray, his red lips smiling sensually, indicated plainly enough that her beauty attracted him, Mrs. Castillyon watched the pair with jealous rage and with agony.

“She’s got every chance,” she muttered; “she’s a widow, and she’s rich, and she’s younger than I am. But I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy the wretchedness of falling in love with that man.”

“But, good heavens! why don’t you pull yourself together? Have you given up all thought of breaking with him?”

“Yes,” she answered desperately; “I’m not going to struggle any more. Let come what may. It’s not I that is concerned now, but fate. I won’t leave him till he throws me aside like a toy he’s tired of.”

“And what about your husband?”

“Paul? Paul’s worth ten of the other. I didn’t know his value till I was so unhappy.”

“Aren’t you a little ashamed to treat him so badly?”

“I can’t sleep at night for thinking of it. Every present he gives me is like a stab in my heart; every kindness is the bitterest anguish. But I can’t help it.”

Miss Ley meditated for a moment.

“I’ve just been talking to Lady Vizard,” she said then. “I suppose there’s no one in London whom a pious person would more readily consign to eternal flames, and yet she looks upon herself as a very good woman indeed. Also I feel sure that our mutual friend, Reggie, has no qualms about any of his proceedings. It suggests to me that the only wicked people in the world are those who have consciences.”

“And d’you think I have a conscience?” asked Mrs. Castillyon bitterly.

“Apparently. I never saw any trace of it till I met you at Rochester. But I suppose it was there in a rudimentary condition, and events have brought it to the front. Take care it doesn’t get the better of you. I see a great danger staring you in the face.”

“What do you mean?”

Mrs. Castillyon’s face, notwithstanding the rouge, was haggard and white. Miss Ley looked at her with piercing keenness.

“Have you never thought of confessing the whole thing to your husband?”

“Oh, Miss Ley, Miss Ley, how did you guess that?”

In her uncontrollable agitation she forgot her self-control, and wrung her hands with anguish.

“Take care. Remember everyone can see you.”

“I forgot.” With an effort she regained her wonted ease of manner. “It’s been with me night and day. Sometimes, when Paul is good to me, I can hardly resist the temptation. Some awful fascination lures me on, and I know that one day I shan’t be able to hold my tongue, and I shall tell him everything.”

During the last six months Mrs. Castillyon had aged, and bitterly conscious of her failing beauty, resorted now to a more extravagant artifice; the colour of her hair was more obviously unnatural, she pencilled her eyebrows, and used too much paint on her cheeks. The unquiet of her manner had increased, so that it was somewhat painful to be with her. She talked more than ever, more loudly, and her laughter was shriller and more frequent; but the high spirits, which before were due to an entire unconcern for the world in general, now were deliberately assumed to conceal, if possible even from herself, a most utter wretchedness. Life had been wont to go most smoothly. She had wealth to gratify every whim, admiration to give a sense of power, a position of some consequence; and she had never wanted anything so desperately that it was more than tiresome to do without it: but now, with no previous experience to guide her, she was beset on every side with harassing difficulties. This ardent passion had swept her off her feet, and the awakening was very bitter when she learnt that it was her turn to suffer. She had no illusions with regard to Reggie. He was immeasurably selfish, callous to her pain, and she had long since discovered that tears had no effect upon him. He meant to get his own way, and when she rebelled gave her the truth in brutal terms.

“If you don’t like me, you can go to the devil. You’re not the only woman in the world.”

But on the whole he was fairly good-humoured—it was his best quality—and she had a certain hold over him in his immense love of pleasure. She could always avoid his peevishness by taking him to the theatre; he was anxious to move in polite circles, and an invitation to some great house made him affectionate for a week. But he never allowed her to dictate, and an occasional display of jealousy was met with an indifferent cynicism which nearly drove her to distraction; besides, she was afraid of him, knowing that to save his own skin he would not hesitate to betray her. Yet, notwithstanding, she loved Reggie still so passionately that it affected her character. Mrs. Castillyon, who had never sought to restrain herself, now took care to avoid causes of offence to the dissolute boy. She made herself complaisant so that he might not again throw in her face her age and waning charms; in bitter misery she learnt a gentleness and a self-control which before she had never known. In the general affairs of life she exhibited a new charity, and especially with her husband was less petulant. His sure devotion was singularly comforting, and she knew that in his eyes she was no less adorable than when first he loved her.

III

Miss Ley took care to learn at which hotel Bella meant to stay in Milan, and when the pair arrived, at the beginning of their honeymoon, they found awaiting them in their friend’s neat and scholarly writing a little ironical letter, enclosing as wedding-present a cheque for five hundred pounds. This enabled them to travel more sumptuously than at first seemed possible, and meaning to spend the worst of the winter at Naples, without fearing the expense they could linger on their way in one charming town after another. Herbert was full of enthusiasm, and for a while seemed entirely to regain health. He forgot the disease which ate away silently his living tissue, and formed extravagant hopes for the future. His energy was such that Bella had much difficulty in restraining his eagerness to the sights of which for so many years he had vainly dreamed. His passion for the sunshine, the blue skies, and the flowers, was wonderful to see, yet Bella’s heart ached often, though with greatest care she trained her countenance to cheerfulness, because this singular capacity for life to her anxious mind seemed to forebode a short continuance. He was gathering into one feverish moment all that others spread over a generation.

In the constant companionship his character unfolded itself, and she learnt how charming was his disposition, how sweet and unselfish his temper. Admiring him each day more ardently, she enjoyed his little airs of masculine superiority, for he would not consent to be treated as an invalid, and somewhat resented her motherly care. On the contrary, he was full of solicitude for her comfort, and took upon himself all necessary arrangements, the ordering of details and so forth, of which she would most willingly have relieved him. He had ingenuous ideas about a husband’s authority, to which Bella, not without a sly amusement, delighted to submit. She knew herself stronger not only in health, but in character, yet it diverted her to fall in with his fancy that she was the weaker vessel. When she feared that Herbert would tire himself, simulated fatigue, and then his anxiety, his self-reproach were quite touching. He never forgot how great was his debt to Bella, and sometimes his gratitude brought to her eyes, so that she sought to persuade him nothing at all was due. Ignorant of the world, his behaviour formed chiefly on books, Herbert used his wife with the gallant courtesy of some Shakespearian lover, writing sonnets which to her mind rang with the very nobility of marital passion; and under the breath of his romantic devotion the dull years fell away from her heart, so that she felt younger and fairer and more gay. Her sobriety was coloured by a not unpleasing flippancy, and she leavened his strenuous enthusiasm with kindly banter. But as though the sun called out his own youth, dissipating the dark Northern humours, sometimes he was boyish as a lad of sixteen, and then, talking nonsense to one another, they shouted with laughter at their own facetiousness. The world, they say, is a mirror whereon, if you look smiling, joyous smiles are reflected; and thus it seemed to them as if the whole earth approved their felicity. The flowers bloomed to fit their happiness, and the loveliness of Nature was only a frame to their great content.

“D’you know, we began a conversation two months ago,” he said once, “and we’ve never come to an end yet. I find you more interesting every day.”

“I am a very good listener, I know,” she answered, laughing. “Nothing gives one a surer reputation for being a conversationalist.”

“It’s no good paying spiteful things to me when you look like that,” he cried, for her eyes rested on him with the most caressing tenderness.

“I think you’re growing very vain.”

“How can I help it when you’re my wedded wife? And you’re so absolutely beautiful.”

“What!” she exclaimed. “If you talk such rubbish to me, I’ll double your dose of cod-liver-oil.”

“But it’s true,” he said eagerly, so that Bella, though she knew her comeliness existed only in his imagination, flushed with delight. “I love your eyes, and when I look into them I feel I have no will of my own. The other day in Florence you called my attention to someone who was good-looking, and she wasn’t a patch on you!”

“Good heavens, I believe the boy’s serious!” she cried, but her eyes filled with tears and her voice broke into a sob.

“What _is_ the matter?” he asked, astonished.

“It’s so good to be loved,” she answered. “No one has ever said such things to me before, and I’m so ridiculously happy.”

But as though the gods envied their brief joy, when they arrived at Rome, Herbert, exhausted by the journey, fell desperately ill. The weather was cold, rainy, dismal; and each day when he awoke, and the shutters were thrown back, Herbert looked eagerly at the sky, but seeing that it remained gray and cloudy, with a groan of despair turned his face to the wall. Bella, too, watched with aching heart for the sunshine, thinking it might bring him at least some measure of health, for she had given up all hope of permanent recovery. The doctor explained the condition of the lungs. Since Frank’s examination the left side, which before was whole, had become affected, and the disease seemed to progress with a most frightful rapidity.

But at length the weather changed, and the warm wind of February, that month of languor, blew softly over the old stones of Rome; the sky once again was blue with a colour more intense by reason of the fleecy clouds that swayed across its dome, whitely, with the grace of dancers. The Piazza di Spagna, upon which looked Herbert’s window, was brilliant with many flowers; the models in their dress of the Campagna, lounged about Bernini’s easy steps; and the savour of the country and the spring was wafted into the sick man’s room.

He grew better quickly; his spirits, of late very despondent, now became extravagantly cheerful, and hating Rome, the scene of his illness, he was convinced that it only needed change of place to complete his recovery. He insisted so vehemently that Bella should take him down to Naples that the doctor agreed it would be better to go, and therefore, as soon as he could be moved, they went further South.

They arrived in Naples no longer a pair of light-hearted children, but a middle-aged woman, haggard with anxiety, and a dying youth. Herbert’s condition betrayed itself in an entire loss of his old buoyancy, so that the new scenes among which he found himself aroused no new emotions. The churches of Naples, white and gold like a ballroom of the eighteenth century, fit places of worship to a generation whose faith was a flippant superstition, chilled his heart; the statues in the museum were but lifeless stones; and the view itself, the glorious crown of Italian scenery, left him indifferent, Herbert, whose enthusiasm had once been so facile, now, profoundly bored, remained listless at all he saw, and discovered in Naples only its squalor and its vicious brutality. But on the other hand a restless spirit seized him, so that he could not remain quietly where he was, and he desired passionately to travel still further afield. With an eager longing for the country which above all others—above Italy, even—had fired his imagination, he wished before he died to see Greece. Bella, fearing the exertion, sought to dissuade him, but for once found him resolute.

“It’s all very well for you,” he cried. “You have plenty time before you. But I have only now. Let me go to Athens, and then I shan’t feel that I have left unseen the whole of the beautiful world.”

“But think of the risk.”

“Let us enjoy the day. What does it matter if I die here, in Greece, or elsewhere? Let me see Athens, Bella. You don’t know what it means to me. Don’t you remember that photograph of the Acropolis I had in my room at Tercanbury? Every morning on waking I looked at it, and at night before blowing out my candle it was the last thing I saw. I know every stone of it already. I want to breathe the Attic air that the Greeks breathed; I want to look on Salamis and Marathon. Sometimes I longed for those places so enormously that it was physical pain. Don’t prevent me from carrying out my last wish. After that you can do what you like with me.”

There was such yearning in his voice and such despair that Bella, much as she dreaded the journey, could not resist. The doctor at Naples warned her that at any time the catastrophe might occur, and she could no longer conceal from herself the frightful ravage of the disease. Herbert, according to the course of his illness, was at times profoundly depressed, and at others, when the day was fine or he had slept well, convinced that soon he would entirely recover. He thought then that if he could only get rid of the cough which racked his chest, he might grow perfectly well; and it was Bella’s greatest torture to listen to his confident plans for the future. He wished to spend the summer at Vallombrosa among the green trees, and buying a guide-book to Spain, made out a tour for the following winter. With smiling countenance, with humorous banter, Bella was forced to discuss schemes which she knew Death would utterly frustrate.

“Two years in the South ought to put me quite right again,” he said once; “and then we’ll take a little house in Kent where we can see the meadows and the yellow corn, and we’ll work together at all sorts of interesting things. I want to write really good poetry, not for myself any more, but for you. I want you never to think that you threw yourself away on me. Wouldn’t it be glorious to have fame! Oh, Bella, I hope some day you’ll be proud of me.”

“I shall have to keep a very sharp eye on you,” she answered, with a laugh that to herself sounded like a sob of pain: “poets are notoriously fickle, and you’re sure to philander with pretty milkmaids.”

“Oh, Bella, Bella,” he cried, with sudden feeling, “I wish I were more worthy of you. Beside you I feel so utterly paltry and insignificant.”

“I dare say,” she replied ironically. “But that didn’t prevent you from writing a sonnet in Pisa about the ankles of a peasant woman.”

He laughed and blushed.

“You didn’t really mind, did you? Besides, it was you who called my attention to the way she walked. If you like, I’ll destroy it.”

Boylike, he took her mocking seriously, and was indeed half afraid he had annoyed her. She laughed again, more sincerely, but still her laughter rang softly with the tears that filled it.

“My precious child,” she cried, “when will you grow up!”

“You wait till I’m well, and then you shall put on these airs at your peril, madam.”

Next morning, the spell of health continuing, he proposed that they should start at once for Brindisi, where they could wait one day, and then take the boat directly to Greece. Bella, who counted on making delay after delay till it was too late, was filled with consternation; but Herbert gave her no opportunity to thwart his will, for he said nothing to her till he had looked out the train, called for the bill, and given the hotel-keeper notice of his intention. Once started, his excitement was almost painful to see: his blue eyes shone and his cheeks were flushed; a new energy seemed to fill him, and he not only looked much better, but felt it.

“I tell you I shall get quite well as soon as I set my foot on the soil of Greece,” he cried. “The immortal gods will work a miracle, and I will build a temple in their honour.”

He looked with beating heart at the country through which they sped, fresh and sunny in the spring, with vast green tracts spread widely on either side, on which browsed herds of cattle, shaggy-haired and timid. Now and again they saw a herdsman, a rifle slung across his back, wild and handsome and debonair; and finally—the trembling of the sea.

“At last!” the boy cried. “At last!”

Next morning he was feverish and ill, and on the day after, notwithstanding his entreaties, Bella absolutely refused to start. He stared at her sullenly, with bitter disappointment.

“Very well,” he said at length. “But next time you most promise to go whatever happens, even if I’m dying: you must have me carried on the boat.”

“I promise faithfully,” answered Bella.

A certain force of will gave him an imaginary strength, so that in a couple of days he was on his feet again; but the elation, which during a fortnight had upborne him, now was quite gone, and he was so silent that Bella feared he had not forgiven the delay on which she insisted. They were obliged to spend a week in Brindisi, that dull, sordid, populous town, and together wandered much about its tortuous and narrow streets. It pleased Herbert chiefly to go down to the port, for he loved the crowded ships, loading and unloading, and dreamt of their long voyages over the wild waste of the sea; and he loved the lounging sailormen, the red-sashed, swarthy porters, the urchins who played merrily on the quay. But the life which thrilled through them, one and all, caused him sometimes an angry despair; they seemed to possess such infinite power to enjoy things, and with all his heart he envied the poorest stoker because his muscles were like iron and his breathing free. The week passed, and on the afternoon before their boat sailed Herbert went out alone; but Bella, knowing his habits, was presently able to find him: he sat on a little hill, olive-clad, and overlooked the sea. He did not notice her approach, for his gaze, intent as though he sought to see the longed-for shores of Greece, was fixed upon the blue Ægean distance, and on his wan and wasted face was a pain indescribable.

“I’m glad you’ve come, Bella: I wanted you.”

She sat beside him, and taking her hand, his eyes wandered again to the far horizon. A fishing-boat, with a white, strange-shaped sail, sped like a fair sea-bird over the water’s shining floor. The sky was a hard, hot blue like the lapis-lazuli, and not a cloud broke its serene monotony.

“Bella,” he said at last, “I don’t want to go to Greece. I haven’t the courage.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, enormously surprised. All his thoughts had tended to this one object, and it seemed a sign of ill omen that when at length it lay within reach he should draw back.

“You thought I was angry because we didn’t start last week. I tried to be, but in my heart I was glad of the respite. I was afraid. I’ve been trying to screw up my courage, but I can’t.”

He did not look at her, but gazed straight out to sea.

“I daren’t run the risk, Bella. I’m afraid to put my fancies to the test of reality. I want to keep my illusions. Italy has shown me that nothing is so lovely and enchanting as the image of it in my mind. Each time that something hasn’t quite come up to my expectations I’ve said myself that Greece would repay me for everything. But now I know that Greece will have just the same disappointments, and I can’t bear them. Let me die with the picture still in my heart of the long-beloved country as I have fancied it. What is it to me when fauns no longer scamper through the fields, and dryads aren’t in the running brooks? It’s not Greece I go to see, but the land of my ideal.”

“But, my dearest, there’s no need to go. You know I’d much rather not,” cried Bella.

He looked at her at length, and his glance was long and searching. It seemed that he wished to speak, yet for some reason hesitated strangely. Then he made an effort.

“I want to go home, Bella,” he whispered. “I feel I can’t breathe here; the blue sky overwhelms me, and I long for the gray clouds of England. I didn’t know I loved my country till I left it. . . . D’you think I’m an awful prig?”

“No, dear,” she answered, with choking voice.

