Miss Tibbutt shook her head.

"Oh, no!" she said gravely. "I should hear the big voice there."

"You'd hear it speak through quite a number of human voices, anyhow," returned the Duchessa.

There was a silence. She wondered what odd coincidence had led Tibby to such a subject. If it were not a coincidence, it must be a kind of thought transference. Almost unconsciously she had been seeing a tall, thin, brown-faced man marching off in the early morning hours to his work in a garden. She had seen him busy with hoe and spade, till the bell over the stables at the Hall announced the dinner hour. She had seen him again take up his implements at the summons of the same bell, working through the sunshine or the rain, as the case might be, till its final evening dismissal. Above all, she had seen him taking his orders from Golding, a well-meaning man truly, and an exceedingly capable gardener, but—well, she pictured Antony as she had seen him in evening dress on the Fort Salisbury, as she had seen him throwing coppers to the brown-faced girl outside the Cathedral at Teneriffe, as she had seen him sitting in the little courtyard with the orange trees in green tubs, and the idea of his receiving and taking orders from Golding seemed to her quite extraordinarily incongruous.

Yet until Miss Tibbutt had introduced the subject, she had been more or less unaware of these mental pictures.

"Besides," she remarked suddenly, and quite obviously in continuation of her last remark, "it entirely depends on what you have been brought up to, I mean, of course as regards the question of being a servant. The question of a religious is entirely different."

"Oh, entirely," agreed Miss Tibbutt promptly. "You can always get another place as a servant if you happen to dislike the one you are in."

"Yes," said the Duchessa, slowly and thoughtfully.

A sudden little anxious pang had all at once stabbed her somewhere near the region of the heart. Would that be the effect of that afternoon's meeting? Most assuredly she hoped it would not be, and equally assuredly she had no idea she was hoping it; verily, her feeling towards Antony was one of mingled anger, indignation, and mortified pride.

Once more there was a silence,—a silence in which Miss Tibbutt sat stirring her coffee, and looking towards the reflection of the sunset sky seen through the branches of the trees opposite. Suddenly she spoke, dismayed apology in her voice.

"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry, I quite forgot. A letter came for you this afternoon. I put it down on the little round table in the drawing-room window, meaning to give it to you when you came in. But you went straight to your room, and so I forgot it. I will get it at once."

"Nonsense," said the Duchessa lightly, "I will get it. I don't suppose for an instant that it is important."

She got up and went across the lawn. In a minute or two she returned, an open letter in her hand.

"It's from Trix," she announced as she sat down again, "She wants to know if she can come down here at the beginning of August."

Miss Tibbutt literally beamed.

"How delightful!" she exclaimed. "Trix has never stayed with you here. You will like having her."

"Dear Trix," said the Duchessa.

"I do so enjoy Trix," remarked Miss Tibbutt fervently.

"So do most people," smiled the Duchessa.



CHAPTER XVIII

A DREAM AND OTHER THINGS

It is perfectly amazing to what a degree the physical conditions of the atmosphere appear to be bound up with one's own mental atmosphere. In the more ordinary nature of things, the physical conditions will act on the mental, sending your mind up to the point marked gaiety when the sun shines, dropping it down to despair—or, at any rate, down to dulness—when the skies are leaden. Also, in more extreme cases, the mental conditions will act on the physical, if not actually, at least with so good a show of reality as to appear genuine. If you are thoroughly unhappy—no mere, light, passing depression, mind you—it matters not at all how brilliant the sunshine may be, it is nothing but grey fog for all you see of it. If, on the other hand, you are in the seventh heaven of joy, the grey clouds are suffused with a golden light of radiance. But these are extreme cases.

It was an extreme case with Antony. Despite the sunshine which lay upon the earth, despite the singing of the birds in the early morning, and at evening, despite the flowers which displayed their colours and lavished their scents around him as he worked, the world might have been bathed in fog for all he saw of its brightness. Hope had taken unto herself wings and fled from him, and with her joy had departed.

He felt a queer bitterness towards his work, a bitterness towards the garden and the big grey house, and most particularly towards the man who had lived in it, and who was responsible for his present unhappiness. He had none towards the Duchessa. But then, after all, he appeared in her eyes as a fraud, the thing of all others he himself most detested. He could not possibly blame her for her attitude in the matter. Yet all the time, he had a queer feeling of something like remorse for his present bitterness; it was almost as if the garden and the very flowers themselves were reproaching him for it, reminding him that they were not to blame. And then a little incident suddenly served to dispel his gloom, at all events in a great measure.

It was a slight incident, a trivial incident, merely an odd dream. Nevertheless, having in view its oddness, and—unlike most dreams—its curious connectedness, also its effect on Antony's spirit, it may be well to record it.

He dreamt he was walking in a garden. He knew it was the garden of Chorley Old Hall, though there was something curiously unlike about it, as there often is in dreams. The garden was full of flowers, and he could smell their strong, sweet scent. At one side of the garden—and this, in spite of that curious unlikeness, was the only distinctly unlike thing about it—was a gate of twisted iron. He was standing a long way from the gate, and he was conscious of two distinct moods within himself,—an impulse which urged him towards the gate, and something which held him back from approaching it.

Suddenly, from another direction, he saw a woman coming towards him. Recognition and amazement fell upon him. She was the same small girl he had played with in his boyhood, and whose name he could not remember, but grown to womanhood. She came towards him, her fair hair uncovered, and shining in the sunshine.

As she reached him she stood still.

"Antony," she cried in her old imperious way, "why don't you go to the gate at once? She is waiting to be let in."

"Who is waiting?" he demanded.

"Go and see," she retorted. And she went off among the flowers, turning once to laugh back at him over her shoulder.

Antony stood looking after her, till she disappeared in the distance. Then he went slowly towards the gate. As he came near it, he saw a figure standing outside. But he could not see it distinctly, because, curiously enough, though the garden was full of sunshine, it was dark outside the gate, as if it were night.

"Who are you?" asked Antony.

The figure made no reply.

"What do you want?" he asked.

Still the figure made no reply.

Antony felt his heart beating quickly, madly. And then, suddenly from a distance behind him, he heard a gay mocking voice.

"Why don't you open the gate, silly? Can't you hear her knocking?"

Still Antony stood irresolute, though he heard little taps falling on the iron.

"Open it, open it," came the sweet mocking voice, this time with a suspicion of pleading in it.

Antony went towards the gate. A great key was sticking in the iron lock. He took hold of it and found it needed the strength of both his hands to turn. Then he flung the gate wide open. The figure moved slowly through the gate, and into the full sunshine.

"Antony," she said smiling.

"You! You at last!" he cried.

And he woke, to find he had cried the words aloud. He sat up in bed. A white pigeon was on the sill outside his window, tapping with its beak on the glass.

Of course it was an entirely trifling incident, and probably he was superstitious to attach any real importance to it. Nevertheless it had a very marked influence on his spirits.

Doubtless it was as well it had, since about this time a certain happening occurred, which, though it did not precisely depress him, most assuredly caused him considerable anger and indignation.

In spite of the somewhat hermit-like life he led, he nevertheless had something of an acquaintance with his fellow-creatures. Among these fellow-creatures there was one, Job Grantley, a labourer on the home farm, possessed of a pretty, rather fragile wife, and a baby of about three months old. Antony had a kindly feeling for the fellow, and often they exchanged the time of day when meeting on the road, or when Job chanced to pass Antony's garden in the evening.

One evening Antony, busy weeding his small flagged path, saw Job in the road.

"Good evening," said Antony; and then he perceived by the other's face, that matters were not as they might be.

"Sure, what's amiss with the world at all?" demanded Antony, going down towards the gate.

"It's that fellow Curtis," said Job briefly, leaning on the gate.

"And what'll he have been up to now?" asked Antony. It would not be the first time he had heard tales of the agent.

Job kicked the gate.

"Says he's wanting my cottage for a chauffeur he's getting down from Bristol, and I'm to turn out at the end of August."

"Devil take the man!" cried Antony. "Why can't his new chauffeur be living in the room above the garage, like the old one?"

Job grunted. "Because this one's a married man."

"And where are you to go at all?" demanded a wrathful Antony.

"He says I can have the cottage over to Crossways," said Job. "He knows 'tis three mile farther from my work. But that's not all. 'Tis double the rent, and I can't afford it. And that's the long and short of it."

Antony dug his hoe savagely into the earth.

"Why can't he be putting his own chauffeur there, and be paying him wage enough for the higher rent?" he asked.

"Why can't he?" said Job bitterly. "Because he won't. He's had his knife into me ever since March last, when I paid up my rent which he thought I couldn't do. I'd been asking him for time; then the last day—well, I got the money. I wasn't going to tell him how I got it, and he thought I'd been crying off with no reason. See? Now he thinks he can force me to the higher rent. 'Tis a bigger cottage, but 'tis so far off, even well-to-do folk fight shy of the extra walk, and so it's stood empty a year and more. Now he's thinking he'll force my hand."

Antony frowned.

"What'll you do?" he demanded.

"The Lord knows," returned Job gloomily. "If I chuck up my work here, how do I know I'll get a job elsewhere? If I go to the other place I'll be behind with my rent for dead certain, and get kicked out of that, and be at the loss of ten shillings or so for the move. I've not told the wife yet. But I can see nought for it but to look out for a job elsewhere. Wish I'd never set foot in this blasted little Devonshire village. Wish I'd stayed in my own parts."

Antony was making a mental survey of affairs, a survey at once detailed yet rapid.

"Look here," said he, "I'd give a pretty good deal to get even with that old skinflint, I would that. You and your wife just shift up along with me. There's an extra room upstairs with nothing in it at all. We'll manage top hole. Sure, 'twill be fine havin' me cooking done for me. You can be giving me the matter of a shilling a week, and let the cooking go for the rest of the rent. What'll you be thinking at all?"

