Not ten minutes after she had made this resolution she unexpectedly encountered Lord Hurdly, in crossing a hall. He had been out on horseback, and still wore his riding-clothes. The correct and carefully fitted leggings showed legs that were thin and shapeless. Beneath them were small feet, on which their owner did not step very firmly. The somewhat showy waistcoat and short coat had an air of displaying themselves and concealing the form beneath them, which was perhaps a high tribute to his tailor's art. His chest looked narrower, his face more wrinkled, his hair thinner, than Bettina had before noticed them to be, and there was a certain loose-jointedness in his figure which, as he moved toward her on his narrow and closely booted feet, gave him the sort of teetering motion of the elderly beau. His face, neutral and cold as ever, showed the signs of age less, yet Bettina felt that it masked the inadequacy of his soul as distinctively as his clothes masked that of his body.

As they came toward each other—this man and this woman, whose marriage was supposed to be a union of two into one—the face of each might, by an eye sensitive to the subtleties of human expression, have been seen to harden slightly. Lord Hurdly took off his hat with an automatic motion which might have prompted the thought that the action arose from his ideal of himself rather than from any association with the woman before him.

"Excuse me for detaining you a moment," said Bettina, "but I want to know whether Horace Spotswood actually received the money which you made over to him at the time of your marriage to me. I have heard that he is leading a very active life, on lines where money will be of great use to him. Naturally I am anxious to be sure of the fact that he has suffered no injury, however indirectly, through me."

She had been able to control both her voice and expression entirely—a fact on which she fervently congratulated herself.

"You may feel quite at ease on that score, I assure you," Lord Hurdly answered, in his cold, incisive tones. "He received the money, and has probably used it for the furtherance of these ridiculous and sentimental schemes of his. This should give you the gratifying assurance that he has been bettered, and not worsted, by reason of his connection with you."

The tone in which he spoke was galling to Bettina, but she made no answer, though no words which she could have spoken would have conveyed a greater resentment of his speech than did her disdainful silence. She made a motion to move away, but he deliberately placed himself in front of her, saying, in the same hard tone:

"It occurred to me, from time to time while we were abroad, that you were rather eager in gleaning information about the person we have been speaking of, and I want to tell you that what has been evident to me may be evident to others. You may not care how the thing looks, but as I do, perhaps you will be more careful in the future."

His use of the word "eager" in connection with her attitude in this affair gave Bettina swift offence, and this feeling was heightened by the suggestion that she had made herself liable to criticism on such a subject.

"You cannot, I think," she answered, in a tone of proud resentment, "be more careful than I am that I shall act with propriety as your wife. Since there is so little besides the form to be complied with, I see the greater necessity for punctiliousness in observing that. The rebuke you have just given me is utterly unmerited, and I shall therefore not change my manner of conducting myself in any particular."

"Perhaps you will think better of that decision, and will oblige me by not making yourself conspicuous by holding your breath to listen whenever that person chances to be mentioned. You are not unlikely to hear him alluded to during the coming season, as he has been making a bid for popularity at his new post by taking up the matter of the famine, and," he added with a sneering smile, "relieving it with the money I paid him."

The word cut into Bettina's heart.

"Paid him?" she said, scrutinizing him with a glance before which even his hard eyes faltered. "Paid him for what?"

"Oh, for keeping himself out of my way!"

She felt that she had compelled him to this response, and that he would have liked to put it more brutally. As it was, there lurked a sting in it which provoked her to reply.

"Did he hold the privilege of your proximity at so large a price?"

A smile of quiet irony accompanied the words. As it curved her lips alluringly, Lord Hurdly felt himself touched with the sudden sense of her powerful charm. No one else on earth would have dared to say this to him, or anything remotely comparable with it. There was something very piquant to his jaded palate in the flavor of this audacious speech. Instead of scowling, therefore, he smiled.

"I have heard," he said, amiably, "that America was the land of the free and the home of the brave, and certainly you seem to warrant one in accepting that belief."

Bettina, a good deal relieved at this turn of affairs, took the opportunity that the moment gave her to say, gravely:

"No; I do not consider myself free. I have bound myself, in my marriage to you, and I have no intention or desire to forget the duties which I owe you. But I tell you frankly, Lord Hurdly, that I am not accustomed to either surveillance or tyranny, and I shall not tamely submit to them. In the carrying out of this resolution, at least, you will find that I can be brave."

She looked more than ordinarily beautiful as she stood erect before him and said these words, and he had not gazed so fully into her eyes for a long time. He had almost forgotten their magnetic loveliness. At sight of them now his pulses beat quicker. A desire for the mastery of this splendid creature returned to him with a force he would not have believed possible.

"Bettina," he said, in a voice which showed an emotion most unusual to him, "have you ever known what it was to love, I wonder?"

"Once—once only," she answered, a quaver in her voice and a sudden suffusion of tears in her eyes. "I loved my mother. No one that ever lived could have loved more truly and more ardently than I loved her; but there it began and ended. I never deceived you as to that. I promised you duty and good faith, and I have not failed in these. I never shall so fail. But love, no! I haven't it to give."

She made a movement to go forward, and he stood aside and let her pass him. She avoided meeting his gaze, and perhaps it was well that she did. For slowly its expression changed. A look of hardness that was almost significant of dislike came into his eyes and compressed his lips. From the day of their marriage this woman had thwarted and baffled him. He had tried to get the mastery of her, but he had failed, and the sense of that failure angered him. He had been used to dominating every one with whom he came into any sort of close contact. He had married this American girl with the determination to dominate her, and he had found himself as powerless as if she had been a mist maiden. There was no way in which he could lay hold upon her.

Concerning Bettina's attitude toward him he had a theory. He believed that she had really loved Horace. She was too absolutely in the shadow of the sorrow of her mother's death to give full play to any other feeling, but he had always felt, in every effort that he had made to win her, that it was the image of Horace Spotswood in her mind which put him in total eclipse. This theory time had deepened. His suspicious watchfulness over her every word and look had made him aware that she listened with interest when Horace's name was mentioned, and his imagination heightened the effect of her interest, and caused him to conjecture as to what she might have heard and felt at such times as he was not by. Moreover, a certain secret consciousness in his own soul stimulated him in his suspicions.



CHAPTER VIII

During the early weeks of their marriage Lord Hurdly, while changing his attitude from the solicitude of the pursuer to the masterfulness of the possessor, had certainly made some effort to win Bettina, while she, on her part, had tried to oblige him by responding to his professions for her. Both were aware that this effort had been made on both sides, and that it had quite failed. By the time the honey-moon was over, Lord Hurdly had, to all appearance, ceased to care. The consciousness of this was an immense relief to Bettina, and she had felt ever since that in doing him credit in the eyes of the world she would satisfy his first object in having her for a wife. In this she had not failed. There was a distinct estrangement between them, but it had never been necessary to define it. Whatever disagreements there had been, only themselves were aware of. Lord Hurdly would have felt his authority over her incomplete indeed if he had ever had to assert it in public.

As for Bettina, a singular change of feeling was going on within her. She had made her test of the world, and found that she had overrated its power to please. It was almost appalling to reflect that there was no more for her to do than to repeat what she had already done. Another London season, another autumn in receiving and making visits, another winter abroad. What then? Was there nothing but material pleasure for her in the world? She wanted something more, something different from all this.

One morning she went out into the park, where spring was just beginning to put forth its greenery. Leaping footsteps sounded behind her. It was Comrade, bounding to her side and nestling up against her. She put her arm around his neck and drew him close. He responded with an affectionateness that was almost human.

Almost human! At this thought she began to ask herself how much human affection there was for her in the world. As much, no doubt, she told herself, as she had to bestow. But why was this?

The birds were going wild with song in the branches above her head. The grass, the trees, the clouds, the sky, seemed all to have been made to be part of a world for love to dwell in. A great hunger possessed her—a hunger not to be loved, but to love. For the first time she found herself longing for this boon, entirely apart from any idea of her mother. Oh, to have some one with a human, comprehending, ardent heart, to put her arms around as she was now clasping Comrade—some one to whom to offer up the wealth of love which she had once thought she could never give except to her dear mother; some one who might make that mother's words come true, that a love far greater than any she had known might be in store for her; some one, handsome, charming, ardent, loving, sympathetic, kind; some one to be friend and brother and lover all in one; above all, some one with thoughts and feelings akin to her own—some one impulsive and natural—some one young!

