Oswyn seemed less at his ease; there was an extra dash of nervous brusqueness in the sarcastic welcome which he offered to the new-comer; and although there was a vacant seat in the little circle, of which Copal and Lightmark formed the nucleus, and to which Rainham had joined himself, he shuffled off to his favourite corner, and buried himself in "Gil Blas" and an abnormally thick cloud of tobacco-smoke.

Rainham gazed after him for a moment or two with a puzzled expression.

"Amiable as ever!" said Lightmark, with a laugh. "Poor old beggar! Have a cigarette? You ought to give up pipes. Haven't you been told that cigarettes are—what is it?—'the perfect type——?'"

"Oh, chestnuts!" interposed Copal, "that's at least six months old. And it's rot, too! Do you know what McAllister calls them? Spittle and tissue. Brutal, but expressive. But I say, old man, won't Mrs. Thingumy drop on you for smoking in your dress-coat? Or—or—— No, break it to me gently. You don't mean to say that you possess two? I really feel proud of having my studio next door to you."

"Copal is becoming quite an humorist," Lightmark suggested in an impartial manner. "What a wag it is! Keep it up, my boy. By the way, Mrs. Grumbit has been talking about your 'goings on,' as she calls them: she's apparently very much exercised in her mind as to the state of your morals. She told me she had to take you in with the matutinal milk three times last week. She wants me to talk to you like a father. It won't do, you know."

"I should like to hear you, Dick," said Rainham lazily. "Fire away! But who is Mrs. Grumbit?"

"Oh, she's our housekeeper—the lady who dusts the studio, you know, and gives the models tea and good advice. She's very particular as to the models: she won't let us paint from any who don't come up to her standard of propriety. And the worst of it is that the properest girls are always the ugliest. I don't know——"

"Before you proceed with this highly original disquisition," interrupted Copal, "I think you ought to be warned that we have recently formed a Society for the Protection of Reputations, models' and actresses' in particular. It was McAllister's idea. You now have the honour of being in the headquarters, the committee-room of the society, and anything like slander, or even truth, will be made an example of."

"Don't you find it rather difficult to spread your sheltering wings over what doesn't exist?" hazarded Lightmark amusedly.

"Ah, I knew you would say that! You see, that's just where we come in. We talk about their morals and reputations until they begin to imagine they have some, and they unconsciously get induced to live up to them. See? It's rather mixed, but it works beautifully. Ask the vice-president! Rainham holds that proud office. I may remark that I am treasurer, and the subscription is half a guinea, which goes towards the expenses of providing light refreshments for the,—the beneficiaries."

"This is really very interesting! Rainham vice-president, too! I thought he looked rather—rather worn by the cares of the office. You must make me a member at once. But who's president?"

"President? Who is president, McAllister? I really forget. You see, whenever the president is caught speaking too candidly of any of our clients' characters, we pass a vote of censure, and depose him, and he has to stand drinks. The competition isn't so keen as it used to be. If you would like to stand—for the office, I mean—I dare say there will be an opening soon.... Well, I must be off: I'm afraid of Mrs. Grumbit, and—yes, by Jove!—I've forgotten my latchkey again! Of course you're not coming yet, Dick? Come and breakfast with me to-morrow. Good-night, you fellows!"

"Copal has been in great form to-night," said Lightmark, after the door had closed on him, getting up and stretching himself. "What does it mean? Joy at my return? Fatted calf?"

"No doubt, my boy, no doubt," growled McAllister humorously, on his way to the door. "But you must bear in mind, too, the circumstance that the laddie's just sold a picture."

"Good business!" ejaculated Lightmark, as he reflected to himself that perhaps that despaired-of fiver would be repaid after all.

About midnight most of the men left. Rainham remained, and Lightmark, who professed himself too lazy to move. Rainham lapsed into his familiar state of half-abstraction, while his friend cross-examined a young sculptor fresh from Rome.

At the next table Oswyn was holding forth, with eager gesticulations and the excitement of the hour in his eyes, on the subject of a picture which he contemplated painting in oils for exhibition at the Salon next year. Rainham had heard it all before; still, he listened with a keen appreciation of the wonderful touch with which the little, dishevelled artist enlarged on the capabilities of his choice, the possibilities of colour and treatment. The picture was to be painted at the dock, and the painter had already achieved a daringly suggestive impression in pastels of the familiar night-scene which he now described: the streaming, vivid torches, their rays struggling and drowning in the murky water, glimmering faintly in the windows of the black warehouse barely suggested at the side; the alert, swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms, growing, as it were, out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy background, in which the river-lights gleamed like opals set in dull ebony.

When the tide of inspiration failed the speaker, as it soon did, Lightmark continued to look at him askance, with an air of absent consideration turning to uneasiness. There was a general silence, broken only by the occasional striking of a match and the knocking of pipe against boot-heel. Soon the young sculptor discovered that he had missed his last train, and fled incontinently. Oswyn settled himself back in his chair, as one who has no regard for time, and rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he had spoken now only perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek. Rainham and Lightmark left him a few minutes later, the last of the revellers, drawing the cat with the charred end of a match on the back of an envelope, and too deeply engrossed to notice their departure.

The fog had vanished, and the moon shone softly, through a white wreath of clouds, over the straggling line of house-tops. The narrow, squalid, little street was deserted, and the sound of wheels in the busier thoroughfare at the end was very intermittent.

Lightmark buttoned his gloves deliberately, and drew a long breath of the night air before he broke the silence.

"It's on occasions like this that I wish Bloomsbury and Kensington lay in the same direction—from here, you know; we should save a fortune in cab-fares.... But—but that wasn't what I wanted to say. Philip, my dear fellow, congratulate me."

He paused for a minute looking at the other curiously, with something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one of the opposite windows.

"I know," he said simply. "I do congratulate you—from the bottom of my heart. And I hope you will make her happy." Then he turned and looked Lightmark in the face. "I suppose you do love her, Dick?"

"I suppose I do. But how the deuce did you know anything about it? I have been blaming myself, needlessly it appears, for not letting you hear of it. Has it—has it been in the papers?"

Rainham laughed in spite of himself.

"Approaching marriage of a celebrated artist? No, Dick, I don't think it has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago."

"Oh," said Dick blankly. "I—I'm much obliged to her. I thought perhaps it was the Colonel; I wrote to him, you know, and I thought he was a discreet old bird. But how did Lady Garnett know?"

"She seemed to think it was no secret," said Rainham, with a suggestion of apology in his tone; "and, of course, she knows that I am——"

"My best friend," interposed the other impulsively. "So you are. And I ought to have told you; I was a brute. And I feel like the devil about it.... Well, it can't be helped. Will you have this cab, or shall I?"

Rainham drew back with a gesture of abnegation, as the driver reined the horse back upon its haunches with a clatter.

"I'm going to walk, I think. Only up to Bloomsbury, you know. Good-night, Dick. I hope you'll be very happy, both of you."

When the cab drove off, Rainham stood still for a minute and watched it out of sight. Then he started and seemed to pull himself together.

"I wish I knew!" he said aloud to himself, as he stepped rapidly towards the East. "Well, we'll be off to Bordighera now, mon vieux. We've lost Dick, I think, and we've lost——"

The soliloquy died away in a sigh and a pathetic shrug.



CHAPTER XV

A day or two later, when Rainham called in the afternoon at the Kensington studio to announce his approaching flight from England, he found Mrs. Sylvester and Eve in occupation, and a sitting in progress. His greeting of Eve was somewhat constrained. He seemed to stumble over the congratulations, the utterance of which usage and old acquaintance demanded; and he was more at his ease when the ice was fairly broken.

"I expected to find you here," he said, addressing Mrs. Sylvester. "I have been to your house, and they told me you would probably be at the studio—the studio—so I came on."

"Good boy, good boy!" said Lightmark, with as much approbation in his voice as the presence of the stick of a paint-brush between his teeth would allow. "You'll excuse our going on a little longer, won't you? It'll be too dark in a few minutes."

"You don't look well, Philip," remarked Mrs. Sylvester presently, with a well-assumed air of solicitude. "You ought to have come to Lucerne with us, instead of spending all the summer in town."

"Yes; why didn't you, Philip?" cried Eve reproachfully. "It would have been so nice—oh, I'm so sorry, Dick, I didn't mean to move—you really ought to have come."

"Well, there was the dock, you see, and business and all that sort of thing. I can't always neglect business, you know."

Lightmark asserted emphatically that he didn't know, while, on the other hand, Mrs. Sylvester was understood to remark, with a certain air of mystery, that she could quite understand what kept Philip in town.

"Don't you think I might have been rather—rather a fifth wheel?" suggested Rainham feebly, entirely ignoring Mrs. Sylvester's remark, to which, indeed, he attached no special meaning.