Now, the offer was prompted by sheer impulsive kind-heartedness, wedded to a keen indignation at injustice. Yet it must be confessed that a sensation exceeding akin to dismay followed close on its heels. Of his own free will he was flinging his privacy from him, and hugging intrusion to his heart.

Job shook his head.

"You'll not stand it," said he briefly. "We don't say anything, but we know right enough you're a come down. You didn't start in the same mould as the rest of us."

"Rubbish," retorted Antony on a note of half-anger and wholly aghast at the other's perspicacity. "I'm the same clay as yourself."

"A duke's that," declared Job, "but the mould's different."

"Saints alive!" cried Antony, "it's no matter what the mould may be. Sure, it's just a question of what it's been used for at all. My mould has been used for labour since I was little more than a boy, and stiffer labour than this little smiling village has dreamt of, that's sure. Besides, think of your wife and child, man."

Job hesitated, debated within his soul. "It's them I am thinking of," he said; "I could fend for myself well enough, and snap my fingers at Curtis and his like."

"Then, 'tis settled," said Antony with amazing cheerfulness.

There was a silence.

"Well," said Job at last, "if you're in the same mind a week hence, but don't you go for doing things in a hurry-like, that you'll repent later."

"'Tis settled now," said Antony. "Tell your wife, and snap your fingers at that old curmudgeon."

Nevertheless despite his cheery assurance, he had a very bitter qualm at his heart as, an hour or so later, he looked round his little cottage, and realized, even more forcibly, precisely what he had done.

"Never mind," he told himself and Josephus with a good show of bravery, "it's not for a lifetime. And, hang it all, a man's mere comfort ought to give way before injustice of that kind."

Thus he buoyed himself up.

And then another aspect of affairs arose.

No one knew how the matter of the intended arrangement leaked out. Job vowed he'd mentioned it to no one but his wife; his wife vowed she mentioned it to no one but Job. Perhaps they spoke too near an open window. Be that as it may, Antony, again at work in his garden one evening, became aware of Mr. Curtis looking at him over the little hedge.

"Good evening," said Mr. Curtis smoothly.

"Good evening," returned Antony equally smoothly, and going on with his work.

"I hear you're thinking of taking in lodgers," said Mr. Curtis blandly.

"Sure now, that's interesting hearing," returned Antony pleasantly, and wondering who on earth had babbled.

"Perhaps," said Mr. Curtis, still blandly, "I was misinformed. I heard the Grantleys were moving up here. I daresay it was merely an idle rumour."

"Sure it may have been," returned Antony nonchalantly, and sticking his spade into the ground.

"It must have been," said Mr. Curtis thoughtfully. "All lodging houses are rented at ten shillings a week, even unfurnished small ones, not five shillings. Besides Grantley is only getting a pound a week wage. He can't afford to live in apartments, unless he's come in for a fortune. If he has I must look out for another man. Men with fortunes get a trifle above themselves, you know. Besides he'd naturally not wish to stay on. But of course the whole thing's merely a rumour. I'd contradict it if I were you. Good evening."

He walked up the lane smiling.

"You bounder," said Antony softly, looking after him. "Just you wait till next March, my friend."

He left his spade stuck into the earth, and went back into the cottage. Half an hour later, he was walking quickly in the direction of Byestry.

* * * * *

Doctor Hilary was in his surgery, when he was told that Michael Field had asked if he could see him. He went at once to the little waiting-room. Antony rose at his entrance.

"Good evening, sor," he said, touching his forehead. "Can you be sparing me five minutes' talk?"

"By all means," said Doctor Hilary. "Sit down."

Antony sat down. In a few brief words he put the Grantley affair before him.

"Well?" said Doctor Hilary, as he finished.

"Well," queried Antony, "can nothing be done?"

Doctor Hilary shook his head. "I am not the agent. I have no voice in the management of the estate."

"Then you can do nothing?"

"I am afraid not."

"Thank you," said Antony, "that's all I wanted to know." He got up.

"Sit down again," said Doctor Hilary.

Antony sat down.

"What do you mean to do?" asked Doctor Hilary quietly.

Antony looked directly at him.

"The only thing I can do. I'll get that extra rent to Job somehow. He mustn't know it comes from me; I must think out how to manage. But, of course, that's merely a make-shift in the business. I wanted the injustice put straight."

Doctor Hilary looked through the window behind Antony.

"Let me advise you," said he, "to do nothing of the kind."

"Why not?" The words came short and rather quick.

"Because Mr. Curtis means to get rid of Grantley. He has got his knife into him, as Grantley said. Your action would merely postpone the evil day, and make it worse in the postponement. Job Grantley had better go."

"And how about another job?" demanded Antony.

Doctor Hilary shrugged his shoulders. "He must see what he can find."

"Well of all the—" began Antony. And then he stopped. After all, he'd seen enough injustice in his time, to be used to it.

"You're honest in saying I would make it worse for Job if I tried to help him?" he asked.

"Perfectly honest," said Doctor Hilary with an odd little smile.

Antony again got up from his chair.

"All right," and his voice was constrained. "I'll not be keeping you any longer, sor."

Doctor Hilary went with him to the door.

"I'm sorry about this business," he said.

"Are you?" said Antony indifferently.

Doctor Hilary went back to his surgery.

"He didn't believe me," he said to himself, "small wonder."

He pulled out his note-book and made a note in it. Then he shut the book and put it in his pocket.

"Anyhow," he said, "it's the kind of thing we wanted."

The memorandum he had entered, ran:—

"Write Sinclair re Grantley."



CHAPTER XIX

TRIX ON THE SCENE

"Tibby, angel, what's the matter with Pia?"

Trix Devereux was sitting on the little rustic table beneath the lime trees, smoking a cigarette. Miss Tibbutt was sitting on the rustic seat, knitting some fine lace. The ball of knitting cotton was in a black satin bag on her lap.

Trix had arrived at Woodleigh the previous day, two days earlier than she had been expected. A telegram had preceded her appearance. It was a lengthy telegram, an explicit telegram. It set forth various facts in a manner entirely characteristic of Trix. Firstly, it announced her almost immediate arrival; secondly, it remarked on the extraordinary heat in London; and thirdly it stated quite clearly her own overwhelming and instant desire for the nice, fresh, cool, clean, country.

"Trix is coming to-day," the Duchessa had said as she read it.

"How delightful!" Miss Tibbutt had replied instantly. And then, after a moment's pause, "There will be plenty of food because Father Dormer is dining here to-night."

The Duchessa had laughed. It was so entirely like Tibby to think of food the first thing.

"I know," she had replied. And then reflectively, "I think it might be desirable to telephone to Doctor Hilary and ask him to come too. It really is not fair to ask Father Dormer to meet three solitary females."

A second time Miss Tibbutt had momentarily and mentally surveyed the contents of the larder, and almost immediately had nodded her entire approval of the idea. She most thoroughly enjoyed the mild excitement of a little dinner party.

"Tibby, angel, what's the matter with Pia?"

The question fell rather like a bomb, though quite a small bomb, into the sunshine.

"Matter with Pia," echoed Miss Tibbutt. "What do you think, my dear?"

"That," said Trix wisely, "is precisely what I am asking you?"

Miss Tibbutt laid down her knitting.

"But do you think anything is the matter?" she questioned anxiously.

"I don't think, I know," remarked Trix succinctly.

Miss Tibbutt took off her spectacles.

"But she is so bright," she said.

Trix nodded emphatically.

"That's just it. She's too bright. Oh, one can overdo the merry light-hearted role, I assure you. And then, to a new-comer at all events, the cloak becomes apparent. But haven't you the smallest idea?"

Miss Tibbutt shook her head.

"Not the least," she announced. "I fancied one evening shortly after she returned here, that something was a little wrong. I remember I asked her. She talked about soap-bubbles and cobwebs but said there weren't any left."

"Of which," smiled Trix. "Soap-bubbles or cobwebs?"

"Oh, cobwebs," said Miss Tibbutt earnestly. "Or was it both? She said,—yes, I remember now just what she did say—she said that a pretty bubble had burst and become a cobweb. And when I asked her if the cobweb were bothering her, she said both it and the bubble had vanished. So, you see!" This last on a note of triumph.

"Hmm," said Trix ruminative, dubious. "Bubbles have a way of taking up more space than one would imagine, and their bursting sometimes leaves an unpleasant gap. The bursting of this one has left a gap in Pia's life. You haven't, by any chance, the remotest notion of its colour?"

"Its colour?" queried Miss Tibbutt.

Trix laughed. "Nonsense, Tibby, angel, nonsense pure and simple. But all the same, I wish I knew for dead certain."

"So do I," said Miss Tibbutt anxiously, though she hadn't the smallest notion what advantage a knowledge of the colour would be to either one of them.

Trix dabbed the stump of her cigarette on the table.

"Well, don't let her know we think there's anything wrong. If you want to remain wrapped up in the light-hearted cloak, nothing is more annoying than having any one prying to see what's underneath,—unless it's the right person, of course. And we're not sure that we are—yet. We must just wait till she feels like giving us a peep, if she ever does."

A silence fell. Miss Tibbutt took up her knitting again. Trix hummed a little air from a popular opera. Presently Miss Tibbutt sighed. Trix left off humming.

"What's the matter, Tibby?"

Miss Tibbutt sighed more deeply. "I'm afraid it's my fault," she said.

"What's your fault?" demanded Trix.

"I've not noticed Pia. I thought everything was all right after what she said. I ought to have noticed. I've been too wrapped up in my own affairs. Perhaps if I'd been more sympathetic I should have found out what was the matter."

Trix laughed, a happy amused, comfortable little laugh.