When at last she said good-bye to Comrade and returned to her rooms, she felt in some strange way that a new era had dawned for her. But a mood like this was new in her experience, and she fought resolutely against its recurrence. As an aid to this end she threw herself more eagerly into the external interests which were so great in such a position as hers, and became more noted for her splendid entertainments and rich dressing than she had been the season before. As she got a deeper insight into the conditions of the life about her, she saw opportunities for influence and power, even to a woman, which attracted her. But she was very ignorant. She knew little of the world and English affairs, and she found the women about her so well informed on these subjects that she began to feel herself at a certain disadvantage. This roused her pride, and she set to work to inform herself on many subjects of which she had hitherto been ignorant.

One means to this end was the reading of newspapers, and this occupation now absorbed a part of every morning. In this way she occasionally came upon Horace Spotswood's name, and when she did, a strange agitation would possess her. She could not quite shake off an influence which this man's life seemed to exert upon hers. Lord Hurdly would have had her believe that she had bestowed a great benefit upon Horace, as it was through her that he was in the possession of his present independent fortune, but there was no voice so strong as the one in her own heart which told her that she had wronged him. Here and there she had picked up the impressions of many different people concerning this young diplomatist, and unquestionably the aggregated effect was one of admiration. The brief notices of him which she read in the papers confirmed this impression of him. He was doing well, for a man of his years, in diplomacy, and he was doing more than well in the work he had undertaken for the relief of the famine-stricken population near him.

It was Horace's interest in this cause which had given rise to Bettina's interest in it, and she began to read eagerly all that she could find on the subject. As a result her heart was, for the first time in her life, awakened to an intense perception of the suffering of the world at large. It was a new emotion to her, and one which throbbed through all her consciousness with a power which changed her individuality even to herself. She began to think for the first time of the utter recklessness with which she had been spending the large sums of money which Lord Hurdly placed at her disposal. Her expenditure of these sums heretofore had met with his entire approval, as she could never have too rich a wardrobe to please him. It was all a part of his own glory and importance, and he never asked a question as to how the money went.

But now the tide within Bettina's heart had turned. As she read of the sufferings of these starving people, the thought of her own excess of luxuriousness sickened her. The more she felt within her soul that nameless sadness which no outside help could relieve, the more she felt it urgent upon her to relieve the wants of others when this assuagement lay within her actual power.

It may seem strange that, with a mother who had a large-hearted sympathy with all sorrow, Bettina should have kept her own heart so closed to the suffering outside it; but no seed can sprout until the soil is prepared for it, and up to this period of her life the ground of Bettina's heart had been unprepared.

Now, however, all was changed. She went to balls and dinners, as her position as Lord Hurdly's wife demanded, but her heart was elsewhere. She began to economize strictly in her personal expenditure, and collected all the ready money she could lay her hands on, both from her husband's allowance and from her own small private fortune, and sent it anonymously to the Indian famine fund.

This contribution was sent in with no other identification than "From B.," written on the card which accompanied it. How could Bettina have dreamed that any living soul would connect her with it?

She was not unaware, however, that she was constantly watched by her husband. Since she had become interested in her new pursuits he observed her more closely than ever, and on the morning of the publication in the papers of the special additions to the famine fund which contained her own subscription Lord Hurdly, with apparently no reason at all, read the list aloud to her across the breakfast table.

When he came to the item "From B.," he paused and looked at her searchingly.

Bettina felt her face turn red.



"I thought so," said her husband, with a strange mixture of satisfaction and anger in his hard tones. "I have been expecting some such foolery as this for some time, and I am not blinded to the motive behind it. What do you care about those devils of Indian savages? What does Horace Spotswood care about them? Just as little! Enough, and too much, of my money has gone already to the prolonging of their worthless lives. If that graceless cub chooses to go on wasting money on them he can do it, but I take this occasion to inform you, Lady Hurdly—and I'd advise you to remember what I say—that I do not choose that any more of my money shall go in that direction. Do you understand?"

There was an insolence in his tone which he had never used to her before. She resented it keenly. Rising to her feet, with an instinct which forbade her to preside over the table at the other end of which he was seated as master, she said, with a tinge of anger in her quiet tones:

"The money was partly my own—from my mother's little fortune; and she would have held, with me, that I could put it to no more holy use. As to the rest, I understood that that also was my own. I did not know that you required of me an account of how I used it."

"How you used it? You may light your fire with it, for all I care! But there is one thing for which I do care, and which I mean to see nipped in the bud; and that is this ridiculous sentimentality which you are indulging in over Horace Spotswood. If you are regretting your young lover, that is your own affair, but when you come to flaunt this regret before the eyes of the public it becomes my affair, and as such I propose to put a stop to it."

Bettina trembled with the rage of resentment that possessed her. She recollected herself enough, however, not to speak until she had paused long enough to be sure that she could control herself. Then she said:

"You are forgetting yourself, Lord Hurdly, when you presume to speak to me as you have just done. I have given you no occasion to do so, and you know it. If there are certain regrets in my marriage to you, your present conduct justifies them. But permit me to say, on my side, that I can imagine no explanation of your behavior, except to suppose that it proceeds from a consciousness in your own mind of having wronged this man."

She was looking at him narrowly. His features did not flush, nor did his cold eyes falter. And yet, in spite of the long habit of guardedness which now stood him in such good stead, there was a consciousness about him, like an atmosphere, which told her that her thrust had drawn blood.

"I thought so!" she said, using the very words which he had used to her. "I have for a long time been struggling in my mind against a doubt which sometimes would arise, that I might have been deceived. Everywhere, in public and in private, that I hear that young man spoken of, it is with words of confidence, admiration, and affection."

Still her penetrating gaze was on him, and still he bore it without flinching.

"You saw the letter," he said, with a sneer. "If that was not enough for you—" He broke off with a harsh, unpleasant laugh.

"It was enough," she said. "Surely it has sufficed to fix my fate in life. But it is possible that that letter gave an exaggerated account. Still, if the half of it was so, I was more than justified in cutting loose from him. No one could possibly blame me."

"No one does, so far as I can see," was the malicious answer. "I hear of no complaints from others, and certainly I have uttered none. You make a very satisfactory Lady Hurdly, and I suppose you get enough out of the position to repay you for anything you may have lost—at least, from the world's point of view, you should have done so."

Bettina did not answer at once. A sickness of soul was creeping over her that made all life look suddenly loathsome. The one feeble ray that penetrated the darkness in which she felt herself enveloped was the help that came from a certain ideal which she had recently enthroned in her own heart. As the world's need, the wider issues affecting the myriad lives beyond her own, had recently been brought before her consciousness, she had felt her way, as simply and weakly as a child might have done, to one plain principle of life—that it was worth while to try to be good. Never had she felt so keenly as in this minute the utter futility of hoping to be happy. Yet in this minute she felt more than ever, also, that happiness was not all.

It was only rarely that she had any personal talk with her husband. The wall of separation between them seemed to be thickening by silent accretion all the time. It was very difficult to scale this wall, and she felt that any effort to do so irked him no less than it did her. So, with an instinct not to let go the present opportunity, she said, rather eagerly, as he was rising to go away:

"Sit down a moment. We do not often speak together. I have something on my mind to say to you."

He resumed his seat and lighted a cigar—an action which discouraged her by its nonchalance. Still, she was determined to go on. By a great effort she made her voice very gentle, as she said:

"I know I have disappointed you in what you had hoped from this marriage between us, and I want to tell you I am very sorry. If I have not been able to give you the feeling which you desired—"

He interrupted her.

"Feeling?" he said. "Who wants feeling nowadays in a wife? No one expects it. I wanted some one to make a handsome figure as Lady Hurdly. I expected that you would do that, and you have not disappointed me."

"If this is true, I'm glad to know it," she said; "but, at any rate, you could not blame me for not giving you the love another woman might have given you. I never deceived you as to that. I told you I had not that love to give; not—as you have so unjustly hinted—because I had given it to another man, but because I was then incapable of love. I had no thought of any one beyond myself. I was miserably ignorant and egoistic. It was in ignorance and egoism that I took the position of your wife, but I think from the first that I have tried, as I could, to fulfil its obligations. I have tried to be and to appear what you would wish. And I am not unmindful of the honor and distinction which my marriage to you has conferred upon me."