"Spare our blushes, old man," expostulated Dick. "It would have been awfully jolly. You would have been such a companion for Charles, you know," he added, with a malicious glance over his shoulder. "Oh dear! fog again. I think I must release you now, Eve. Tell me what you think of the portrait, now that I've worked in the background, Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, now don't you think I was right about the flowers?"

There was, in fact, a charming, almost virginal delicacy and freshness of air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple, white dress, with only—the painter had so far prevailed over the milliner,—only a suggestion of bright ribands at throat and waist; the quaint chippendale chair, the sombre Spanish leather screen, which formed the background, and the pot of copper-coloured chrysanthemums, counterparts of the little cluster which Eve wore in the bosom of her gown, on a many-cornered Turkish table at the side: it had all the gay realism of modern Paris without losing the poetry of the old school, or attaining the hardness of the new.

Rainham looked at it attentively, closely, for a long time. Then he said simply:

"It's the best thing you have done, Dick. It will be one of the best portraits in the Academy, and you ought to get a good place on the line."

"I'm so glad!" cried Eve rapturously, clasping her hands. "On the line! But," and her voice fell, "it isn't to go to the Academy. Mamma has promised Sir—Dick is going to send it to the Grosvenor. But it's pretty much the same, isn't it? Oh, now show Philip the sketch you have made for your Academy picture," she added, pointing to a board which stood on another easel, with a protecting veil over the paper which was stretched upon it. "You know he can tell us if it's like the real thing."

"If it's the Riviera, or—or dry docks," added Rainham modestly.

But Lightmark stepped forward hastily, after a moment's hesitation, and put his hand on the drawing just as Eve was preparing with due ceremony to unveil it.

"Excuse me, I don't want to show it to Rainham yet. I—I want to astonish him, you know."

He laughed rather uneasily, and Eve gave way, with some surprise in her eyes, and a puzzled cloud on her pretty brow, and went and seated herself on the settee at her mother's side.

"He's afraid of my critical eye, Mrs. Sylvester," said Rainham gravely. "That's what it is. Well, if you don't show it me now, you won't have another opportunity yet awhile."

"That's it, Eve," exclaimed Lightmark hastily. "I'm afraid of his critical what's-his-name. You know he can be awfully severe sometimes, the old beggar, and I don't want him to curl me up and annihilate me while you're here."

"I don't believe he would, if it were ever so bad," said Eve, only half satisfied. "And it isn't; it's awfully good. But it's too dark to see anything now."

"By Jove, so it is! Mrs. Sylvester, I'm awfully sorry; I always like the twilight myself. Rainham, would you mind ringing the bell. Thanks. Oh, don't apologize; the handle always comes off. I never use it myself, except when I have visitors. I go and shout in the passage; but Mrs. Grumbit objects to being shouted for when there are visitors on the premises. Great hand at etiquette, Mrs. Grumbit is."

The lady in question arrived at this juncture, fortified by a new and imposing cap, and laden with candles and a tea-tray, which she deposited, with much clatter of teaspoons, on a table by Mrs. Sylvester's side.

"Thank you, Mrs. Grumbit. And now will you come to a poor bachelor's assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry, but I haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but the beggar's gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to imagine you're at Oxford."

Mrs. Sylvester looked bewildered, and paused with one hand on the Satsuma teapot.

"Don't you know, mamma, it isn't—form, don't you say? to have sugar-tongs at Oxford? It was one of the things Charles always objected to. I believe he tried to introduce them, but people always threw them out of the window. I think they're an absurd invention."

Rainham, as he watched her slender fingers with their dimpled knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester seemed to think her argument that sugar-tongs could be so pretty—"Queen Anne, you know"—entirely unanswerable.

It was not until Mrs. Grumbit broke in upon the cosy little party to announce that the ladies' carriage was at the door that Rainham remembered the real object of his expedition.

Then, when Eve, warmly wrapped in her furs, and with the glow of the firelight still in her face, held out a small gloved hand with a smiling "Au revoir, Philip," he shook his head rather sadly.

"I'm afraid it must be good-bye—for some time, at least. I came to tell you that I am on the wing again. Doctor's orders, you know. I shall be in Bordighera on Friday, I expect."

"And to-day's Tuesday," complained Eve.

"And I was just going to ask you to dine with us, one day soon," expostulated her mother.

"You must come over at Christmas, old man," said Dick cheerfully. "For the wedding, you know. You've got to give me away, and be bridesmaid, and all that sort of thing."

Rainham shook his head again.

"I'm afraid not. You don't know my doctor. He wouldn't hear of it. No, you won't see me in town again before May, unless there's a radical reform in the climate."

"Couldn't—couldn't we put it off till May?" suggested Eve naively.

But the suggestion was not received with anything approaching enthusiasm.

"Good-bye, Philip," said Eve again, when her lover was handing Mrs. Sylvester into the little brougham. "Mind you take great care of yourself."

Rainham returned the frank pressure of her hand.

"Good-bye," he said.



CHAPTER XVI

After all, Philip Rainham loitered on his way South. He spent a week in Paris, and passing on by way of the Mont Cenis, lingered in Turin, a city with a treacherous climate and ugly rectangular streets, which he detested, out of sheer idleness, for three days. On the fourth, waking to find winter upon him suddenly, and the ground already dazzling from a night's snow, he was seized with panic—an ancient horror of falling ill in strange places returning to him with fresh force, as he felt already the chill of the bleak plains of Piedmont in his bones. It sent him hurrying to his destination, Bordighera, by the first train; and it was not too soon: the misused lung asserted itself in a haemorrhage, and by the time he reached the fair little town running out so coquettishly, amid its olive yards and palm-trees, into the blue Mediterranean, he was in no proper temper to soliloquize on its charms.

The doctor had a willing slave in him for three weeks; then he revolted, and found himself sufficiently cured to sit when the sun shone—and sometimes when it did not—covered in a gray shawl, smoking innumerable cigarettes on a green, blistered seat in the garden of his hotel. He replied to the remonstrating that he had been ill before this bout, and would surely be ill again, but that temporarily he was a well man. It was only when he was alone that he could afford to admit how savage a reminder of his disabilities he had received. And, indeed, his days of captivity had left their mark on him—the increased gauntness of his figure apart—in a certain irritation and nerve distress, which inclined him for once to regret the multitude of acquaintance that his long habit of sojourning there had obtained. The clatter of English tongues at table d'hote began to weary him; the heated controversy which waged over the gambling-tables of the little principality across the bay left him arid and tired; and the gossip of the place struck him as even more tedious and unprofitable than of old. He could no longer feign a decent interest in the flirtations of the three Miss Smiths, as they were recounted to him nightly by Mrs. Engel, the sympathetic widow who sat next to him, and whose sympathy he began, in the enlightenment of his indisposition, to distrust.

The relief with which he hailed the arrival of the post and a budget of letters from England surprised himself. It struck him that there was something feverish and strange in this waiting for news. Even to himself he did not dare to define his interest, confessing how greatly he cared.

Lightmark's epistles just then were frequent and brief. The marriage was definitely fixed; the Colonel, his uncle, had been liberal beyond his hopes: a house in Grove Road of some splendour had been taken for the young couple, who were to install themselves there when the honeymoon, involving a sojourn in Paris and a descent into Italy, was done. Hints of a visit to Rainham followed, which at first he ignored; repeated in subsequent epistles with a greater directness, their prospect filled him with a pleasure so strangely mixed with pain that his pride took alarm. He thought it necessary to disparage the scheme in a letter to Lightmark, of a coldness which disgusted himself. Remorse seized him when it had been despatched, and he cherished a hope that it might fail of its aim. This, however, seemed improbable, when a fortnight had elapsed and it had elicited no reply. From Lady Garnett, at the tail of one of those long, witty, railing letters, in which the old lady excelled, he heard that the marriage was an accomplished fact, and the birds had flown. Mrs. Lightmark! the phrase tripped easily from his tongue when he mentioned it at dinner to his neighbour, Mrs. Engel, to whom the persons were known. Later in his room, face to face with the facts which it signified, he had an intolerable hour. He had extinguished his candle, and sat, partially undressed, in a mood of singular blankness by the fire of gnarled olive logs, which had smouldered down into one dull, red mass; and Eve's face was imaged there to his sick fancy as he had seen it last in Dick's studio in the vague light of an October evening, and yet with a certain new shadow, half sad and half reproachful, in the beautiful eyes. After all, had he done his best for the child? Now that this thing was irrevocable and complete, a host of old misgivings and doubts, which he had believed long ago banished, broke in upon him. He had only asked that she should be happy—at least, he said, it had never been a question of himself. He certainly knew nothing to Lightmark's discredit, nothing which could have justified him in interfering, even if interference could have prevailed. The two had fallen in love with one another, and, the man not being visibly bad, the marriage had come about; was there more to say? And yet Rainham's ill-defined uneasiness still questioned and explored. A hundred little episodes in his friendship with the brilliant young painter, dismissed as of no import at the time, returned to him—instances, as it seemed now to his morbid imagination, in which that character, so frank and so enigmatic, rang scarcely true. And suddenly the tragical story of Kitty Crichton intruded itself before him, with all its shameful possibilities. Could Lightmark have lied to him? Had not his sudden acquiescence in the painter's rendering of the thing implied a lack of courage—been one of those undue indolences, to which he was so prone, rather than any real testimony of his esteem? Would not a more rigorous inquiry, a little patient investigation into so curious a coincidence, have been the more seemly part, as much for his friend's sake as for Eve's, so that this haunting, intolerable doubt might have been for ever put away—as surely it would have been? The contrary issue was too horrible for supposition. And he ended by mocking at himself with a half-sigh for carrying fastidiousness so far, recognising the mundane fitness of the match, and that heroic lovers, such as his tenderness for the damsel would have had, are, after all, rare, perhaps hardly existing out of visions in a somewhat gross world, where the finest ore is not without its considerable alloy.

