CHAPTER XIX.

The conservatory door flew open with a rattle of shattered glass, admitting Lady Rossland and Mercia fleeing from the gardens amid the spattering raindrops.

"Oh!" they exclaimed simultaneously, on catching sight of the tableau where the silken tent had stood. "Oh!" Mercia's voice was low and hurt. Lady Rossland's rose up, pitched higher in an outraged tone.

Britton dropped the wrists he had grasped and turned toward the two women, humiliation written on his grave face, but the pride of Mercia would not allow her to wait for a forthcoming apology.

"I fancy we intrude," she said coldly. "Come, Lady Rossland, we can probably reach the house." Her ladyship wheeled across the doorstep, flashing back scornful eyes, and took Mercia's arm as they hurried out.

Rex gave an eager, pleading cry and darted forward.

"Wait," he cried entreatingly. "You are misjudging-"

But they were gone in the darkness, having raced up the gravel walk to the great illuminated house! The big, round drops wetted Britton's cheeks and dashed on his head. A moment he stood on the flags at the door, yearning to follow and explain, but a more vital and immediate necessity lay behind him in the conservatory.

He turned back, keeping himself forcibly in hand, determined on a summary and decisive dealing with the pregnant issue thrust upon him by Maud Morris.

"That," he said to her, "was the most humiliating thing any wife could see, yet it meant nothing at all!"

A change had come over her since the sudden apparition of the two women in the doorway. The fear of failure, inspired by the sweet, pure beauty of Mercia, seemed to hold her in its grip, and she called to her aid the old resource of alluring appeal.

"Don't say that, Rex," she pleaded, with a touch of pathos. "Have you altogether forgotten the old days? There must be memories sometimes!"

"No," said Britton, doggedly, "I could not remember them if I would."

"You are very trying," she murmured, petulant as a crossed child. "Can you not listen to reason?"

"There is only one way of reasoning soundly and in accordance with universal law," Rex answered with conviction. "That reasoning is along the line of right. I am prepared to follow it to the bitter end."

She looked up in amazement during a short interval.

"Do you realize all that your words imply?" she questioned incredulously. "I cannot think you do!"

"Yes, everything they imply," he answered, filled with the weary languor attendant upon nervous strain.

She was not left to surmise. Britton's meaning was plain. Her confidence began to shake.

"The alternative!" she began plaintively, "-surely you have understood me!"

"Too well," laughed Britton, harshly, "and I would rather go to prison-which I shall certainly not do, since, as you say, there is no proof!"

The woman's cheeks and brow went crimson with annoyance coupled with shame; she felt the demoralizing force of man's scorn.

"Rather than take that alternative, you will suffer me to tell Mercia?" she asked uncertainly.

"No," Rex answered in a ringing voice, "for I am going to tell her!"

She gasped. "You!" she exclaimed precipitately. "It is suicide! Are you entirely mad?"

There was in the woman's manner the recognition of an impending catastrophe, the knowledge of immeasurable possibilities. Britton instinctively felt her disappointment, and it helped to bring back to him, in a fair degree, his original assurance, confidence, and reliance.

"It will be the sanest thing I ever did," he declared.

Then the mask of the woman's plotting and machination fell, and she stood revealed in her uncertain status of life, fighting for what she loved in her own contemptible way.

"Rex, Rex," she cried incoherently, "I can't let you do that. My God, you know what it would mean!"

She grasped his hands in her intolerable fear, but he rescued them with a calm gesture. The action saved them from a second surprise.

The greenhouse door burst open more violently than before, and Guy Rossland stamped up and down in a pair of rain-soaked pumps, sending the wet flying in all directions.

"Ruined," he said woefully, regarding his pulpy patent leathers. "By Jove, but it's a beastly night. Hello! tent blown down?"

"A gust through that open window," explained the theosophist, who had resumed her veil. "Please close it and help me with the curtain. I am afraid the rain has frightened all my subjects."

"Couldn't find Kinmair," lamented Guy, climbing on the sill to fasten the casement. "The bally idiot! He's next after Britton. Hunted him through all the gardens, and then they told me he'd gone punting. Went on the river and got caught-worse luck! Jove, my feet feel as if I were barefoot in the marsh."