"Gad! I should hope not! One of the biggest positions in England!" he exclaimed, in a tone of scornful irritation. With these words he rose and left the room.

Bettina's pride was deeply wounded. It had been that new assertion of the control of duty which had led her to say these things to her husband. She had conquered much in herself before speaking, and she felt that she had a right to resent the almost brutal insensibility with which he had received her words.

As she turned from the breakfast-room and mounted to her own apartments she felt conscious of a new humiliation in her life. Up to this time she had believed that Lord Hurdly would have been incapable of such speech as he had used to her that morning. She had done a good deal—more than was required of her, she told herself—in speaking to him as she had done after his words in the early part of their conversation, and now it seemed plain to her that she had fulfilled her whole duty toward him, and that if it had done no good, the fault was on his side and not on hers.

Once in her own rooms, she gave herself up to profoundly sorrowful thoughts. She was only twenty-two. How long the path of her future life looked, and whither would it lead? She had attained all that any woman could desire in the way of the world's bestowment. She did not underrate the value of this. On the contrary, it was as essential to one part of her nature as something far different in the way of human possibility was to another part. She did not lose her hold upon the actual because she was striving after the unattained. All this power and admiration was very important to her, though she felt the insufficiency of mere worldly prosperity. "Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain," were words that very nearly fitted her state of mind. At the thought of going back to the obscurity she had come out of she shrank.



CHAPTER IX

That talk with Lord Hurdly made a distinct epoch in their relations to each other. Neither ever referred to it, but it had left its impress upon both. To Bettina it gave the assurance that she had done all that could possibly be required of her, in her desire to come to a true and amicable understanding with her husband, and, after it, she had a greater sense of freedom. To Lord Hurdly it gave an insight into Bettina's nature which he had not had before. He found her to be possessed of a power of caustic speech which, he was bound to acknowledge, had made him feel uncomfortable. He felt also that he had not succeeded in asserting his supremacy over her quite so conclusively as he could have wished. He had, moreover, an uncomfortable warning, from the recollection of her words and looks, that it might be better for him to think twice in future before crossing swords with her. He was a man who hated opposition, and who was quite unused to dealing with it in his own house. He was still master, and his sovereignty no one had even questioned. As he desired to keep this so, he did not care to enter into any further discussion with Bettina. There were circumstances not beyond his conceiving which might cause him a greater loss of prestige than any already endured, and the thought of these made him careful to avoid coming again into close quarters with Bettina.

This position on his part led to an attitude toward his wife which might have been interpreted agreeably, since he no longer seemed to watch her so narrowly as he had done. He seemed, without speaking on the subject, to give her rather more freedom, and he never again referred to her interest in the Indian famine or in the doings of Horace Spotswood.

Yet Bettina had the same uncomfortable sense of being criticised and held to strict account. She felt as if evidence were rolling up against her which might one day be brought before her all at once.

She had, however, acquired a thirst for some knowledge of things beyond her own narrow interests, which was not to be calmed except by indulgence. When she looked about her in the great throbbing life of London, she found so many objects which seemed absolutely to stand waiting for her interest and participation that she was soon caught in the strong movement of woman's work in social life in its wider and deeper meaning.

No sooner was it found that Lady Hurdly was willing to interest herself in such matters than they came crowding upon her. It was a new and delightful consciousness to her that she might become part of the power that was working against the evil in the world, and she threw herself into the effort with spirit and enthusiasm.

Life became better for her after that. The importance of her position was borne into her in a new and better way. By being Lady Hurdly she might hope, perhaps, to do some little service in bettering the lots of those who were at the other extreme of life's scale from her, whereas if she had remained in her former position she would have had as little value at one end as at the other.

Apart from these considerations of pure altruism was the sweet thought that she was drawing nearer to her mother in spirit, now that she was trying so hard to give help to others; and sometimes another thought would come. This was that, far apart as their lives must be, she was trying to do in her sphere what Horace was doing in his, and perhaps with the same hope in the heart of each—namely, that the record of the future might help to compensate for the mistakes and wrong-doings of the past. She found herself passionately hoping that he had flung his evil past behind him, just as she was trying to throw hers.

Under these changed conditions, Bettina's second season in London was unlike the first in both its object and its results. From some unknown and unquestioned source she was becoming penetrated with the "scorn for miserable aims that end with self," and by the time that she was ready to return to Kingdon Hall her life had become so informed with its new purpose that she looked forward to the leisure which her removal there would give with real satisfaction in its opportunity for better work. Besides, she had now in view a personal supervision of the affairs on the Kingdon Hall estate, which she was eager to enter into. She had awakened to the duty of looking after the interests of tenants and the good of the parish.

Whether she would have the approval of her husband in such work or not she was unable to guess. So far, beyond a rather cynical and distant observation of her new interests he had never interfered, but she guessed that the probable explanation of this fact was that he felt that her prominence in philanthropic activities, which had been approved by the best society, was a new way of reflecting glory upon himself.

For, as time had passed and Bettina had got a truer insight into the man she had married, the fact had confronted her that he was egoistic to the last degree. His cold neutrality of manner veiled this to most people, but to her keen and constant observation the length and breadth of his egoism were at times almost sickening.

She was therefore not unprepared for what happened when she began her visiting among the poor at Kingdon and her investigation into the needs of her husband's tenants. She had gone to work openly about it, and he had taken no notice; but one morning, when he was about to leave for a few days' hunting in one of the neighboring counties, he said to her, at the moment of departure:

"I want to tell you that I do not approve of the innovations which you are beginning to make in the management of affairs on the estate. The ladies of Kingdon Hall, heretofore, have left these matters to their husbands, and I prefer that you do the same. I mention it now so that I may see no signs of interference on my return."

It was not at all unusual for him to take this tone with her, and he was following his usual custom in speaking to her in a moment of haste, whenever he had anything unpleasant to say. He could, in this way, end the conversation where he chose, and she saw that he had no intention of lingering now. The cart was at the door, and he had on his overcoat and even his hat, and stood drawing on and buttoning his gloves, with an unlighted cigar between his teeth. His eyes were bent upon his task, under frowning brows.

His cool and careless words, which her knowledge of him taught her were the veneering for an inexorable resolution, gave her a shock of disappointment. She did not often take a humble tone with him, but there was humility as well as entreaty in her voice as she now said,

"You won't forbid my going to see the tenants, and making things a little better for them, if I can, will you?"

"I forbid all interference," he answered, in a tone that made her feel that he relished the exercise of his power. "You can safely leave the affairs of my tenants to me. They have fared sufficiently well in my hands so far."

At one time these words and tones would have provoked a sharp retort, but Bettina had so far changed since the early months of her marriage that the thoughts of her own wrongs and indignities were now less insistent than the troubles of these poor people, which she had hoped to be able to alleviate.

"Oh, indeed you are mistaken!" she said, urgently. "You do not know how much they need what a very little money and effort would supply them with. Don't refuse to let me help them. It is a thing so near to my heart."

She saw his face grow harder.

"It is also," he said, "near my pocket. Going in for charity is all very well, if it amuses you, and I did not interfere with your doing so in London. Here, however, it is different. The time has come to stop it."

His words hurt her pride, and she felt, too, that he liked the position of being entreated by her. She had an instinct to retort sharply, but another instinct was stronger. She was feeling what was a new sensation to her—a willingness to humble her pride that others might be benefited.

"I have never given money without first satisfying myself that you approved it," she said, "and I will promise you to regulate my public charities in future strictly in accordance with whatever limitations you may set. But don't refuse to let me work a little here—it will not take much money—among the poor at our very doors."

Instead of softening him, as she had hoped that this attitude of humility would do, her words seemed to have the opposite effect. She had a feeling, all at once, that he enjoyed making her appeal to him, because it would give him the still greater pleasure of refusing.