Two days later, as he sat upon his wonted seat, in lazy enjoyment of the midday sun, a vetturino, heralded far down the road by the jingle of his horse's bells, deposited a couple at the door whose faces were familiar. At table d'hote, though he was separated from the new-comers by half a dozen covers, he had leisure to identify them as the Dollonds; and by-and-by the roving, impartial gaze of the Academician's wife encountering him, he could assure himself that the recognition was mutual. They came together at the end of dejeuner, and presently, at Mrs. Dollond's instigation, started for a stroll through the olives towards the old town.

"Are you wintering here?" he asked after a moment, feeling that an affirmative answer would hardly be to his taste.

But Mrs. Dollond, with an upward inclination of her vivacious shoulders, repudiated the notion. A whim of her own, she explained to Rainham confidentially, as they came abreast in the narrowing path, while Mr. Dollond strolled a little behind, cutting down vagrant weeds absently with his heavy oak stick.

"Hugh wanted a month's holiday; and I wanted"—she dropped her voice, glancing over her shoulder with an air of mock mystery—"yes, Mr. Rainham, you must not be shocked, but I wanted a fortnight at Monte Carlo; and so I may as well tell you that our destination is there. We came from San Remo this morning, meaning to drive over right away; but this place was so pretty that Hugh insisted on staying."

Rainham helped her up a difficult terrace, and remarked urbanely that he was in fortune's way.

She threw him a brilliant smile.

"Ah, Mr. Rainham, if we had only known that you were here! then we might have arranged differently; we could have stayed here pastorally, and driven up to that delightful little place on the hill. Tell me, how is it called?"

She pointed with her scarlet parasol—they had emerged now on to the main road—at a little, turreted town perched far above them on the brow of an olive-crested hill.

"It is Sasso," said Rainham. "I should have been delighted to come with you, but I am afraid it is out of the reach of carriages, and of invalids. You might go there on a mule."

"Oh no!" she laughed; "I think on the whole we shall be more comfortable at the Hotel de Paris. Can't we induce you to come with us now?"

Rainham lifted his eyebrows, smiling a little and groping vaguely for an excuse, while Mrs. Dollond turned to her husband with a look which demanded corroboration of her speech.

"Yes, Mr. Rainham, do come, if you possibly can," supplemented Mr. Dollond, coming forward in burlesque obedience. "We are boring each other horribly—I can answer for myself—and it would be an act of real charity."

"Well, Hugh, I am ashamed of you! You really ought not to say such things. If you can't behave better than that, you may go on maltreating those thistles. I declare we have left a regular trail of heads in our wake,—like the Revolution, or Judge Jeffreys."

"Bloody Jeffreys!" suggested Mr. Dollond mildly.

His wife turned to Rainham with the little despairing gesture which she reckoned one of her most effective mannerisms.

"Is not he dreadful? But you will come, Mr. Rainham? I am sure you know all about systems, and—and things. You know I insist on winning; so I must have a system, mustn't I?"

"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said her companion humorously, "you remind me that the only system I have is a very bad one. I am afraid my doctor would not trust me with it at Monaco."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Dollond reflectively; "but you need not gamble, you know! You can help me, and see that I don't get cheated. Hugh and I will see your doctor, and promise to take care of you. Hugh shall carry your shawl—he likes carrying shawls."

"He is getting used to it," interposed her husband dryly.

"Ah, well, that is settled," continued the lady gaily, leaving her victim no time to formulate more than the lamest of protests.

By this time they had reached the middle of the cape, and they stood for a moment by the lazy fountain looking down at the Marina straggling below the palms; and beyond, at the outline of the French coast, with white Mentone set in it, precisely, like a jewel.

"The dear little place!" cried Mrs. Dollond in a rapture; "I suppose Monaco is behind that cape. I wish we could see it. And it would not look a bit wicked from here. I declare, I should like to live there!"

"I've no doubt you would, my dear!" said her husband; "but you sha'n't, so long as I have any voice in the matter. I don't get so much for my pictures that I can afford to contribute to M. Blanc's support."

Rainham followed the direction of her eyes absently. "I have half a mind to go with you after all," he said.

"Of course," said Mrs. Dollond; "it will do you worlds of good; we will drive you over with us to-morrow. And now, Mr. Rainham, if you don't mind, I think we will sit down. I can see that Hugh is getting out his sketch-book."

She sank down as she spoke upon one of the rough stone seats which are scattered about the cape. Mr. Dollond had ensconced himself behind them, and was phlegmatically starting on a rough study of the old town, which rose in a ragged, compact mass a hundred yards away, with its background of sad olives and sapphire sky.

Rainham followed the lady's example, tired himself by their scramble under the hot sun, and contented himself for a while by turning a deaf ear and polite, little mechanical gestures to her perennial flow of inconsequent chatter, which seemed quite impervious to fatigue, while he rested his eyes on the charming prospect at their feet; the ragged descent of red rocks, broken here and there by patches of burnt grass and pink mallows, the little sea-girt chapel of St. Ampelio, and the waste of violet sea. His inattentive ear was caught at last by the name of Lightmark occurring, recurring, in the light eddy of his companion's speech, and he turned to her with an air of apologetic inquiry.

"Yes," Mrs. Dollond was observing, "it was quite a grand wedding; rather pretentious, you know, we thought it, for the Sylvesters—but, oh, a great affair! We stayed in London for it, although Hugh wanted to take a holiday. I could tell you all about the bridesmaids' dresses, and Mrs. Lightmark's, but I suppose you would not care. She looked very charming!"

"Yes?" said Rainham, with a curious light in his averted eyes. Then he added, somewhat abruptly, "Brides always do, I suppose?"

"Of course, if they have a good dressmaker. And the presents—there was quite a show. Your pearl necklace—how I envied her that! But, after all, weddings are so much alike."

"I have never been to one," said the other absently.

"Ah, then you ought, if only to get a little experience before your own time comes, you know. Yes, you really ought to have been there. It was quite a foregone conclusion that you would be best man. It was so funny to see Colonel Lightmark in that role, with that young Mr. Sylvester giving away the bride. It would have been so much better if they could have changed parts."

"I am sorry to interrupt you," said Mr. Dollond, getting up and putting away his sketch-book; "I can't sketch; the place is full of locusts, and they are getting into my boots."

Mrs. Dollond started up, shaking her skirts apprehensively, with an affectation of horror.

"How I do hate jumping things! And, anyhow, I suppose we ought to be getting back to our hotel, or we shall be late for dinner. You don't know what Hugh can be like when one is late for dinner. He is capable of beginning without me."

Rainham had risen with a ready response to her words, bordering almost on the ludicrous; and half an hour later he was congratulating himself that at least six seats intervened between his place and that of Mrs. Dollond at the dinner-table.

And yet on the morrow he found himself, and not without a certain relief, sitting beside the mundane, little lady, and turning to her incessant ripple of speech something of the philosophic indifference to which her husband had attained, while a sturdy pair of gaily-caparisoned horses, whose bells made a constant accompaniment, not unpleasing in its preciseness, to the vagueness of Rainham's thought, hurried them over the dusty surface of the Cornice.

Certainly the excursion into which he had been inveigled, rather from indolence than from any freak of his inclination, afforded him, now that it was undertaken, a certain desultory pleasure to which he had long been a stranger. Into the little shrug, comic and valedictory, of Mrs. Dollond's shoulders, as they passed the Octroi, a gesture discreetly mocking of the conditions they had left, he could enter with some humour, the appreciation of a resident who still permitted himself at times the licence of a casual visitor on his domain.

"Tell me," Mrs. Dollond had asked, as they rattled out of the further gate of Ventimiglia, "why did the excellent lady who tried to monopolize conversation in the salon last night appear so scandalized when I told her where we were going? Was I—surely now, Mr. Rainham, I was not indiscreet?"