“The clamour of the South tires my ears, and the colours are overbright, the air is too thin and too brilliant, the eternal sunshine blinds me. Oh, give me my own country again. I can’t die down here; I want to be buried among my own people. I’ve never said a word to you, Bella, but lately I’ve lain awake at night thinking of the fat Kentish soil. I want to take it up in my hands, the cool, rich mould, and feel its coldness and its strength. When I look up at that blue fire, I think of my beautiful Kentish sky, so gray, so soft, so low; and I yearn for those rounded clouds, all pregnant with rain.”

His excitement was unbearable as the thoughts crowded upon him, and he pressed his hands to his eyes so that nothing should disturb.

“My mouth is parched for the spring showers. D’you know, we’ve not seen a drop of rain for a month. Now at Leanham and at Ferne the elm-trees and the oaks are all in leaf, and I love their fresh young green. There’s nothing here like the green of the Kentish fields. Oh, I can feel the salt breeze of the North Sea blowing against my cheek, and in my nostrils are all the spring smells of the country. I must see the hedgerows once more, and I want to listen to the birds singing. I long for the cathedral with its old gray stones, and the dark, shady streets of Tercanbury. I want to hear English spoken around me; I want to see English faces. Bella, Bella, for God’s sake take me home, or I shall die!”

There was such agony in his passionate appeal that Bella was more than ever alarmed. She thought he had some mysterious premonition of the end, and it was only with difficulty that she brought herself to utter words of consolation and of reassurance. They settled to start at once. Herbert, in his anxiety, wished to travel directly to London; but his wife, determined to take no risk that could possibly be avoided, insisted on going by very easy stages. Through the winter she had written every week to the Dean, telling him of their doings and the places they saw, but he had never once replied, and for news of him she had been forced to rely on friends in Tercanbury. Now she wrote to him immediately.

“MY DEAREST FATHER, “My husband is dying, and I am bringing him home at his own wish, I do not know how long he can continue to live, but at the most I’m afraid it can only be a question of very few months. I beg you most earnestly to put aside your anger. Let us come to you. I have nowhere to take Herbert, and I cannot bear that he should die in a stranger’s house. I beseech you to write to me at Paris.

“Your affectionate daughter, “BELLA.”

Her first two letters the Dean had enough resolution not to open, but he could not grow used to his solitude, and each day missed more acutely his daughter’s constant care. The house was very empty without her, and sometimes in the morning, forgetting what had happened, he expected when he went down to breakfast to find her as ever, alert and trim, at the head of his table. The third letter he could not resist, and afterwards, though his pride forbade him to answer, looked forward intensely to the weekly communication. Once, when by some chance it was two days delayed, he was so anxious that he went to a friend in the chapter whose wife, he knew, corresponded with Bella, and asked whether anything had been heard.

On opening this final note, the Dean was surprised to find it so short, for Bella, to comfort and interest him, was used to write a sort of diary of the week. He read it two or three times. He gathered first that Bella was on her way home, and if he liked might once more sit at his solitary table, go about the house gently as of old, and in the evening play to him the simple melodies he loved so well; but then he became aware of the restrained despair in those few hurried lines, and reading deeper than the words, understood for the first time her overwhelming love for that poor sick boy. From his daughter’s letters the Dean had come to know Herbert somewhat intimately, for with subtle tenderness Bella related little traits which she knew would touch him, and for long he had struggled with an uneasy feeling of his own injustice. He remembered now the lad’s youth and simplicity, that he was poor and ill, and his heart went out to him strangely. Contrition seized him. A portrait of his wife, dead for five-and-thirty years, hung in the Dean’s study, showing her in the first year of marriage with the simpering air, the brown ringlets, of a middle Victorian young lady; and though a work of no merit, to the sorrowing husband it seemed a real masterpiece. He had often gathered solace and advice from those brown eyes, and now, pride and love contending in his breast, looked at it earnestly. The face seemed to wear an expression of reproach, and in mute self-abasement the Dean bent his head. The hungry had come to him, and he had given no meat; the stranger he had cast out, and the sick turned from his door.

“I have sinned against heaven and in Thy sight,” he muttered painfully, “and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.”

His eyes caught a photograph of Bella, which, for a while banished from the room, now again occupied its accustomed place, and as though to take her in his arms, he stretched his hands towards it. He smiled happily, for his mind was made up. Notwithstanding the words uttered in his wrath, he would go to Paris and bring home his daughter with her dying husband; and if in the last months of the boy’s life he could make up for past harshness, perhaps it would be taken as some atonement for his cruel pride.

Announcing his intention to no one, the Dean set out at once. He had no means to communicate with Bella, but knew the hotel to which she would go, and determined there to await her arrival. Finding at what hour she must reach it, he lingered in the hall, but twice was grievously disappointed. On the third day, however, when he began to feel the tension unbearable, a cab drove up, and trembling with excitement, he saw Bella step out. Desirous that she should not see him immediately, the Dean withdrew a little to one side. He noted the care with which she helped Herbert to get out of the cab: she took his arm to lead him in. He was apparently very weak, wrapped up to his eyes though the evening was warm, and while she asked for rooms he sat down in sheer exhaustion.

The Dean was very remorseful when he saw the change in him, for when last they met Herbert Field was full of spirits and gay; and these months of anxiety had left their mark on Bella also, whose hair was beginning to turn quite gray. Her expression was tired and wan. When they were gone upstairs, the Dean asked for the number of their room, but to give them time to get off their things, forced himself to wait half an hour by the clock. Then, going up, he knocked at the door. Bella, thinking it was a maid, called out in French.

“Bella,” he said in a low voice, and he remembered how once she had begged to be admitted to his study and he had refused.

With a cry she flung open the door, and in a moment they were clasped in one another’s arms; he pressed her to his heart, but in his emotion found no word to say. She drew him in eagerly.

“Herbert, here’s my father.”

The youth was lying on the bed in the next room, and Bella led the Dean in. Herbert was too tired to rise.

“I’ve come to take you both home,” said the old man, tears of joy in his voice.

“Oh, father, I’m so glad. You’re not angry with me any longer. It’ll make me so happy if you forgive me.”

“It’s not you that need forgiveness, but I, Bella. I want to ask your husband to pardon my unkindness. I’ve been harsh and proud and cruel.”

He went to Herbert and took his hand.

“Will you forgive me, my dear? Will you allow me to be your father as well as Bella’s?”

“I shall be very grateful.”

“And will you come back to Tercanbury with me? I should like you to know that so long as I live my home will be yours. And I will try and make you forget that I was ever——”

The Dean broke off with a gesture of appeal, unable to finish.

“I know you’re very good,” smiled Herbert, “and you see I have brought Bella back to you.”

The Dean hesitated a moment shyly, then bent down and very tenderly kissed the pale, suffering lad.

IV

Some days after the party at Lady Edward Stringer’s Basil went to Brighton, and was met at the station by Jenny and her sister. Sending the traps by porter, they set out for the lodgings, but were quickly joined by a very smart young man, introduced to Basil as Mr. Higgins, who paired off with Annie Bush, When they had gone ahead, Basil asked who he was.

“He’s Annie’s latest,” answered Jenny, laughing.

“Have you known him long?”

“We got to know him the second day we were down. I noticed him look at us, and I said to Annie: ‘There you are, my dear; there’s company for you when Basil comes, because I can’t stick walking three in a row.’”

“Who introduced him to you?”

“What a silly you are!” laughed Jenny. “He just came up and said good-evening, and Annie said good-evening, and then he began to talk. He seems to have lots of money. He took us to a concert last night, to the best places. It was nice of him, wasn’t it?”

“But, my dear child, you can’t go about with people you don’t know.”

“You must let Annie enjoy herself, and he’s a very respectable young fellow, isn’t he? You see, living at home, she hasn’t the opportunity to get to know men that I had. And he’s quite a gentleman.”

“Is he? I should have thought him a most awful bounder.”

“You’re so particular,” said Jenny. “I don’t see anything wrong in him.”

Arriving at the lodging-house, Annie, engaged in lively conversation with her new acquaintance, stopped till the others came up. She resembled Jenny as much as it was possible for a somewhat plain woman to resemble a beautiful. She had the same graceful figure, but her hair, arranged with needless elaboration, was colourless, and her complexion had not the mellow delicacy which distinguished her elder.

“Jenny,” she cried, “he won’t come in to tea because he says you want to be alone with your hubby. Tell him it’s all right.”

“Of course it’s all right,” said Jenny. “You come in and take a cup of tea with us, and then we’ll all go on the front.”

He was evidently a facetious person, for while Basil washed he heard the two women in the adjoining room shout with uproarious merriment. Presently Jenny called out that tea was ready, and somewhat against his will, he was forced to go in. His wife, much better in health, talking and laughing loudly, was in high spirits; and the three had evidently enjoyed thoroughly the last two weeks, for they were full of remembered jokes. Basil, annoyed by the stranger’s intrusion, sought not to join in the conversation, but sat silently, and after a while took up a newspaper. Annie gave him an angry glance, and Mr. Higgins looked once or twice uncertainly, but then went on with his rapid string of anecdote. Perhaps he also had cause for irritation, since his best stories were heard by Basil with all the appearance of profound boredom.

“Well, who says a stroll on the parade?” he cried at last.

“Come on, Jenny,” answered Annie Bush, and turned to Basil. “Are you coming?”

He looked up from his paper indifferently.

“No; I have some letters to write.”

Jenny preferred to remain with her husband, and, once alone, they talked for a time of domestic affairs; but there seemed a certain constraint between them, and presently Basil began to read. When Annie, after some while, came back, she glanced at him aggressively.

“Better?” she asked.

“What?”

“I thought you didn’t seem well at tea.”

“Thanks, I’m in the best of health.”

“You might make yourself obliging, then, instead of sitting there like a funeral-mute when I have a gentleman to visit me.”

“I’m sorry my behaviour doesn’t meet with your approval,” he answered quietly.

“Mr. Higgins says he won’t come here till your husband’s taken himself off, my dear. He says he knows where he’s not wanted, and I don’t blame him, either.”

“Oh, Annie, what nonsense!” cried Mrs. Kent, “Basil was only tired.”

“Yes, a journey to Brighton’s very tiring, isn’t it? I tell you straight, Basil, I expect my friends to be treated like gentlemen.”

“You’re an amiable creature, Annie,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders.

After supper Annie waited somewhat impatiently till the servant came in to say that Mr. Higgins was at the door; then hurriedly put on her hat. Basil hesitated for one moment, unwilling to give offence, but decided that some word of warning was necessary.

“I say, Annie, d’you think you ought to go out alone at night with a man you’ve picked up casually on the pier?”

“What I do is no business of yours, is it?” she answered angrily. “I’d thank you to give me your advice when I ask for it.”

“Shall I come with you, Annie?” said her sister.

“Now, don’t you interfere. I can look after myself, as you know very well.”

She went out, vindictively slamming the door, and Basil, without another word, a frown on his brow, returned to his book. But in a little while he heard that Jenny was crying very quietly.

“Jenny, Jenny, what’s the matter?” he exclaimed.

“Oh, nothing,” she answered, drying her eyes and doing her best to smile. “Only I’ve been having such a good time down here; I only wanted you to make it perfect. I did look forward so to your coming, and now you’ve upset everything.”

“I’m very sorry,” he sighed, with complete discouragement.

He did not know what to say nor how to comfort her, for he realized, too, that his appearance had disturbed her enjoyment, and for all his goodwill he appeared able to bring her only unhappiness. She was most herself in the company of such as Mr. Higgins; her greatest pleasure was to walk on the parade, staring at the people, or to listen to nigger-minstrels’ sentimental ditties; she wanted gaiety and noise and garish colour. On the other hand, things which affected him painfully left her unmoved, and she was perfectly content in the sordid, vulgar lodging which overwhelmed him with disgust. It seemed that he was in a labyrinth of cross-purposes wherefrom was no issue.

Next morning occurred a trifling incident which showed Basil how his wife regarded him. Annie, dressed for church, came downstairs in a costume which was positively outrageous, so that one wondered at the perverse ingenuity with which the colours were blended; and she wore much cheap finery.

“Well, my dear, you’re never going out like that!” she cried, seeing that Jenny was no differently attired from the day before. (An antipathy to Sunday clothes was to his wife one of Basil’s most incomprehensible fads.) “Aren’t you going to put on your new hat?”

Mrs. Kent looked somewhat uneasily at her husband.

“I saw such a smart hat in a shop, Basil, and Annie simply made me buy it. And I must say it was dirt cheap—only six and eleven.”

“This is evidently an occasion to put it on,” he smiled. In a few minutes she came back, radiant and flushed, but Basil could not persuade himself that her headgear was cheap at the price.

“D’you like it?” she asked anxiously.

“Very much,” he replied, wishing to please.

“There, Jenny, I knew he wouldn’t mind. If you heard all the fuss she made about your being angry and not liking it, and I don’t know what all!”

“Basil says I look best in black,” said Jenny in self-defence.

“Men never know what’s dressy, my dear,” Annie answered. “If you went by what Basil said, you would be a dowd.”

It was rather distressing to find that his wife still somewhat feared him. In her eyes, apparently, he was a bearish creature whose whimsical fancies must be humoured, and he thought bitterly of the confidence which he hoped would exist between them, of the complete union in which not a thought nor an emotion should be unshared. And knowing that his own love was long since dead, Basil sought to persuade himself that hers also was on the wane. The week-end bored him immensely, and it was not without relief that he found himself on Monday morning at the station, whither his wife accompanied him.

“I’m awfully busy; I don’t know whether I can manage to come down next Saturday,” he said tentatively.

But Jenny’s eyes filled on a sudden with tears.

“Oh, Basil, Basil, I can’t live without you! I’d rather come up to town. If you don’t like Annie, she can go away. Promise me you’ll come. I look forward to it all the week.”

“You’ll have a very good time without me. I’ve only made you wretched by my visit.”

“No, you haven’t. I want you so badly. I’d rather be utterly unhappy with you than happy without. Promise me you’ll come.”

“All right. I will.”

The chains that bound him were as fast as ever. And as the train sped towards London his heart beat madly because each minute he drew nearer to Hilda Murray. It was very plain now that he loved her passionately, more than ever he had done, and with violent rage he told himself that she was lost to him for always. Intoxicated by the ring of her voice, by the sweep of her dress, by the tender look in her eyes, he repeated every word she had said at Lady Edward’s. On Wednesday he was to dine with Miss Ley, and already he felt sick with hope at the thought of meeting Hilda. In the afternoon, leaving chambers, he went home by way of Charles Street, and like a lover of eighteen, looked up at her windows. There were lights in the drawing-room, so that he knew she was at home, but he dared not go in. Mrs. Murray had not asked him to visit her, and he could not tell whether she had no wish to see him, or whether she thought a call so obvious as to need no special invitation. The windows seemed to beckon, the very door offered a mute welcome; while he lingered someone came out, Mr. Farley, and wondered angrily why he should go to that house so often. At length with a desperate effort he walked away.

Though Basil went on Wednesday to Miss Ley almost trembling with excitement, he managed to ask gaily who was expected to dinner, but his heart sank when she made no mention of Mrs. Murray. Then he wondered how to pass the dreariness of that evening to which he had so enormously looked forward. Since the meeting at Lady Edward Stringer’s, the passion, hitherto dormant, had blazed into such a vehement flame that he could scarcely bear himself. It seemed impossible to live through the week without seeing Hilda; he could think of nothing else, and foresaw with sheer horror his excursion on Saturday to Brighton. Of course it was madness, and he knew well enough it was no use to see Mrs. Murray again—it would have been better if they had never met; but the sound sense which he preached to himself seemed folly, and his eagerness to see her overcame all prudence. He thought there could be no harm in speaking to her just once more, only once, after which he vowed entirely to forget her.

Next day he walked again through Charles Street, and again saw the light in her windows. He hesitated, walking up and down. He could not tell if she wished any longer to know him, and feared horribly to discern on her face that he intruded, but at length in sullen anger decided to adventure. He could not love Hilda more if he saw her, and perhaps by some miracle the sight might console him, helping him to bear his captivity. He rang.

“Is Mrs. Murray at home?”

“Yes, sir.”

She was reading when he entered the room, and with dismay Basil fancied that a very slight look of vexation crossed her eyes. It disconcerted him so that he could think of nothing to say. Then he imagined that his behaviour must astonish her, and asked himself whether she knew the cause of his sudden marriage. He listened to the polite or flippant things she said, and did his best to answer fittingly; but his words sounded so unnatural that he scarcely recognised his voice. Yet they laughed and jested as though neither had a care in the world; they spoke of Miss Ley and of Frank, of the plays then to be seen in London, of one trivial topic after another, till Basil was forced to go.

“I came in fear and trembling,” he said gaily, “because you certainly never asked me to call.”

“I thought it wasn’t needful,” she answered, smiling; but she looked straight into his eyes with an odd air of defiance.

Basil flushed, glancing at her quickly, for there seemed a double meaning in her words, and he knew not how to take them. He lost momentarily his urbane, courteous manner.

“I wanted so much to come and see you,” he said, in a low voice, which he strove to keep firm. “May I come again?”

“Of course!” she replied; but her tone was full of cold surprise, as though she wondered at his question and resented it.

Suddenly she found his eyes fixed upon her with such an expression of deadly anguish that she was troubled. His face was very white, and his lips twitched as though he sought to command himself. All through the night she thought of that look of utter agony; it stared at her from the darkness, and she knew that if she needed revenge the fates had given it. But she was not pleased. For the hundredth time, unable to get it out of her head that he loved her still, she asked herself why he had married so strangely; but she would not inquire into her own feelings. She tightened her lips.