He did not answer at once. It seemed to please him to keep her waiting. His gloves were now neatly fastened on his long thin hands, and with great deliberation he took out his match-box and proceeded to light his cigar. She noticed that he did not ask permission to do so, as he would certainly have done at one time—as he would also, undoubtedly, at one time have removed his hat while talking to her. Still, these signs of a diminished deference toward her touched her lightly compared with the importance which she attached to his answer to her question.

She watched him narrowing his eyes, to avoid the smoke which he was now puffing from his just-lighted cigar, and waited for him to speak.

Always scrupulously careful in small things, he walked to the window to throw away the end of the extinguished match. It suddenly came over her that he did not intend to answer her last words.

Perhaps he wanted to make her urge him further. At this her heart rebelled. She would not. Still, the idea of his going off for several days, leaving the question unsettled, was too annoying to contemplate. As he moved toward the door she said:

"You have not answered me."

"I beg your pardon," he said, with chill politeness. "I answered you in the beginning. I wish you to leave the management of the tenants' affairs where they properly belong—with me."

So saying, he lifted his hat, bowed, and went.

Bettina stood where he had left her, trembling with indignation from the sense of being treated tyrannically by a person who exercised an arbitrary power over her which she could not dispute. What had she ever done to deserve such treatment at his hands? How dared he treat her so?

With the new-born instinct of rectitude within her she tried to see if there was any reasonable ground for the real dislike of her which now seemed to be in her husband's mind. With every desire to be honest, she could think of none except the fact that she had not answered to his rein. He could hardly resent her not loving him, for he had married her without asking that; and besides, what did he know of love, as she was now beginning to comprehend it? No, it was not that which he resented in her; it was the fact that, although she chose to conform to him in outward things, he had never obtained the mastery of her in the manner which, to his ideas, befitted the relationship of Lord and Lady Hurdly. She thought of the picture of his meek little mother and masterful-looking father.



CHAPTER X

Bettina had been left to the lonely idleness of her own reflections but a few days when the monotony of her life was broken by one of those sudden events which, by the vastness of their consequences, seem not only to change the face of nature for us, and the aspect of all the world without, but also to change ourselves, in our spirits and minds, so that we can never be the same creatures that we were before. She received a telegram announcing that Lord Hurdly had been killed in the hunting-field.

Poor Bettina, with all her faults and limitations, had something of her mother's noble nature in her, and this element of her somewhat complicated individuality had been the part of her which had expanded most of late. Her first feelings, therefore, were unmingled pity and regret. She did not think of herself and of how all things would be changed for her. Her whole thought was of him who so long had existed in her mind as the image of pride and indomitable self-will, but who had now become, in one moment, the object of her deepest pity. She had scarcely ever thought of death in connection with him. He had seemed as sound as steel. She had never heard him speak of the least symptom of illness, and now the paper in her hand informed her that he was dead.

How thankful she was that she had not spoken to him angrily in their last talk! How she wished that she had said just one kind word to him at parting! True, he had given her no opportunity; but if she had known—

Suddenly she burst into violent weeping, and in this condition they found her, with the telegram on the floor at her feet.

"Who would have thought my lady would have taken it so hard?" said Mrs. Parlett, when the exciting news was heard down-stairs. "They was that 'aughty to one another before people! But it's them as feels the most, sometimes."

This remark was addressed to Nora, in the hope of eliciting a response, but Nora excelled in the art of holding her tongue.

It was she alone who was admitted to her mistress's apartments, where Bettina remained, in deep agitation, while the preparations for the arrival of Lord Hurdly's body were being made. After her profound emotion of pity for him, her next thought had been of Horace. He was the heir and nearest of kin. It flashed upon her, with the suddenness of surprise, that he was Lord Hurdly now.

How strange, how absolutely bewildering, this new state of things seemed! Her mind seemed unable to grasp the strangeness of these new conditions.

Bettina saw no one but the rector of the parish. All that had to be done was so plain and simple, and there were so many capable hands to do it, that there was little need to consult with her. She begged the rector to act in her stead in giving all necessary directions. It was with a deep sense of relief that she reflected on the impossibility of Horace's arrival in time for the funeral. Perhaps she could get away somewhere before he came.

Those days when her husband's body lay in the apartment near her, and the relations and friends assembled to do it an honor which in his lifetime they were scarcely suffered to express, marked the period of the real awakening of Bettina's soul. The sense of freedom which her position now secured to her, the power to do and be what she chose, was like wings to her spirit, and for the first time in her experience the woman and the hour were met.

When she had been free before to make her own life, her vision had been so limited, her aspiration so low, her interest in the heart-beats of the great humanity of which her little life was so small a part had been so uncomprehending, that she had cared only for the narrow issues which concerned herself. But now, in the hour which saw her free again, she was another woman, and this woman had a passionate purpose in her heart to make herself avail for the needs of others.

She resolved that the moment her affairs were settled her new life should begin. The period of her marriage had opened up before her vast opportunities, of which she was eager to take advantage. These would need money for their carrying out, but that she would have money enough she had never doubted. Of course until the reading of the will it would not be known what provision had been made for her, but Lord Hurdly had always been extremely generous as to money, and she had no misgivings on that score.

At last the funeral was over and the house was rid of guests. Various cousins and friends had shown their willingness to remain and bear her company, but Bettina, with the rector's aid, had managed to get rid of these. She wanted to be alone and to think out some course of future action, for she was still in a state of absolute unadjustment to her new situation.

It had turned out that Lord Hurdly had left her an income of one thousand pounds. Her first realization of the smallness of this provision for her came from the rector's comment, which was spoken in a tone as if reluctantly censorious.

"I should not have believed Lord Hurdly capable of such a thing," he said. "I am sure that all who have cared for his honorable reputation must regret this as much on his account as on yours."

"Is it so little?" said Bettina, too proud to show disappointment. "A thousand pounds a year seems a sufficient sum for the support of one woman."

"For some women, perhaps," was the answer, "but not for the woman who has once held the position of mistress of Kingdon Hall. I repeat that I would not have believed it of Lord Hurdly."

Bettina did not hear his last emphatic words, or, at all events, took no conscious cognizance of them. She was absorbed in the contemplation of her new condition. How strange it seemed!

It was something more than strange. She had been too long in possession of the power and importance of being the reigning Lady Hurdly, so to speak, not to feel a real revolt at the idea of seeing herself laid on the shelf. It would not necessarily be so bad if she had had ample means, for she had made a place for herself in the world. But she was certain, from the air of commiseration with which not only the rector but others had regarded her, that she would be extremely curtailed in such opportunities as depended upon money; and she had sufficient insight into social affairs to know how the possession of money broadened opportunity, and the absence of it limited power.

There was no denying to herself the pain that it gave her to relinquish such a position. She had accommodated herself to greatness so naturally that it seemed incredible that she was to sink back into a life of obscurity. Frankly, she did not like it.

And yet, on the other hand, she felt an unfeigned gladness that Horace was to come to his own. She rejoiced that no child of hers would ever stand in his way. She had reason to hope that he would use his great position to great ends, for the residuum of all her turbid and agitating thoughts about him was an admiration for the man in his attitude toward the world, no matter how much she still resented his attitude toward herself. That this last was so, there needed no stronger proof than her eager resolution to get away from Kingdon Hall—out of the country, if possible—before the arrival of the man whose place her husband had once taken, and who, in another sense, was now to take his.



CHAPTER XI

It was some time before Bettina realized the changed conditions of her life consequent upon her husband's extremely small provision for her. In England, in the only society which she knew, it would be a mere pittance, after what she had always had there; but in America, in her old home, which she had always kept as her mother left it, it would be almost riches. Sometimes she thought of going back there for good, and leaving the great world in which she had found so little joy. But it was this world which could give her, as she now knew, the best substitute that can be offered for joy—active and interesting occupation. Having once known the inspiration of this, the stagnation of her old home was not to be thought of for a permanency. It seemed to her best, however, to go there for a short time to look after the money interests now become important to her, and from there to seek some work for the faculties which she had only lately realized that she possessed.

In her heart she could but feel a certain wounded pride in the altered position to which her husband had deliberately condemned her. She felt that it was his way of punishing her for not having been a more conformable wife. He had not succeeded, in his life, in humbling her pride; he would therefore do it now. She felt that he must have had some intention of this sort.

That instinct was confirmed by the family lawyer, who told her, when he came to have a talk on business, that Lord Hurdly had expressed to him the supposition, and even the wish, that she should return to America to live.