"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said Rainham humorously, "you know it was a delicate subject. At our hotel we don't recognise Monte Carlo. We are divided upon the other topics in which we are interested: the intrigues of the lawn tennis club, and the orthodoxy of the English chaplain. But we are all orthodox about Monte Carlo, and Mrs. Engel is the pillar of our faith. We think it's——"

"The devil?" interrupted Mr. Dollond, bending forward a little, with his bland smile.

"Precisely," said Rainham; "that is what Mrs. Engel would say. Oh no, Mrs. Dollond, we don't drive over to Monte Carlo from Bordighera. At Mentone it is more regular; you see, you can get there from Mentone pretty much by accident. But from Bordighera it has too much the appearance of being a preconcerted thing."

"It was particularly preconcerted here," put in the Academician with a yawn, and Mrs. Dollond remarked innocently that people who wintered in these places must have very singular ideas.

The prospect was increasing in beauty as they wound their way along the historical road, now rendered obscure by the thick groves of olives on either side, now varied by little glimpses of the sea, which again they skirted from time to time, and so nearly that, as Mrs. Dollond remarked, it was like driving along the sands. Rainham identified spots for them as the prospect widened, naming sea-girt Mortola with its snug chateau, Mentone lying placidly with its two bays in the westering sun, and, now and again, notorious peaks of the Alpes Maritimes which bounded the horizon beyond. At the frontier bridge of St. Louis, where they alighted to meet the requirements of the Douane, even Mrs. Dollond's frivolity was changed into silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge. They stood for a while leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning reluctantly from the great beetling rocks of the ravine above to gaze with strange qualms into the yawning precipice beneath. Rainham pointed out the little thread of white which was the one dangerous pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy with the fatal fascination with which it had filled so many—he mentioned the name of a young Englishman staying at Mentone the year before amongst the number—at the ultimate cost of their lives.

"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Dollond, retreating to the carriage, which awaited them on the French side of the bridge. "I shall dream of it to-night."

"I have dreamt of it," said Rainham simply. "When I was a boy I used to dream of climbing to the edge of the world and falling over. Nowadays, I dream of dropping over the Pont St. Louis: the sensation is much the same."

"A very disagreeable one, I should think," said Mrs. Dollond, settling herself in her wraps with a little shudder.

"No," said Rainham, with a smile. "I think, Mrs. Dollond, it was rather nice: it was the waking up which was disagreeable."

They made their breakfast—a very late one—at Mentone, and dawdled over it, Mr. Dollond having disappeared at the last moment, and been found, after a lengthy search, sketching, in serene disregard of the inappropriateness of the occasion, a doorway in St. Michele.

When at last they drove into the principality, the evening was well advanced. Even the irrepressible Mrs. Dollond was not to be enticed by the brilliant windows of the Casino from the sofa upon which she had stretched herself luxuriously, when their extensive dinner was at an end; and Rainham with a clear conscience could betake himself immediately to bed. But, in spite of his fatigue, he lay for a long time awake; the music of the concert-room, the strains of M. Oudshorn's skilful orchestra, floated in through the half-closed persiennes of his room, and later mingled with his dreams, tinging them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, a sort of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance music, even the most extravagant, is deeply pervaded.

A week later, as from the window of the receding Italian train he caught a last glimpse of the Dollonds on the crowded platform, he waved a polite farewell to them with a sensible relief. It was a week in which Mrs. Dollond had been greatly on his hands, for her husband had made no secret of the willingness with which he had accepted Rainham's escort for the indefatigable lady amongst the miscellaneous company of the tables, leaving him free to study the picturesque in the less heated atmosphere which he preferred. And a week of Mrs. Dollond, as Rainham was obliged to confess, was not good for any man to undergo.

Nor was Mrs. Dollond's verdict upon their acquaintance, who had become for the space of seven days an intimate, more complimentary.

"I suppose he was better than nobody," she remarked with philosophy as they made their way up the terrace. "He looked after my stakes, and did not play much himself, and was always at hand; but he was really very dull."

"Better than me, I suppose you mean, my dear?" suggested her husband humorously. "Was he so dull? You ought to know; I really have hardly spoken to him."

"Don't be absurd!" she remarked absently. Then she said a little abruptly: "It seems funny, now that one knows him, that there should be those stories."

"Stories? About Rainham?"

Her husband glanced at her with some surprise.

"Yes," she said. "Of course, you never know anything; but he is talked about."

"Ah, poor man!" said Mr. Dollond. "What has he done?"

Mrs. Dollond's fair eyebrows were arched significantly, and Mrs. Dollond's gay shoulders shrugged with a gesture of elision, in which the essence of many scandals, generated and discussed in the discreet undertones of the ladies' hour, was nicely distributed.

"Don't be dense, Hugh! It is quite notorious!"

Mr. Dollond laughed his broad, tolerant laugh.

"Well," he said, "I should never have thought it."

Rainham, reaching his hotel the same afternoon, met Mrs. Engel in the hall; her formal bow, in which frosty disapproval of the sin, and a widow's tenderness for the middle-aged sinner, if repentant, were discreetly mingled, amused if it scarcely flattered him. He was still smiling at his recollection of the interview when the Swiss porter, accosting him in elaborately bad English, informed him that a lady and gentleman, who had left on the previous evening, had made particular inquiries after him. The name, he confessed, escaped him, but if Monsieur pleased—— He produced the visitors' book, in which Rainham read, scarcely now with surprise, the brief inscription, "Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark, from Cannes."



CHAPTER XVII

There was a ceaseless hum of voices in the labyrinth of brilliant rooms, with their atmosphere of transient spring sunshine and permeating, faint odour of fresh paint. Few people came to see the pictures, which covered the walls with a crude patchwork of seas and goddesses, portraits and landscapes: all that by popular repute were worth seeing had been exhibited already to the people who were now invited to view them,—at the studios on Show Sunday, and on the Outsiders' Day. One entered the gloomy gates of Burlington House on the yearly occasion of the Private View because it was, socially, a great public function, in order to see the celebrities, who were sure to be there, from the latest actress to the newest bishop. In one corner a belated critic endeavoured to scratch hasty impressions on his shirt-cuff or the margin of a little square catalogue; in another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a patron's attention on the merits of his speculative purchase. The providers of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives and daughters; the artist often affects to despise the occasion, and contents himself with a general survey—frequently limited to his own pictures—on Varnishing Day.

The Hanging Committee had dealt kindly with Lightmark's Academy picture. When it was passed in review before these veterans, after a long procession of inanely smiling portraits, laboured, wooden landscapes, and preternaturally developed heroes, the expression of satiated boredom and damnation of draughts, which variously pervaded the little row of arbitrators, was for a moment dissipated. There was a movement of chairs, followed by an exchange of complimentary murmurs; and the picture was finally niched into a space which happened to fit it between two life-size portraits on the line in one of the smaller rooms.

On the fashionable afternoon Lightmark's work was never without the little admiring crowd which denotes a picture of more than usual interest. The canvas, which had loomed so large in the new studio in Grove Road, was smaller than many of its neighbours, but its sombre strength of colour, relieved by the pale, silvery gold of its wide frame, and the white dresses of the ladies portrayed in the pictures on either side, made it at once noticeable.

The critics next day referred to it as a nocturne in black and gold, and more than one of the daily journals contained an enthusiastic description of the subject—an ocean-steamer entering a Thames graving-dock at night-time, with torch-light effects; and a mist on the river.

Eve fluttered delightedly from room to room with her mother, recurring always to the neighbourhood of her husband's picture, and receiving congratulations by the score. It had been a disappointment to her when her husband, at the eleventh hour, expressed his inability to be present; but even Mrs. Sylvester's remonstrances had failed to move him, and the two ladies had come under the Colonel's escort.

"I didn't know your husband was so nervous," said Mrs. Dollond sceptically. "Is this the effect of matrimony?... Oh, Mrs. Lightmark, do look at that creature in peacock blue! Did you ever see such a gown? Have you seen my husband's pictures? He's got one in every room, nearly. Between you and me, they're all of them pretty bad; but so long as people don't know any better, and buy them, what does it matter? Ah, Colonel Lightmark, how do you do? Of course I've seen your nephew's picture. I've been saying all sorts of nice things about it to Mrs. Lightmark."

"It's pretty good, I suppose," suggested the Colonel radiantly. "Have you seen the Outcry this week? There's no end of a good notice about it, and about your husband's pictures, too."

"Really? I wonder who wrote it. I must ask him to dinner, if he's respectable. We never read critiques nowadays. They're so dreadfully rude to Academicians, you know—always talking about 'pot-boilers,' and suggesting that they ought to retire on their laurels. As if laurels were any good! One can't keep a carriage on laurels."

"No, by Jove! it wouldn't be good for the horses. I say, though, Mrs. Dollond, is one supposed to go through all the rooms?"