"Oh, Tibby, you angel, that's so like you. You always want to shoulder the blame for every speck of wrong-doing or depression that appears in your little universe. Women like you always do. It's an odd sort of responsible unselfishness. That doesn't in the very least express to any one else what I mean, but it does to myself. You never allow that any one else has any responsibility when things go wrong, and you never take the smallest share of the responsibility—or the praise, rather—when things go right."

Miss Tibbutt laughed. In spite of her queer earnestness over what seemed—at all events to others—very little things, and her quite extraordinary conscientiousness—some people indeed might have called it scrupulosity—she had really a keen sense of humour. She was always ready to laugh at her own earnestness as soon as she perceived it. She was not, however, always ready to abandon it, unless it were quite, quite obvious that she had really better do so. And then she did it with a quick mental shake, and put an odd little mocking humour in its place.

"But, my dear, one generally is responsible, and that just because my universe is so small, as you justly pointed out. But I always believe literally what any one says. I don't in the least mean that Pia said what was not true. Of course she thought she had swept away the cobweb and the bubble, and I've no doubt she did. But it left a gap, as you said. I ought to have seen the gap and tried to fill it."

Trix shook her head.

"You couldn't, Tibby, if the bubble were the colour I fancy. Only the bubble itself, consolidated, could do that."

"Oh, my dear, you mean—?" said Miss Tibbutt.

"Just that," nodded Trix. "It was bound to happen some time. Pia is made to give and receive love. She was too young when she married to know what it really meant. And, well, think of those years of her married life."

"I thought of them for seven years," said Miss Tibbutt quietly. "You don't think I've forgotten them now?"

Trix's eyes filled with quick tears.

"Of course you haven't. I didn't mean that. What I do mean is that I suppose she thought she had got the real thing then, and all the young happiness in it was destroyed in a moment. Then came those seven terrible years. For an older woman perhaps there would have been a self-sacrificing joy in them; for Pia, there was just the brave facing of an obvious duty. She was splendid, of course she was splendid, but no one could call it joy. Now, somehow, she's had a glimpse of what real joy might be. And it has vanished again. I don't know how I know, but it's true. I feel it in my bones."

Again there was a silence. Then:

"What can we do?" asked Miss Tibbutt simply.

Trix laughed, though her eyes were grave. "You, angel, can pray. Of course I shall, too. But I'm going to do quite a lot of thinking, and keeping my eyes open as well. And now I am going right round this perfectly heavenly garden once more, and then, I suppose, it will be time to dress for dinner."

Swinging herself off the table, she departed waving her hand to Miss Tibbutt before she turned a corner by a yew hedge.

"Dear Trix," murmured Miss Tibbutt.



CHAPTER XX

MOONLIGHT AND THEORIES

The little party of two men and two women were assembled in the drawing-room. Trix had not yet put in an appearance. But, then, the dinner gong had not sounded. Trix invariably saved her reputation for punctuality by appearing on the last stroke.

Miss Tibbutt and Father Dormer were sitting on the sofa; Pia was in an armchair near the open window, and Doctor Hilary was standing on the hearthrug. His dress clothes seemed to increase his size, and he did not look perfectly at home in them; or, perhaps, it was merely the fact that he was so seldom seen in them. Doctor Hilary in a shabby overcoat or loose tweeds, was the usual sight.

Father Dormer was a tallish thin man, with very aquiline features, and dark hair going grey on his temples. At the moment he and Miss Tibbutt were deep in a discussion on rose growing, a favourite hobby of his. Deeply engrossed, they were weighing the advantages of the scent of the more old-fashioned kinds, against the shape and colour of the newer varieties, with the solemnity of two judges.

"They're pretty equally balanced in my garden," said Father Dormer. "I can't do without the old-fashioned ones, despite the beauty of the newer sorts. I've two bushes of the red and white—the York and Lancaster rose. I was a Lancashire lad, you know."

And then the first soft notes of the gong sounded from the hall, rising to a full boom beneath the footman's accomplished stroke.

There was a sound of running steps descending the stairs, and a final jump.

"Keep it going, Dale," said a voice without. And then Trix entered the room, slightly flushed by her rapid descent of the stairs, but with an assumption of leisurely dignity.

"I'm not late," she announced with great innocence. "The gong hasn't stopped."

Doctor Hilary, who was facing the door, looked at her. He saw a small, elf-like girl in a very shimmery green frock. The green enhanced her elf-like appearance.

"Deceiver," laughed Pia. "We heard you quite, quite distinctly."

Obviously caught, Trix echoed the laugh.

"Well, anyhow I'd have been in before the echo stopped," she announced.

They went informally into the dining-room, where the light of shaded wax candles on the table mingled with the departing daylight, for the curtains were still undrawn.

"I like this kind of light," remarked Trix, as she seated herself.

Trix almost always thought aloud. It meant that conversation in her presence seldom flagged, since her brain was rarely idle; though she could be really marvellously silent when she perceived that silence was desirable.

"Do you know this garden?" she said, addressing herself to Doctor Hilary, by whom she was seated.

He assented.

"Well, isn't it lovely? That's what made me nearly late,—going round it again. I've been round five times since yesterday. It's just heavenly after London. Roses versus petrol, you know." She wrinkled up her nose as she spoke.

"You ought to see the gardens of Chorley Old Hall, Miss Devereux," said Father Dormer. "Not that I mean any invidious comparison between them and this garden," he added, with a little smile towards the Duchessa.

"Chorley Old Hall," remarked Trix. "I used to go there when I was a tiny child. There was a man lived there, who used to terrify me out of my wits, his eyes were so black. But I liked him, when I got over my first fright. What has become of him?"

"He died a short time ago," said the Duchessa quietly. "Oh," said Trix regretfully. Possibly she had contemplated a renewal of the acquaintanceship.

"He'd been an invalid for a long time," explained the Duchessa. She was a little, just a trifle anxious as to whether the conversation might not prove embarrassing for Doctor Hilary. There was a feeling in the village that the journey, which Doctor Hilary had permitted—some, indeed, said advocated—had been entirely responsible for the death.

But Doctor Hilary was eating his dinner, apparently utterly and completely at his ease.

"Anyhow the gardens aren't being neglected," said Father Dormer. "They've got a new under-gardener there who is proving rather a marvel in his line. In fact Golding confesses that he'll have to look out for his own laurels. He's a nice looking fellow, this new man, and a cut above the ordinary type, I should say. I used to see him in church after Mass on Sundays at one time. But he has given up coming lately."

"Really," said the Duchessa.

Trix looked up quickly, surprised at the intonation of her voice.

"Oh, he isn't a Catholic," smiled Father Dormer. "Perhaps curiosity brought him in the beginning, and now it has worn off."

Trix was still looking at the Duchessa. She couldn't make out the odd intonation of her voice. It had been indifferent enough to be almost rude. But, if it were intended for a snub, Father Dormer had evidently not taken it as such. Yet there was a little pause on the conclusion of his remark, almost as if Doctor Hilary and Miss Tibbutt had had the same idea as herself. At least, that was what Trix felt the little pause to mean. And then she was suddenly annoyed with herself for having felt it. Of course it was quite absurd.

She looked down at her plate of clear soup. It had letters of a white edible substance floating in it.

"I've got an A and two S's in my soup," she remarked pathetically. "I don't think it is quite tactful of the cook."

There was an instant lowering of eyes towards soup plates, an announcing of the various letters seen therein. Trix had an application for each, making the letters stand as the initials for words.

"C. S.," said Miss Tibbutt presently, entering into the spirit of the game.

"Sure there isn't a T?" asked Trix.

"No," said Miss Tibbutt peering closer, "I mean there isn't one."

"Well then, it can't be Catholic Truth Society. My imagination has given out. I can only think of Christian Science. I don't think it's quite right of you, Tibby dear."

Miss Tibbutt blinked good-humouredly.

"Aren't they the people who think that the Bible dropped down straight from heaven in a shiny black cover with S. P. G. printed on it?" she asked.

Trix shook her head.

"No," she declared solemnly, "they're Bible Christians. The Christian Science people are the ones who think we haven't got any bodies."

"No bodies!" ejaculated Miss Tibbutt.

"Well," said Trix, "anyhow they think bodies are a false—false something or other."

"False claim," suggested Father Dormer.

"That's it," cried Trix, immensely delighted. "How clever of you to have thought of it. Only I'm not sure if it's the bodies are a false claim, or the aches attached to the bodies. Perhaps it's both."

"I thought that was the New Thought Idea," said Pia.

Trix shook her head. "Oh no, the New Thought people think a lot about one's body. They give us lots of bodies."

"Really?" queried Doctor Hilary doubtfully.

"Oh yes," responded Trix. "I once went to one of their lectures."

"My dear Trix!" ejaculated Miss Tibbutt flustered.

"It was quite an accident," said Trix reassuringly. "A friend of mine, Sybil Martin, was coming up to town and wanted me to meet her. She suggested I should meet her at Paddington, and then go to a lecture on psychometry with her, and tea afterwards. I hadn't the faintest notion what psychometry was, but I supposed it might be first cousin to trigonometry, and quite as dull. But she wanted me, so I went. It was funny," gurgled Trix.

Doctor Hilary was watching her.

"You'd better disburden your mind," he said.

Trix crumbled her bread, still smiling at the recollection.

"Well, the lecture was held in a biggish room, and there were a lot of odd people present. But the oddest of all was the lecturer. She wore a kind of purple velvet tea-gown, though it was only three o'clock in the afternoon. She talked for a long time about vibrations, and things that bored me awfully, and people kept interrupting with questions. One man interrupted particularly often. He kept saying, 'Excuse me, but am I right in thinking—' And then he would give a little lecture on his own account, and look around for the approval of the audience. I should have flung things at him if I had been the purple velvet lady. It was so obvious that he was not desiring her information, but merely wishful to air his own. There was a text on the wall which said, 'We talk abundance here,' and when I pointed out to Sybil how true it was, she wasn't a bit pleased, and said it didn't mean what I thought in the least. But she wouldn't explain what it did mean. After the lecture, the purple velvet lady held things—jewelry chiefly—that people in the audience sent up to her, and described their owners, and where they'd got the things from. There was quite a lot of family history, and people's characteristics and virtues and failings, and very, very private things made public, but no one seemed to mind."