"Kinmair can postpone his visit," Rex said. "Indeed, the storm will cause a general postponement. No one can come through this rain. I think I'll make a run for it!"

But he walked, seeming not to notice the violence and the downpour. The coolness was pleasing on his face, and the damp lowered the feverish temperature of his heated blood, though it proved disastrous to his immaculate dress clothes.

He could see neither Mercia nor Lady Rossland when he entered, but he encountered Trascott elaborating on philanthropies to a penniless dowager. The curate did not note Britton's personal appearance, so deep was he in a cherished plan of building orphan homes and reading rooms for the poor of London, a plan involving the expenditure of something like two millions of money.

"It's admirable," murmured the dowager, who herself had to scrape to keep up appearances. "It's a most beautiful scheme, Mr. Trascott. You have every technicality well within your grasp. What is to prevent the carrying out of those details?"

"The money," Britton heard Trascott answer sadly. "It exists as yet only in my dreams. I have advanced my theories and worked for their realization, but the unthinking rich have not responded. Sometimes I feel as if I shall never live long enough to see my project undertaken either by my own hand or by that of a more competent man."

"Still, it is ideal," the dowager returned, as Rex moved on past them. "And it is something to cherish an ideal to the end of one's life, even if one never enjoys its realization."

Britton took the thought as applied to his own existence, especially in its present crisis, and turned it over and over in his mind while he searched the different rooms for Ainsworth.

Within Rossland's great country mansion the gaiety of the occasion was undiminished. The games, the talk, the dancing, all went on as merrily as if no tempest raged outside. The decorated chambers were illuminated with such a blaze of light that the flashes of the sky's electric current were scarcely in evidence through drawn blinds. Only the spaced, resounding roll of thunder and the crash of giant trees in the woodland groves told that a terrific storm was in progress.

In the centre of the music salon he saw the Rosslands with a crowd of guests, lamenting the disagreeable night that had driven them from the river. Mercia was not with them, and Rex felt that after the incident of the conservatory he must avoid Lady Rossland for the moment.

He crossed the hall and ran into young Guy, who, looking very flushed and disturbed, appeared to have emerged from some more or less inglorious conflict. Guy had on dry shoes, but they had not sufficed to smooth his apparently ruffled feelings.

"What's wrong?" asked Britton, remembering the youth's capacity for getting into trouble. "Been quarreling with someone in the house?"

"Quarreling? Not much-worse luck!" the boy blurted out ingenuously. "But, by Jove, aunt has the beastliest temper in Sussex! She's down on the theosophist she hired about something or other. Packed her off in the rain!"

"What?" Rex asked, interestedly. "Lady Rossland packed off the hired Mahatma woman?"

"Just that," Guy answered. "In a cab with James, through all the beastly rain-to the Crystal Hotel. That's the best in New Shoreham, and aunt told James to pay the bill."

Rex was thinking retrospectively. If his own concerns had not compelled the deepest gravity, he would have been inclined to laugh. As it was, he gave Guy a speculative look.

"Beastly temper aunt has," the youth continued. "Jove, didn't she rate me! Gave me fits for not holding down my position-guess it must have been on account of the tent. How'd I know the stuffy thing would blow? And Kinmair, the bally idiot, on the river with Dora! drat him!"

The nephew rattled on with the frank tongue of youth, and a smile grew by degrees around Britton's mouth and eyes. It was like the smile of a soldier in the firing line when he gets an unexpected respite and forgets for a brief moment the lurking danger and the strain.

"I wouldn't take it to heart," Rex said while the smile lasted. "It wasn't your fault, Guy, and, now I come to think of it, perhaps-I-I should have closed that conservatory window."

In the smoking-room Britton found Ainsworth whom he had been seeking.

"Stay with the pole instead of the punt?" asked Ainsworth, lightly, surveying his friend's wet clothes.

"Never in my life," replied Britton, very seriously.

"Jump into the river or one of the fountains to rescue somebody?" the lawyer continued in the same bantering way, but Rex had not the heart to match his flippancy.

"Can you get Trascott away and follow us home?" he asked instead, speaking what was on his mind. "I would like you both to give me an hour after we reach the Hall. I want to get some advice and some opinions."

Ainsworth looked at him with awakened interest.