"Oh yes," replied the lady composedly; "all except the water-colours, and sculpture, and architecture. One only goes there to flirt, as a rule. Personally, I always get up the pictures from 'Academy Notes,' when I haven't seen them at the studios, you know. Yes; I should like some tea, please, since Mrs. Lightmark has deserted you. Is that Lady Garnett with her? What lovely white hair! I wonder where she gets it."

Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders a little petulantly after she had made the ghost of a return to Mrs. Dollond's airy greeting.

"My dear," she said, turning to Eve confidentially, "may I confess to you that I am not altogether too fond of that woman? Is she a great friend of yours, or don't you know her well enough to abuse her? I like the husband; he amuses me, though he is rather a bear. Otherwise, I should not see very much of Mrs. Dollond, I promise you."

Eve smiled at the thought of Mr. Dollond's eccentricities, and then her face grew rather grave.

"Shall we go into the lecture-room?" she suggested. "It is cooler there among the statues, and perhaps we shall be able to sit down."

The old lady assented with alacrity.

"Yes," she said; "by all means let us leave these painty pictures, and we will have a chat; you shall tell me of your wanderings. Apropos, did you see anything of our friend Philip? His last letter—a long time ago; he is becoming a bad correspondent—struck me as rather triste, even for him. I'm afraid he is not well."

"Yes," said Eve slowly; "we went over to Bordighera one day while we were at Cannes, and we stayed a night at the hotel, but we didn't see Mr. Rainham. He had gone over to Monte Carlo."

"Ah, poor fellow, what an idea! I wonder what dragged him there."

Eve looked at the old lady questioningly for a minute.

"I think he went with the Dollonds," she answered gravely.

"Ah, my dear, no wonder his letter was dull! Then you didn't see him? Well, I suppose he will come back soon. You mustn't be jealous of him, you know. He is very much lie with your husband, isn't he?"

"I don't suppose he will see quite so much of him now."

There seemed to be a trace of weariness in the girl's voice as she answered, and Lady Garnett glanced at her sharply before she let her eyes continue their task of wandering in a kind of absent scrutiny of the sculptured exhibits in the room.

"But of course not.... How terrible all these great plaster figures are, and the busts, too! They are so dreary, they have the air of being made for a cemetery. Don't they make you think of tombstones and mausoleums?"

Eve looked at her a little wonderingly.

"Are they very bad? Do you know, I rather like them. Not so much as the pictures, of course; but still I think some of them are charming, though I am rather glad Dick isn't a sculptor. Don't you like that? What is it—Bacchus on a panther?"

"My dear, you are quite right," said the old lady decisively, dropping her tortoise-shell lorgnon into her lap, and suppressing a yawn. "Only, it is you who are charming! I must go to the Grosvenor as soon as it opens to see if your clever husband, who seems to be able to paint everything and everybody, has done you justice.... But you mustn't sit talking to an old grumbler like me any longer. Go back to your picture; Mr. Dollond will pilot you. And if you encounter Mary on the way, tell her that a certain discontented old lady of her acquaintance wants to be taken home. Au revoir."

About five minutes later Mary Masters found her aunt half asleep. The paint had made her stupid, she said. She could understand now why painters did not improve as they grew older; it was the smell of the paint.

"Ah," she said, as they passed out into the busy whirl of Piccadilly, "how glad I shall be to get back to my Masons and Corots. Though I like that pretty little Mrs. Lightmark.... Poor Philip! Now tell me whom you saw. Charles Sylvester, of course? But no, I am too sleepy now; you shall tell me all about it after dinner."

It was six o'clock before the Colonel was able to deposit his bulky, military person rather stiffly on a cushioned seat, and to remove his immaculate silk hat, with an expression of weary satisfaction. He had devoted all the sunny spring afternoon, (when he might have been at Hurlingham, or playing whist at the "Rag"), to making his way, laboriously and apologetically, from room to room in search of friends and acquaintances, whom, when found, he would convoy strategically into the immediate vicinity of No. 37 in the First Room.

"My nephew's picture," he explained; "nice thing! I don't know much about painting" (he called it paintin') "and art, and all that sort of thing, but I believe it's about as good as they make them."

He had accepted all the inconsistent, murmured criticism almost as a personal tribute; and for the greater part at least of the afternoon his beaming face had completely belied the discomfort occasioned by his severe frock-coat and tightly-fitting patent-leather boots; and his yearning for a comfortable chair, with a box of cigars and a whisky-and-seltzer at his elbow, had been suppressed, rigidly and heroically.

"I suppose it's devilish good," he thought, as he sat waiting for the rest of his party. "People seem to admire those splashes of yellow and black, and all those dirty colours. Personally, I think I prefer the girl in white next door. Hullo, there's Eve!"

"Don't get up, Colonel," said Mrs. Sylvester; "we want to sit here for a little and hear what people say about Richard's picture. They make such amusing remarks sometimes! Not always complimentary; but, then, they often don't know anything about art."

"Yes," said Eve, seating herself, with a delicate consideration for the new dress, which the occasion had demanded, between the Colonel and her mother; "we heard someone say that the flesh in that big Roman picture with the temple, you know—I can't pronounce the name—was like cotton wool—pink cotton wool! Oh, and that the girl in black, with the yellow fan, whose portrait is in the big room, must be at least eight feet high!"

"Now, how the dickens could he tell that!" interposed the Colonel.

"Oh, he was talking very learnedly, about heads and things. How provoking of that old gentleman in the gold spectacles! Standing just in front of Dick's picture with his back to it. He looks just exactly like a millionaire, and he won't look, and he's preventing other people from looking! Do turn him round, uncle, or move him on, or something!"

"Do you see that man there?" whispered Mrs. Sylvester presently, "the tall man with the sandy hair and beard? I think he's a painter. He said just now that Richard's picture was amazingly good, and that he thought he knew where he got the idea from."

"Why, of course," said the Colonel carelessly; "Dick got the idea from that beggar what's-his-name's dock—and a thundering good idea too! I wonder what time they close? Perhaps——"

"Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester, buttoning her gloves, "I suppose we had better go."

The room was nearly empty when McAllister passed before his friend's picture again, after a satisfactory interview with a gentleman from Bond Street on the subject of one of his own. McAllister, whose criticism Mrs. Sylvester had overheard and reported, had recently been elected Associate, owing the honour, according to some malicious people, more to his nationality than to his merit as a painter of cattle and landscapes. The Outcry, indeed, with reference to this promotion, and the continued neglect of older artists of greater public repute, had suggested, with its usual impertinence, that the motto of Lasciate ogni speranza, which was reported in certain circles to be almost visibly inscribed over the door of the Academicians' Committee-room, should be supplemented by the legend, "No English need apply."

"It's good," he said reflectively, as he stopped in front of the picture, with something like a chuckle on his lips, and a twinkle in his shrewd, gray eyes. "More than good. You can see the clever French trick in every line of it, and they'll call it one of the pictures of the year. So it is, though there are dozens in the vaults downstairs worth two of it. But I thought this was Oswyn's subject? He was always talking about it. Well, I should like to see what he would have made of it!"



CHAPTER XVIII

As the clock struck five Rainham looked up with an air of relief, flipping negligently across the table the heap of papers which had occupied him since lunch-time.

"We must go into this some other time, Bullen," he remarked with a certain petulance. "I confess things look rather bad; but I suppose they can hold over till to-morrow?"

The foreman assented dubiously, gathering together the despised sheets, and preparing for departure.

"I've done my best, sir," he said a little sullenly; "but it is difficult for things to go smoothly when the master is always away; and you never will take no notice of business letters, you know, sir."

"Yes, yes," said Rainham wearily; "I am sure you have, Bullen. If I go into the Bankruptcy Court, as you so frequently prophesy, it will be entirely my own fault. In the meantime you might tell your wife to send me up some tea—for two, Bullen, please. Mr. Oswyn will be up presently."

The man retired, shutting the door with some ardour. Rainham rose, and, with the little, expansive shrug with which he usually discarded his commercial worries, wandered towards the window. The dock was empty and desolate: the rain, which had prevailed with a persistent dreariness since the morning, built morasses at regular intervals along the dock-side, splashed unceasingly into the stagnant green water which collected in slack seasons within the dock-gates. The dockman stood, one disconsolate figure in the general blankness, with his high boots and oilskins, smoking a short clay pipe by the door of the engine-room; and further out, under the dripping dome of an umbrella, sat Oswyn in a great pea-jacket, smoking, painting the mist, the rain, the white river with its few blurred barges and its background of dreary warehouses, in a supreme disregard of the dank discomfort of his surroundings.

Rainham had tapped three times against the streaming pane before he succeeded in attracting his attention, and then the painter only responded to the wonted signal by an impatient, deprecating flourish of the hand which held the palette. The tea was already simmering on the rickety table in the bow-window, when Oswyn, staggering under his impedimenta, climbed the staircase, and shouldered his way familiarly into the room.