Knowing well that he would come again, it was Mrs. Murray’s impulse to tell the butler not to admit him; but something, she knew not what, prevented her. She wished to observe once more the terrible wretchedness of his face; she wished to make sure that he was not happy in what seemed his cruel treachery. One afternoon of the following week, coming in from a drive, she found his card. She took it in her hand and turned it over.

“Shall I ask him to luncheon?” With a frown of annoyance she put it down. “No; if he wants to see me, let him come again.”

Basil was bitterly disappointed that day when the servant said that Mrs. Murray was not at home, and at first determined that there he must leave it. He waited for a note, but none came. He waited for a week, able to do nothing but think of her, restless and preoccupied. With stricken conscience he went to Brighton, and so far as possible avoided to be alone with Jenny. He took her to a play one night, to a concert the next, and insisted that Mr. Higgins, still faithful, should be constantly with them; but the whole thing disgusted him, and he felt utterly ashamed.

Then he made it a practice every evening to take Charles Street on his way to Frank, and ever the windows appeared to invite him. When he looked back, the whole street beckoned, and at length he could resist no longer. He knew that Mrs. Murray was in. If the butler sent him away it must be taken as definite, for it would mean that Hilda had given orders he was not to be admitted.

This time better fortune was his, but when he saw her the many things on the tip of his tongue seemed impossible of utterance, and it was an effort to speak commonplace. Mrs. Murray was disconcerted by the look of pain which darkened his face, and the constraint between them made conversation very difficult. Basil dared not prolong his visit, yet it was dreadfully hard to go leaving unspoken all that lay so heavily on his heart. Talk flagged, and presently silence fell upon them.

“When is your book to be published?” she asked, oppressed, she knew not why.

“In a fortnight.... I wanted to thank you for your help.”

“Me!” she cried, with surprise. “What have I done!”

“More than you know. I felt sometimes as if I were writing for you only. I judged of everything by what I thought would be your opinion of it.”

Mrs. Murray, somewhat embarrassed, did not answer. He looked away, as though forcing himself to speak, but nervous.

“You know, it seems to me as though everyone were surrounded by an invisible ring which cuts him off from the rest of the world. Each of us stands entirely alone, and each step one must judge for one’s self, and none can help.”

“D’you think so?” she answered. “If people only knew, they would be so ready to do anything they could.”

“Perhaps, but they never know. The things about which it’s possible to ask advice are so unimportant. There are other things, in which life and death are at stake, about which a man can never say a word; yet if he could it would alter so much.” He turned and faced her gravely. “A man may have acted in a certain way, causing great pain to someone who was very dear to him, yet if all the facts were known that person might—excuse and pardon.”

Mrs. Murray’s heart began to beat, and she had some difficulty in preserving the steadiness of her voice.

“Does it much matter? In the end everyone resigns himself. I think an onlooker who could see into human hearts would be dismayed to find how much wretchedness there is which men bear smiling. We should all be very gentle to our fellows if we realized how dreadfully unhappy they were.”

Again there was silence, but strangely enough, the barrier between them appeared suddenly to have fallen, and now, though neither spoke, there was no discomfort, Basil got up.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Murray. I’m glad you let me come to-day.”

“Why on earth shouldn’t I?”

“I was afraid your servant would say you weren’t at home.”

He looked at her steadily, as though meaning to say far more than was expressed in the words.

“I shall always be very glad to see you,” she answered, in a low voice.

“Thank you.”

A look of deep gratitude softened away the pain on his face.

At that moment Mrs. Barlow-Bassett was announced. She shook hands with Basil somewhat coldly, thinking that a man who had married a barmaid could be no proper companion for her virtuous son, and she determined not to renew the old acquaintance. He went out.

“D’you know whom Mr. Kent married, and why?” asked Mrs. Murray.

The question had been often on her lips, but pride till this moment had ever prevented her from making an effort to clear up a difficulty which had long puzzled her.

“My dear Hilda, don’t you know? It’s a most shocking story. I must say I was surprised to find him here, but of course, if you didn’t know, that explains it. He got into trouble with some dreadfully low creature.”

“She’s very beautiful. I’ve seen her.”

“You?” cried Mrs. Bassett, with astonishment. “It seems there was going to be a baby, and he was forced to marry.”

Mrs. Murray blushed to the roots of her hair, and for one moment bitter anger blazed in her heart. Again she told herself that she hated and loathed him, but remembering on a sudden the woe in his eyes, knew it was no longer true.

“D’you think he’s very unhappy?”

“He must be. When a man marries beneath him he’s always unhappy, and I must say I think he deserves it. I told my boy the whole story as a warning. It just shows what comes of not having good principles.”

Mrs. Murray’s eyes dwelt on the speaker absently, as though she thought of other things.

“Poor fellow! I’m afraid you’re right. He is very unhappy.”

V

In his distress Basil could scarcely bear the thought of resuming his old life at Barnes, so unprofitable to the spirit, mean and illiberal; and though ill able to afford it, pretexting Jenny’s health, he insisted that she should remain longer at Brighton than was at first intended. But at length she was evidently quite well, and no persuasions of Basil could induce her to prolong her visit. They returned to the little house in River Gardens, and outwardly things went very much as in the past. Yet certain differences there were. They seemed more strange to one another after the temporary separation, and on each side trifles arose occasionally to embitter their relations. Basil observed his wife now in a more critical spirit, and certain little vulgarities which before had escaped him now set his teeth on edge. He thought that the company of her sister for two months had affected her somewhat badly. She used expressions which he found objectionable, and he could not help it if her manners at table offended his fastidious taste. He loathed the slovenly way with which she conducted her household affairs, and the carelessness of her dress. Though what she bought was ever in outrageous taste, indoors she took no pains to be even tidy, and spent most of the day a dirty dressing-gown, with bedraggled hair. But since alteration seemed impossible, Basil determined rather to ignore things, leading his own life apart, and allowing Jenny to lead hers. When she did anything of which he disapproved, he merely shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips. He grew much more silent, and did not now attempt to discuss with her matters wherein he was aware she took no interest.

But he had reckoned without his wife’s passionate affection, no less than when first they married. Realizing the change in him, of which the causes were to her quite incomprehensible, Jenny was profoundly disturbed. Sometimes she wept helplessly, wondering what she had done to lose his love, and at others, conscious of his injustice, broke irritably into sharp speeches. She resented his reserve, and the indifference with which he put aside her questions on topics which before he would have eagerly discussed. Brooding over all this, she concluded that only a woman could have wrought this difference, and remembered on a sudden her mother’s advice to keep a sharp eye on him. Basil one morning told her that he was dining out that day. He had accepted the invitation before he knew she would be back.

“Who with?” asked Jenny, quickly suspicious.

“Mrs. Murray.”

“Your lady friend who came down here to see you last year?”

“She came to see _you_,” replied Basil, smiling.

“Yes, I believe that. I don’t think a married man ought to go dining in the West End by himself.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve accepted the invitation, and I must go.”

Jenny did not answer, but when Basil came home in the afternoon watched him. She saw how restless he was. His eyes shone with excitement, and he looked at his watch a dozen times to see if it were time to dress. The moment he was gone, determined to find out on what terms he was with Mrs. Murray, and hindered by no scruple, she went to the pockets of the coat he had just taken off, but his pocket-book was not there. A little surprised, for he was careless about such things, she thought there might be a letter in the desk, and with beating heart went to it. But it was locked, and this unaccustomed precaution doubled her suspicions. Remembering that there was a duplicate key, she fetched it, and on opening the drawer at once came upon a note signed _Hilda Murray_. It began with _Dear Mr. Kent_, and ended _Yours Sincerely_—a mere formal invitation to dinner. Jenny glanced through the other letters, but they related to business matters. She replaced them in the old order and locked the drawer. She felt sick with shame now that she had actually done this thing.

“Oh, how he’d despise me!” she cried.

And in terror lest she had left any trace of her interference, she opened the drawer again, and once more smoothed out and tidied everything. Basil had asked her not to wait up for him, but she could not go to bed. She looked at the clock, ticking so slowly, and with something like rage told herself that Basil all this time enjoyed himself, and never thought of her. When he came home, flushed and animated, she fancied that a look of annoyance crossed his face when he saw her still sitting in the armchair.

“Are you very sleepy?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you go to bed? I’m just going to have one more pipe.”

“I’ll wait till you’re ready.”

She watched him walk up and down the room, excited with his thoughts, and he never spoke to her. He seemed to have forgotten that she was present. Then rage and jealousy overcame all other feelings.

“All right, my young fellow,” she whispered to herself, “I’ll find out if there’s anything in this.”

She had taken note of Mrs. Murray’s writing, and thenceforward examined closely the addresses of all letters that came for him, to see if one was written by her. Basil had been used to leave his correspondence lying about, but now took care to lock up everything, and this convinced her that he had something to conceal. But she flattered herself, with a little bitter laugh, that she was fairly sharp, and he did not know that every day after he went out she ransacked his desk. Though she never found anything, Jenny was none the less assured that there were good grounds for her jealousy. One morning she noticed that he was dressed in new clothes, and it flashed across her mind that in the afternoon he meant to see Mrs. Murray. It seemed to her that if he actually went it would be a confirmation of her fears, while if not she could put aside all these tormenting fancies. Knowing at what time he left chambers, Jenny, veiled and dressed soberly, that she might not attract his attention, took up her stand in good time on the other side of the square, and waited. Presently he came out, and she followed. She followed him sauntering down the Strand, she followed him to Piccadilly Circus, and here was obliged to come a little closer, for fear of losing him in the throng. On a sudden he wheeled round and quickly strode up to her. She gave a stifled cry, and then, seeing his face white with rage, was overwhelmed with shame.

“How dare you follow me, Jenny?”

“I wasn’t following you. I didn’t see you.”

He called a cab, and told her to get in, jumped up, and bade the driver go to Waterloo. They were just in time to catch a train to Barnes. He did not speak to her, and she watched him in frightened silence. He said no word during the walk back to the house. They went to the drawing-room, and he closed the door carefully.

“Now will you have the goodness to tell me what you mean by this?” he asked.

She gave no answer, but looked down in sullen anger,

“Well?”

“I won’t be bullied,” she answered.

“Look here, Jenny, we had better understand one another. Why have you been going to my drawer and reading my letters?”

“You’ve got no right to accuse me of that. It’s not true.”

You leave my desk in such disorder when you’ve been to it.”

“Well, I’ve got a right to know. Where were you going, to-day?”

“That is absolutely no business of yours. I’m simply ashamed that you should do such horrible things. Don’t you know that nothing is so disgraceful as to follow anyone in the street, and I’d sooner you stole than read private letters.”

“I’m not going to stand by and let you run after other women, so you needn’t think I am.”

He gave a laugh, partly of scorn, partly of disgust.

“Don’t be absurd. We’re married, and we must make the best of it. You may be quite sure that I’ll give you no cause for reproach.”

“You’re always after your fine friends that I’m not good enough for.”

“Good heavens!” he cried bitterly, “you can’t grudge me a little relaxation. It surely does you no harm if sometimes I go and see the people I knew intimately before my marriage?”

Jenny did not answer, but pretended to order anew flowers in a vase; then she smoothed down cushions on the sofa and set a picture straight.

“If you’ve done preaching at me, I’ll go and take off my hat,” she said at length viciously.

“You may do exactly as you choose,” he answered, with cold indifference.

Shortly after this Basil’s novel was published. Knowing that it could not interest her, and conscious of her small sympathy, he gave a copy to Jenny somewhat shyly, but said no more than the truth when he wrote to Mrs. Murray that great part of his pleasure in the book’s appearance lay in the fact that he was able to send it to her. He waited for her letter of thanks with as much anxiety as for the first reviews. She wrote twice, first to acknowledge the receipt and say that she had already read a chapter; then, having finished, to bestow enthusiastic praise. Her appreciation lifted him to a very heaven of delight. When Jenny, after an obvious struggle, reached the last page, he waited for some criticism, but since none came, was forced to ask what she thought.

“I liked it very much,” she said.

But there was in her tone an unconcern which not a little incensed him, and though he knew this indifference pointed to no particular fault in his book, he was none the less profoundly humiliated. Yet a bitterer disappointment awaited him in the reviews which now began to come in. For the most part they were short, somewhat scornful, somewhat patronizing, and it appeared that this book, which he had imagined would raise him at once to a literary position of some eminence, was no more than prentice work, showing more promise than performance. Its merits, indeed, were not few, but scarcely such as to excite any sudden admiration; his construction was faulty, and in parts his attention to the environment suggested rather the essay or the treatise. The result, notwithstanding many qualities, was neither very good romance nor very good history. Two literary papers at length offered salve to his wounded vanity in long and appreciative notices, doing full justice to his passion for beauty, his measured and careful style, the clear-cut perfection of his portraits. The first of these was sent him with a note of congratulation by Mrs. Murray, and he read it with leaping heart. It gave him new confidence, and a firmer resolution to do better in future. But though careful to hand over to Jenny all unfavourable criticisms, these, which from a literary standpoint were more important than all the others put together, with a kind of inverted pride he forbore to show.

The consequence of this was that Jenny gained a rather false impression of the book’s failure, and the idea came that Basil, after all, was perhaps not such a wonderful person as once she fancied. She sought not to analyze her feelings, but had she done so would have found in them a strange medley. She adored Basil passionately, jealously, but at the same time felt against him a sort of confused irritation which made her welcome the published sneers that wounded him so keenly; they seemed to draw him down to her, for if he was less clever than at first she thought it lessened the distance between them. Yet the gulf which separated them grew daily greater, and quarrels were of more frequent occurrence. Basil, hating his life at Barnes, wrapped himself in a reserve which he strove to make impenetrable; he was very silent, going about his work methodically, and doing his best to avoid the acrimonious discussions which Jenny forced upon him. He tried to relieve his unhappiness with unceasing toil, and to counter his wife’s ill-temper with philosophic indifference. It drove her to furious anger that, however she taunted, he seldom replied, and then only with cold sarcasm. But sometimes remorse seized her. Then she went to her husband in tears, begging him to forgive and asserting again her great love; and this for some days would be followed by a measure of peace.

But one morning a more serious quarrel arose, for Basil, somewhat pressed for money, had discovered that James Bush, still out of work, was steadily borrowing from Jenny. He had begged her not to lend any more, and finding her unwilling to give a promise, was obliged somewhat peremptorily to insist that not another penny should go into the grasping hands of the Bush family. On both sides there was a good deal of irritation, and finally Basil flung out of the house. Presently James Bush, cause of all the trouble, sauntered in.

“Where’s his lordship this afternoon?” he asked, helping himself to Basil’s cigarettes.

“He’s gone out for a walk.”

“That’s what he tells you, my dear,” he answered with a malevolent laugh.

“Have you seen him anywhere?” asked Jenny quickly, full of suspicion.

“No, I can’t say I ’ave, an’ if I ’ad I wouldn’t boast about it.”

“What did you mean, then?” she insisted.

“Well, whenever I come here he’s out for a walk.”

He glanced at her, and then without more ado asked for the loan of a couple of sovereigns; but Jenny, mindful of the morning’s dispute, and regretfully conscious that herself had brought it about, firmly refused. Since he insisted, accusing her of meanness, she was forced to explain how heavy of late had been their expenses; the doctor had sent in a bill for fifty pounds, the visit to Brighton cost a great deal, and they would have much difficulty to make both ends meet.

“It was a wonderful fine thing you did when you married him, Jenny, and you thought you’d done precious well for yourself too.”

“I won’t have you say anything against him,” she cried petuously.

“All right; keep your shirt in. I’m blowed if I know what you’ve got to stick up for him about. He don’t care much about you.”

She looked up with a quick drawing-in of the breath.

“How d’you know?”

“Think I can’t see?” He chuckled slily at his own acuteness. “I suppose you ’aven’t been crying to-day?”

“We had a little tiff this morning,” she answered. “Oh, don’t say he doesn’t care for me. I couldn’t live.”

“Go along with you,” he laughed. “Basil Kent ain’t the only pebble on the beach.”

Jenny went to the window and looked out. She saw her husband walk slowly along, his head bent down, betraying in his whole appearance the most profound depression, and thinking of their wretchedness, she could not restrain her tears. Everything went against them, and though loving him so tenderly, some mysterious power seemed ever to force her to anger him. With entire despair she turned to her brother and spoke words which had long been in her heart, but which till then she had not uttered to a living soul.

“Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, sometimes I don’t know which way to turn, I’m that unhappy. If the baby had only lived, I might have kept my husband—I might have made him love me.”

She sank on a chair and hid her face, but in a moment, hearing the door close, looked up.

“He’s just come in, Jimmie. Mind you don’t say anything to put him out.”

“I’d just like to give ’im a piece of my mind.”

“Oh, Jimmie, don’t. It was my fault that we quarrelled this morning. I wanted to make him angry, and I nagged at him.” She knew the best way to influence her brother. “Don’t let him see that I’ve said anything to you, and I’ll try and send you a pound to-morrow.”

“Well, he’d better not start patronizing me, because I won’t put up with it. I’m a gentleman, and every bit as good as he is, if not better.” At this Basil came in, noticed James, but did not speak. “’Afternoon, Basil.”