"Something on the political side, eh?" he questioned smilingly.

"Yes, partly," Rex responded. "This convention affair is involved."

"Ah!" laughed Ainsworth, "I recognize in you the true politician's trait, namely the utter inability to draw a hard and fast line between business and pleasure. But go on with your wife! Trascott and I will not be far behind if Rossland will send us in one of his carriages, and of course he will. I am indefatigable in your interests, my dear fellow, and we can talk for three hours if you like."

The lawyer went out to break Trascott's conversation with the stout dowager. Britton remained in the smoking-room a moment, writing two short letters, one to Lord Rossland and one to Kinmair. It seemed a very odd proceeding when he was inside one man's house and within reach of the other man, but it was in keeping with Britton's secret resolve.

Crossing the drawing-room in search of Mercia, he met her alone. She greeted him with the same cold, reserved smile that she habitually gave him. Her beauty forced its way to his heart and left an aching pang.

"Your view of that incident to-night was entirely wrong," he said gravely. "In an hour or two you will have the right of it. This is hardly the place for explanations."

She inclined her head with a regal air which became her well, but which few women could assume because they had not the royal cast of loveliness to support it.

"Explanations are quite unnecessary," she quietly returned. "I do not ask for any."

"Yet I proffer them-at the right time," Britton said. "Please do not misunderstand me." There was courteous pleading in his voice, and it did not escape Mercia.

When they bade Lady Rossland good-night, with their own carriage and that supplied the other men standing in wait, Britton spoke to the hostess of the same thing.

"Lady Rossland," he said, "there is an explanation due you. My wife will ease your mind when I have explained to her. You will have no cause for resentment."

"I am glad of that," her ladyship observed with a bright smile, pressing his hand more warmly. "Indeed, I am very pleased to hear it. I was sure there must be some mistake."

Britton gave her the two letters. "Another favor!" he begged. "Kindly hand these to Lord Rossland and Kinmair in the morning. My request is a little strange, but I would like to have these delivered as I say."

"Certainly," laughed her ladyship. "You do not amaze me. You politicians are always involved in some intricate or uncommon scheme. These shall be handed to my husband and to Kinmair in the morning as you have requested. Good-night to you all. Take good care of your wife, sir!"

The rain thrummed on the canopy covering the walk like a hundred small drums beating tattoos as they hastened to the carriages.

Britton's stood first, the horses frantic with the roar of the sky's heavy artillery. Rex took advantage of a lull in their plunging and handed Mercia in.

They dashed away into the oppressive darkness, thick as a North Sea fog, seeing but little beyond the pale circle cast by their carriage lamps. Intermittent wicked blue flashes revealed the surrounding country at intervals of a second's duration, and a fleeting, dreary panorama was unrolled. These momentary glimpses showed the winding black road running in murky rivulets; they uncovered copses and groves with foliage bedraggled and rent, with branches torn from the trunks, so that their white scars flickered ghost-like beneath the lightning's glare; they photographed a flooded stretch of down lashed by the descending cloud-torrents and vanishing mysteriously into the ungauged distance.

Mercia leaned back upon the carriage cushions without speaking. Her diamonds quivered when the lightning came, and Britton could mark her wonderful profile.

A startling sense of the unreality of his married life lay upon him; the impassableness of the secret gulf separating him from his wife was most poignantly impressed.

"Mercia," he began, "I-I wonder-" and paused hesitatingly.

"What?" she asked, gravely meeting his eyes in a spasmodic flash of electricity.

"I wonder if you remember that evening we came over the trail by Indian River," Britton continued, "the night you saved my life!"

"Yes, I remember," she answered, studiously calm. "That was the beginning." Her voice showed that she did not wish to continue in that train of thought. Rex sighed and pressed as close to his side of the vehicle as he could till they swept through the curved drive of Britton Hall.

Rossland's borrowed carriage bowled up behind, bearing the lawyer and the curate.

Ainsworth bounced upon the lighted porch beside the husband and wife.

"Awful night!" he shivered. "Must be a pack of fiends abroad! Say-what was in those letters, Britton? Anything new turned up?"

"Yes," Rex answered, "they contained my refusal of the candidature."

"The devil!" said Ainsworth.