"How fearfully wet you must be!" said his host lazily from the depths of an arm-chair. "Help yourself to a pair of slippers and a dry coat, and have some tea. It's strong enough even for you by this time."

The other had disembarrassed himself of his dripping jacket and overalls, and now kicked off his shoes, with a short laugh. He was never a great talker in the daytime, and the dreary charm of the river world outside was still upon him. He dropped the sketch upon which he had been working rather contemptuously against the wall, where Rainham could see it, and selected a pair of slippers from quite a small heap in the corner by the fireplace.

"I don't mind your seeing my work, because you don't talk about it," he said, glancing at Rainham quickly. "I hate people who try to say complimentary things; they don't often mean them, and when they do they talk absolute rot."

"Yes," said the other sympathetically. "Shall I put a slice of lemon in your tea? I suppose I must live up to my reputation and say nothing about your sketch. But I must have it when it's finished! It's always most embarrassing to have to pay personal compliments, though I suppose some people like them."

The painter grunted inarticulately between two sips of tea.

"Like them! Don't your society artists and authors simply wallow in them? Have you got any cigarettes, or papers? I dropped mine into a puddle. Ah, thanks.... That's a pretty face. Whose is it?"

The cigarette case, which Rainham handed to his guest, was a well-worn leather one, a somewhat ladylike article, with a photograph fitted into the dividing flap inside. Before answering the question he looked at the photograph absently for a moment, when the case had been returned to him.

"It's not a very good photograph. It's meant for—for Mrs. Lightmark, when she was a little girl. She gave me the case with the portrait years ago, in Florence."

Oswyn glanced at him curiously and shrewdly through a thin haze of blue smoke, watching him restore the faded, little receptacle almost reverentially to the breast-pocket of his coat.

"Have you been to the Chamber of Horrors?" he asked suddenly, after a silent pause, broken only by the ceaseless lashing of the window by the raindrops.

Rainham looked up with a start, half puzzled, seeking and finding an explanation in the faint, conscious humour which loosened the lines about the speaker's mouth.

"The Chamber of—— Do you mean the R.A.? You do, you most irreverent of mortals! No, I have not been yet. Will you go with me?"

"Heaven forbid! I have been once."

"You have? And they didn't scalp you?"

"I didn't stay long enough, I suppose. I only went to see one picture—Lightmark's."

"Ah, that's just what I want to see! And you know I still have a weakness for the show. I expect you would like the new Salon better."

"There are good things there," said Oswyn tersely, "and a great many abominations as well. I was over in Paris last week."

Rainham glanced at him over his cup with a certain surprise.

"I didn't know you ever went there now," he remarked.

"No, I never go if I can help it. I hate Paris; it is triste as a well, and full of ghosts. Ghosts! It's a city of the dead. But I had a picture there this time, and I went to look at it."

"In the new Salon?"

"In the new Salon. It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing they learn here, and one or two are men of genius. But I should dearly like to set them down, en plein air too, if they insist upon it, with the palette of Velasquez. I went out and wandered in the Morgue afterwards, and I confess its scheme of colour rested my eyes."

"Do I know your picture?" asked Rainham to change the subject, finding him a little grim. "Is it the thing you were doing here?"

Oswyn's head rested on one thin, colour-stained hand which shaded his eyes.

"No," he said with a suggestion of constraint, "it was an old sketch which I had worked up—not the thing you knew. I shall not finish that——"

"Not finish it!" cried Rainham. "But of course you must! why, it was superb; it promised a masterpiece!"

"To tell you the truth," said Oswyn, "I can't finish it. I have painted it out."

Rainham glanced at him with an air of consternation, of reproach.

"My dear fellow," he said, "you are impossible! What in the world possessed you to do such a mad thing?"

The painter hesitated a moment, looking at him irresolutely beneath his heavy, knitted brows.

"I meant to tell you," he said, after a while; "but on the whole I think I would rather not. It is rather an unpleasant subject, Rainham, and if you don't mind we will change it."

Oswyn had risen from his chair, with his wonted restlessness, and was gazing out upon the lazy, evening life of the great river. The monotonous accompaniment to their conversation, which had been so long sustained by the drip and splash outside, had grown intermittent, and now all but ceased; while a faint tinge of yellowish white upon the ripples, and a feathery rift in the gray dome of sky, announced a final effort on the part of the setting sun.

The yard door swung noisily on its hinges, and a light step and voice became audible, and the sound of familiar conference with the dockman. Rainham lifted his head inquiringly, and Oswyn, shrugging his shoulders, left the window and regained his seat, picking up his sketch on the way.

"Yes," he said in answer to a more direct inquiry on the other's part, "I think it was Lightmark."

Almost as he spoke there was a step on the stair, followed by a boisterous knock at the door, and Dick entered effusively.

"Well, mon vieux, how goes it? Why, you're all in the dark! They didn't tell me you were engaged.... Oh, is that you, Oswyn? How do you do?"

"Quite an unexpected pleasure?" suggested Oswyn sardonically, nodding over his shoulder at the new-comer from his seat by the fire.

Rainham's greeting had been far more cordial, and he still held his friend's hand between his own, gazing inquiringly into his face as if he wished to read something there.

"Yes, I am back, you see," he said presently, when Dick had found himself a chair. "I have been here two days, and I was just beginning to think of looking you up. I was very sorry to miss you at Bordighera. How is Eve? It's very good of you to come all this way to see me; you must be pretty busy."

"Oh, Eve is tremendously well! Thanks, no, I won't have any tea, but you might give me a whisky-and-soda. I had to come down into these wilds to look at a yacht which we think of taking for the summer. Quite a small one," he added half apologetically, as he detected the faint, amused surprise in the other's expression; "and as I found myself here, with a few minutes to spare before my train goes, I thought I would look in on the off chance of finding you. How is business just now? The dock didn't strike me as looking much like work as I came in. Pretty stagnant, eh?"

Rainham shook his head.

"Oh, it's much as usual—perhaps a little more so! Bullen continues to threaten me with bankruptcy, but I am getting used to it. Threatened men live long, you know."

"Oh, you're all right!" answered Dick genially. "As long as Bullen looks after you, you won't come to grief."

While the two were thus occupied in reuniting the chain of old associations, Oswyn had been silently, almost surreptitiously, preparing for departure; and he now came forward awkwardly, with his hat in one hand and the tools of his trade under his arm.

"May I leave some of these things, here, or will they be in your way?"

"But you're not going?" said Rainham, rising from his seat with a constraining gesture; "why, don't you remember we were going to dine together? Dick will stay too, n'est ce pas? It will be like old times. Mrs. Bullen has been preparing quite a feast, I assure you!"

Oswyn paused irresolutely.

"Don't let me drive you away," said Dick. "In any case I'm going myself in a few minutes. Yes," he added, turning to Rainham, "I'm very sorry, but I've got to take my wife out to dinner, and I shall have to catch a train in, let me see, about ten minutes."

"Really? Well, then, clearly you must sit down again, Oswyn; I won't be left alone at any price. That's right. Now, Dick, tell me what you have been doing, and especially all about your Academy picture; I haven't seen even a critique of it. Of course it's a success? Have you sold it?"

"Oh, spare my modesty!" protested Lightmark somewhat clumsily, with a quick glance at Oswyn. "It's all right, but we mustn't talk shop."

"Yes, for God's sake spare his modesty!" supplemented the other painter almost brutally. "Look at his blushes. It isn't so bad as all that, Lightmark."

"I don't even know the subject," pursued Rainham. "You might at least tell me what it was. Was it the canvas which you wouldn't show me, just before I went away—at the studio? The one about which you made such a mystery——?"

"Oh bosh, old man!" interrupted Dick hurriedly, "I never made any mystery. It—it wasn't that. It's quite an ordinary subject, one of the river scenes which I sketched here. You had better go and see it. And come and see us. You know the address. I must be off!"

"Wait a minute," interposed Oswyn, with a cadence in his voice which struck Rainham as the signal of something surpassing his wonted eccentricity. "Don't go yet. I said just now, Rainham, that I wouldn't tell you why I had painted out that picture, the picture which I had been fool enough to talk about so much, which I had intended to make a masterpiece. Well, I have changed my mind. I think you ought to know. Perhaps you would prefer to tell him?" he added, turning savagely to Lightmark, and speaking fast and loud with the curious muscular tremor which betokens difficult restraint. "No? Of course you will have the impudence to pretend that the conception was yours. Yes, curse you! you are quite capable of swearing that it was all yours—subject and treatment too.... But you can't deny that you heard me talking of the thing night after night at the club, when I have no doubt you hadn't even begun on your bastard imitation. One of the pictures of the year as they call it, as you and your damned crew of flatterers and critics call it...."