“You here again?” he remarked indifferently.

“Looks like it, don’t it?”

“I’m afraid it does.”

“Are you? I suppose I can come and see my own sister.”

“I suppose it’s inevitable. Only I should be excessively grateful if you’d time your coming with my going, and _vice versâ_.”

“That means you want me to get out, I reckon.”

“You show unusual perspicacity, dear James,” said Basil, with a frigid smile.

“Look here, Basil, let me give you a bit of advice. Don’t put on quite so much side, or you’ll hurt yourself.”

“I observe that you have not acquired the useful art of being uncivil without being impertinent.”

There was nothing James could brook less easily than the irony and the deliberate sarcasm with which Basil invariably answered him, and now in his exasperation, forgetting all prudence, he jumped up.

“Look ’ere, I’ve ’ad about enough of this. I’m not going to stand you sneerin’ and snarlin’ at me when I come here. You seem to think I’m nobody, I should just like to know why you go on as if I was I don’t know what.”

“Because I choose,” answered Basil, looking him up and down with chilling scorn.

Jenny’s heart beat furiously as she foresaw the approaching quarrel, and in an undertone, hurriedly, she begged James to hold his tongue. But he would not be restrained.

“You can bet anything you like I don’t come ’ere to see you.”

“It has been borne in upon me that the length of my I purse attracts you more than the charm of my conversation. I wonder why you imagined, because I married your sister, I was bound to support the whole gang of you for the rest of your lives? Would you have the intense amiability to inform your family that I’m sick and tired of giving money?”

“I wonder you don’t forbid us your house while you’re about it,” snarled James.

Basil shrugged his shoulders.

“You may come here when I’m not at home—if you I behave yourself.”

“I’m not good enough for you, I suppose?”

“No, you’re not,” answered Basil, with deliberation.

“I dare say you’d like to get me out of the way. But I mean to keep my eye on you.”

“What d’you mean by that?” asked Basil, so sharply that James saw he had touched him on the raw.

He pursued his advantage.

“You think I don’t know what sort of a feller you are. I can just about see through two of you. Jenny has something to put up with, I lay.”

But Basil recovered himself quickly, and turned to Jenny with a smile of contempt, which, since it was undeserved, most deeply wounded her.

“Has she been telling you my numerous faults? You must have had plenty to talk about, my dear.” He saw her motion of protest, and gave a laugh. “Oh, my dear girl, if it amuses you, by all means discuss me with your relations. I should be so dull if I had no failings.”

“Tell him I’ve not said anything against him, Jimmie,” she cried.

“It’s not for want of something to say, I’ll be bound.”

Basil was growing bored, and saw no reason for concealing the fact. He sat down at his desk to write a letter, and took a sheet of note-paper. Jimmie watched him viciously, smarting under the bitter things the other had said, and wondering what the next move would be. Basil glanced at him indifferently.

“I’m getting rather tired, brother James. I’d go if I were you.”

“I shan’t go till I choose,” answered Bush very aggressively.

Basil looked up with a smile.

“Of course, we’re both of us Christians, dear James, and there’s a good deal of civilization kicking about the world nowadays. But the last word is still with the strongest.”

“What d’you mean by that?”

“Merely that discretion is the better part of valour. They say that proverbs are the wealth of nations.”

“That’s just the sort of thing you’d do—to ’it a feller smaller than yourself.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hit you for worlds,” laughed Basil bitterly. “I should merely throw you downstairs.”

“I should just like to see you try it on,” cried the other, edging a little towards the door.

“Don’t be silly, James. You know you wouldn’t like it at all.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Of course not. But still—you’re not very muscular, are you?”

Rage driving away prudence, James shook his fist in Basil’s face.

“Oh, I’ll pay you out before I’ve done. I’ll pay you out.”

“James, I told you to get out five minutes ago,” said Basil, in a more peremptory fashion.

Jimmie looked at him for one moment, furious and impotent; then, without another word, flung out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Basil smiled quietly and shrugged his shoulders. He felt almost as disgusted with himself as with James, but supposed that as such scenes grew more frequent he would acquire a certain callousness. In his self-contempt he told himself that without doubt the time would come when he would be proud of his triumph in repartee over an auctioneer’s clerk. He glanced at Jenny, who sat with sewing in her hands, but without working gazed straight out of window.

“The only compensation in brother James is that he causes one a little mild amusement,” he murmured.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she answered. “Why d’you treat him as if he was a dog?”

“My dear child, I don’t. I’m very fond of dogs.”

“Isn’t he as good as I am? And you condescended to marry me.”

“I really can’t see that because I married you I must necessarily take the whole of your amiable family to my bosom.”

“Why don’t you like them? They’re honest and respectable.”

Basil gave a little sigh of fatigue. They had discussed the matter often during the last month, and though he did his best to curb his tongue, his patience was nearly exhausted.

“My dear Jenny,” he said, “we don’t choose our friends because they’re honest and respectable, any more than we choose them because they change their linen daily. But I’m willing to acknowledge that they have every grace and every virtue, only they rather bore me.”

“They wouldn’t if they were swells.”

He looked at her curiously, wondering why she imputed to him such despicable motives, and reflected that he could have been very good friends with his wife’s relations if they had been simple country folk, unassuming and honest; but the family of Bush joined the most vulgar pretentiousness to a code of honour which could only in charity be called eccentric. Jenny brooded over his words, and after a silence of some minutes burst out impatiently.

“After all, we’re not in such a bad position as all that. My mother’s father was a gentleman.”

“I wish your mother’s son were,” answered Basil, without looking up from the letter he wrote.

“D’you know what Jimmie says _you_ are?”

“I don’t vastly care, but if it pleases you very much you may tell me.”

She shot at him an angry glance, but did not answer. Then Basil got up, and going to her, placed his hands on her shoulders. Making his tone very gentle, he explained that it was really not his fault if he did not care for her people. Could she not resign herself to the fact, and make the best of it? Surely it would be better than to make themselves miserable. But Jenny, refusing the offer of reconciliation, turned away.

“You don’t think they’re good enough for you to associate with because they’re not in swell positions.”

“I don’t in the least object to their being grocers and haberdashers,” he answered, with a flush of annoyance. “I only wish they’d sell us things at cost price.”

“Jimmie isn’t a grocer or a haberdasher. He’s an auctioneers clerk.”

“I humbly apologize. I thought he was a grocer, because last time he did us the honour of calling he asked how much a pound we paid for our tea, and offered to sell us some at the same price. But then he also offered to insure our house against fire, and to sell me a gold-mine in Australia.”

“Well, it’s better to make a bit as best one can than to moon around like you do.”

“Really, even to please you I’m afraid I can’t go about with little samples of tea in my pocket, and sell my friends a pound or two when I call upon them. Besides, I don’t believe they’d ever pay me.”

“Oh no,” cried Jenny scornfully, “you’re a gentleman, and a barrister, and an author, and you couldn’t do anything to dirty those white hands that you’re so proud about. How do other fellows manage to get briefs?”

“The simplest way, I believe, is to marry the wily solicitor’s daughter.”

“Instead of a barmaid?”

“I didn’t say that, Jenny,” he answered very gravely.

“Oh no, you didn’t say it. But you hinted it. You never say anything, but you’re always hinting and insinuating till you drive me out of my senses.”

He held out his hands.

“I’m very sorry if I hurt your feelings. I promise you I don’t mean to. I always try to be kind to you.”

He looked at her wistfully, expecting some word of regret or affection; but sullenly, with tight-closed lips, she cast down her eyes, and went on with her sewing.

With darkened brows he returned to his letters, and for an hour they remained silent. Then Jenny, unable any longer to bear that utter stillness, which seemed more marked because he sat so near, hostile and unapproachable, went out to sit in her own room. Her anger was past, and she was frightened at herself. She wanted to think the matter out, and with despair remembered that there was none to whom she could go for advice. It would be impossible to make her own folk understand these difficulties, and instead of help they would give only floats and cruel jibes. It crossed her mind to go to Frank, the only friend of Basil whom she knew with any intimacy, for he came not infrequently to Barnes, and his manner, always so kind and gentle, made her think that she could trust him; but what should he care for her misery, and what assistance could he offer? She knew well enough the expressions of helpless sympathy he would use. It seemed that she stood quite alone in the world, weak and without courage, separated at once from those among whom her life had been spent, and from those into whose class her marriage had brought her. With throbbing brain, like a puppet driven round endlessly in a circle of pain, she could not see an end to her troubles. But the very confusion, the terror and uncertainty of it, forced her to make some desperate attempt, and she sought within herself for strength to gain the happiness she so woefully desired. She pondered over the events of the last year, picturing distinctly each passing scene, and saw the gradual bitterness that darkened the bliss of the beginning; then she told herself that some great effort was needed, or it would be too late. She was losing her husband’s love, and in bitter self-reproach took all the blame therefor upon her own shoulders. The only chance now was to change herself completely. She must try to be less exacting, less insanely jealous; she must at least attempt to be more worthy of him. In an agony of repentance she reviewed all her faults. At last, with flushed cheeks and eyes still shining with tears, she went to Basil, and laid her hand on his shoulder.

“Basil, I’ve come to beg your pardon for what I said just now. I was carried away, and forgot myself.”

There was a gentleness in her voice which he had almost forgotten. He stood up and took her hands, smiling brightly.

“My dear girl, what does it matter? I’d forgotten all about it.”

“I’ve been thinking it all over. We haven’t been getting on very well of late, and I’m afraid I’ve been to blame. I did things I regret. I have been reading your letters”—she blushed deeply with intense shame—“but I swear I won’t do it any more. I will try to be a good wife to you. I know I’m not your equal, but I want to try to get up to you. And you must be patient with me—you must remember I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“Oh, Jenny, don’t talk like that; you make me feel such a cad.”

She smiled through her tears. He spoke in just the same eager tone which in time past had so charmed her. But then a wistful look came to her face.

“You do love me still a little, Basil, don’t you?”

“My darling, you know I do.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her. She burst into tears, but they were tears of joy, for she thought, poor thing! that there ended their troubles. The future would be brighter and quite different.

VI

Part of Frank’s work as assistant-physician was to make post-mortem examinations of patients who died in the hospital, and in the performance of this duty, some time after Easter, he contracted a septic inflammation of the throat. Characteristically making nothing of it till quite seriously ill, he was at length taken to St. Luke’s in a high fever, delirious, and there for more than a week remained in a somewhat dangerous condition. For a fortnight more he found himself so languid that, though with vexation rebelling against his weakness, he was obliged to keep his bed; but finally convalescent, he arranged to go for a little to Ferne, near Tercanbury, where his father had a large general practice; then he meant to stay at Jeyston in Dorsetshire, where the Castillyons were giving a small house-party for Whitsun. Nor was there much inconvenience in his taking then a needed holiday, for the absence during August and September of the physician whose place in the wards he must fill would keep him in town for the hottest months.

The night before his departure Frank dined with Miss Ley, alone as both preferred, and during the meal, as was their wont, they discussed the weather and the crops. Each was sufficiently fond of his own ideas to brook no interruption from the service of food, and chose rather to keep till afterwards any topic that needed free discussion. But when the coffee was brought into the library, Miss Ley being comfortably stretched on a sofa, and Frank, with his legs on an armchair, lit his cigar, they looked at one another with a sigh of relief and a smile of self-satisfaction.

“You are going down to Jeyston, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I don’t think I can face it. As the time grows nearer, I begin to feel more wretched at the prospect, and I’m convinced I shall have worried myself into a dangerous illness by the appointed day. I don’t see why at my age I should deliberately expose myself to the tedium of a house-party. Paul Castillyon has notions of old-fashioned hospitality, and every morning after breakfast asks what you would like to do; (as if any sensible woman knew at that preposterous hour what she wanted to do in the afternoon!) but it’s a mere form, because he has already mapped out your day, and you’ll find every minute has its fixed entertainment. Then, it bores me to extinction to be affable to people I despise, and polite—— Oh, how I hate having to be polite! A visit of two days makes me feel as if I should like to swear like a Billingsgate fishwife, just to relieve the monotony of good manners.”

Frank smiled, and drinking his Benedictine, settled himself still more comfortably in his chair.

“By the way, talking of good manners, did I tell you that just before I grew seedy I went to three dances?”

“I thought you hated them?”

“So I do, but I went with a special object. The chief thing that struck me was the execrable breeding of the people. Supper was to be ready at midnight, and at half-past eleven they began to gather round the closed doors of the supper-room; by twelve there was as large a crowd as at the pit-entrance of a theatre, and when the doors were thrown open they struggled and pushed and fought like wild beasts. I’m sure the humble pittite is never half so violent, and they just flung themselves on the tables like ravening wolves. Now, I should have thought polite persons showed no excessive anxiety to be fed. By Jove! they made a greater clamour than the animals at the Zoo.”

“You’re so _bourgeois_, dear Frank,” smiled Miss Ley. “Why do you suppose people go to a dance, if not to have a good square meal for nothing? But that was surely not your object.”

“No; I went because I’d made up my mind to marry.”

“Good heavens!”

“Having arrived at the theoretical conclusion that marriage is desirable, I determined to go to three dances to see whether I could find anyone with whom it was possible, without absolute distaste, to contemplate passing the rest of my days. I danced and sat out with seventy-five different persons, Miss Ley, ranging in age from seventeen to forty-two, and I can honestly say I’ve never been so hideously bored in my life. It’s no good; I’m doomed to a career of single blessedness. I didn’t think I should fall desperately in love on the spot, but it seemed possible that one of those five-and-seventy blooming maidens would excite in me some faint thrill: not one disturbed my equilibrium for a single moment. Besides, they were mostly phthisical or anæmic or ill-developed; I hardly saw one who appeared capable of bearing healthy children.”

For a moment they were silent, while Miss Ley, not without amusement, pondered over Frank’s fantastic scheme for finding a wife.

“And what are you going to do now?” she asked.

“Shall I tell you?” He put aside the light manner which prevented one from seeing how much of what he said was seriously meant, and how much deliberate nonsense, and leaned forwards, his square strong chin on his hand, looking at Miss Ley with steady gaze. “I think I’m going to chuck everything.”

“What on earth d’you mean?”

“I’ve been thinking of it more or less for some months, and during this last fortnight in bed I’ve put two and two together. I’m going home partly to sound my people. You know my father has toiled year after year, saving every penny he could, so that I might have the best possible medical education, and take at once to consulting work without any anxiety about my bread-and-butter. He knew it entailed earning very little for a long time, but he was determined to give me a chance; it’s a poorish practice round Ferne, and he’s never had a holiday for thirty years. I want to find out if he could bear it if I told him I intend to abandon my profession.”

“But, my dear boy, d’you realize that you wish to give up a very brilliant career?” exclaimed Miss Ley in some consternation.

“I’ve considered it pretty carefully. I suppose no one of my years in the medical has quite such a brilliant chance as I. Luck has been on my side throughout. I fell into the post of resident at St. Luke’s by the death of the man above me, and at the end of my time got the assistant-physicianship at a very early age. I have friends and connections in the world of fashion, so that I shall soon have a rich and important practice. In due course, I dare say, if I stick to it, I may earn ten or fifteen thousand a year, be appointed a royal physician, and eventually be baroneted; and then I shall die, and be buried, and leave rather a large fortune. That is the career that awaits me: I can see myself in the future portly and self-complacent, rather bald, with the large watch-chain, the well-cut frock-coat, and the suave manner of the modish specialist; I shall be proud of my horses, and fond of giving anecdotes about the royal personages I treat for over-eating.”

He paused, looking straight in front of him at this imaginary Sir Francis Hurrell who strutted pompously, sleek and prosperous, under a load of honours. Miss Ley, deeply interested in all stirrings of the soul, observed keenly his look of scorn.

“But it seems to me at the end of it I may look back, intensely bored with my success, and say to myself that, after all, I haven’t really lived a single day. I’m thirty now, and my youth is beginning to slip away—callow students in their first year think I’m quite middle-aged—and I haven’t lived yet; I’ve only had time to work, and by Jove! I have worked—like the very devil. When my fellow-students spent their nights in revelry, at music-halls, kicking up a row and getting drunk, or making love to pretty wantons, when they played poker into the small hours of the morning, reckless and light of heart, I sat working, working, working. Now, for the most part, they’ve settled down as sober, tedious general practitioners, eminently worthy members of society, and respectably married; and a fool would say I have my reward because I’m successful and somewhat distinguished, while they for past dissipation must pay to their life’s end with the stupidest mediocrity. But sometimes their nerves must tingle when they look back on those good days of high spirits and freedom; I have nothing to look back on but the steady acquirement of knowledge. Oh, how much wiser I should have been to go to the deuce with them! But I was just a virtuous prig. I’ve worked too much, I’ve been altogether too exemplary, and now my youth is going, and I’ve known none of its follies; my blood burns for the hot, mad riot of the devil-may-cares. And this medical life isn’t as I thought once, broad and catholic; it’s warped and very narrow. We only see one side of things; to us the world is a vast hospital of sick people, and we come to look upon mankind from the exclusive standpoint of disease; but the wise man occupies himself, not with death, but with life—not with illness, but with radiant health. Disease is only an accident; and how can we lead natural lives when we deal entirely with the abnormal? I feel I never want to see sick persons again; I can’t help it, they horrify and disgust me, I thought I’d busy myself with science, but that, too, seems dead to me and irksome; it wants men of different temper from mine to be scientists. There are plenty to whom the world and its glories are nothing, but I have passions—hot, burning passions; my senses are all alert, and I want to live. I wish life were some rich fruit, that I could take it in my hands and tear it apart, and eat it piece by piece. How can you expect me to sit down at my microscope hour after hour when the blood is racing through my veins and my muscles are throbbing for sheer manual labour?”