"That's the odd thing about those people," said Doctor Hilary thoughtfully. "Disclosing their innermost thoughts, feelings, and so-called experiences, seems an absolute mania with them. And the more public the disclosure the better they are pleased. But go on, Miss Devereux."

"Well," said Trix, "at last she began describing a sort of Cleopatra lady, and—and rather vivid love scenes, and—and things like that. When she'd ended, the bracelet turned out to belong to a little dowdy woman looking like a meek mouse. I thought the purple velvet lady would have been really upset and mortified at her mistake. But she wasn't in the least. She just smiled sweetly, and returned the bracelet to the owner, and said that the dowdy little woman had been Cleopatra in a former incarnation. Of course when she began on that tack, I saw the kind of lecture I'd really let myself in for, and I knew I'd no business to be in the place at all, so I made Sybil take me away. It was nearly the end, and she didn't mind, because she missed the silver collection. But she talked to me about it the whole of tea-time, and she really believed it all," sighed Trix pathetically.

Miss Tibbutt looked quite shocked.

"Oh, but, my dear, she couldn't really."

"She did," nodded Trix.

Miss Tibbutt appealed helplessly to Father Dormer.

"Why do people believe such extraordinary things?" she demanded almost wrathfully.

Father Dormer laughed. "That's a question I cannot pretend to answer. But I suppose that if people reject the truth, and yet want to believe something beyond mere physical facts, they can invent anything, that is if they happen to be endowed with sufficient imagination."

"Then the devil must help them invent," said Miss Tibbutt with exceeding firmness.

After dinner they had coffee in the garden. A big moon was coming up in the dusk behind the trees, its light throwing the shadows dark and soft on the grass.

"It's so astonishingly silent after London," said Trix, gazing at the blue-grey velvet of the sky.

She looked more than ever elfin-like, with the moonlight falling on her fair hair and pointed oval face, and the shimmering green of her dress.

"I wonder why we ever go to bed on moonlight nights," she pursued. "Brilliant sunshine always tempts us to do something—a long walk, a drive, or boating on a river. Over and over again we say, 'Now, the very next fine day we'll do—so and so.' But no one ever dreams of saying, 'Now, the next moonlight night we'll have a picnic.' I wonder why not?"

"Because," said Doctor Hilary smiling, and watching her, "the old and staid folk have no desire to lose their sleep, and—well, the conventions are apt to stand in the way of the young and romantic."

"Conventions," sighed Trix, "are the bane of one's existence. They hamper all one's most cherished desires until one is of an age when the desires become non-existent. My aunt Lilla is always saying to me, 'When you're a much older woman, dearest.' And I reply, 'But, Aunt Lilla, now is the moment.' I know, by experience, later is no good. When I was a tiny child my greatest desire was to play with all the grubbiest children in the parks. Of course I was dragged past them by a haughty and righteous nurse. I can talk to them now if I want to, and even wheel their perambulators. But it would have been so infinitely nicer to wheel a very dirty baby in a very ramshackle perambulator when I was eight. Conventions are responsible for an enormous lot of lost opportunities."

"Mightn't they be well lost?" suggested Father Dormer.

Trix looked across at him.

"Serious or nonsense?" she demanded.

"Whichever you like," he replied, a little twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh, serious," interpolated Miss Tibbutt.

Trix leant a little forward, resting her chin on her hands.

"Well, seriously then, conventions—those that are merely conventions for their own sake,—are detestable, and responsible for an enormous lot of unhappiness. 'My dear (mimicked Trix), you can be quite polite to so and so, but I cannot have you becoming friendly with them, you know they are not quite.' I've heard that said over and over again. It's hateful. I'm not a socialist, not one little bit, but I do think if you like a person you ought to be able to be friends, even if you happen to be a Duchess and he's a chimney-sweep. The motto of the present-day world is, 'What will people think?' People!" snorted Trix wrathfully, warming to her theme, "what people? And is their opinion worth twopence halfpenny? Fancy them associating with St. Peter if he appeared now among them as he used to be, with only his goodness and his character and his fisherman's clothes, instead of his halo and his keys, as they see him in the churches."

The two men laughed. Miss Tibbutt made a little murmur of something like query. The Duchessa's face looked rather white, but perhaps it was only the effect of the moonlight.

"But, Miss Devereux," said Doctor Hilary, "even now the world—people, as you call them, are quite ready to recognize genius despite the fact that it may have risen from the slums."

"Yes," contended Trix eagerly, "but it's not the person they recognize really, it's merely their adjunct."

"What do you mean?" asked Miss Tibbutt. Father Dormer smiled comprehendingly.

"I mean," said Trix slowly, "they recognize the thing that makes the show, and the person because of that thing, not for the person's own self. Let me try and explain better. A man, born in the slums, has a marvellous voice. He becomes a noted singer. He's received everywhere and feted. But it's really his voice that is feted, because it is the fashion to fete it. Let him lose his voice, and he drops out of existence. People don't recognize him himself, the self which gave expression to the voice, and which still is, even after the voice is dumb."

Father Dormer nodded.

"Well," went on Trix, "I maintain that that man is every bit as well worth knowing afterwards,—after he has lost his voice. And even if he'd never been able to give expression to himself by singing, he might have been just as well worth knowing. But the world never looks for inside things, but only for external things that make a show. So if Mrs. B. hasn't an atom of anything congenial to me in her composition, but has a magnificent house and heaps of money, it's quite right and fitting I should know her, so people would say, and encourage me to do so. But it's against all the conventions that I should be friendly with little Miss F. who lives over the tobacconist's at the corner of such and such a street, though she is thoroughly congenial to me, and I love her plucky and cheery outlook on life." She stopped.

"Go on," encouraged Doctor Hilary.

"Well," laughed Trix, "take a more extreme case. Sir A. C. is—well, not a bad man, but not the least the kind of man I care about, but he may take me in to dinner, and, on the strength of that brief acquaintance, to a theatre if he wants, provided I have some other woman with me as a sort of chaperon, and he can talk to me by the hour, and that all on account of his money and title. Mr. Z. is a really white man, but he's a 'come-down,' through no fault of his own, and a bus-conductor. I happen to have spoken to him once or twice; and like him. But I mightn't even walk for half an hour with him in the park, if I'd fifty authorized chaperons attending on me. That's what I mean about conventions that are conventions for their own sake." She stopped again.

"And what do you suggest as a remedy?" asked Father Dormer, smiling.

"There isn't one," sighed Trix. "At least not one you can apply universally. Everybody must just apply it for themselves, and not exactly by defying conventions, but by treating them as simply non-existent."

The Duchessa made a little movement in the moonlight.

"Which," she said quietly, "comes to exactly the same thing as defying them, and it won't work."

"Why not?" demanded Trix.

"You'd find yourself curiously lonely after a time if you did."

"You mean my friends—no, my acquaintances—would desert me?"

"Probably."

"Well, I'd have the one I'd chanced it all for."

"Yes," said the Duchessa slowly and deliberately, "but you'd have to be very sure, not only that the friend was worth it, but that you were worth it to the friend."

There was rather a blank silence. Trix gave a little gasp. It was not so much the words that hurt, as the tone in which they had been spoken. It was a repetition of the little scene at dinner, but this time intensified. And it was so utterly, so entirely unlike Pia. Trix felt miserably squashed. She had been talking a good deal too, perhaps, indeed, rather foolishly, that was the worst of it. No doubt she had made rather an idiot of herself. She swallowed a little lump in her throat. Well, anyhow that inflection in Pia's tone must be covered at once. That was the first, indeed the only, consideration.

"I never thought of all those contingencies," she laughed. There was the faintest suspicion of a quiver in her voice. "Let's talk about the moonlight. But it was the moonlight began it all."

* * * * *

Two hours later the garden lay deserted in the same moonlight.

A woman was sitting by an open window, looking out into the garden. She had been sitting there quite a long time. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Trix, Trix," she said half aloud, "if only it would work. But it won't. And it was the moonlight that began it all."



CHAPTER XXI

ON THE MOORLAND

Trix was walking over the moorland. The Duchessa and Miss Tibbutt had departed to what promised to be an exceedingly dull garden party some five miles distant. It had been decreed that it was entirely unnecessary to inflict the same probable dulness on Trix, therefore she had been left to freedom and her own devices for the afternoon.

Trix was playing the game of "I remember." It can be a quite extraordinarily fascinating game, or an exceedingly painful one. Trix was finding it extraordinarily fascinating. It was so gorgeously delightful to find that nothing had shrunk, nothing lessened in beauty or mystery. A larch copse was every bit as much a haunt of the Little People as formerly; the moss every bit as much a cool green carpet for their tripping feet. A few belated foxglove stems added to the old-time enchantment of the place. Even a little stream rippling through the wood, was a veritable stream, and not merely a watery ditch, as it might quite well have proved. Then there was the view from the gate, through a frame of beech trees out towards the sea. It was still as entrancing an ocean, sun-flecked and radiant. There were still as infinite possibilities in the unknown Beyond, could one have chartered a white-winged boat, and have sailed to where land and water meet. There was a pond, too, surrounded by blackberry bushes and great spear-like rushes, perhaps not quite the enormous lake of one's childhood, but a reasonably large pond enough, and there were still the blackberry bushes and the spear-like rushes. And, finally, there was the moorland, glowing with more radiant crimson lakes and madders than the most wonderful paint box ever held, and stretching up and down, and up again, till it melted in far away purples and lavenders.