Under other conditions her husband's wish would have greatly influenced her decision, but under these it had no weight whatever. She could not help feeling that she had been harshly treated. It was not the actual loss of money that she minded; it was the slight implied thereby. She had married Lord Hurdly without any pretence of loving him. He had not required that of her; and she had done her best to maintain her position as his wife in accordance with his wishes. These had often conflicted with her own, but in such cases she had always yielded. She felt, therefore, that she had been treated with injustice.

The chief sting of this feeling was in connection with the thought of Horace. It made her flush with shame when she reflected that he was bound to know that the man for whom she had given him up had treated her so slightingly. Under the spur of this thought she had a wild impulse to run away to America, where he should never see or hear of her again. Business affairs compelled her to remain in England for a short while, but she was quite determined to leave it before Horace should arrive.

One morning, quite unexpectedly, she got a cable despatch from him. It was addressed to Lady Hurdly, at Kingdon Hall, and was in these words: "Kindly remain and act for me until I can arrive. Unavoidably detained here.—SPOTSWOOD."

This direct message from the young lover who had once been so near to her life moved Bettina to strange emotions. She was aware that Mr. Cortlin, the family lawyer, had written him that she was going away as soon as possible, and he had, of course, been informed of all the conditions of his cousin's will. Not one penny had been left him except what was his by legal right; but Lord Hurdly's personal fortune had been an inconsiderable part of the estate, so that Horace was now a man of great wealth as well as the bearer of an old and noble title.

The signature to this telegram was one of the things that affected Bettina. The telegrams sent to the lawyers, the rector, and others had been signed "Hurdly." Several of these she had seen. It seemed to her, therefore, a very delicate instinct which had caused him to refrain from the use of her husband's name in addressing her. He had always been delicate in his intuitions and expressions, or at least so it had seemed.

The effect of this telegram upon Bettina was to make her more confused and uncertain in her plans than she had been before. She felt a strong instinct to avoid meeting Horace again, and yet this telegram was in the form of a request, and she could hardly refuse to do him a favor. In the midst of her perplexity a servant brought word that Mr. Cortlin had arrived and asked to see her.

When the lawyer entered, with his usual obsequious bow, Bettina received him with a rather cold civility. Her manner had become distinctly more haughty since her descent in the scale of social and pecuniary importance.

Mr. Cortlin did not take the seat to which she invited him, but remained standing, with his hat in his hand, as he said:

"A former client of mine, and friend of his late lordship, Mr. Fitzwilliam Clarke, who died about a year ago, left in my keeping a letter to your ladyship, which he instructed me to deliver in person upon the death of Lord Hurdly. I am come now, my lady, in the fulfilment of that trust."

Bettina looked at him in amazement.

"There must be some mistake," she said. "I know no Mr. Fitzwilliam Clarke. I have never even heard his name."

"That may be, my lady, but there is no mistake. This letter was meant for you."

Bettina took the letter he held out, and opened it with a certain incredulous haste. Mr. Cortlin at the same moment walked away to a window, and stood there with his back turned while Bettina read the following sentences:

"MY DEAR LADY HURDLY,—Should this letter ever come to your eyes, you will be at that time a widow, as I have left instructions that it shall be delivered only in the event of your surviving your husband. By that time I shall have passed into the unknown world, where, if such things can be, I shall have had with Lord Hurdly an understanding which, by the hard conditions he imposed on me, was impossible in this life. But before leaving the world of human life and action I wish to make sure that at least one wrong which came about through me will have been repaired by me. I am aware that the rupture of your engagement of marriage to Mr. Horace Spotswood was caused chiefly by a letter shown you by Lord Hurdly, and purporting to come from an altogether trustworthy source—a man who was on the spot and who was a personal friend of his. I was that man. I was on the spot because I was sent there by Lord Hurdly for the purpose of writing this letter. For reasons which I need not enter into he had me in his power, and until one of us shall be dead he can force me to do his will. If you ever hold this letter in your hand and read these words we shall both be dead, and by this letter I desire to make reparation for a base and cruel wrong which I have helped to inflict upon an honorable and high-minded gentleman. I allude to the man who, when you read these words, will bear the name and title of Lord Hurdly. The things I wrote of him are in absolute contradiction to the truth, for a nobler and more loyal heart never beat. You might well discredit any assurance which comes by means of me, and I do not ask to have my words accepted. All I expect to accomplish is that you shall pay enough attention to my statement to investigate the matter for yourself. He is well known, and once your ears are open you will hear enough to prove to you that he has been wronged. That I have wronged him, though reluctantly and by reason of a power I could not resist, is the saddest consciousness of my life.

"That I may possibly by this letter do something, however late, to repair this wrong is my chief consolation on leaving the world. I shall carry with me into whatever life I go an ineradicable resentment against the man who was Lord Hurdly, and I leave behind me the most ardent and admiring wishes of my heart for the man who, when you read this, will bear the noble name and title which his predecessor, if the truth about him could be known, has so soiled with treachery in the furtherance of the most indomitable egotism ever known in mortal man.

"In conclusion, I ask of your ladyship, as I do of all the world, such gentle judgment as Christian hearts may find it in them to accord to one whose sins, though many, were of weakness rather than malice, and who did the evil work of a malicious man because he had not strength to brave what that man had it in his power and purpose to do to him in punishment of the resistance of his will.

"Your ladyship's repentant and unhappy servant,

"FITZWILLIAM CLARKE."

Bettina, in her breathless reading of this letter, had forgotten that she was not alone. As she finished it and thrust it back into its envelope she glanced toward the window, and there saw Mr. Cortlin's figure half hid by the heavy curtains.

"Mr. Cortlin," she said, in a tone which summoned him quickly to her side, "I wish to ask if you or any other person have any knowledge of the contents of this letter."

"I can only answer for myself, my lady. I have not. It was delivered to me sealed as you have found it, and no hint of its purpose told me."

"Had you a personal knowledge and acquaintance with this Mr. Clarke?" she asked next.

"I had, my lady. He was in the confidence of his late lordship, who intrusted to him many of his private affairs."

"The man was under some great obligation to Lord Hurdly, was he not?"

"So I have understood, my lady. Formerly he was in the army, and I have heard that there was some dark story about him. I have even heard cheating at cards attributed to him, and it was said that Lord Hurdly's influence and friendship were all that saved him. The story was hushed up, but he resigned."

Bettina scarcely followed these last words. A sense of sickening confusion made her head spin round. The revelation of this letter was too much for her. The past possessed her like a blighting spell that she could never hope to shake off, and the knowledge which had come to her through this letter added a thousandfold to its bitterness.

As to the future, she dared not try to see a step before her feet. To go through life with the consciousness of this wrong to Horace unexplained was a thought at which she shuddered. Yet to explain it under existing circumstances was impossible. The agitation of this interview had almost overwhelmed her. Mr. Cortlin saw it, and, ringing for her maid, silently withdrew. When Nora came she found her mistress pale as death, and very nearly lost to consciousness.

After that interview, so significant for her in so many ways, Bettina began to long to get away—quite, quite away into another world—before the master of Kingdon Hall should have set foot in this one. She was doing her best to take his place and act for him in such matters as required immediate attention and decision. She could not refuse to do this, but she was anxious to be gone, to be quite to herself, so that she might the better look life in the face and see what could be done with the wretched remnant of her existence. She had given up all idea of making her residence in England, and there was no other country in which she had any deep interest, save for the mournful interest that attached to her mother's grave.

She had asked the lawyer to say to Lord Hurdly that she would, at his request, delay her departure for America a little while, but that she was extremely anxious to get off as soon as it would be possible. She also begged that he would cable when he was coming, as soon as he could make his plans to do so.

The days were active ones for Bettina in many new and serious ways. There were numerous business matters which she had to be consulted about, and these gave her an insight into the affairs of the estate which showed her far more clearly than ever what need there was for reform, and revived in her her ardent longing to have a hand in these reforms. But from all such thoughts as these she turned away heart-sickened.