In his excitement he jumped up, and walked up and down, blowing out the smoke furiously in white clouds. The old fable of the ant and the grasshopper came to Miss Ley’s mind, and she reflected that so at the approach of autumn might have reasoned the ant when she contemplated her store of food laboriously collected; perhaps she, bitterly envied the grasshopper who had spent the glorious days in idle singing, and in her heart, notwithstanding an empty larder and the cold winter to come, felt that the careless songster had made a better use than she of the summer-time.

“Do you think you’ll have the same ideas after a fortnight in the country has brought you back again your full health?” asked Miss Ley meditatively.

She was astonished at the effect of this question, for he turned on her with an anger which she had never seen in him before.

“D’you think I’m an absolute fool, Miss Ley?” he cried. “D’you think these are mere idle womanish fancies? I’ve been thinking of this for months, and my illness has left my brain clearer than ever it was. We’re all tied to the wheel, and when one of us tries to escape the rest do all they can by jibes and sneers to hold him back.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, my son,” smiled Miss Ley indulgently. “You know I have a certain discreet affection for you.”

“I beg your pardon; I didn’t mean to be so violent,” he answered, quickly penitent. “But I feel as though chains were eating into my flesh, and I want to get free.”

“I should have thought London offered a fairly spirited and various life.”

“London doesn’t offer life at all—it offers culture. Oh, they bore me to extinction, the people I go and see, all talking of the same things and so self-satisfied in their narrow outlook! Just think what culture is. It means that you go to first-nights at the theatre and to private views at the Academy; you rave over Eleonora Duse and read the _Saturday Review;_ you make a point of wading through the latest novel talked of in Paris, discuss glibly the books that come out here, and occasionally meet at tea the people who write them. You travel along the beaten track in Italy and France, much despising the Cook’s Tourist, but really no better than a vulgar tripper yourself; you’re very fond of airing your bad French, and you have a smattering of worse Italian. Occasionally, to impress the vulgar, you consent to be bored to death by a symphony concert; you go into fashionable raptures over Wagner, collect paste buckles, and take in the _Morning Post._”

“Spare me,” cried Miss Ley, throwing up her hands; “I recognise a particularly unflattering portrait of myself.”

Frank in his vehemence paid no attention to her remark.

“And the dull stupidity of it just chokes me, so that I pant for the fresh air. I want to sail in ships, and battle with hurricane and storm; I want to go far away among men who actually do things—to new countries, Canada and Australia, where they fight hand to hand with primitive nature; I desire the seething scum of great cities, where there’s no confounded policeman to keep you virtuous. My whole soul aches for the East, for Egypt and India and Japan; I want to know the corrupt, eager life of the Malays and the violent adventures of South Sea Islands, I may not get an answer to the riddle of life out in the open world, but I shall get nearer to it than here; I can get nothing more out of books and civilization. I want to see life and death, and the passions, the virtues and vices, of men face to face, uncovered; I want really to live my life while there’s time; I want to have something to look back on in my old age.”

“That’s all very fine and romantic,” replied Miss Ley; “but where are you going to get the money?”

“I don’t want money; I’ll earn my living as I go, I’ll ship before the mast to America, and there I’ll work as a navvy; and I’ll tramp from end to end picking up odd jobs. And when I know that, I’ll get another ship to take me East. I’m sick to death of your upper classes; I want to work with those who really know life at the bottom, with its hunger and toil, its primitive love and hate.”

“That’s nonsense, my dear. Poverty is a more exacting master than all the conventions of society put together, I dare say one voyage before the mast would be interesting, and would certainly teach you the advantage of ample means and the comfort of useless luxuries. But remember that as soon as anything becomes a routine it ceases to be true.”

“That sounds epigrammatic,” interrupted Frank; “but does it by any chance mean something?”

Miss Ley, uncertain that it did, went on quickly.

“I assure you that no one can be free who isn’t delivered from the care of getting money. For myself, I have always thought the philosophers talk sheer silliness when they praise the freedom of a man content with little; a man with no ear for music will willingly go without his stall at the opera, but an obtuseness of sense is no proof of wisdom. No one can really be free, no one can even begin to get the full value out of life, on a smaller income than five hundred a year.”

Frank looked straight in front of him, without answering; his quick mind still thrilled with the prospect his imagination offered. Miss Ley continued reflectively.

“On the other hand, it seems to me proof of great dulness that a person of ample fortune should devote himself to any lucrative occupation, and I have no patience with the man of means who from sheer habit or in poverty of spirit pursues a monotonous and sordid industry. I know a millionaire who makes his only son work ten hours a day in a bank, and thinks he gives him a useful training! Now, I would have the rich leave the earning of money to such as must make their daily bread, and devote their own energies exclusively to the spending thereof. I should like a class, leisured and opulent, with time for the arts and graces, in which urbanity and wit and comeliness of manner might be cultivated; I would have it attempt curious experiments in life, and like the Court of Louis XV., offer a frivolous, amiable contrast to the dark strenuousness in which of necessity the world in general must exist. A deal of nonsense is now talked about the dignity of labour, but I wonder that preachers and suchlike have ever had the temerity to tell a factory hand there is anything exalting in his dreary toil. I suppose it is praised usually because it takes men out of themselves, and the stupid are bored when they have nothing to do. Work with the vast majority is merely a refuge from ennui, but surely it is absurd to call it noble on that account; on the contrary, there is probably far more nobility in indolence, which requires many talents, much cultivation, and a mind of singular and delicate constitution.”

“And now for the application of your harangue,” suggested Frank, smiling.

“It’s merely that in this short life of ours it’s never worth while to be bored. I set no such value on regular occupations as to blame you if you abandon your profession; and for my part neither honours nor wealth would tempt me to a career wherein I was imprisoned by any kind of habit, tie, or routine. There’s no reason why you should continue to be a doctor if it irks you, but for Heaven’s sake don’t on that account despise the fleshpots of Egypt. Now, I have a proposition to make. As you know, my income is much greater than my needs, and if you will graciously accept it, I shall be charmed to settle upon you five hundred a year—the smallest sum, as I have often told you, on which may be played the entertaining game of life.”

He shook his head, smiling.

“It’s awfully good of you, but I couldn’t take it. If I can bring my father round, I shall go to Liverpool, and get on a ship as ordinary seaman. I don’t want anybody’s money.”

Miss Ley sighed.

“Men are so incurably romantic.”

Frank bade her good-night, and next day went to Ferne. But Miss Ley considered what he had said, and the morning solemnly visited her solicitor at Lancaster Gate—an elderly, rubicund gentleman with mutton-chop whiskers.

“I wish to make my will,” she said, “but I really don’t know what to do with this blessed fortune of mine; no one much wants it, and now my brother is dead there’s no one I can even annoy by leaving him nothing. By the way, can I during my lifetime settle an annuity on a person against his will?”

“I’m afraid you can’t force anyone to take money,” answered the solicitor, with a chuckle.

“How tiresome your laws are!”

“I should have said they applied perfectly, because a man who refuses an income is certainly fit only for a lunatic asylum.”

Beside her house in Old Queen Street, Miss Ley had somewhat less than four thousand a year, and the necessity of leaving it in a more or less rational fashion had of late much tormented her.

“I think,” she said, after a moment’s thought, “I’ll just divide it into three—one part to my niece, Bertha Craddock, who won’t in the least know what to do with it; one part to my nephew, Gerald Vaudrey, who’s a scamp and will squander it in riotous living; and one part to my friend, Francis Hurrell.”

“Very well; I’ll have it drawn out, and send it down to you.”

“Fiddlesticks! Take a sheet of paper and write it now. I’ll wait till you’re ready.”

The solicitor, sighing over this outrage to the decorum of legal delays, but aware that his client was of a peremptory nature, did her bidding, and calling in a clerk, with him witnessed her signature. She departed, feeling singularly pleased with herself, for whatever happened Frank would never suffer from financial difficulties, and she thought, not without sly amusement, of his extreme surprise when he found himself at her demise a man in comfortable circumstances.

VII

During his fortnight at home Frank observed his father and mother with great attention, and realized, really for the first time, how enormous were the sacrifices they had made for his sake. Every day, fine or rainy, old Dr. Hurrell drove out to visit his scattered patients, and in the afternoon trudged round on foot. From five till seven he saw patients in the surgery, and often enough was called up in the middle of the night to go to a farmhouse five miles away in the very heart of the country. To all these people he dispensed the fruits of his long experience, medical knowledge perhaps a little rough-and-ready, but serviceable enough; and of a surety his old-fashioned drugs, his somewhat drastic surgery, were more popular with yokel and farmer than would have been any new-fangled methods of treatment. Besides, he gave to all and sundry good, cheery advice, and a piece of his mind when they did what they shouldn’t, so that it was no wonder not a practitioner for twenty miles around was so beloved and trusted. But it was a monotonous life, without rest, without a single break from year’s end to year’s end, ill-paid if paid at all; and for thirty years the good man and his wife had looked upon every sovereign earned as held in trust for their only son. They had demanded economy neither at Oxford nor afterwards in London, but rather pressed money upon him. They had received with proud enthusiasm his desire to take up consulting practice, though knowing he must for a long time still be a charge upon them, and insisted that he should rent in Harley Street the very best rooms obtainable. The constant drudgery had been happiness unalloyed, because it gave every chance to the beloved boy whose brilliant talents seemed a thing so surprising that they could only thank God humbly for an unmerited mercy.

“Don’t you get tired of the practice sometimes, father!” asked Frank.

“It’s a matter of habit, and it’s all I’m fit for—a country practice. And then I have my reward, because some day you may be at the head of the profession; and when afterwards they write your life, a chapter will be devoted to the old G.P. at Ferne, who first gave you a love for medicine.”

“But we shan’t work very much longer,” said Mrs. Hurrell, “for soon we shall be able to afford to retire and live close to you. Sometimes we do want to see you often, Frank. It’s very hard to be separated from you for so long at a time.”

There was trembling in that strong even voice, so that Frank felt powerless. How could he, for reasons they would never understand, destroy that edifice of hope on which they had spent so many years of striving? He could never cause them such bitter, bitter pain. So long as they lived he must bear the yoke which they had put upon him, and go on with the steady, not inglorious routine of his existence in London.

“You’ve been very good to me,” he said, “and I’ll try so to live as to prove to you that I’m grateful for all you’ve done. I’ll be very ambitious, so that you may not think you’ve wasted your time.”

But Frank’s humour was inclined to the satiric when he arrived at Jeyston, the Castillyons’ place in Dorsetshire. Miss Ley had finally decided that her health prevented her from indulging in any dissipation, but Mrs. Barlow-Bassett with Reggie came by the same train as himself, and Paul’s mother, who with her companion made up the small party, a few hours later.

A wizened little woman with white hair and a preposterous cap, the elder Mrs. Castillyon babbled incessantly of nothing in particular, but for the most part of her own family, the Bainbridges of Somersetshire, whereof now she was the only living representative. Immensely proud of her stock, she took small pains to hide her contempt for all whose names figured less importantly than her own in the _Landed Gentry_. Ignorant, narrow, ill-educated and ill-bred, she pursued her course through this vale of sorrow with a most comfortable assurance of her superiority to the world in general; and not only in her husband’s time, but even now that Paul reigned in his stead, by virtue of the purse-strings, whereof she kept tight hold, tyrannized systematically over Jeyston and all the villages surrounding. Her abominable temper, unchecked since in early youth she awoke to the fact that she was an heiress of old family, was freely vented on Miss Johnston, her companion, a demure maiden of forty, who ate with admirable complacency the bread of servitude; but also to some extent on her daughter-in-law, whom the old lady detested heartily, never hesitating to remind her that it was her good money which she so lightly squandered. Paul alone, whom she spoke of always as The Squire, had influence with her, for it was Mrs. Castillyon’s belief, innate as the capacity of ducks to swim, that the holder of this title was God’s representative on earth, a person of super-human attributes whose word was law, and whose commands must be obeyed; and Frank, who had seen Mr. Castillyon somewhat flouted in London as a notorious bore, was amazed to find that here he was ultimate arbiter of all questions. His judgment was unquestioned in matters of opinion as in matters of fact; his ideas upon art or science were as necessarily final as his political theories were the only ones an honest man could hold. When he had spoken all was said, and it would have been as rational to contradict him as to argue with an earthquake. But even Paul was relieved when his mother’s periodic visits came to an end, for her forcible and unique repartee made intercourse somewhat difficult.

“Thank God _I_’m not a Castillyon,” she said habitually. “I’m a Bainbridge, and I think you’ll have some difficulty in finding a better family in this part of England. You Castillyons hadn’t a penny to bless yourselves with till _I_ married into you.”

At dinner on his first evening Frank attempted to join intelligently in the conversation, but soon found that nothing he could say in the least interested the company; he had imagined innocently that it was ill-mannered to speak of one’s ancestors, but now learned that there were households wherein it was the staple of conversation: this rested chiefly between the elder Mrs. Castillyon, the Squire, and his brother Bainbridge, agent for the property, an obese man with a straggling beard, rather untidy and dressed in shabby old clothes, who talked very slowly, with a broad Dorsetshire accent, and to Frank seemed not a whit better than the farmers with whom he mostly consorted. They spoke besides of local affairs, of the neighbouring gentry, and of the Rector’s vulgar independence. Afterwards Grace Castillyon went up to Frank.

“Aren’t they awful?” she asked. “I have to put up with this day after day for weeks at a time. Paul’s mother rubs her money and her family into me; Bainbridge, that lout who should dine with the housekeeper instead of with us, discusses the weather and the crops; and Paul plays at being God Almighty.”

But Mrs. Barlow-Bassett was somewhat impressed by the pomposity of her environment, and took an early opportunity again to peruse the account given by the worthy Burke of the family whose guest she was; she found the page much thumbed and boldly marked with blue pencil. Every article in the house had its history, which old Mrs. Castillyon the elder narrated with gusto, for though from her exalted standpoint despising the family into which she had married, she had no doubt they were a great deal better than anyone else. Here were books collected by Sir John Castillyon, grandfather of the present Squire; there the Eastern curiosities of the Admiral his great-uncle; in fine array were portraits of frail ladies in the time of Charles II., and of fox-hunting, red-faced gentlemen in the reign of King George. Mrs. Bassett had never so felt her own insignificance.

After two days Frank retired to his room to compose a wrathful letter to Miss Ley.

“O Wise Woman! “I know now why the thought of a visit to Jeyston drove you to such a state of desperation; I am so bored that I feel perfectly hysterical, and except that I dare not risk to make myself ridiculous even in the privacy of my bedchamber, would fling myself on the floor and howl. It would have been charitable to warn me, but I take it that you had a base desire I should eat the bread of hospitable persons, and then betray to you all their secrets: to gain your ends you have stifled the voice of conscience, and deafened your ears to the promptings of good feeling. It would serve you right if I discoursed for six pages on things in general, but I so overflow with indignation that, even though I feel a mean swine because I abuse my hosts, I must let myself go a little. Imagine a Georgian house, spacious and well-proportioned and dignified, filled with the most delicate furniture of Chippendale and Sheraton, portraits on the walls by Sir Peter Lely and Romney, and splendid tapestries; a park with wide meadows and magnificent trees before which you feel it possible to kneel down and worship; all around the country is undulating, lovely and fertile; and it belongs, lock, stock, and barrel, to people who have not a noble idea, no thought above the commonplace, no emotion that is not petty and sordid. Pray observe also that they heartily despise me because I am what they call a materialist. It makes my blood boil to think that this wonderful place is enjoyed by a pompous ass, a silly woman, an ill-tempered harridan, and a loutish boor, all of whom, if things went by deserts, would inhabit the back-room of a grocer’s shop in Peckham Rye, Bainbridge, who will eventually come into the estate unless Mrs. Castillyon can bring herself so to endanger her figure as to produce an heir, is a curious phenomenon: he went to Eton and spent a year at Oxford, from which he was sent down because he could pass no examination, but in manners and conversation is no better than a labourer at thirteen shillings a week. He has lived all his life here, and goes to London once in two years to see the Agricultural Show. But let me not think of him. The day is passed by Mrs. Barlow-Bassett listening with open mouth to Mrs. Castillyon’s family anecdotes, by Reggie in eating and drinking and sucking up to the Squire, by myself in desperation, I fancied that I might get entertainment from Miss Johnston, the companion, and was at some pains to make myself amiable; but she has the soul of a sycophant. When I asked whether she was never bored, she looked at me severely, and answered: “Oh no, Dr. Hurrell, I’m never bored by gentlefolks.” Whenever there is a pause in the conversation or Mrs. Castillyon is out of temper, she points to some picture or ornament of which she has already heard the history a thousand times, and asks how it came into the family. “Fancy your not knowing that!” cries the old lady, and breaks into an endless rigmarole about some beery Squire, happily deceased, or about a simpering dame whose portrait shows that her liver from tight-lacing must have been quite out of shape. The things a single woman is driven to for thirty pounds a year and board and lodging! I would far sooner be a cook. Oh, how I long for the smoking-room in Old Queen Street and your conversation! I am coming to the conclusion that I only like two kinds of society—yours on the one hand, and that of the third-class actor on the other: where the men are all blackguards, the women frankly immoral, and no fuss is made when you drop an aitch, I feel thoroughly comfortable. I don’t think I have any overwhelming desire to omit aspirates, but it is a relief to be in company where no notice would be taken if I did.