Trix's heart sang in accord with the laughing sun-kissed earth around her. It was all so gorgeous, so free and untrammelled. She lay upon the hot springy heather, and crushed the tiny purple flowers of the wild thyme between her fingers, raising the bruised petals to her face to drink in their strong sweet scent.

From far off she could hear the tinkle of a goat bell, and the occasional short bark of a sheep dog. All else was silence, save for the humming of the bees above the heather. Tiny insects floated in the still air, looking like specks of thistle-down as the sun caught and silvered their minute wings. Little blue butterflies flitted hither and thither like radiant animated flowers.

For a long time Trix sat very still, body and soul bathed in the beauty around her. At last she got to her feet, and made her way across the heather, ignoring the small beaten tracks despite the prickliness of her chosen route.

After some half-hour's walking she came to a stone wall bordering a hilly field, a low wall, a battered wall, where tiny ferns grew in the crevices, and the stones themselves were patched with orange-coloured lichen.

Trix climbed the wall, and walked across the soft grass. A good way to the right was a fence, and beyond the fence a wood. Trix made her way slowly towards it. Thistles grew among the grass,—carding thistles, and thistles with small drooping heads. She looked at them idly as she walked. Suddenly a slight sound behind her made her turn, and with the turning her heart leapt to her throat.

From over the brow of the hilly field behind her, quite a number of cattle were coming at a fair pace towards her.

Now Trix hated cows in any shape or form, and these were the unpleasant white-faced, brown cattle, whose very appearance is against them. They were moving quickly too, quite alarmingly quickly.

Trix cast one terrified and pathetic glance over her shoulder. The glance was all-sufficient. She ran,—ran straight for the wood, the cattle after her. Doubtless curiosity, mere enquiry maybe, prompted their pursuit. Trix concerned herself not at all with the motive, the fact was all-sufficient. Fear lent wings to her feet, and with the horned and horrid beasts still some ten yards behind her, she precipitated herself across the fence to fall in an undignified but wholly relieved heap among a mass of bracken and whortleberry bushes. The briefest of moments saw her once more on her feet, struggling, fighting her way through shoulder-high bracken. Five minutes brought her to an open space beyond. Trembling, breathless, and most suspiciously near tears, she sank upon the ground.

"The beasts!" ejaculated Trix opprobriously, and not as the mere statement of an obvious fact. She took off her hat, which flight had flung to a somewhat rakish angle, and blinked vigorously towards the trees. She was not going to cry.

Presently fright gave place to interest. She gazed around, curious, speculative. It was an unusual wood, a strange wood, a wood of holly trees, with a scattered sprinkling of beech trees. The grey twisted trunks of the hollies gleamed among the dark foliage, giving an eerie and almost uncanny atmosphere to the place. It was extraordinarily silent, too; and infinitely lonelier than the deserted moorland. It gave Trix an odd feeling of unpleasant mystery. Yet there was nothing for it but to face the mystery, to see if she could not find some way out further adown the wood. Not for untold gold would she again have faced those horned beasts behind her.

A tiny narrow path led downhill from the cleared space. Trix set off down it, swinging her hat airily by the brim the while. Presently the sense of uncanniness abated somewhat; the elfin in her went out to meet the weirdness of the wood.

Now and again she stopped to pick and eat whortleberries from the massed bushes beneath the trees. She did not particularly like them, truly; nevertheless she was still young enough to pick and eat what nature had provided for picking and eating, and that for the mere pleasure of being able to do so. Also, at this juncture the action brought confidence in its train.

Presently, through the trees facing her, she saw a wall, a high wall, a brick wall, and quite evidently bordering civilization.

"It can't go on for ever," considered Trix. "It must come to an end some time, either right, or left. And I'm not going back." This last exceedingly firmly.

She went forward, scrutinizing, anxious. And then,—joyful and welcome sight!—a door, an open door came into view. A mound of half-carted leaf mould just without showed, to any one endowed with even the meanest powers of deduction, that someone—some man, probably—was busy in the neighbourhood.

Trix made hastily for the door. The next moment she was through it, to find herself face to face with a man and a wheelbarrow. Trix came to a standstill, a standstill at once sudden and unpremeditated. The man dropped the wheelbarrow. They stared blankly at each other. And Trix was far too flustered to realize that his stare was infinitely more amazed than her own.

"You can't come through this way," said the man, decisive though bewildered. His orders regarding the non-entrance of strangers had been of the emphatic kind.

Trix's brain worked rapidly. The route before her must lead to safety, and nothing, no power on earth, would take her back through the field atop the wood. She was genuinely, quite genuinely too frightened. This is by way of excuse, since here a regrettable fact must be recorded. Trix gave vent to a sound closely resembling a sneeze. It was followed by one brief sentence.

"There's someone at the gate," was what the man heard.

Again amazement was written on his face. He turned towards the gate. Trix fled past him.

"I couldn't go back," she insisted to herself, as she vanished round the corner of a big green-house. "And I did say 'isn't there' even if it was mixed up with a sneeze. And wherever have I seen that man's face before?"

She whisked round another corner of the green-house, attempting no answer to her query at the moment, ran down a long cinder path bordered by cabbages and gooseberry bushes, and bolted through another door in another wall. And here Trix found herself in an orchard, at the bottom of which was a yew hedge wherein she espied a wicket gate. She made rapid way towards it. And now she saw a big grey house facing her. There was no mistaking it. Childhood's memories rushed upon her. It was Chorley Old Hall.

Trix came through the wicket gate, and out upon a lawn, in the middle of which was a great marble basin full of crystal water, from which rose a little silver fountain. Before her was the big grey house, melancholy, deserted-looking. The blinds were drawn down in most of the windows. It had the appearance of a house in which death was present.

And then a spirit of curiosity fell upon her, a sudden strong desire to see within the house, to go once more into the rooms where she had stood in the old days, a small and somewhat frightened child.

There was not a soul in sight. Probably the man with the wheelbarrow had not thought it worth while to pursue her. The garden appeared as deserted as the house. Trix tip-toed cautiously towards it. She looked like a kitten or a canary approaching a dead elephant.

To her left was a door. Quite probably it was locked; but then, by the favour of fortune, it might not be. Of course she ran a risk, a considerable risk of meeting some caretaker or other, and her presence would not be particularly easy to explain. Curiosity and prudence wavered momentarily in the balance. Curiosity turned the scale. She tried the door. Vastly to her delight it yielded at her push. She slipped inside the house, closing it softly behind her.

She found herself in a long carpeted passage, sporting prints adorning the walls. She tip-toed down it, her step making no smallest sound on the soft carpet. The end of the passage brought her into a big square hall. To her right were wide deep stairs; opposite them was a door, in all probability the front door; to her left was another door.

Trix recalled the past, rapidly, and in detail. The door to the left must lead to the library,—that is, if her memory did not play her false. She remembered the big room, the book-cases reaching from floor to ceiling, and the man with the black eyes, who had terrified her. Something, some fleeting shadow, of her old childish fear was upon her now, as she turned the door handle. The door yielded easily. She pushed it wide open.

The room was shadowed, gloomy almost. The heavy curtains were drawn back from the windows, but other curtains of some thinnish green material hung before them, curtains which effectually blotted out any view from the window, or view into the room from without. Before her were the old remembered book-cases, filled with dark, rather fusty books.

Trix pushed the door to behind her, and turned, nonchalantly, to look around the room. As she looked her heart jumped, leapt, and then stood still.



CHAPTER XXII

AN OLD MAN IN A LIBRARY

A white-haired man was watching her. He was sitting in a big oak chair, his hands resting on the arms.

"Oh!" ejaculated Trix. And further expression failed her.

"Please don't let me disturb you," came a suave, courteous old voice. "You were looking for something perhaps?"

"I only wanted to see the library," stuttered Trix, flabbergasted, dismayed.

"Well, this is the library. May I ask how you found your way in?"

"Through a door," responded Trix, voicing the obvious.

"Ah! I did not know visitors were being admitted to the house?" This on a note of interrogation, flavoured with the faintest hint of irony, though the courtesy was still not lacking.

Trix coloured.

"I wasn't admitted," she owned. "I just came."

"Ah, I see," said the white-haired man still courteously. "You perhaps were not aware that your presence might be an—er, an intrusion."

Again Trix coloured.

"A man did tell me I couldn't come through this way," she confessed.

"Yet he allowed you to do so?" There was a queer note beneath the courtesy.

Trix's ear, catching the note, found it almost repellant.

"It wasn't his fault," she declared. "I came. I said, 'Isn't there someone at the gate?' And while he turned to look, I ran. At least,—" a gleam of laughter sprang to her eyes—"I sneezed first, so it sounded like 'There's somebody at the gate.' So he thought there was really. It—it was rather mean of me."

"What you might call an acted lie," suggested the man.

Trix looked conscience-stricken, contrite.

"I suppose it was," she admitted in a very small voice. "But it was the cows. Only I think they were bulls. I am so frightened of cows. I couldn't go back. And he wasn't going to let me through. It wasn't his fault a bit, it wasn't really. I know I told a—a kind of lie." She sighed heavily.

"You did," said the man.

Again Trix sighed.

"I'd never make a martyr, would I? Only"—a degree more hopefully—"A sneeze isn't quite like denying real things, things that matter, is it?" This last was spoken distinctly appealingly.

"I'm not a theologian," said the man dryly.

Trix looked at him. A sudden light of illumination passed over her face, giving place to absolute amazement.

"Aren't you Mr. Danver?" she ejaculated.

"I never heard of his being a theologian," was the retort.

"But Mr. Danver is dead!" gasped Trix.

"Is he?"

"Well," said Trix dazed, bewildered, "he evidently isn't. But why on earth did you—" she broke off.