He stopped for breath, clutching at the table with one hand and letting the other, which had been upraised in denunciation, fall at his side. He had meant to be calm, to limit himself strictly to an explanation; but in the face of his wrong and the wrong-doer the man's passionate nature had broken loose. Now, when he already half repented of the violence with which he had profaned the house of his friend, his eyes fell upon Rainham, and he felt abashed before the expression of pain which he had called into the other's face.

"I don't know what all this means," said Rainham wearily, turning from Oswyn to Dick as he spoke; "but surely it is all wrong? Be quiet, Dick; you needn't say anything. If Oswyn is accusing you of plagiarism, of stealing his ideas, I can't believe it. I can't believe you meant to wrong him. The same thing must have occurred to both of you. Why, Oswyn, surely you see that? You have both been painting here, and you were both struck in the same way. Nothing could be simpler."

Now Lightmark seemed to assume a more confident attitude, to become more like himself; and he was about to break the chain of silence, which had held him almost voiceless throughout Oswyn's attack, when Rainham again interrupted him.

"I am sure you needn't say anything, Dick. We all know Oswyn; he—he wasn't serious. Go and catch your train, and forget all about it."

The first words which Rainham spoke recalled to Oswyn the powerful reason which had determined him to preserve his old neutrality, and to make an offering of silence upon the altar of his regard for the only man with whom he could feel that he had something in common. If his vengeance could have vented itself upon a single victim, it would have fallen, strong and sure; but it was clear to his calmer self that this could not be; the consequences would be too far-reaching, and might even recoil upon himself. After all, what did it matter? There was a certain luxury in submission to injustice, a pleasure in watching the bolt of Nemesis descend when his hands were guiltless of the launching. And as he struggled with himself, hunting in retrospect for some excuse for what his passion railed at as weakness, a last straw fell into the scale, for he thought of the faded portrait in the cigarette-case.



CHAPTER XIX

"My dear," said Lady Garnett, accepting a cup of tea from the hands of her niece, and regarding her at the same time, from her low cushioned chair, with a certain drollery, "do you know that it is exactly one week since Mr. Sylvester called?"

Mary Masters' head was bent a little over her long Suede gloves—they had just returned from their afternoon drive in the Park—and she paused to remove her hat and veil before she replied.

"And it is at least three weeks since Mr. Rainham was here."

"Ah, poor Philip!" remarked the old lady, "he is always irregular; he may come, or he may not. I must ask him to dinner, by the way, soon. But I was talking of Mr. Sylvester, who is a model of punctuality. (Give me a piece of baba for Mefistofele, please!) Mr. Sylvester was here last Saturday, and the Saturday before that. I think it is highly probable, Mary, that we shall be honoured with a visit from Mr. Sylvester to-day."

"I hope not!" said the girl with some energy. "I have a couple of songs that I must positively try over before to-night. Surely, it is a little late too, even for Mr. Sylvester."

"It is barely half-past five," said Lady Garnett, lazily feeding her pug, "and he knows that we do not dine till eight. Resign yourself, cherie; he will certainly come."

She glanced across at the young girl, pointing, with her keen gaze, words which seemed trivial enough. And Mary, her calm forehead puckered with a certain vague annoyance which she disdained to analyse, understood perfectly all that the elder lady was too discreet to say. She sat for a little while, her hands resting idly in her lap, or smoothing the creases out of her long, soft gloves. Then she rose and moved quickly across to Lady Garnett's side, knelt suddenly down by her chair.

"Ah, my aunt!" she cried impulsively, "tell me what is to be done?"

Lady Garnett glanced up from the novel into which she had subsided; she laid it on the little tea-table with a sigh of relief at this sudden mood of confidence, coming a little strangely amidst the young girl's habitual reticence.

"We will talk, my dear," she said, "now you are practical. I suppose, by the way, he has not proposed?"

Mary shook her head.

"That is it, Aunt Marcelle! That is exactly what I want to prevent. Is—is he going to?"

Lady Garnett smiled, and her smile had a very definite quality indeed.

"I would not cherish any false hopes, my dear. Charles Sylvester is a young man—not so very young though, by the way—whose conclusions are very slow, but when they arrive, mon Dieu! they are durable. I am sure he is terribly tenacious. It took him a long time to conclude that he was in love with you; at first, you know, he was a little troubled about your fortune, but at last he came to that conclusion—at Lucerne."

"Oh, at Lucerne!" protested the young girl with a nervous laugh. "Surely not there!"

"It was precisely at Lucerne," continued Lady Garnett, "that he decided you would make him an adorable wife, and, in effect, it was a considerable piece of wisdom. And since then his conclusions have been more rapid. The last has been that he will certainly marry you—with or without a dot—before the elections. You are serious, you know, my dear, though not so serious as he believes; you are a girl of intelligence, and he is going to stand for some place or other, and candidates with clever wives often obtain a majority over candidates who are clever but have no wives. Yes, my dear, he is certainly going to propose. You may postpone it by the use of great tact for a month or so; you will hardly do so for longer."

"I don't want to postpone it," said Mary ruefully; "if it be inevitable, I would sooner have it over."

"It will never be over," remarked Lady Garnett decisively. "Did I not say that he was tenacious—comme on ne l'est plus? You may refuse him once—twice; it will all be to go over again and again, until you end by accepting him."

"Oh, Aunt Marcelle!" protested the young girl, with little flush of righteous wrath.

"After all," continued the elder lady, ignoring her interruption, "are you so very sure that—that it would not do? There are many worse men in the world than Sylvester. Both my husbands were profligates, in addition to being fools. At any rate, this dear Charles is very correct. And remember, the poor man is really in love with you."

"I know," said Mary plaintively; "that is why I am so sorry. He is a good man, a conscientious man, and a gentleman; and really, sometimes lately, he has been quite simple and nice. Only——"

Lady Garnett completed the sentence for her with an impartial shrug.

"Only he is perfectly ridiculous, and as a lover quite impossible? My dear, I grant it you with all my heart, and I think he has all the qualities which make an excellent husband."

As the young girl was still silent, unconvinced, she went on after a little while:

"You know, Mary, I have never tried to marry you. Frankly, my dear, I do not believe very much in pushing marriages. My own, and most others that I have known intimately, might have been very reasonably made—let us say—in purgatory. But a girl must marry some time or other, if she be rich. And you will have plenty of money, my poor child! You shall do exactly as you please, but I must admit that Charles is a most unobjectionable parti. After all, there is only one other man I would sooner give you to, Mary, and he is impossible."

"Aunt Marcelle! Aunt Marcelle!" pleaded the young girl faintly, her dark head bent very low now over the arm of the chair.

Lady Garnett had been talking so far in a somewhat desultory fashion, interspersing her words with brief caresses to the pug who was curled up in her lap. Now she put down the little dog with a brusqueness which hurt his dignity; he pawed fretfully at Mary's dress, and, attracting no attention, trotted of to his basket on the rug, where he settled himself with a short growl of discontent. And Lady Garnett, with a sudden change of tone and a new tenderness in her voice, just stooped a little and touched the young girl's forehead with her thin lips.

"My poor child!" she said, "my dear little Mary! Did you suppose I didn't know? Did you think I was blind, as well as very old, that I shouldn't see the change in you, and guess why?"

"Ah!" cried the girl with a break in her voice. "What are you saying? What do you make me say?"

"Nothing! nothing!" said the old lady; "you need not tell me anything. It is only I who tell you—like the old immortal in Daudet, J'ai vu ca moi!—and it will pass as everything passes. That is not the least sad part, though now you will hardly believe it. You see, I don't lie to you; I tell you quite plainly that it is no good. Some men are made so—vois tu, ma cherie!—to see only one woman, an inaccessible one, when they seem to see many, and he would be like that. Only it is a pity. And yet who would have foreseen it—that he should charm you, Mary? He so tired and old and use—for he is old for you, dear, though he might be my son—with his humorous, indolent, mocking talk, and his great, sad eyes. It's wicked of me, Mary, but I love you for it; so few girls would have cared, for he is a wretched match. And I blame myself, too."

"Because I am foolish and utterly ashamed?" cried the girl from her obscurity, in a hard, small voice which the other did not know.

"Foolish!" she exclaimed. "Well, we women are all that, and some men—the best of them. But ashamed? Because you have a wise mother, my darling, who guesses things? I have never had any children but you and him. And no one but I can ever know. No; I was sorry because I had to hurt you. But it was best, my dear, because you are so strong. Yes, you are strong, Mary!"

"Am I?" said the girl wearily. "What is the good of it, I wonder? Except that it makes one suffer more and longer."