“Yours ever, “FRANK HURRELL.”

Miss Ley would have used her sharp eyes at Jeyston to more purpose than Frank, and seen enacted a little comedy which on one side verged somewhat to the tragic. Tired and unhappy, Grace Castillyon with all her soul looked forward to Reggie’s visit as a respite from the anxiety of her life; for of late more than ever tormented by her conscience, only the actual presence of her lover was able to make her forget how abominably she treated Paul. She had learnt to see the tenderness behind her husband’s pompous manner, and his complete loving confidence gave a very despicable air to her behaviour; she felt guilty before him and vile. But with Reggie by her side Grace knew she would forget everything save her insatiable passion; she resolved only to see his good points, and forget how ill he had used her; it seemed that she could only keep the bare shreds of her self-respect by holding on to his love, and if she lost that nothing would remain but the dark night of despair and shame. And her heart rejoiced because at Jeyston no conflicting desires would take Reggie from her side; they could walk together delightfully, and in the quiet country enjoy somewhat of that great bliss which glorified the memories of their early friendship.

But to her dismay, Mrs. Castillyon found that Reggie systematically avoided to be alone with her. The morning after his arrival she asked him to come for a stroll in the park, and he accepted with alacrity; but after going upstairs to put on her hat she found that Paul and Mrs. Bassett waited for her in the hall.

“Reggie says you’ve offered to show us the park,” said Mrs. Bassett. “It’ll be so nice for us all to go together.”

“Charming,” answered Mrs. Castillyon.

She shot an angry glance at Reggie, which he sought not to elude, but took calmly, with a faint smile of amusement; and when they walked he dawdled so as to be well within earshot of the others. After luncheon again he remained with Frank, and it was not till the evening that Mrs. Castillyon had opportunity even to say half a dozen words.

“Why did you ask your mother to come out with us this morning?” she asked hurriedly, in a low voice. “You knew I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“My dear girl, we must be careful. Your mother-in-law is watching us like a cat, and I’m sure she suspects something. I don’t want to get you into a mess.”

“I _must_ see you alone; I must talk to you,” cried Mrs. Castillyon desperately.

“Don’t be a fool!”

“Well, I shall wait for you here after the others have gone to bed.”

“You’ll jolly well have to wait, because _I_’m not going to take any risks.”

She gave him a look of hatred, but could not answer, for at that moment Miss Johnston joined them, and Reggie, with alertness unusual to him, engaged her in the conversation. Grace, for the moment discountenanced, and careless if she betrayed her distress, stared at him fixedly, wondering what was in that mind which revelled in crooked ways. She felt horribly powerless in his hands, and knew, though it sickened her to know it, that now he would play with her cruelly, catlike, till he was sufficiently amused, and not till then deal the final blow. For two days more he pursued the same tactics, more carefully still, so that he never saw Mrs. Castillyon, even for a moment, except when others were present; and he appeared to take a malicious pleasure in hurting her. He made extravagant compliments which excited Paul’s ponderous hilarity, and using her like an intimate friend with whom he was on confidential terms, chaffed and bantered and laughed at her. Old Mrs. Castillyon, who liked to be amused, took a great fancy to him, which was no way diminished when she discovered, with the clear vision of dislike, that her daughter-in-law winced at these good-natured jokes. Grace bore them with a smiling face, with little shrieks of laughter; but it seemed there was a great raw wound in her heart, which Reggie, callously joyful because he inflicted pain, probed with a red-hot knife. When she was alone and could surrender to her wretchedness, she wept bitterly, wondering, half mad with agony, why her passionate love should be repaid by this inexplicable hatred. She had done everything possible to make Reggie love her, and beside giving him her whole soul, had been very, very good to him.

“He’s found me a real brick all through,” she sobbed. “I’d have done anything to help him.”

Of late even she had sought to influence him for his own weal, persuading him to drink less and to be less extravagant. In her adoration she was capable of any sacrifice for his sake; and the result was only that he loathed her. She could not understand. At length she could bear the torment no longer, and since Reggie gave no opportunity, determined at all costs to make one. But it was the last day of the visit, and he doubled his precautions. With an inkling that Grace would force an interview, he took care not to be alone for one moment, and sighed with relief when, after a smiling good-night, he retired with the other men to the smoking-room. But Mrs. Castillyon was decided not to let him go without an explanation of his behaviour; and although the danger of her contemplated step was enormous, her frame of mind was so desperate that she did not hesitate. When Reggie, chuckling slily because he had circumvented her, went to his bedroom, he found Grace quietly seated, waiting for him.

“Good Lord! what are you doing here?” he cried, for once startled from his self-possession. “Frank might very well have come in with me.”

She did not answer his question, but stood up and faced him, more haggard and pale for the magnificence of her gown and the brilliancy of her diamonds. She sought to compose herself and to talk deliberately.

“Why have you been avoiding me all these days?” she asked. “I want an explanation. What are you up to?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t bring that up again! I’m sick to death of it. You didn’t suppose I was coming down here to stay with your husband, and then play the fool with you? After all, I flatter myself I’m a gentleman.”

Mrs. Castillyon gave a low angry laugh.

“It’s rather late in the day to develop honourable sentiments, isn’t it? Haven’t you got some better story to me than that?”

“What d’you take me for? Why should you always think I’m lying to you?”

“Because experience has shown me that you generally are.”

He shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette, then looked at Grace with deliberation, as though meditating what he should now do.

“Haven’t you got anything to say to me at all?” she asked, her voice suddenly breaking.

“Nothing, except that you’d better go back to your own room. It’s devilish unsafe for you to be here, and I can you _I_ don’t want to get into a mess.”

But what does it all mean?” she cried desperately. “Don’t you care for me any more?”

“Well, if you insist, it means that I think the whole thing had better stop.”

“Reggie!”

“I want to turn over a new leaf, I’m going to give up racketing about, and settle down. I’m sick of the whole thing.”

He did not look at her now, but kept his eyes away nervously. A sob caught Grace’s throat, for what she feared was true.

“I suppose you’re gone on somebody else.”

“That’s no business of yours, is it?”

“Oh, you cad! I wonder how I could ever have been such a fool as to care for you.”

He gave a short, dry laugh, but did not answer. She went up to him quickly and took hold of his arms.

“You’re hiding something from me, Reggie. For God’s sake, tell me the whole truth now!”

He turned his eyes to her slowly, that sulky look of anger on his face which she knew so well.

“Well, if you want to know, I’m going to be married.”

“What?” For a moment she could not believe him. “Your mother never said a word about it.”

He laughed.

“You don’t suppose she knows, do you?”

“And what if I tell her?” whispered Grace hurriedly, distracted, only knowing that this horror must be prevented. “You can’t marry; you haven’t the right to now. It’s too infamous. I won’t let you. I’ll do anything to stop it. Oh, Reggie, Reggie, don’t leave me! I can’t bear it.”

“Don’t be a fool! It had got to come to an end some day or other. I want to marry and settle down.”

Mrs. Castillyon looked at him, and despair and anger and vehement hatred chased one another across her mobile face.

“We’ll see about that,” she whispered vindictively.

Reggie went up to her and caught her violently by the shoulders, so that she could hardly bear the pain.

“Look here, none of your little games! If I find out that you’ve been putting a spoke in my wheel, I’ll give you away. You’d better hold your tongue, my dear; and if you don’t, every letter you’ve written to me shall be sent to your mother-in-law.”

Grace turned deathly pale.

“You promised me you’d burn them.”

“I dare say, but you’re not the only woman I’ve had to do with. I always like to have a weapon or two in my hands, and I thought it might be useful if I kept your letters. They’d make pretty reading, wouldn’t they?”

He saw the effect of his words on Grace, and let go; she tottered to a chair, shaken with terror. Reggie rubbed it in.

“I’m not a bad-tempered chap, but when people put my back up I know how to get even with them.”

For a moment she gazed straight in front of her, then looked up with a curious expression in her eyes. She spoke in a hoarse voice, jerkily.

“I don’t think you’d come out of it very well if there were a public scandal.”

“Don’t you have any fear about me, my girl,” he answered. “What d’you suppose I care if I’m made a co? The mater would be a bit sick, but it don’t really matter a button to a man.”

“Not if it gets known that he’s taken a good deal of money off the woman unlucky enough to fall in his clutches? You forget that I’ve paid you—paid you, my friend, paid you. In the last six months you’ve had two hundred pounds out of me; d’you think anyone would ever speak to you again if they knew?”

She saw the deep blush of shame which coloured his dark cheeks, and with a ring of bitter triumph in her voice, continued.

“The first time I sent you money I never thought for a moment you’d accept; and because you did I knew what a low cur you were. I’ve got letters, too, in which you ask for money, and letters in which you thank me because I sent it. I kept them, not because I wanted a weapon against you, but because I loved you and treasured everything you’d touched.”

She stood up, and with cold, sneering lips flung out the words; she hoped they would rankle; she wanted to wound his self-esteem, to sear him so that he should writhe before her.

“Make a scandal, by all means, and let all the world see that you’re nothing but a blackguard and a cad. Oh, I should like to see you expelled from your club, I should like to see people cut you in the street! Don’t you know that there are laws to imprison men who get money in no filthier a way than you?”

Reggie strode up to her, but now she was no longer frightened. She laughed at him. He thrust his face close to hers.

“Look here, get out of this, or I’ll give you such a thrashing as you’ll never forget. Thank God, I’m done with you now. Get out—get out!”

Without a word, swiftly, she passed him, and went to the door. Not caring who might be about, she crossed the long passage that led from Reggie’s room to hers, her brain beating as though devils within it hammered madly; she could not realize what had occurred, but felt that the world was strangely coming to its end; it seemed to her the finish of life and of everything. Her wan cheeks were flushed still with anger and hatred. She had just reached her door, when Paul walked towards her up the great staircase; for one moment she was panic-stricken, but the danger extraordinarily cleared her mind.

“Grace, I’ve been looking for you,” he said; “I wondered where you were.”

“I’ve been talking to Mrs. Bassett,” she answered quickly. “Where on earth did you suppose I was?”

“I couldn’t think. I’ve just been downstairs to see if you were there.”

“I wish you wouldn’t follow me about and spy on my movements,” she cried irritably.

“I’m very sorry, my darling; I didn’t mean to do that.” He stood at the door of her room.

“For Heaven’s sake, come in or go out,” she said; “but don’t stand there with the door wide open.”

“I’ll just come for two minutes,” he answered mildly.

“What do you want?”

She took off her jewels, which burnt her neck like a circle of fire.

“I’ve got something I wish to talk to you about. I’m much distressed by a thing that has happened on the estate.”

“Oh, my dear Paul,” she cried impatiently, “for goodness’ sake don’t worry me to-night; you know I don’t care twopence about the estate. Why don’t you consult Bainbridge, who’s paid to look after it?”

“My love, I wanted your advice.”

“Oh, if you knew how my head was aching! I feel as if I could scream in sheer agony.”

He stepped forward, full of affectionate concern.

“My poor child, why didn’t you tell me before? I’m so sorry, and I’ve been bothering you. Is it very bad?”

She looked up at him, and her mouth twitched. He was so devoted, so kind, and whatever she did he could overlook and forgive.

“What a pig I am! she cried’ “How can you like me when I’m so absolutely horrid to you?”

“My darling,” he smiled. “I don’t blame you for having a headache.”

A sudden impulse seized her; she flung her arms round his neck and burst into a flood of tears.

“Oh, Paul, Paul, you are good to me. I wish I were a better wife. I’ve not done my duty to you.”

He folded his arms about her, and kissed tenderly her painted, wan, and wrinkled face.

“My darling, I couldn’t want a better wife.”

“Oh, Paul, why can’t we be alone? We seem so separated. Let’s go away together, where we can be by ourselves. Can’t we go abroad? I’m sick of seeing people—I’m sick of society.”

“We’ll do whatever you like, my dearest.”

A great happiness filled him, and he wondered how he had deserved it. He wished to stay by his wife, helping her to undress, but she begged him to go.

“My poor child, you look so tired,” he said, kissing her forehead gently.

“I shall be better in the morning, and then we’ll start a new life. I’ll try and be better to you—I’ll try and deserve your love.”

“Good-night, darling.”

He closed the door very softly, leaving her to her thoughts.

VIII

Mrs. Castillyon passed a sleepless, unquiet night, and looking at herself in the glass next morning, was shocked at her haggard countenance; but she was determined that Reggie during this final interview should discern no sign of her distress, and coming down to breakfast, was to all appearance in the highest spirits. She noticed the hang-dog air with which he avoided her glance, and with angry resolution began to rally him in the somewhat obvious fashion often mistaken by persons of her sort for wit. To conceal her poignant misery she kept up a flow of vapid conversation, intermingled with little shrieks of laughter and pointed by much gesticulation; but she exaggerated her spiritless vivacity so that the effect was somewhat hysterical, and Frank, whom this did not escape, wondering what thus affected her, mentally prescribed a sedative. The carriage drove round before breakfast was over, and Mrs. Bassett, fearful of missing her train, began to bid the company farewell. Mrs. Castillyon held out her hand frankly to Reggie.

“Good-bye. You must come and see us again when you have time. I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself.”

“A1,” he answered.

He could not understand the smiling carelessness of her look, wherein he saw no reproach nor anger, and asked himself uncomfortably what Grace could have in mind, He pondered slowly over the harm she could possibly do him. But he was glad of the decisive rupture, and heartily thankful the final meeting was over. He hated her the more because of the reminder that a good deal of money had passed from her hands to his.

“She knew I couldn’t afford to go about with her on my allowance, and I’ve spent it all on her,” he muttered to himself in extenuation.

They were in the train now, and he looked at his mother, who sat in the opposite corner of the carriage, reading the _Morning Post_. He would not have liked her to know the details of the affair. Again he repeated excuses to himself, at the end of which he settled to a sullen resentment against Grace because she had tempted him. Finally his thoughts went elsewhere and his heart began to beat more quickly.

But after the Bassetts and Frank were gone, Mrs. Castillyon was seized by a great dismay, and shuddered as though a cold wind blew, because she must spend two days more under the stern eyes of Paul’s mother, who seemed to watch with a vindictive triumph, as though she knew the abominable secret, and to reveal it only waited for an opportunity. Grace stood looking out of the window at the wide stretch of meadow-land and the splendid trees of the park. The sky was gray, covering the earth with a certain sad monotony which answered her mood, depressed after the forced excitement of the early morning. Paul came up behind her, and placed his arm round her waist.

“Are you very tired, darling?” he asked.

She shook her head, trying to smile, touched, as of late she had been often, by the gentleness of his voice.

“I’m afraid you exhaust yourself. You were the life and spirit of the whole party. Without you we should have been almost dull.”

From force of habit an ironic and obvious repartee came to her lips, but she did not say it. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

“I’m beginning to feel so dreadfully old, Paul.”

“Nonsense! You’ve scarcely reached your prime. You’re looking prettier than ever.”

“D’you think so really? I suppose it’s because you care for me a little still. This morning I thought I looked a hundred and two.”

He did not answer, being more accustomed to debate than to conversation, but pressed his arm a little more closely round her waist.

“Have you never regretted that you married me, Paul? I know I’m not the sort of wife you wanted, and I’ve never brought you any children.”

He was profoundly moved, for his wife had never spoken to him in such a way before. For once the pompousness fell away from his delivery, and he answered in trembling tones, almost whispering.

“My darling, each day I thank God for you. I feel I’m not worthy of the blessing I’ve received, and I’m grateful to my Maker, very grateful, because He has given me you to be my wife.”

Grace’s lips twitched, and she clenched her hands to prevent herself from bursting into tears. He looked at her with a fond smile,

“Grace, I bought a little present for your birthday next week. May I give it you now instead of waiting?”

“Yes, do,” she smiled, “I knew you had something, and I’m so impatient.”

Quite jauntily he went off, and in a minute, somewhat out of breath from his haste, returned with a diamond ornament. Mrs. Castillyon knew something of jewellery, and her eyes glistened at the magnificence of this.

“Paul, how could you!” she cried. “How perfectly gorgeous! But I didn’t want anything half so valuable. I have so much that you’ve given me. I only wanted a tiny present to show that you still cared for me.”

He beamed with satisfaction and rubbed his hands gleefully.

“As if anything was too good for my loving, faithful wife!”

“We mustn’t show it to your mother, Paul. She’d scold awfully,” answered Grace archly.

He burst into a shout of laughter.

“No, no, hide it from her.”

Mrs. Castillyon raised her lips to his, and with ardent passion, unexpected in that stout, complacent man, he kissed her. At that moment the dogcart came to the door, and Paul, in some surprise, asked his wife if she needed it.