"Did I what?" he demanded with a queer smile.

"Say you were dead?" asked Trix.

"Dead men, my dear young lady, tell no tales, nor have I ever heard of a living one proclaiming his own demise."

Trix laughed involuntarily.

"Anyhow you've let other people say you are," she retorted.

The man shrugged his shoulders.

"Why did you let them?" asked Trix.

Again the man shrugged his shoulders.

"I have no responsibility in the matter."

"Doctor Hilary has, then," she flashed out.

"Has he?" was the quiet response.

"He has told people you were dead."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Well, he's let them think so anyway. Why has he?" demanded Trix.

"You ask a good many questions for an—er—an intruder," remarked the man.

Trix's chin went up. "I'm sorry. I apologize. I'll go."

"No, don't," said the man. "Sit down."

Trix sat down near a table. She looked straight at him.

"Well," she asked, "what do you want to say to me?"

"I am Nicholas Danver," he said.

"I was quite sure of that," nodded Trix. She was recovering her self-possession.

"I had an excellent reason for allowing people to imagine I was dead," he remarked, "as excellent a one, perhaps, as yours for your—your unexpected appearance."

"I'm glad you didn't say 'intrusion' again," said Trix thoughtfully.

Nicholas gave a short laugh.

There was a little silence.

"Doctor Hilary must have told a dreadful lot of lies," said Trix slowly and not a little regretfully.

"On the contrary," said Nicholas, "he told none."

Trix looked up quickly.

"Listen," said Nicholas, "it's quite an interesting little history in its way. You can stop me if I bore you.... Doctor Hilary says, in the hearing of a housemaid, that it might be a good plan to consult a specialist. It is announced in the village that the Squire is going to consult a specialist. Doctor Hilary travels up to town with an empty litter. The village announces that he has taken the Squire to the specialist. He returns alone. The station-master asks him when the Squire will return from London. He is briefly told, never. The village announces the Squire's demise. I don't say that certain little further incidents did not lend colour to the idea, such as the Squire confining himself entirely to two rooms, and allowing the butler alone of the servants to see him; Doctor Hilary's dismissal of the other indoor servants on his return to town; the deserted appearance of the house. But from first to last there was less actual direct lying in the matter, than in—shall I say, than in a simple sneeze."

A third time the colour mounted in Trix's cheeks.

"You'll not let me forget that," she said pathetically. "But why ever did you want everyone to think you were dead?"

Nicholas looked towards the window thoughtfully, ruminatively.

"That, my dear young lady, is my own affair."

"I beg your pardon," said Trix quickly. She lapsed into silence. Suddenly she looked up, an elfin smile of pure mischief dancing in her eyes. "And now I know you're not dead," she remarked. "Exactly," said Nicholas. "You know I'm not dead."

"Well?" demanded Trix.

"Well, of course you can go and publish the news to the world," he remarked smoothly.

"And equally of course," retorted Trix, "I shall do nothing of the kind. Quite possibly you mayn't trust me, because—because I did sneeze. But honestly I didn't have time to think properly then, at least, only time to think how to get out of the difficulty, and not time to think about fairness or anything. I truly don't tell lies generally. And to tell about you would be like telling what was in a private letter if you'd read it by accident, so of course I shan't say a word."

Nicholas held out his hand without speaking. Trix got up from her chair, and put her own warm hand into his cold one.

"All right," he said in an oddly gentle voice. "And you can speak to Doctor Hilary about it if you like. You'll no doubt need a safety valve." He looked again at her, still holding her hand. "Haven't I seen you before?" he asked.

Trix nodded. "When I was a tiny child. My name is Trix Devereux. I used to come here with my father."

"What!" exclaimed Nicholas, "Jack Devereux's daughter! How is the old fellow?"

"He died five years ago," said Trix softly.

Nicholas dropped her hand.

"And I live on," he said grimly. "It's a queer world." He looked down at the black dressing gown which hid his useless legs. "Bah, where's the use of sentiment at this time of day. Anyhow it's a pleasure to meet you, even though your entrance was a bit of——"

"An intrusion," smiled Trix.

"I was going to say a surprise," said Nicholas courteously. "And now you must allow me to give you some tea."

Trix hesitated.

"Oh, but," she demurred, "the butler will see me."

"And a very pleasant sight for him," responded Nicholas, "if you will permit an old man to pay you a compliment. Besides Jessop is used to holding his tongue."

Trix laughed.

"That," she said, "I can quite well imagine."

Nicholas pressed the electric button attached to the arm of his chair. He watched the door, a curious amusement in his eyes.

Trix attempted an appearance of utter unconcern, nevertheless she could not avoid a reflection or two regarding the butler's possible views on her presence.

During the few seconds of waiting, she surveyed the room. It was extraordinarily familiar. Nothing was altered from her childish days. The very position of the furniture was the same. There were the same heavy brocaded curtains to the windows, the same morocco-covered chairs, the same thick Aubusson carpet, the same book-cases lined with rather fusty books, the same great dogs in the fireplace.

Nicholas looked at her, observing her survey.

"Well?" he queried.

"It's all so exactly the same," responded Trix.

"I never cared for change," said Nicholas shortly.

And then the door opened.

"Jessop," said Nicholas smooth-voiced, "Will you kindly bring tea for me and this young lady."

A flicker, a very faint flicker of amazement passed over the man's face.

"Yes, sir," he responded, and turned from the room.

"An excellent servant," remarked Nicholas.

"I wonder," said Trix reflectively, "how they manage to see everything, and look as if they saw nothing. When I see things it's perfectly obvious to everyone else I am seeing them. I—I look."

"So do most people," returned Nicholas.

* * * * *

When, some half-hour later, Trix rose to take leave, Nicholas again held out his hand. "I believe I'd ask you to come and pay me another visit," he said, "but it would be wiser not. It is not easy for—er, dead men to receive visitors."

"I wish you hadn't—died," said Trix impulsively.

"Do you mean that?" asked Nicholas curiously.

Trix nodded. There was an odd lump in her throat, a lump that for the moment prevented her from speaking.

"You're a queer child," smiled Nicholas.

The tears welled up suddenly in Trix's eyes.

"It's so lonely," she said, with a half-sob.

"My own doing," responded Nicholas.

"That doesn't make it nicer, but worse," gulped Trix.

Nicholas held her hand tighter.

"On the contrary, it's better. It's my own choice." He emphasized the last word a little.

Trix was silent. Nicholas let go her hand.

"Let yourself out the front way," he said. "I am sorry I am unable to accompany you."

Trix went slowly to the library door. At the door she turned.

"It mayn't be right of me," she announced, "but I'm glad, really glad I did sneeze."

Nicholas laughed.

"To be perfectly candid," he remarked, "so am I."



CHAPTER XXIII

ANTONY FINDS A GLOVE

Trix's appearance at the door in the wall had fairly dumbfounded Antony. He had recognized her instantly. And the amazing thing was that she was exactly as he had seen her in his dream. Her announcement had carried the dream sense further, and it was with a queer feeling of intense disappointment that he found no one standing outside the gate. There was nothing but the silent deserted wood and the mound of leaf-mould. For a moment or so he stood listening, almost expecting to hear a footstep among the trees. Nothing but silence greeted him, however, broken only by the faint rustling of the leaves.

He turned back to the garden. It was empty. There was nothing, nothing on earth to prove that the whole thing had not been an extraordinarily vivid waking dream. And if it were a dream, surely it was calculated to dispel the relief the first dream had brought him. Yet was it a dream? Could it have been? Wasn't he entirely awake, and in the possession of his right senses?

Demanding thus of his soul, solemn, bewildered, and reflective, he turned once more to his wheelbarrow. Ten minutes later, trundling it down a cinder path, his eye fell on an object lying beneath a gooseberry bush. He dropped the barrow, and picked up the object.

It was a long soft doe-skin glove.

"It wasn't a dream," said Antony triumphantly. "But where in the name of all that's wonderful did she come from? And where did she vanish to?"

He put the glove into his pocket, and resumed his work.

"I am afraid," he remarked to himself as he heaved the leaf-mould out of the barrow, "that she knew perfectly well there was no one at the gate. I wonder why she said there was, and why, above all, she made such an extraordinarily unexpected appearance."

These considerations engrossed his mind for at least the next half-hour, when, the leaf-mould having been transported from the wood, he went round to the front of the house to trim the edges of the lawn. He was on his knees on the gravel path, busily engaged with a pair of shears, when he heard the amazing sound of the front door opening and shutting. He looked round over his shoulder, to see the same apparition that had appeared to him from the wood, walking calmly down the steps and in the direction of the drive. Apparently she was too engrossed with her own thoughts to observe him where he was kneeling at a little distance to the eastward of the front door.

"Well!" ejaculated Antony bewildered. And he gazed after her.

It was not till her white dress had become a speck in the distance, that Antony remembered the long soft glove reposing in his pocket. He dropped his shears, and bolted after her.

Trix was half-way down the drive, when she heard rapid steps behind her. She looked back, to see that she was being pursued by the young man who had formerly been trundling a wheelbarrow.

Her first instinct was one of flight. Her second, conscious that the owner of the property had condoned her intrusion, and also having in view the fact that there was nowhere but straight ahead to run, and he was in all probability fleeter of foot than she, was to stand her ground, and that as unconcernedly as possible.

"Yes?" queried Trix with studied calmness, as he came up to her.

"Excuse me, Miss, but you dropped this in the kitchen garden." Antony held out the long soft glove.

"Oh, thank you," said Trix, infinitely relieved that his rapid approach had signified nothing worse than the restoration of her own lost property. And then she looked at him. Where on earth had she seen him before?

"There wasn't any one at the gate, Miss," said Antony suddenly.

Trix flushed. "Oh, wasn't there? I—" she broke off.