There were certain visits from Lord Hurdly's relations which had to be received, an ordeal that would have tried Bettina sorely had it not been that she made these the occasion for the investigation of Horace Spotswood's character, nature, actions, interests, habits, etc., which the fateful letter had recommended her to make. She had never had one instant's doubt of the truth of every word contained in that letter, but it was a sort of bitter pleasure to talk to these people and draw forth the manifestations of their delight at having Horace for the head of the family, and their confidence that this fact would result in pleasure and benefit to them all. From their ardent appreciation of him Bettina got at the fact of their universal dislike for the Lord Hurdly recently laid at rest with his ancestors.

Yet it was a relief when all the guests were gone and she was left alone to the mingled sweet and bitter feelings of her last days as mistress of Kingdon Hall. The worldly spirit in Bettina, diminished as it was, had not wholly disappeared, and never would as long as she was young and healthy and so beautiful. These attributes carried with them a certain love of display, and although it was a trial to be borne with dignity, it was still a trial to her to think of losing forever the splendid place which she had for a short year or two held in the great world.



CHAPTER XII

Bettina was writing in the library one morning when her attention was arrested by the sound of an approaching footstep. The next moment a servant announced,

"Lord Hurdly."

At this name she started violently. So long accustomed to associate it with one person, she forgot for the instant that another bore it now. As she rose, startled and expectant, through the portiere held back by the servant there entered a man whose sharp dissimilarity to the image in her mind made her catch her breath.

The next second she knew that it was Horace, and realized that she was trembling from head to foot. The breadth of the room was between them, for he had paused just within the door, nodding to the servant to withdraw.

He stood there an instant in silence.

Perhaps she was no more startled by the surprise which the sight of him occasioned than was he at the sight of her; but the quality of the surprise was different. It was her beauty, her so far more than recollected beauty, which had arrested him and held him spellbound. He had left her sick with grief about her mother, the color faded from her cheeks, her eyes dulled with weeping. There had been, moreover, in her expression an apathy which his ardent words had failed to do away with. Besides these inherent things, the extrinsic points were glaringly a contrast to the present ones. Then her somewhat too slight figure had been dressed in gowns of village make and fit, and her lovely hair had been carelessly wound up, without regard to fashion or effect.

Now he saw confronting him a woman whom nature had endowed with a rare beauty, and for whom art had also done its best in the matter of outward adornment. True, she was clad in plain unrelieved black from head to foot, but no other costume could have so exquisitely displayed her glowing loveliness of coloring or the pure correctness of her outlines.

During the few seconds in which they stood looking at each other she had perceived also a great change in him. It was of a very different character, but it made all the more a strong appeal to her, for he was mysteriously aged. Not only had the Eastern sun turned to bronze the once ruddy hues of his skin, but he had also lost flesh, and his hair was getting streaks of gray in it. His figure, too, was sparer, but it looked more powerful than ever; and still more apparent was the added look of strength in the familiar and yet subtly altered face.

There was no pause long enough to be embarrassing before he spoke.

"I hope you will excuse me," he said (and, oh, the voice was altered too, unless she had forgotten that rich, vibrating tone in it!), "for coming upon you so suddenly. I know I should have given warning, but I had what I think a sufficient reason for not doing so. I am hoping earnestly that you will agree with me when you have heard it."

"Pray sit down," said Bettina, speaking mechanically, and from the mere instinct of observance of ordinary forms. She had no sooner spoken than she remembered that it was his own house, of which she was doing the honors to him. If he remembered it also, he gave no sign, for he took the chair she indicated, with the conventional "Thank you" of an ordinary visitor.

Bettina also had sunk into her chair, and sat quite still, with her white hands clasped together on the dense black of her dress. She could not speak, yet she dreaded lest, in the silence, he might hear the beating of her heart. Its soft thuds were plainly audible to her, and all the blood from her cheeks seemed to have gone there.

"In any event, I should have been obliged to come to England soon," said her companion, "but I should have put it off longer had I not felt it important to come on your account."

Bettina's eyes expressed a questioning surprise.

"On my account?" she said, vaguely.

"Certainly," was the prompt, decided answer. "The only responsibility which comes near to me in my new and strange position is that of protecting the honor and credit of the name I have assumed. These, you will excuse me for saying, have been seriously, I may even say shamefully, disregarded by the terms of the late Lord Hurdly's will."

Bettina's eyes had still that vague and puzzled look. She had not the least comprehension of what he meant. Could he be resenting the fact that, so far as it was practicable for him to do so, his cousin had disinherited him? But no, that was impossible. As she remained silent and expectant, he went on:

"Since he chose to disregard the duty and dignity of his position, it is for me, who must now bear his name, to repair that wrong so far as it is in my power to do so. It is for that explicit purpose that I am now come to speak to you."

Still Bettina looked perplexed.

"I don't understand exactly in what way the will has displeased you," she said. "There was a great deal of it that I hardly took in. But in any case there is nothing for me to do. As you know, my services have not been asked, and certainly there is no place for them. I have nothing whatever to do with the executing of Lord Hurdly's will. Indeed, my plans are all made to return to America immediately."

"I cannot be surprised at your decision," he said, with a certain resentment in his voice which she did not understand. "Certainly it would be natural for you to wish to shake off the dust of this land from your feet. But wherever you may choose to live for the future, it is my duty to see that you live as becomes the widow of Lord Hurdly, and it is for this purpose that I have hastened to get here before you should be gone."

All was now clear, and with the illumination which had come to her from these words of his the color flooded her pale cheeks. Her first sensation was of keenly wounded pride.

"You might have spared yourself such haste," she said. "If you had taken the slight trouble to write to me, I could have saved you the long and hurried journey. So far from wishing to have more money than what I am legally entitled to, it is my purpose and decision to take nothing. I have of my own enough to live upon in the simple way in which I shall live for the future. Did you think so ill of me as to suppose that I would wish to grasp at more than my husband saw fit to leave me—or to take money at your hands?"

It was her instinct of pride which had caused her to use the words "my husband," which another instinct at the same moment urged her to repudiate. But pride was now the uppermost feeling of her heart, and it supplied her with a sudden and sufficient strength for this hour's need.

"This is in no sense a question between you and your late husband," said Horace. (Was there not in him also a certain hesitation at that word, and did not the same feeling as in her compel him to its use?) "Nor is it a question between you and me. The obviously simple issue is what propriety demands as to the manner in which the widow of Lord Hurdly is provided for. It belongs to my own sense of the dignity of my position that the late Lord Hurdly's widow should be situated as becomes her name and title, and I am determined to see that this is done."

"Determined," she said, a certain defiance in her quiet tone, "is not the word for this case. You may determine as you choose, but what will it avail if I determine not to touch a penny belonging to either the late or the present Lord Hurdly? You are very careful of the dignity of your position. I must also look to mine, which you seem strangely to have forgotten."

His expression showed her plainly that these words of hers had cut deep into his consciousness. A swift compunction seized her heart, but her pride was still in the supremacy, and enabled her to stifle the feeling.

"I have not forgotten it," he said. "It is because I have been mindful of the dignity of your position that I have urged this thing upon you. The conditions of the will need not be generally known if you will accept the right and proper income, which I wish, above all things, to see you have. Can you not believe me sincere in my desire to remove the indignity put upon you by a member of my family, and the bearer before me of a name and position of which it has now become my duty to maintain the credit? And can you not believe me just enough and kind enough to wish to see this done for your sake as well as for my own?"

Bettina's face continued proudly hard. If the gentleness of her companion's expression, the kindness of his manner, the delicate respect of his tones, made any appeal to her woman's heart, the all-potency of her pride enabled her to conceal it. But the struggle between the two feelings at war within her made a desperate demand upon her strength. She felt that she would do well to put an end to this interview as soon as practicable. With this purpose she said, abruptly:

"I am willing to do full justice to your motives, but they cannot affect my action. My mind is quite made up. I shall return to America at once, and there the credit of Lord Hurdly's name will not suffer any hurt, since I shall be practically out of the world. Certainly I shall be forever removed from the world in which his life will be spent. Do not think that I shall regret it. I shall not. My experience of your world has shown me that the mere possession of money, rank, position, influence, is powerless to bring happiness. I thought once that if I should come to have these I could get pleasure and satisfaction from them, but I was wrong. My nature inherently loved importance and display, but I mistook the unessential for the essential. If I had had all these external things, together with the satisfaction of the inward needs, they might have made me happy. In themselves I have proved them to be worthless."