“Oh, I forgot,” she cried. “I’m going up to town for the day. I ought to have told you. Miss Ley is much worse than she pretends, and I think I should go and see if I can do anything.”

The night’s dreary meditation had left her with a sensible resolve to consult Miss Ley, and when the maid came to draw the blinds she had ordered the trap to take her to the station for the train after that by which her guests were going. Now glibly she invented an excuse for her journey, and refused to hear Paul’s remonstrance, who feared she would make herself ill; nor would she allow him to accompany her.

“I feel I mustn’t prevent you when you’re bent on an errand of mercy,” he said at length. “But come back as early as you can.”

Miss Ley was finishing luncheon when Mrs. Castillyon was announced.

“I thought you were entertaining at Jeyston,” she exclaimed, much surprised to see her.

“I felt I must see you or I should go mad. Oh, why didn’t you come down? I wanted you so badly.”

Miss Ley, evidently in robust health, could not repeat her plea of indisposition, and therefore, instead of explaining, offered her guest food.

“I couldn’t eat anything,” cried Grace, with a shiver of distaste. “I’m simply distracted.”

“I surmised that you were in some trouble,” murmured Miss Ley, “for I think you’ve rather overdone the—slap. Isn’t that the technical expression?”

Mrs. Castillyon put both hands to her cheeks.

“It burns me. Let me go and wash it off. I had to put it on this morning, I looked such an absolute wreck. May I go and bathe my face? It’ll cool me.”

“By all means,” answered Miss Ley, smiling, “and while Mrs. Castillyon was absent asked herself what could be the cause of this sudden excursion.

Presently Grace returned and looked in the glass. Her skin, bare of rouge and powder, was yellow and lined, and the cosmetic on her eyebrows and lashes, which water did remove, threw into more violent contrast the ghastly pallor. Instinctively she took a puff from her pocket, and quickly powdered her face; then she turned to Miss Ley.

“Did _you_ never make up?” she asked.

“Never. I was always afraid of making myself absurd.”

“Oh, one gets over that—but I know it’s silly; I’m going to give it up.”

“You say that as tragically as though you announced your intention of going into a nunnery.”

Mrs. Castillyon glanced at the door suspiciously.

“Will no one come in?” she asked.

“No one; but for all that I recommend you to keep calm,” retorted the other, who suspected that Grace wished to make a scene, and somewhat resented the infliction.

“It’s all finished between Reggie and me. He’s thrown me over like a worn-out tie; he’s got somebody else.”

“You’re well rid of him, my dear.”

Miss Ley’s sharp eyes were intent on Mrs. Castillyon’s face, seeking therein to read the inner secret of her heart.

“You don’t care for him any more, do you?”

“No, thank God, I don’t. Oh, Miss Ley, I know you won’t believe me, but I am going to try to turn over a new leaf. During these last months I’ve seen Paul so differently. Of course, he’s absurd and pompous and dull—I know that better than anyone—but he _is_ so kind; even now he loves me with all his heart. And he’s honest. You don’t know what it means to be with a man who’s straight to the very bottom of his soul. It’s such a relief and such a comfort!”

“My dear, it surely requires no excuses to find good qualities in one’s husband. You show a state of mind which is not only laudable, but highly original and ingenious.”

“It makes it so much harder for me,” answered Mrs. Castillyon, woebegone and tragic; “I feel such an awful cad. I can’t bear that he should trust me implicitly when I’ve behaved in such a disgusting way; I can’t bear his kindness. You guessed before that I was tortured by the desire to make a clean breast of it, and now I can’t resist any longer. This morning, when he was so sweet and gentle I could hardly restrain myself. I can’t go on; I must tell him and get it over. I would rather be divorced than continue with this perpetual lie between us.”

Miss Ley observed her for some while calmly.

“How selfish you are!” she murmured at length in an even, frigid voice. “I had an idea you were beginning to care for your husband.”

“But I do care for him,” answered Mrs. Castillyon, with astonishment.

“Surely not, or you wouldn’t wish to cause him such great unhappiness. You know very well that he dotes upon you; you are the only light and brightness in his life; if he loses his faith in you, he loses everything.”

“But it’s only honest to confess my sin.”

“Don’t you remember the proverb that open confession is good for the soul? There’s a lot of truth in it—it is very good indeed for the soul of the person who confesses; but are you sure it’s good for the listener? When you wish to tell Paul what you have done, you think only of your own peace of mind, and you disregard entirely your husband’s. It may be only an illusion that you are a beautiful woman of virtuous temper, but all things are illusion, and why on earth should you insist on destroying that of all others which Paul holds dearest? Haven’t you done him harm enough already? When I see a madman wearing a paper crown under the impression that it is fine gold, I haven’t the brutality to undeceive him; let no one shake our belief in the fancies which are the very breath of our nostrils. There are three good maxims in the conduct of life: Never sin; but if you sin, never repent; and above all, if you repent, never, never confess. Can’t you sacrifice yourself a little for the sake of the man you’ve treated so badly?”

“But I don’t understand,” cried Grace. “It’s not self-sacrifice to hold my tongue—it’s just cowardly. I want to take my punishment; I want to start fair again, so that I can look Paul in the face.”

“My dear, you have an incurable passion for rodomontade. You’re really not thinking of Paul in the least; you have merely an ardent desire to make a scene; you wish to be a martyr and abase yourself in due form. Above all, you want to rid yourself of the burden of a somewhat guilty conscience, and to do that you are perfectly indifferent how much you make others suffer. May I suggest that if you’re really sorry for what you’ve done, you can show it best by acting differently in the future; and if you hanker after punishment, you can get as much as ever you want by taking care that no word or deed of yours lets your husband into this rather odious secret.”

Mrs. Castillyon looked down, following with her eyes the pattern of the carpet; she thought over all that Miss Ley said.

“I came to you for advice,” she moaned helplessly, “and you’ve only made me more undecided than ever.”

“Pardon me,” answered the other, with considerable asperity: “you came with your mind perfectly made up, for me to approve your disinterestedness; but as I think you uncommonly stupid and selfish, I reserve my applause.”

The result of this conversation was that Mrs. Castillyon promised to hold her tongue; but on leaving Old Queen Street to catch the train back to Jeyston, she would have been puzzled to tell whether there was in her mood more of relief or of disappointment.

Mrs. Castillyon arrived at Jeyston just in time to dress for dinner, and somewhat tired by her journey, did not notice the gravity which affected the family party; she was accustomed to their dulness, and ate her food silently, wishing the meal were over. When Paul and Bainbridge came into the drawing-room afterwards, with an effort she gave her husband a smile of welcome, and made room for him on the sofa whereon she sat.

“Tell me what it is you wanted to speak about last night,” she said; “you asked for my advice, and I was too cross to give it you.”

He smiled, but his face quickly regained its serious look.

“It’s too late now; I had to decide at once. But I’d better tell you about it.”

“Fetch me my cloak, then, and we’ll stroll up and down the terrace; the light tires my eyes, and I hate talking to you always in the presence of other people.”

Paul was only too pleased to do as she suggested, and found it very delightful to wander in the pleasant starlit night; the clouds which had darkened the morning were vanished with the setting sun, and there was a delicate softness in the air. Grace took her husband’s arm, and her need for support made him feel very strong and masculine.

“A dreadful thing has happened,” he said, “and I’ve been very much upset. You remember Fanny Bridger, who went up to London last year in service? Well, she’s come back. It appears that she got into trouble. . . .” He hesitated a moment in the discomfort of telling his wife the brutal fact. “The man deserted her, and she’s returned with a baby.”

He felt a tremor pass through his wife, and wished that he had kept his second resolution, to say nothing to her.

“I know you hate to speak of such things, but I must do something. She can’t go on living here.” Fanny Bridger’s father was an under-gamekeeper on the estate, and his two sons were likewise employed. “I saw Bridger to-day, and told him his daughter must be sent away; I can’t in my position connive at immorality.”

“But where is she to go?” asked Mrs. Castillyon in a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper.

“That is no business of mine. The Bridgers have been good servants for many years, and I don’t wish to be hard on them. I’ve told the old man that I’ll give him a week to find somewhere for his daughter to go.”

“And if he can’t?”

“If he can’t, it’ll be because he’s a stupid and obstinate dolt. He began to make excuses this afternoon; he talked a deal of nonsense about keeping her in his care, and that it would break his heart to send her away, and he couldn’t afford to. I thought it was no good mincing matters, so I told him if Fanny wasn’t gone for good by Tuesday next I should dismiss him and his two sons.”

Abruptly Mrs. Castillyon snatched her arm from his, and a coldness seized her; she was indignant and horrified.

“We’d better go in to your mother, Paul,” she said, knowing to whom this determination of her husband was due. “We must talk this out at once.”

Surprised at the change in her tone, Castillyon followed his wife, who walked quickly to the drawing-room and flung aside her cloak. She went up to Mrs. Castillyon the elder.

“Did you advise Paul that Fanny Bridger should be sent away?” she asked, her eyes flaming with anger.

“Of course I did. She can’t stay here, and I’m happy to see that Paul has behaved with spirit. People in our position have to take great care; we must allow no contamination to enter the parish.”

“What d’you think will happen to the wretched girl if we turn her out? The only chance for her is to remain in her family.”

Paul’s mother, by no means a patient woman, vastly resented the scornful indignation apparent on Grace’s face; she drew herself up, and spoke with tight lips, acidly.

“Perhaps you’re not very capable of judging matters of this sort, my dear. You’ve lived so much in London that I dare say your notions of right and wrong are not quite clear. But, you see, I’m only a country bumpkin. I’m happy to say I think differently from you. I’ve always been under the impression that there is something to be said for morality. To my mind, Paul has been absurdly lenient in giving them a week. My father would have turned them out bag and baggage in twenty-four hours.”

Grace shuddered at the cruel self-righteousness of that narrow, bigoted face, and then slowly examined Paul, whose eyes were upon her, dreadfully pained because she was angry, but none the less assured of his own rectitude. She pursed her lips, and saying not a word more, went to her room. She felt that nothing could be done then, and made up her mind next morning to visit for herself the unlucky girl. Paul, disturbed because she did not speak to him, was about to follow further to expostulate; but his mother, sharply rapping the table with her fan, prevented him.

“Now, don’t run after her, Paul,” she cried peremptorily. “You behave like a perfect fool, and she just turns you round her little finger. If your wife has no sense of morality, other people have, and you must do your duty, however much Grace dislikes it.”

“I dare say we might manage to find Fanny Bridger some place.”

“I dare say you’ll do nothing of the sort, Paul,” she answered. “The girl’s a little wanton. I’ve known her since she was a child, and she always was. I wonder she had the impudence to come back here, but if you have any sense of decency _you_ won’t help her. How d’you suppose you’re going to keep people moral if you pamper those who fall? Remember that I have some claims upon you, Paul, and I don’t expect my wishes to be entirely disregarded.”

In her domineering way she looked round the room, and it was obvious in every repellent feature—in her narrow lips, in her thin nose and little sharp eyes—that she remembered how absolute was her power over the finances of that house. Paul indeed was the Squire, but the money was hers, if she chose, to leave every penny to Bainbridge. Next day she came in to luncheon in a towering passion.

“I think you should know, Paul, that Grace has been to Bridger’s cottage. I don’t know how you expect the tenants to have any regard for modesty and decorum if your wife openly favours the most scandalous indecency.”

Grace turned on her mother-in-law with flashing eyes.

“I felt sorry for the girl, and I went to see her. Poor thing! she’s in great distress.”

She saw again that little cottage at one of the park gates—a pretty rural place overgrown with ivy, the tiny garden vivid with carefully-tended flowers. Here Bridger was working, a man of middle age, hard-featured and sullen, his face tanned by exposure. He turned his back on her approach, and when she bade good-morning answered unwillingly.

“I’ve come to see Fanny,” said Mrs. Castillyon. “May I go in?”

He faced her with a dark scowl, and for a moment did not answer.

“Can’t you leave the girl alone?” he muttered at last huskily.

Mrs. Castillyon looked at him doubtfully, but only for a moment. She passed by quickly, and without another word entered the house. Fanny was seated at the table, sewing, and close to her was a cradle. Seeing Grace, she rose nervously, and a painful blush darkened her white cheeks. Once a pretty girl with fresh colours, active and joyful, deep lines of anxiety now gave a haggard look to her eyes. Her cheeks were sunken, and the former trimness of her person had given way to slovenly disorder. She stood before Grace like a culprit, conscience-stricken, and for a moment the visitor, abashed, knew not what to say. Her eyes went to the baby, and Fanny, seeing it, anxiously stepped forward to get between them.

“Was you looking for father, mum?” she asked.

“No; I came to see you. I thought I might be of some use. I want to help you if you’ll let me.”

The girl looked down stubbornly, white again to her very lips.

“No, mum, there’s nothing I want.”

Facing her, Grace understood that there was something common to them both, for each had loved with her whole soul and each had been very unhappy. Her heart went out strangely to the wretched girl, and it was torture that she could not pierce that barrier of cold hostility. She knew not how to show that she came with no thought of triumphing over her distress, but rather as one poor weak creature to another. She could have cried out that before her Fanny need fear no shame, for herself had fallen lower even than she. The girl stood motionless, waiting for her to go, and Mrs. Castillyon’s lips quivered in helpless pity.

“Mayn’t I look at your baby?” she asked.

Without a word the girl stepped aside, and Mrs. Castillyon went to the cradle. The little child opened two large blue eyes and lazily yawned.

“Let me take it in my arms,” she said.

Again the fleeting colour came to Fanny’s cheeks as with a softer look she took the baby and gave it to Grace. With curious motherly instinct Grace rocked it, crooning gently, and then she kissed it. Against her will a cry was forced from her.

“Oh, I wish it were mine!”

She looked at Fanny with pitiful longing in her eyes all bright with tears; and her own emotion thawed at length the girl’s cold despair, for she buried her face in her hands and burst into passionate weeping. Grace placed the child again in the cradle, and gently leaned over Fanny.

“Don’t cry. I dare say we can do something. Do talk to me, and let me see how I can help.”

“No one can help,” she moaned. “We’ve got to go in a week; the Squire says so.”

“But I’ll try and make him change his mind, and if I can’t I’ll see that you and the baby are well provided for.”

Fanny shook her head hopelessly.

“Father says if I go he goes, too. Oh, the Squire can’t turn us out! What are we to do? We shall starve, all of us. Father’s not so young as he was, and he won’t get another job so easy, and Jim and Harry have got to go, too.”

“Won’t you trust me? I’ll do whatever I can. I’m sure he’ll let you stay.”

“The Squire’s a hard man,” muttered Fanny. “When he sets his mind to anything he does it.”

And now at luncheon, looking at Paul and his mother, Bainbridge and Miss Johnston, she felt a bitter enmity against them all because of their narrow cruelty. What did they know of the horrible difficulties of life, when their self-complacency made the way so easy to their feet?

“Fanny Bridger is no worse than anyone else, and she’s very unhappy. I’m glad I went to see her, and I’ve promised to do all I can to help her.”

“Then I wash my hands of you,” cried the elder Mrs. Castillyon violently. “But I can tell you this, that I’m shocked and scandalized that you should be quite dead to all sense of decency, Grace. I think that you should have some regard for your husband’s name, and not degrade yourself by pampering an immoral woman.”

“I think it was unwise of you to go to Bridger’s cottage,” said Paul gently.

“You’re all of you so dreadfully hard. Have you none you pity or mercy? Have _you_ never done anything in your lives that you regret?”

Mrs. Castillyon turned to Grace severely.

“Pray remember that Miss Johnston is a single woman, and unaccustomed to hearing matters of this sort discussed. Paul has been very lenient. If he were more so, it would seem as if he connived at impropriety. It’s the duty of people in our position to look after those whom Providence has placed in our care. It’s our duty to punish as well as to reward. If Paul has any sense remaining of is responsibilities, he will turn out neck and crop the whole Bridger family.”

“If he does that,” cried Grace, “I shall go too.”

“Grace!” cried Mr. Castillyon, “what do you mean?”

She looked at him with shining eyes, but did not answer. They were too many against her, and she knew it useless to attempt anything more till next day, when Paul’s mother departed. Yet it was almost impossible to hold her tongue, and she was desperately tempted to cry out before them all the story of her own shameful misery.

“Oh, these virtuous people!” she muttered to herself. “They’re never content unless they see us actually roasting in hell! As if hell were needed when every sin brings along with it its own bitter punishment. And they never make excuses for us. They don’t know how many temptations we resist for the one we fall to.”

IX

But Grace found her husband more obstinate than ever before, and though she used every imaginable device he remained unmoved; by turns she was caressing and persuasive, scornful, bitter, and angry, but at length, because of his unperturbed complacency, was seized with indignant wrath. He was a man who prided himself on the accomplishment of every resolve he formed, and his determination once made, that the Bridgers at the end of their week’s warning should go, no appeals to his reason or to his emotion would induce him to another mind. Though it hurt him infinitely to thwart his wife, though it was very painful to feel her cold antagonism, his duty seemed to point clearly in one direction, and the suffering it caused made him only more resolute to do it. Paul Castillyon had a very high opinion both of the claims his tenants had upon him and of his great responsibilities towards them; and he never imagined for a moment that their private lives could be no concern of his: on the contrary, convinced that a merciful Providence had given him a trust of much consequence, he was fully prepared to answer for all who were thus committed to his charge; and he took his office so seriously that even in London he was careful to inform himself of the smallest occurrences on his estate. To all these people he was a just and not ungenerous master, charitable in their need, sympathetic in their sickness, but arrogated to himself in return full authority over their way of life. In this instance his moral sense was sincerely outraged; the presence of Fanny Bridger appeared a contamination, and with the singular prudery of some men, he could not think of her case without a nausea of disgust. It horrified him somewhat that Grace not only could defend, but even visit her; it seemed to him that a pure woman should feel only disdain for one who had so fallen.