Then she looked straight at him.

"I knew there wasn't," she confessed. "But I was afraid to go back, so I had to make you look away while I ran. It was the cows." She sighed. She felt she had been making bovine explanations during the greater part of the afternoon.

"Cows, Miss?" queried Antony, a twinkle in his eyes.

Trix nodded.

"Yes; awful beasts with white faces, in the field above the wood. I'm not sure they weren't bulls."

Antony laughed.

"Sure, and why weren't you telling me, then? I'd have tackled them for you."

Trix smiled.

"I never thought of that way out of the difficulty," she owned. "But it will be all right, I ex—" She broke off. She had been within an ace of saying she had explained matters to Mr. Danver. She really must be careful. "I expect—I'm sure you won't get into trouble about it," she stuttered.

"Sure, that's all right," he said, a trifle puzzled.

There was a queer pleasure in this little renewal of the acquaintanceship of the bygone days, despite the fact of its being an entirely one-sided renewal. He'd have known her anywhere. It was the same small vivacious face, the same odd little upward tilt to the chin, the same varied inflection of voice, the same little quick gestures. He would have liked to keep her standing there while he recalled the small imperious child in the elfin-like figure before him. But, her property having been restored, there was nothing on earth further he could say, no possible reason for prolonging the conversation. He waited, however, for Trix to give the dismissal.

Trix was looking at him, a queer puzzlement in her eyes. Why was his face so oddly familiar? It was utterly impossible that she should have met him before, at all events on the intimate footing the familiarity of his face suggested. It must be merely an extraordinary likeness to someone to whom she could not at the moment put a name. Quite suddenly she realized that they were scrutinizing each other in a way that certainly cannot be termed exactly orthodox. She pulled herself together.

"Thank you for restoring my glove," said she with a fine resumption of dignity; and she turned off once more down the drive.

Antony went slowly back to his shears.



CHAPTER XXIV

AN INTEREST IN LIFE

Doctor Hilary was walking down the lane in a somewhat preoccupied frame of mind. He had been oddly preoccupied the last day or so, lapsing into prolonged meditations from which he would emerge with a sudden and almost guilty start.

Coming opposite the drive gates of Chorley Old Hall, he was brought to a sense of his surroundings by a figure, which emerged suddenly from them and came to a dead stop.

"Oh!" ejaculated Doctor Hilary. "Good afternoon." And he took off his cap.

"Good afternoon," responded Trix. She turned along the lane beside him.

"Have you been interviewing the gardens?" he asked. She fancied there was the faintest trace of anxiety in his voice.

A sudden spirit of mischief took possession of Trix. She had been given leave. It was really too good an opportunity to be lost.

"Oh no," she responded, dove-like innocence in her voice, "I've just been having tea with Mr. Danver."

If she wanted to see amazement written on his face, she had her desire. It spread itself large over his countenance, finding verbal expression in an utterly astounded gasp.

"He seems very well," said Trix demurely.

"Miss Devereux!" ejaculated Doctor Hilary.

"Yes?" asked Trix sweetly.

"Have you known all the time?" he demanded.

Trix shook her head, laughter dancing in her eyes. It found its way to her lips.

"Oh, you looked so surprised," she gurgled. "I hadn't the tiniest bit of an idea. How could I? I was never so flummuxed in all my life as when I realized who was talking to me."

Doctor Hilary was silent.

Trix put her hand on his arm, half timidly.

"Don't be angry," she said. "He wasn't. And I've promised faithfully not to tell."

Doctor Hilary glanced down at the hand on his arm.

"I'm not angry," he said with a queer smile, "I'm only—" He stopped.

"Flummuxed, like I was," nodded Trix, removing her hand. "It's quite the amazingest thing I ever knew." She gave another little gurgle of laughter, looking up at the very blue sky as if inviting it to share her pleasure.

"How much did he tell you?" asked Doctor Hilary.

Trix lowered her chin, and considered briefly.

"Just nothing, now I come to think of it, beyond the fact that he was Mr. Danver. But then I'd really been the first to volunteer that piece of information. I haven't the faintest notion why there's all this mystery, and why he has pretended to be dead. He didn't want me to know that. So please don't say anything that could tell me. He said I could talk to you."

"I won't," smiled Doctor Hilary answering the request.

They walked on a few steps in silence.

"But what I should like to know," he said after a minute, "is how you managed to get inside the house at all?"

"Oh dear!" sighed Trix twisting her glove round her wrist.

Doctor Hilary looked rather surprised.

"Don't say if you'd rather not," he remarked quickly.

Trix sighed again.

"Oh, I may as well. It will only be the third time I've had to own up."

And she proceeded with a careful recapitulation of the events of the afternoon.

"You must have been very frightened," said he as she ended.

"I was," owned Trix.

"Ah, well; it's all over now," he comforted her.

"Y-yes," said Trix doubtfully.

"What's troubling you?" he demanded.

"The sneeze," confessed Trix in a very small voice.

Doctor Hilary stifled a sudden spasm of laughter. She was so utterly and entirely in earnest.

"I wouldn't worry over a little thing like that, if I were you," said he consolingly.

Once more Trix sighed.

"Of course it's absurd," she said. "I know it's absurd. But, somehow, little things do worry me, even when I know they're silly. And there's just enough that's not silliness in this to let it be a real worry."

"A genuine midge bite," he suggested. "But, you know, rubbing it only makes it worse."

She laughed a trifle shakily.

"And honestly," he pursued, "though I do understand your—your conscience in the matter, I'm really very glad you've seen Mr. Danver."

"Well, so was I," owned Trix.

Again there was a silence. They were walking down a narrow lane bordered on either side with high banks and hedges. The dust lay rather thick on the grass and leaves. It had already covered their shoes with its grey powder. Doctor Hilary was turning certain matters in his mind. Presently he gave voice to them.

"It is exceedingly good for him that someone besides myself and the butler and his wife should know that he is alive, and that he should know they do know it. I agreed to this mad business because I believed it would give him an interest in living, eccentric though the interest might be."

Trix gurgled.

"It sounds so odd," she explained, "to hear you say that pretending to be dead could give any one an interest in life." And she gurgled again. Trix's gurgling was peculiarly infectious.

"Odd!" laughed Doctor Hilary. "It's the oddest thing imaginable. No one but Nick could have conceived the whole business, or found the smallest interest in it. But he did find an interest, and that was enough for me. He is lonely now, I grant. But before this—this invention, he was stagnant as well as lonely. His mind, and seemingly his soul with it, had become practically atrophied. His mind has now been roused to interest, though the most extraordinarily eccentric interest."

"And his soul?" queried Trix simply.

Doctor Hilary shook his head.

"Ah, that I don't know," he said.

They parted company at the door of Doctor Hilary's house. Trix went on slowly down the road. She paused opposite the presbytery, before turning to the left in the direction of Woodleigh. She rang the bell, and asked to see Father Dormer.

He came to her in the little parlour.

"Oh," said Trix, getting up as he entered, "I only came to ask you to say a Mass for my intention. And, please, will you say one every week till I ask you to stop?"

"By all means," he responded.

"Thank you," said Trix. Then she glanced at a clock on the mantelpiece. "I had no idea it was so late," she said.

She walked home at a fair pace. The midge bite had ceased to worry her. But then, at Doctor Hilary's suggestion, she had ceased to rub it. She was thinking of only one thing now, of a solitary old figure in a large and gloomy library.

She sighed heavily once or twice. Well, at all events she had asked for Masses for him.



CHAPTER XXV

PRICKLES

If you happen to have anything on your mind, it is impossible—or practically impossible—to avoid thinking about it. Which, doubtless, is so obvious a fact, it is barely worth stating.

The Duchessa di Donatello had something on her mind; it possessed her waking thoughts, it coloured her dreams. And what that something was, is also, perhaps, entirely obvious. Again and again she told herself that she would not dwell on the subject; but she might as well have tried to dam a river with a piece of tissue paper, as prevent the thought from filling her mind; and that probably because—with true feminine inconsistency—she welcomed it quite as much as she tried to dispel it.

Occasionally she allowed it free entry, regarded it, summed it up as unsatisfactory, and sternly dismissed it. In three minutes it was welling up again, perhaps in the same old route, perhaps choosing a different course.

"Why can't I put the man and everything concerning him out of my mind for good and all?" she asked herself more than once. And, whatever the reply to her query, the fact remained that she couldn't; the thought had become something of an obsession.

Now, when a thought has become an obsession, there is practically only one way to free oneself from it, and that is by speech. Speech has a way of clearing the clogged channels of the mind, and allowing the thought to flow outwards, and possibly to disappear altogether; whereas, without this clearance, the thought of necessity returns to its source, gathering in volume with each recoil.

But speech is frequently not at all easy, and that not only because there is often a difficulty in finding the right confidant, but because, with the channels thus clogged, it is a distinct effort to clear them. Also, though subconsciously you may realize its desirability, it is often merely subconsciously, and reason and common sense,—or, rather, what you at the moment quite erroneously believe to be reason and common sense—will urge a hundred motives upon you in favour of silence. Maybe that most subtle person the devil is the suggester of these motives. If he can't get much of a look in by direct means, he'll try indirect ones, and depression is one of his favourite indirect methods. At all events so the old spiritual writers tell us, and doubtless they knew what they were talking about.

Now, Trix was perfectly well aware that Pia had something on her mind; she was also perfectly well aware that it was something she would have an enormous difficulty in talking about. And the question was, how to give her even the tiniest lead.

Trix had stated that she had guessed the colour of the soap-bubble; but she hadn't the faintest notion where it had come into existence, nor where and how it had burst. Nor had Pia given her directly the smallest hint of its having ever existed. All of which facts made it exceedingly difficult for her even to hint at soap-bubbles—figuratively speaking of course—as a subject of conversation.