"No," said Lady Garnett. "It makes one show it less, and only that matters. Aren't we going to Lady Dulminster to-night? Ah, my dear, the play must go on; we mustn't spoil the fun with sour faces, masks, and dominos except now and then! Believe me, cherie, underneath it all we are much the same—very sad people. Only it wouldn't do to admit it. Life would be too terrible then. So we dance on and make believe we enjoy it, and by-and-by, if we play hard enough, we do believe it for a minute or two. From one point of view, you know, it is rather amusing."

Mary looked up at last; her eyes, shining out of the white face, seemed to have grown suddenly very large and bright.

"Does it go on always, Aunt Marcelle?" she asked with a child's directness.

"Always!" said Lady Garnett promptly. "Only there are interludes, and then sometimes one guest steals away with his bosom friend into a corner, and they look under each other's masks. But it isn't a nice sight, and it mustn't happen very often, else they wouldn't be back in their places when the music began. Ah, my child!" she broke off suddenly, "I am talking nonsense to amuse you, and making you sadder all the time. But you know I think nobody was ever consoled by consolations unless it were the consoler."

She drew the girl's blank face towards her, clasped the smooth brown head against her breast with two bird-like hands on which the diamonds glittered.

"Cry, my dear!" she said at last; "that is the best of being young—that gift of tears. When one is old one laughs instead; but ah, mon Dieu! it is a queer kind of laughter."

They sat locked together in silence until the room was quite dark, lit only by the vague lamplight which shone in through the fine lace curtains from the street. Then Mary rose and played a little, very softly, in the darkness, morsels of Chopin, until the footman came in with a bright lamp, announcing that dinner was on the table. And Charles Sylvester had not arrived.

He atoned for this breach of his habit, however, on the morrow by making an early call upon the two ladies, whom he found alone, immediately after luncheon. He was very clean shaven, very carefully dressed, and with his closely buttoned frock-coat and his irreproachable hat, which he held ponderously in his hand during his protracted visit, he had the air of having come immediately from church.

Lady Garnett taxed him with this occupation presently, suppressing her further thought that he looked still more like an aspirant to matrimony, and Charles admitted the impeachment; he had been in the morning with his sister, Mrs. Lightmark, to the Temple Church. His severe gaze was turned inquiringly upon Mary. Lady Garnett responded for her a little flippantly.

"Oh, Mary went nowhere this morning, Mr. Sylvester—not even to the church parade. We were very late last night, at Lady Dulminster's. London grows later and later; we shall be dining at midnight soon."

"I should like to go to the Temple Church sometimes," said Mary, "because of the singing, only it is so very far."

Charles Sylvester bent forward with bland satisfaction; he had it so obviously on the tip of his tongue that he would be charmed to be her escort, that the girl hastened to interrupt him.

"You were not at Lady Dulminster's, Mr. Sylvester? We quite expected to see you."

"If I had known that you were to be there!" he exclaimed. Then he added: "I had a card, and, indeed, I fully intended to look in. But one is always so pressed for time just before the long vacation, and yesterday I was quite exhausted. Did you see any of my people?"

"Yes," said Mary, "Eve was there; we expected her to play. It is a very musical house."

"Ah, yes! I have heard so from my sister, and from Colonel Lightmark. He says that Lady Dulminster is really a most accomplished woman."

"He looks as if he found her charming," put in Lady Garnett with a shrug. Then she added, suppressing a yawn, her thin fingers dallying regretfully with the leaves of her novel: "I suppose your exertions are nearly over, Mr. Sylvester. You will be going away soon?"

He shook his head gravely.

"I fear not for long. I may have a week's cruise with my brother-in-law—you know, he has a yacht for the summer—but my labours are only beginning. I have the elections in view. You agree with me, no doubt, Lady Garnett, that the Government is bound to go to the country in the autumn; you know, of course, that I am thinking of standing for——"

"I congratulate you in advance, Mr. Sylvester! I am sure you will get in, especially if you have your sister down to canvass."

"I am afraid Eve is not sufficiently interested in politics to be of much assistance," said the candidate. Then he went on, a little nervously, pulling at his collar: "You will wish me success, Miss Masters?"

"Oh, yes!" said the girl hastily; "I am sure we both wish you that, Mr. Sylvester. We shall be most interested, shall we not, Aunt Marcelle?"

Lady Garnett came to her assistance with smiling promptitude.

"Of course, Mr. Sylvester; we will even wear your colours, if they are becoming, you know; and I am sure you would not fight under any others. And, mind, we will have no reforms—unless you like to try your hand on the climate. But nothing else! You are so fond of reforming, you English—even the most Conservative of you—that I live in constant fear of being reformed away. I hope, Mr. Sylvester, you are more Conservative than that."

Charles Sylvester flushed a little; he cleared his throat elaborately before he replied:

"I fear I have failed to make myself understood, Lady Garnett; in no sense do I call myself a Conservative, though I am prepared to vote with the party on the Irish Question. I am a Liberal Unionist, Lady Garnett. I may almost call myself a Radical Unionist. My views on the emancipation of labour, for instance, are quite advanced. I am prepared——"

Mary interrupted him, absently, demurely, with a little speech that appeared to be a quotation.

"Labour is a pretty beast in its cage to the philanthropic visitor with buns; its temper is better understood of the professional keeper."

Lady Garnett arched her eyebrows pensively; Charles looked surprised, displeased; Mary hastened to explain, blushing a little:

"I beg your pardon! the phrase is Mr. Rainham's. I believe it is the only political principle he has."

Charles's displeasure at the maxim cooled to lofty disdain of its author.

"Ah, yes!—pretty, but cynical, as I should say most of Mr. Rainham's principles were."

Lady Garnett was aroused out of her state of vacant boredom for the first time into a certain interest. Mary sat, her hands clasped in her lap, the flush just dying away out of her pale cheeks, while Mr. Sylvester embarked upon an elaborate disquisition of his principles and his programme—it might have been an expansion of his Parliamentary address—which the elder lady, whom a chance phrase had started upon a new line of thought, scarcely considered.

Does he know? she asked herself. Has this rather stupid young man grown suddenly acute enough to be jealous? Certainly there had been a flash, a trace of curious rancour in his brief mention of Rainham's name, for which it was scarcely easy to account. That the two men, in spite of their long juxtaposition, had never been more than acquaintances, had never been in the least degree friends, she was perfectly well aware; it was not in the nature of either of them to be more intimately allied.

Rainham's indolent humour and fantastic melancholy, his genial disregard of popularity or success, could not but be displeasing to a man so precise and practical as the barrister. Only now she had scented, had dimly perceived beneath his speech, something more than the indefinable aversion of incompatible tempers, a very personal and present dislike. Had things passed between them, things of which she was ignorant? Was the sentiment, then, reciprocal? She hardly believed it: Rainham's placid temper gave to his largest hostilities the character merely of languid contempt; it was not worth the trouble to hate anyone, he had said to her so often—neither to hate nor to love. She could imagine him with infidelities on occasion to the last part of his rule; yes, she could imagine that—but for hatred, no! he had said rightly he was too indolent for that. It must be all on one side, then, as happens so frequently in life with love and hate, and the rest—all on one side. And the barrister had risen to take his leave before her reflections had brought her further than this.



CHAPTER XX

It must be admitted that when Lady Garnett insinuated, for the benefit of her half-incredulous inward counsellor, that Charles Sylvester, in spite of his almost aggressive panoply of self-assurance, had been smitten by the fever of jealousy, she fully sustained her reputation for perspicacity. Her conclusions were seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him line upon line, like the most clearly printed of books. As in the case of a book, what one read was not always intelligible, and it might even on occasion be necessary to read between the obvious lines; but in this particular instance the page contained no cryptogram, and the astute old lady had read it without her spectacles.

Charles was jealous; he had not insulted himself by admitting it even for an instant, but he was jealous; and his jealousy was more than the roving fever of all lovers, in that it had a definite, tangible object.

It would have been contrary to his nature to allow either his love or the ensuing passion to interfere in any way with his professional duties or instincts; he was a lawyer, and an embryo Member of Parliament first, a man afterwards; and it was not until late in the afternoon of the day which followed his last recorded interview with Lady Garnett and her niece that he dismissed from his brain the complexities of "Brown and another versus Johnson," and drew from an orderly mental pigeon-hole the bundle of papers bearing the neat endorsement, "Re Miss Masters." When, to the ecstatic joy of his clerk, he had withdrawn himself from his chambers in Paper Buildings, and was walking briskly along the dusty Embankment in the direction of his club, he found himself, by a sequence which was natural, though he would have been the last to own it, already thinking of Rainham, and wondering, with a trace of dignified self-reproach, whether he had not been guilty of some remissness in the performance of his duty towards society, in the matter of that reprehensible individual and his aberrations from the paths of virtue. He did not stop to question himself too strictly as to the connection between his matrimonial aspirations and Rainham's peccadilloes; but he was able to assure himself that the assertion of his principles demanded a closer investigation, a more crucial analysis of certain ambiguous episodes.