The week passed, and Grace had been able to effect nothing; bitterly disappointed, angry with her husband and with herself, she made up her mind that no pecuniary difficulties should add to Fanny’s distress; if she had to go, at least it was possible so to provide that some measure of happiness should not be unattainable. But here she was confronted by Bridger’s obstinate determination not to be separated from his daughter; he had got it into his slow brain that the trouble came only because she had gone away, and no argument would convince him that in future little need be feared; somehow, also, he was filled with sullen resentment against the Squire, and, himself no less self-willed, refused to yield one inch. He repeated over and over that if the girl went, he and his sons must go too.

Late in the afternoon of the day before that on which Fanny was to leave for ever the village of her birth, Mrs. Castillyon sat moodily in the drawing-room, turning over the pages of a periodical, while Paul, now and then glancing at her anxiously, read with difficulty a late-published Blue-Book. A servant came in to say that Bridger would like to speak with the Squire. Paul rose to go to him, but Mrs. Castillyon begged that he might come there.

“Send him in,” said the Squire.

Bridger entered the room somewhat timidly, and stood at the door cap in hand; it was raining, and the wet of his clothes gave out an unpleasant odour. There was a certain grim savagery about the man, as though his life spent among wild things in the woods had given him a sort of fawnlike spirit of the earth.

“Well, Bridger, what do you want?”

“Please, Squire, I came to know if I was really to go to-morrow?”

“Are you accustomed to hear me say things I don’t mean? I told you that if you did not send away your daughter within a week I should dismiss you and your sons from my service.”

The gamekeeper looked down, revolving these words in his mind: even then he could not bring himself to believe that they were spoken in grim earnest; he felt that if only he could make Mr. Castillyon understand how impossible was what he asked, he would surely allow him to stay.

“There’s nowhere Fanny can go. If I send her away, she’ll go to the bad altogether.”

“You doubtless know that Mrs. Castillyon has promised to provide for her. I have no doubt there are homes for fallen women where she can be looked after.”

“Paul,” cried Grace indignantly, “how can you say that!”

Bridger stepped forward and faced the Squire; he looked into his eyes with surly indignation.

“I’ve served you faithfully, man and boy, for forty years, and I was born in that there cottage I live in now. I tell you the girl can’t go; she’s a good girl in her heart, only she’s ’ad a misfortune. If you turn us out, where are we to go? I’m getting on in years, and I shan’t find it easy to get another job. It’ll mean the workus.”

He could not express himself, nor show in words his sense of the intolerable injustice of this thing; he could only see that the long years of loyal service counted for nothing, and that the future offered cold and want and humiliation. Paul stood over him cold and stern.

“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I can do nothing for you. You’ve had your chance, and you’ve refused to take it.”

“I’ve got to go to-morrow?”

“Yes.”

The gamekeeper turned his cap round nervously, and to his face came an expression of utter distress; he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came, only an inarticulate groan. He turned on his heel and walked out. Then Grace went up to Paul desperately,

“Oh, Paul, you can’t do it,” she cried. “You’ll break the man’s heart. Haven’t you any pity? Haven’t you any forgiveness?”

“It’s no good, Grace. I’m sorry that I can’t fall in with your wishes. I must do my duty. It wouldn’t be fair to the other people on the estate if I let this go by without notice.”

“How can you be so hard!”

He wouldn’t see, he couldn’t see, that it was out of the question to drive Bridger away callously from the land he loved with all his soul; in one flash of inspiration she realized all that his little cottage signified to him, the woods and coverts, the meadows, the trees, the hedges: with all these things his life was bound up; like a growing thing, his roots were in the earth which had seen his birth and childhood, his marriage, and the growth of his children. She took hold of her husband’s arms and looked up into his face.

“Paul’ don’t you know what you’re doing? We’ve come nearer to one another of late. I’ve felt a new love grow up in my heart for you, and you’re killing it. You won’t let me love you. Can’t you forget that you’re this and that and the other, and remember that you’re only a man, weak and frail like the rest of us? You hope to be forgiven yourself, and you’re utterly pitiless.”

“My darling, it’s for your sake also that I must be firm with this man. It’s because you are so good and pure that I dare not be lenient.”

“What on earth d’you mean?”

She disengaged herself roughly from his arms and stepped back. Her face, without powder or rouge, was ashen gray, and in her eyes was a look of panic fear.

“I can’t allow that creature to live in the same place as you. Because you’re a virtuous and a good woman, it’s my duty to protect you from all contact with evil. It horrifies me to think that you may meet her on your walks—her and her child.”

Mrs. Castillyon’s cheeks flamed with red, and there was such a catching at her throat that she put her hand to it.

“But I tell you, Paul, that compared with me that woman is innocent and virtuous.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” he laughed.

“Paul, I’m not what you think. That woman sinned because she was ignorant and unhappy, but I knew what I was doing. I had everything I wanted, and I had your love; there were no excuses for me. I was nothing better than a wanton.”

“Don’t be absurd, Grace! How can you talk such rubbish?”

“Paul, I’m talking perfectly seriously. I’ve not been a good wife to you. I’m very sorry. It’s best that you should know.”

He stared at her incredulously.

“Are you mad, Grace? What do you mean?”

“I’ve been—unfaithful.”

He said nothing, he did not move, but a trembling came over his fleshy limbs and his face turned deathly white. Still he could scarcely believe. She went on with dry throat, forcing out the words that came unwillingly.

“I’m unworthy of the love and confidence that you gave me. I’ve deceived you shamefully. I’ve committed—adultery!”

The word hit him like a blow, and with a cry of rage he stepped forward to his wife, cowering before him, and seized her shoulders. He seized her roughly, cruelly, with strong hands, so that she set her teeth to repress the cry of pain.

“What d’you mean? Have you been in love with someone else? Tell me who it is.”

She did not answer, looking at him in terror, and he shook her angrily; he was blind with rage now, in a condition which she had never seen before.

“Who is it?” he repeated. “You’d better tell me.”

She shrank away from him, but he held her fast with ruthless hands, and he tightened them so that she could have screamed with pain.

“Reggie Bassett,” she cried at last.

He released her roughly, so that she fell against a table.

“You dirty little beast!” he cried.

Mrs. Castillyon’s breath came quickly. She felt about to faint, and steadied herself against the table; she was trembling still with the pain she had suffered; her shoulders ached from the violence of his bands. He faced her, looking as though even now he scarcely understood what she had said; he passed his hands over his face wearily.

“And yet I loved you with all my heart; I did everything I could to make you happy.” Suddenly he remembered something. “The other night when you kissed me and said we must come closer together, what did you mean?”

“I’d just broken with Reggie for ever,” she gasped.

He laughed savagely.

“You didn’t come back to me till he’d thrown you over.”

She stepped forward, but he put out his hands to prevent her.

“For God’s sake, don’t come near me, or I shall hit you.”

She stopped dead, and for a moment they confronted one another strangely. Then again he passed his hands across his face, as though he wished to push away some horrible thing before him.

“Oh God, oh God! what shall I do?” he moaned.

He turned away quickly, and sinking in a chair, hid his face and burst into tears. He sobbed uncontrollably, with all the agony and the despair of a man who has cast shame from him.

“Paul, Paul, for Heaven’s sake don’t cry; I can’t bear it.” She went up to him, and tried to take away his hands. “Don’t think of me now; you can do what you like with me afterwards. Think of these wretched people. You can’t send them away now.”

He pushed her away more gently, and stood up.

“No, I can’t send them away now. I must tell Bridger that he and the girl can stay.”

“Go to them at once,” she implored. “The man’s heart is breaking, and you can give him happiness. Don’t let them wait a minute longer.”

“Yes, I’ll go to him at once.”

Paul Castillyon seemed now to have no will of his own, but acted as though under some foreign impulse. He went to the door, walking heavily as if grown suddenly old, and Grace saw him go out into the rain, and disappear into the mist of the approaching night. She stood at the window wondering what he would do, and imagined with a shiver of dismay the shame of proceedings for divorce; she looked at the great trees of Jeyston as though for the last time, and tried to picture to herself the life that awaited her. Reggie would make no offer of marriage, nor, if he did, would she accept, since no trace remained of her vehement passion, and she thought of him merely with loathing. She hoped the case, going undefended, would excite small attention; and afterwards she was rich enough in her own right to live on the Continent as she chose. At all events, peace of sorts would be hers, and she could drag out somehow the rest of her years; she was thankful now that she had no child from whom separation would be unendurable. Wearily Grace pressed her eyes.

“What a fool I’ve been!” she cried.

Quickly the events of her life marshalled themselves before her, and she looked back with shame and horror on her old self, flippant and egoistic, worthless.

“Oh, I hope I’m not like that now.”

The minutes passed like hours, so that she was surprised because Paul did not return; she glanced at the clock, and found that half an hour had gone. The Bridgers’ cottage was not more than five minutes’ walk from the house, and it was incomprehensible that Paul delayed so long. She was seized with fear of impending disaster, and the mad thought came that the gamekeeper, without waiting for his master’s words, in his rage and grief had committed some horrible deed. She was on the point of sending a servant to see what had become of her husband. Suddenly she saw him running along the drive towards the house; dusk had set in, and she could not see plainly. At first she thought herself mistaken, but it was Paul. He ran with little quick steps, like a man unused to running, and his hat was gone; the rain pelted down on him. Quickly she flung open the glass doors that led into the garden, and came in.

“Paul, what’s the matter?” she cried.

He stretched out his hands to support himself against a chair; he was soaked to the skin, muddy and dishevelled; his large white face was set to an expression of sheer horror, and his eyes started out of his head. For a moment he pressed his hand to his heart, unable to speak.

“It’s too late,” he gasped; and his voice was raucous and strange. It was a dreadful sight, this pompous man, ordinarily so self-composed, all disarrayed and terror-struck. “For God’s sake, get me some brandy!”

Quickly she went into the dining-room, and brought him a glass and the decanter. Though by habit so temperate that he drank little but claret and water, now with shaking hand he poured out half a tumbler of neat spirit, and hastily swallowed it. He took a handkerchief, and wiped his face, streaming with rain and sweat, and sank heavily into the nearest chair. Still his eyes stared at her as though filled with some ghastly sight; he made an effort to speak, but no words came; he gesticulated with aimless hands, like a madman; he groaned inarticulately.

“For Heaven’s sake, tell me what it is,” she cried.

“It’s too late! She threw herself in front of the London express.”

She stepped forward impulsively, and then some strange power seemed to pluck her back. She threw up her hands, and gave a loud cry of horror.

“Be quiet, be quiet!” he cried angrily. Then words came to him, and he uttered his story rapidly, voluble and hysteric; he was all out of breath, and did not think of what he spoke. “I went down to the cottage, and Bridger wasn’t there. He was at the public-house, and I went on. A man met me, running, and said there’d been an accident on the railway; I knew what it was. I ran with him, and we came to them just when they were taking her along. Oh God, oh God! I saw her.”

“Oh, Paul, don’t tell me! I can’t bear it.”

“I shall never get it out of my eyes.”

“And the child?”

“The child’s all right; she didn’t take it.”

“Oh, what have we done, Paul—you and I?”

“It’s my fault,” he cried—“only mine!”

“Have you seen Bridger?”

“No; they went to tell him, and I couldn’t bear it any more. Oh, I wish I could get it out of my eyes.”

He looked at his hands and shuddered; then he got up.

“I must go and see Bridger.”

“No, don’t do that. Don’t see him now when he’s mad with drink and rage. Wait till to-morrow.”

“How are we going to spend the night, Grace? I feel I shall never sleep again.”

Next day, when Mr. Castillyon came downstairs, his wife saw that he had slept as badly as herself; for though dressed now very carefully in the rough tweeds of the country gentleman, his face was drawn and white, his eyes heavy with watching. He advanced to kiss her as usual, but on a sudden stopped, and a flush rapidly darkened his cheek; he drew back, and without a word sat down to breakfast. Neither could eat, and after a decent interval, meant to impress the servants that nothing very unusual had happened, Paul rose heavily to his feet.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “You’d better not go to Bridger’s; he’s been drinking hard all night, and he might hurt you. You know he’s violent-tempered.”

“D’you think I should care if he killed me?” he answered hoarsely, his face distorted by a look of dreadful pain,

“Oh, Paul, what have I done!” she cried, breaking down.

“Don t talk of that now.”

He moved towards the door, and she sprang up.

“If you are going to see Bridger, I must come, too, I’m so afraid.”

“Would you mind if anything happened to me?” he asked bitterly.

She looked at him with utter pain.

“Yes, Paul.”

He shrugged his massive shoulders, and together in silence they walked along the drive. The fine weather of the last three weeks was gone, and the day was chilly, and an east wind blew. A low white mist lay over the park, and the dripping trees were very cheerless. No sign of life was seen at Bridger’s cottage, but the little garden, usually so trim and neat, was trampled and torn, as though many men had gone carelessly over the beds. Paul knocked at the door and waited, but no answer came; he lifted the latch, and followed by Grace, walked in. Bridger, seated at the table, was looking straight in front of him, stupefied still with grief and liquor. He gazed vacantly at the intruders, as though he recognised them not.

“Bridger, I’ve come to tell you how dreadfully sorry I am for the awful thing that has happened.”

The sound of the voice seemed to bring the man to his senses, for he gave a low cry and lurched forward.

“What d’you want? What ’ave you come here for? Couldn’t you leave me alone?” He stared at Paul, rage gradually taking possession of him. “D’you still want me to go—me and the boys? Give us time, and we’ll clear.”

“I hope you’ll stay. I want to do everything I can to make up for your horrible loss. I can’t tell you how deeply I blame myself. I would give anything that this dreadful thing hadn’t occurred.”

“She killed ’erself so as I shouldn’t be turned off. You’re a hard master—You always was.”

“I’m very sorry. In future I will try to be gentler to you all. I thought I only did my duty.”

Mr. Castillyon, that man so conscious of his dignity, had never before spoken to his inferiors in apologetic tones. Apt to take others to account, he had never dreamed that some day himself might need to make excuses.

“She was a good girl, after all,” said Bridger. “In her heart she was as good as your wife, Squire.”

“Where’s the child?” asked Grace, almost in a whisper,

He turned upon her savagely.

“D’you want that, too? Aren’t you satisfied yet? Has the child got to go, too, before we stay?”

“No, no!” she cried hastily. “You must keep the child, and we’ll do all we can to help you.”

Paul looked at the man.

“Won’t you shake hands with me, Bridger? I should like you to tell me you forgive me.”

Bridger drew back his hands and shook his head. Paul saw that no good could come of staying, and turned to the door. The gamekeeper’s eye, following him, caught sight of his gun, which leaned against a chair; he stretched out hand and took it. Grace gave a start, but managed to repress her cry of alarm.

“Squire!” he called.

“Well?”

Paul turned round, and when he saw that the man held that weapon in his hand he straightened himself; he looked at him steadily.

“Well, what do you want?”

Bridger stepped forward, and roughly gave the gun into his master’s hand.

“Take it and keep it, Squire. I swore last night I’d blow your bloody brains out, and swing for it. I’m not fit to have this gun yet. Keep it, or if I get in drink I’ll kill you.”

An indescribable look of pride came into Paul’s face, and the humiliation and shame were banished. Grace’s heart beat fast when she saw what he was about to do, and a sob broke from her. He gave back the gun.

“You’ll need it for your work,” he said coldly. “I don’t think I’m afraid. I will take my chance of your wanting to shoot me.”

The man looked with wonder at his master, and then violently flung the gun into the corner of the room.

“By God!” he said.

Paul waited for one moment to see if Bridger had anything more to say, then gravely opened the door for his wife.

“Come, Grace.”

He walked with long steps back to the house, and for the first time in her life Grace admired her husband; she felt that, after all, he was not unworthy of his authority. She touched his arm.

“I’m glad you did that, Paul. I felt very proud.”

He removed his arm quickly, so that she shrank away.

“Did you think I was likely to be afraid of my gamekeeper?” he answered disdainfully.

“What are you going to do about me?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet. I must think it over. All that you told me last night was true?”

“Quite true.”

“Why did you tell me?”

“It was the only way to save those people. If I’d had the courage to do it a couple of hours earlier, that poor girl wouldn’t have killed herself.”

He said no more, and silently they reached the house.

For some days Paul made no reference to his wife’s confession, but went about the work of his estate, his Parliamentary labours, with stolid method, and only Grace’s new sympathy discerned the awful torment from which he suffered. He took care to speak naturally before the servants and his brother, but avoided to be alone with her. His back seemed strangely bent, and he walked with a listless torpor, as though his large limbs were grown suddenly too heavy to bear; his fleshy face was drawn and sallow, his eyelids puffy from want of sleep, and his eyes