She was compelled to say these words. The intimate knowledge of the character of her husband which had come to her after marriage made her long that Horace should know that had she really comprehended the man as he perhaps had known him all the while, she never could have become his wife. It was impossible for her to tell him this, but she caught eagerly at her present opportunity of letting him know that she had had no duty toward her late husband beyond the mere formal obligation of her wifehood. She could not bear Horace to think that she had loved him. Even now, under the softening influence that death imparts, that thought was intolerable to her. This was quite aside from his treatment of her in his will, which, indeed, was strangely little to her. It was the memory of the crafty and common nature under that polished exterior that made her recoil from the thought of him now.

If this feeling was strengthened by the contrast of the personality now present to her gaze, how could she be blamed? Surely the man who stood before her might have seemed to answer any woman's heart's desire as lover, companion, friend. How her conscience smote her for the doubts she had once had of him! When she remembered whose treachery it was that had created these doubts, there was hate in her heart.

She did not wish him to see the expression of this feeling in her face, so she rose abruptly and turned from him. As if he understood her, he rose also, and crossed the room to the desk at which she had been seated on his entrance.

Here were heaped papers and memoranda connected with the Kingdon Hall estates. Evidently he recognized their character, for he said:

"At least you have not refused to give me the help that I asked. I've been talking to Kirke, and he tells me you have been taking an interest in the affairs of the tenants. Thank you for this."

In an instant the bitterness in Bettina's heart was changed into a new and softer emotion. She saw the opportunity of effecting now what she had been so powerless to effect in the past. Forgetting everything else, she came quickly to his side and took up one of the papers. This was in her own handwriting, and was a memorandum of some length. She held it away from him a moment, her face flushing, and a look of hesitation showing on it.

"I never intended that you should see this," she said. "I began it long ago, and had to put it by; but recently I have taken it up again, without really knowing why, except that all my whole heart was in it."

"What is it?" he asked. "I beg you to let me see it."

"No," she said. "It is not my affair, and I must remember that. It concerns some most deplorable facts which I have discovered concerning the management of the Kingdon Hall estates, but—"

"Then it is my affair," he interrupted her; "and since you know what these abuses are, and have looked into them, you surely will not deprive me of the help that you could give. I ask it as a favor."

Still Bettina hesitated, but he could see that she was longing to comply. He could imagine, also, what it was that held her back.

"Not as a favor to me," he hastened to add; "I appeal to you in the name of these poor tenants, who have been so long neglected and abused. This is no new thing to me. I have seen it going on from the time I was a boy here, and I can truly say that almost the only pleasure that I have looked forward to in succeeding to the estates has been the righting of these wrongs. Surely you will not refuse to help me to do this."

For answer, Bettina turned upon him a pair of ardent eyes that swam with tears.

"Oh, are you really going to do this blessed, glorious thing?" she said. She had forgotten herself for the moment, and was thinking only of them—the wretched beings whose wrongs had so long oppressed her, and who, it seemed, were to have justice and care and kindness at last. "You don't know how hideous the condition of these poor creatures is, and how impossible it has been for me to do anything in the past. To think there is some one who will let me tell about it at last and give the help that is so needed! But you can do nothing with such a steward as Kirke. His heart is as cold as ice."

"Kirke shall go at once. I have long believed that he was unworthy of the position he holds. If you will give me the benefit of your investigation and insight into the situation you will save me much trouble, and you can also feel that these poor people will be that much nearer to having their distress relieved."

At these prompt, determined words her heart swelled, and again tears brimmed her eyes.

"Oh, thank God that you will help them!" she said. "Now that I am sure of that, I can go away contented. It would have broken my heart to leave them so—yet I had not dared to hope that I could do anything. You have no idea of the extent of it. It will take a great deal of money to give them new houses, proper sanitary conditions, and all the things they need."

"Never mind that—only tell me what to do."

"But can you do it? I know how comparatively limited you are as to money."

"Comparatively only," he said, reassuringly. "I have much less than my predecessor had, but fortunately I have little pride and simple tastes. I can let the place in Leicestershire, where the hunting is good, and I can also lease the town house if necessary. Pray consider that the question of money is disposed of. I assure you that does not enter into it."

Thus invited, Bettina sat down before the desk, while he took a seat near by, and with the papers before her she went fully into the questions at issue, showing a grasp of the situation which soon testified to her companion that she had studied it to some purpose. All the changes which she recommended were approved, but more than once his attention was diverted from the purpose of the future to an indignant contempt for the delinquencies of the past. It was hard for him to constrain himself to silence as to this, but Bettina thanked him in her heart for the successful effort which he made. She was too abject in her sense of compunction for her own past to feel inclined to severe judgment of another, and in her joy that these cherished plans of hers were to be immediately realized she was able to put by for the moment more personal trouble. She spoke with a fervor that made her beautiful face wellnigh adorable in its kind compassion, and when she would describe the wrongs and hardships of these poor simple folk her eyes at times would fill with tears of pity and her voice would tremble.

She knew it not, but in this hour she was making a new revelation of herself to Horace, which answered to the need of his maturer nature as marvellously as the Bettina of old had satisfied the needs of the ardent young fellow that he was then. If he remembered that Bettina only as being beautiful and beloved, he saw in this one a far nobler and more perfect beauty, as he recognized in her qualities more worthy to command love.

Here they were alone together, in a mood of extraordinary openness and sincerity, for they were thinking the same thoughts of helpfulness to others, and there was not an atom of the embarrassment of their personal relationship to come between them now. It was not singular, therefore, that he, for his part, should have longed to speak to her, heart to heart, of that mysterious thing which had divided them, and to tell her that, in spite of all—in spite of facts that had been flaunted before his eyes in society, in the public prints, and everywhere—he had never quite succeeded in stilling a small voice in his soul which had continued to declare that the young girl to whom he had so passionately given his love was less fickle and unfaithful than these facts had shown her to be. Now, more than ever, this insistent voice repeated itself. How he longed to ask her the simple question! But then came common-sense, and demanded, What question? Was there any question which he could ask her to which the fact and conditions of her marriage to Lord Hurdly were not a final answer?

As for Bettina, she had also her longings to take advantage of that interview, when they were speaking together in such friendly converse, by telling him of the letter of confession which she had received, but pride here took the place of common-sense, and bade her to be silent.

They had gone over all the papers together now. There was no longer any excuse for lingering. He had given and repeated his assurances that all these abuses which she so lamented should be remedied, and she had thanked him again and again. Both felt that the time to part had come. And yet both felt an impulse to postpone it. It was her consciousness of this feeling which now made Bettina act. There was an influence from his very presence which alarmed her.

"I must go now," she said, her voice a shade unsteady.

"No, it is I who am going," was the answer. "I return at once to London, as I have neither the right nor the desire to intrude upon your privacy. I wish to say, however, that I do not accept your decision as to your future income. I beg you to give my wish, my earnest request, your consideration. I shall write to you. Perhaps I can put the case more clearly so. At all events, I shall try."

Bettina shook her head.

"You will simply waste your time," she said. "Nothing can change me from my purpose of going at once to America, with no income but my own little inheritance, and taking up my old life there."

The word inheritance had suggested to both of them the thought of her mother. They saw the consciousness in each other's eyes.

"How can you take up your old life there," he said, "when the presence which made its interest, its very atmosphere, is gone? It is enough to kill you—and you will not have money to live elsewhere."

The keen solicitude in voice and eyes could not be mistaken. It was evident that he cared for what she might suffer—what might ultimately become of her. The thought was rapture to her starved and lonely heart.

"I must bear it," she said, trying to control her voice as well as her face. "Life will be no harder to me there than elsewhere."

"You are wrong. In no other spot on earth will the loss of your mother so oppress you. I know what that has been to you, by my consciousness of what that possession was. And remember one thing, which gives me some right to speak to you as I am doing now—I loved your mother and she also loved me."

At these words and the tones that accompanied them Bettina's strength gave way. She dropped back in the seat from which she had risen, and, hiding her face in her hands, burst into tears.

She could not see the effect of her weeping on the man, who still stood motionless and erect before her. She did not know that the tears sprang into his eyes also, and that the whispered utterance of her name was on his lips.

He heard it, however, though she did not, and the knowledge that he had lost control of himself made him turn away and walk to the other end of the room.

When he had stood there a few seconds, with his back turned, he heard her voice, somewhat shaken, though with the accent of recovered self-possession, saying, in a tone of summons,

"Lord Hurdly—"

An inward revolt sprung up at being so addressed by her. The name had only sinister associations for him in any case, but to hear it from Bettina's lips filled him with a sort of rage.

"Lord Hurdly," she said again, and this time her voice had gained in steadiness, until it sounded mechanical and hard.

"I wish to express to you," she said, when he had drawn a little nearer, "my thanks for your kind intentions concerning me. I can only repeat, however, that my decision is quite fixed, and that I shall carry out the plans I have made known to you. Do not urge me further. Do not write to me. It will be useless. Let me go back to the life from which you never should have taken me. You were mistaken in me from the first, and I have been nothing but a trouble and a hinderance to you. I am sorry. I ask you to forget it all if you can. But, above all things, I ask, if you would really help me and serve me in the one way in which I can be helped by you, that you will consider that the present moment closes our intercourse in every way, and will show me the respect, little as I deserve it, of proving to me that in this one instance, at least, you believe me capable of acting with rectitude and dignity, and of meaning what I say."

He did not answer her. He only stood profoundly still and looked at her. That gaze, the searching, scrutinizing power of it, made her afraid. Trembling with terror of what she might reveal in answer to it, she turned suddenly and vanished through a door behind her, leaving him standing there, and with a consciousness that his keen eyes were on her yet, reading what she so ardently desired to conceal.

Once in her own room, she locked the door, and then ran swiftly to the window, which gave her a view of the terrace below.

There she saw waiting a hired trap, with its driver drowsing in the sunlight. As she looked, she saw the man from whom she had just parted come rather slowly down the steps and get into the shabby conveyance. His hat-brim hid the upper part of his face, but she saw the stern set of his jaw, the bronzed pallor of his cheeks.

She watched the little trap until it had disappeared behind some great oaks, which were one of the glories of Kingdon Hall. In a strange way she had come to love this stately old place, and it gave her a pang to feel that she was about to look her last on it. This feeling, however, was subordinated to another, which literally tore her heart; this was that, by the use of every means of thought and action within her power, she had quite determined never to run the risk of seeing this man again.

She knew that her only safety lay in flight, and she set to work at once to make her preparations to fly.



CHAPTER XIII

In the days that followed, Bettina's only resource was in bodily activity. She wrote at once and took her passage on a steamer to sail for America one week from the day of Horace's visit. Then, with Nora's help, she set to work to do her packing. The French maid was sent away, and her lady refused all other offers of service.

Her first impulse had been to leave all her wardrobe and personal belongings behind her, and this she would undoubtedly have done but for the counteracting instinct to remove from any possibility of the sight of the future occupant of these apartments any smallest reminder of the late Lady Hurdly. No doubt another bearer of that name would soon be installed in them, and to her the least reminder of the beautiful Bettina who had once so strangely come to it would naturally be offensive.

With this thought in her mind, she eagerly helped Nora to collect and pack away every trace of her ever having lived here. One record of the fact it was out of her power to remove, and this was the full-length portrait of her, in all the state and magnificence of her proud position, which hung in the picture-gallery, and which Horace had never seen. Neither had he ever seen her in such a guise, and, in spite of her, there was a certain exultation in her breast when she imagined the moment of his first beholding it. Another moment, equally charged with mingled pride and pain, was the anticipation of the time when the next bearer of the name and title should come to have her portrait hung there. No Lady Hurdly who had come before could bear the comparison with her, and she knew it. Was it not, therefore, reasonable to believe that those who followed her might suffer as much by the contrast?

But these feelings of satisfaction in the consciousness of her appropriateness to such a setting as Kingdon Hall were only momentary, and many of those busy hours of work were interspersed with lonely fits of weeping, when even Nora was excluded from her mistress's room. The good creature, who had never been burdened with mentality, went steadily on with her work and asked no questions; yet it was not unknown to her that Bettina's unhappiness depended not altogether upon the fact of her recent widowhood, or even upon the disastrous consequences of it in her future life.

Two or three times Nora had brought to her mistress letters in a handwriting which she had not forgotten, and although she made no sign of suspicion, she did connect these letters with Bettina's unhappiness.

Certainly it was no wonder that such letters as she received from Horace now should have so desperately sad an influence on her. In them he begged, argued, pleaded with her to grant him this one request, even using her mother's name to touch and change her. Indeed, there was a tone in these letters that she could scarcely understand. Keenly conscious as she was of the injustice of which she had been guilty toward him, it seemed incredible that he could so ignore it as to manifest any personal interest in her on her own account. She even felt a certain regret that he could so lose sight of this flagrant fact. It had come to be a vital need to her to have the ideal of Horace in her life. It was now almost more essential to her to have something to admire than something to love. Under these conditions she felt a certain sense of disappointment in him, that he could seem to forget the deep wrong she had done him. And yet, in utter contradiction to this feeling, his kind ignoring of it soothed her tortured heart.

She sent no answer to these letters. She even hoped that by taking this course she might make the impression on him that she did not read them. This was her design and her consolation, even while she read and re-read them with a devouring eagerness. She never paused to ask herself why this was. She avoided any investigation into her feeling for Horace. It was enough that, in spite of all the self-accusation and self-abasement which she carried in her heart, this being who knew the very worst of her could still think her worthy of kindness and respect. When she thought of this she felt as if she could go on her knees to him.

One fear was constantly before her mind, and that was that he might seek a personal interview with her again. She dared not trust herself to this, instinctively as she longed for it. It was, therefore, with positive terror in her breast that she heard one morning from Nora that Lord Hurdly was in the house, having come down by train from London.

"I cannot see him—I will not!" she cried, in an impassioned protest, which only Nora could have seen her portray.

"He did not ask to see you," said Nora. "I met him in the hall, and he told me to say to you that he required some papers which were in the library, and that he would, with your permission, like the use of the room for a few hours. He told me to say that he had had luncheon, and would not disturb you in any way."

At these words Bettina felt a sinking of the heart, which was her first consciousness of the sudden hope she had been entertaining. This made her reproach herself angrily for such weakness and want of pride, and with this feeling in her heart, she said, abruptly,

"There is no answer to Lord Hurdly's message."

"I beg your pardon," said Nora, hesitatingly, "but I am quite sure he is expecting an answer."

"I say there is no answer," Bettina repeated, with a sudden sternness. "Lord Hurdly is in his own house. He can come and go as he chooses. His asking permission of me is a mere farce."

Nora ventured to say no more, and withdrew in silence, leaving her mistress alone with the consciousness that Horace was in the very house with her, and that at any moment she might, if she chose, go to him and tell him all the truth.

And why did she not? That old feeling between them was quite dead. She had a right to clear herself from a condemnation which she did not deserve—a right, at least, to make known the palliating circumstances in the case. In any other conceivable instance she would not have hesitated to do so. What was it, then, which made it so impossible in this instance?

The answer to this question leaped up in her heart, and so struggled for recognition that she had an instinct to run away from herself that she might not have to face it. She wanted to close her eyes, so that she might shut out the truth that was before her mental vision, and to put her hands over her ears, that she might not hear the voice that clamored to her heart.

Surely a part of this feeling was the compunction which she felt for having wronged him. That she might openly acknowledge. But that was not all. She was aware of something more in her own heart. Even that she might have stifled, and, supported by her pride, might have concisely told him of the error under which she had acted. But there was still another thing that entered in. This was a faint, delicious, disturbing, unacknowledged to her own heart, suspicion about Horace himself. He had said nothing to warrant her in the belief that his anxiety about her future was anything more than the satisfaction of his own self-respect, but her heart had said things which she trembled to hear, and there was a certain evidence of her eyes. In leaving her the other day—or rather at the moment of her hurried leaving of him—he had looked at her strangely.

That look had lingered in her consciousness, and without effort she could recall it now. In doing so her cheeks flushed, her heart beat quicker. She felt tempted to woo the sweet sensation, and by every effort of imagination to quicken it into keener life, but the seductiveness of this temptation terrified her.