And Pia was slightly irritable too. Of course it was entirely because she was unhappy, but it didn't conduce to intimate conversation. Prickles would suddenly appear among the most innocent looking of flowers, in a way that was entirely disconcerting and utterly unpleasant. And the worst of it was, that there was no avoiding them. They darted out and pricked you before you were even aware of their presence. It was so utterly unlike Pia too, and so—Trix winked back a tear as she thought of it—so hurting.

At last she came to a decision. The prickles simply must be handled and extracted if possible. Of course she might get quite unpleasantly stabbed in the process, but at all events she'd be prepared for the risk, and anything would be better than the little darts appearing at quite unexpected moments and places.

"The next time I'm pricked," said Trix to herself firmly, "I'll seize hold of the prickle, and then perhaps we'll see where we are."

And, as a result perhaps of this resolution, the prickles suddenly disappeared. Trix was immeasurably relieved in one sense, but not entirely easy. She fancied the prickles to be hidden rather than extracted. However, they'd ceased to wound for the time being, and that certainly was an enormous comfort. Miss Tibbutt, with greater optimism than Trix, believed all to be entirely well once more, and rejoiced accordingly.

* * * * *

"Doctor Hilary has been over here rather often lately," remarked Miss Tibbutt one afternoon. Pia and she were sitting in the garden together.

"Old Mrs. Mosely is ill," returned Pia smiling oracularly.

"But only a very little ill," said Miss Tibbutt reflectively. "Her daughter told me only yesterday—I'm afraid it wasn't very grateful of her—that the Doctor had been 'moidering around like 'sif mother was on her dying bed, and her wi' naught but a bit o' cold to her chest, what's gone to her head now, and a glass or two o' hot cider, and ginger, and allspice, and rosemary will be puttin' right sooner nor you can flick a fly off a sugar basin.'"

Pia laughed.

"My dear Tibby, he doesn't come to see Mrs. Mosely."

Miss Tibbutt looked up in perplexed query.

"He comes on here to tea, doesn't he?" asked Pia, kindly, after the manner of one giving a lead.

"Certainly," returned Miss Tibbutt, still perplexed. "He would naturally do so, since he is in Woodleigh just at tea time."

Pia leant back in her seat, and looked at Miss Tibbutt.

"Tibby dear, you're amazingly slow at the uptake."

Miss Tibbutt blinked at Pia over her spectacles.

"Please explain," said she meekly.

Pia laughed.

"Haven't you discovered, Tibby dear, that it's Trix he comes to see?"

"Trix!" ejaculated Miss Tibbutt.

"Yes; and she is quite as unaware of the fact as you are, so don't, for all the world, enlighten her. Leave that to him, if he means to."

Miss Tibbutt had let her work fall, and was gazing round-eyed at Pia.

"But, my dear Pia, he's years older than Trix."

"Oh, not so very many," said Pia reassuringly. "Fifteen or sixteen, perhaps. Trix is twenty-four, you know."

"And Trix is leaving here the day after to-morrow," said Miss Tibbutt regretfully.

"London isn't the antipodes," declared Pia. "She can come here again, or business may take Doctor Hilary to London. There are trains."

"Well, well," said Miss Tibbutt.

Trix appeared at the open drawing-room window and came out on to the terrace. She paused for a moment to pick a dead rose off a bush growing near the house. Then she saw the two under the lime tree. She came towards them.

"Doctor Hilary has just driven up through the plantation gate," she said. "I suppose he's coming to tea. His man was evidently going to put up the horse."

The Duchessa glanced at a gold bracelet watch on her wrist.

"It's four o'clock," she said.

"He takes tea quite for granted," smiled Trix.

"I suppose," responded the Duchessa, "that he considers five almost consecutive invitations equivalent to one standing one."

"Well, anyhow I should," nodded Trix. "What are you looking so wise about, Tibby angel?"

Miss Tibbutt started. "Was I looking wise? I didn't know."

Trix perched herself on the table.

"Dale will clear me off in a minute," she announced. "I suppose you'll have tea out here as usual. Till then it's the nicest seat. Oh dear, I wish I wasn't going home to-morrow. That's not a hint to you to ask me to stay longer. I shouldn't hint, I'd speak straight out. But I must join Aunt Lilla at her hydro place. She's getting lonely. She wants an audience to which to relate her partner's idiocy at Bridge, and someone to help carry her photographic apparatus. Also someone to whom she can keep up a perpetual flow of conversation. That's not the least uncharitable, as you'd know if you knew Aunt Lilla. I think she must have been born talking. But I love her all the same."

Trix tilted back her head and looked up at the sky through the branches of the trees.

"I wonder why space is blue," she said, "and why it's so much bluer some days than others, even when there aren't any clouds."

A step on the terrace behind her put an end to her wondering. Doctor Hilary came round the corner of the house.

"I've taken your invitation for granted, Duchessa, as I happened to be out this way," said he as he shook hands.

"Is old Mrs. Mosely still so ill?" asked Trix, sympathy in her voice.

Miss Tibbutt kept her eyes almost guiltily on her knitting. Pia, glancing at her, laughed inwardly.

"She's better to-day," responded Doctor Hilary cheerfully. And then he sat down. Trix had descended from the table, and seated herself in a basket chair.

Dale brought out the tea in a few minutes, and put it on the table Trix had vacated. The conversation was trivial and desultory, even more trivial and desultory than most tea-time conversation. Miss Tibbutt was too occupied with Pia's recent revelation to have much thought for speech, Doctor Hilary was never a man of many words, the Duchessa had been marvellously lacking in conversation of late, and Trix's occasional remarks were mainly outspoken reflections on the sunshine and the flowers, which required no particular response. Nevertheless she was conscious of a certain flatness in her companions, and wondered vaguely what had caused it.

"I'm going to Llandrindod Wells to-morrow," said she presently.

Doctor Hilary looked up quickly.

"Then your visit here has come to an end?" he queried.

Trix nodded.

"Alas, yes," she sighed, regret, half genuine, half mocking, in her voice. "But most certainly I shall come down again if the Duchessa will let me come. I had forgotten, absolutely forgotten, what a perfectly heavenly place this was. And that doesn't in the least mean that I am coming solely for the place, and not to see her, though I am aware it did not sound entirely tactful."

"And when do you suppose you will be coming again?" asked Doctor Hilary with a fine assumption of carelessness, not in the least lost upon the Duchessa.

"Before Christmas I hope," replied she in Trix's stead. "Or, indeed, at any time or moment she chooses."

Doctor Hilary looked thoughtful, grave. A little frown wrinkled between his eyebrows. He pulled silently at his pipe. The Duchessa was watching him.

"Alas, poor man!" thought she whimsically. "He was about to seize opportunity, and behold, fate snatches opportunity from him. Oh, cruel fate!"

And then she beheld his brow clearing. He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and began feeling in his pocket for his pouch to refill it.

"He's relieved," declared the Duchessa inwardly, and somewhat astounded. "He's so amazingly diffident, and yet so utterly in love, he's relieved."

Of course she was right, she knew perfectly well she was right. Well, perhaps courage would grow with Trix's absence. For his own sake it was to be devoutly trusted that it would.

Doctor Hilary took his tobacco pouch from his pocket, and with it a small piece of paper. He looked at the paper.

"The name of a new rose," he said. "Michael Field, the new under-gardener at the Hall, gave it to me. He tells me it is a very free flowerer, and has a lovely scent. Do you care to have the name, Duchessa?" He held the slip of paper towards her.

The Duchessa looked carelessly at it. Trix was looking at the Duchessa.

"No, thank you," she replied. "We have plenty of roses here, and Thornby can no doubt give me the name of any new kinds I shall want."

Now it was not merely an entirely unnecessary refusal, but the tone of the speech was nearly, if not quite, deliberately rude. It was a terribly big prickle, and showed itself perfectly distinctly. There wasn't even the smallest semblance of disguise about it.

Doctor Hilary put the paper and his tobacco pouch back into his pocket.

"I must be off," he said in an oddly quiet voice. "I've one or two other calls to make."

Miss Tibbutt walked towards the house with him,—to fetch some more knitting, so she announced. Trix suspected a little mental stroking.

"What's the matter, Pia?" asked Trix calmly, leaning back in her chair.

"The matter?" said Pia, the faintest suspicion of a flush in her cheeks.

"You were very—very snubbing to Doctor Hilary," announced Trix, still calmly. Inwardly she was not so calm. In fact, her heart was thumping quite loudly.

"My dear Trix," replied the Duchessa coldly, "I have an excellent gardener. I do not care for recommendations emanating from a complete stranger."

"There was no smallest need to snub Doctor Hilary, though," said Trix quietly. The queer surprise on his face had caused a little stab at her heart.

The Duchessa made no reply.

"Pia, what is the matter?" asked Trix again.

"I have told you, nothing," responded the Duchessa.

Trix shook her head. "Yes; there is. You're unhappy. You've been—you can tell me to mind my own business, if you like—you've been horribly prickly lately. You've tried to hurt my feelings, and Tibby's, and now you've tried to hurt Doctor Hilary's. And he didn't deserve it in the least, but he thought, for a moment, he did. And it isn't like you, Pia. It isn't one bit. Do tell me what's the matter?"

"Nothing," said Pia again.

"Darling, that's a—a white lie at all events."

Pia coloured. "Anyhow it's not worth talking about," she said.

"Are you sure it isn't?" urged Trix. "Couldn't I help the weeniest bit?"

The Duchessa shook her head.

"Darling," said Trix again, and she slipped her arm through Pia's.

"I'm all one big bruise," said Pia suddenly.

Trix stroked her hand.

"It is entirely foolish of me to care," said the Duchessa slowly. "But I happen to have trusted someone rather implicitly. I never dreamed it possible the person could stoop to act a lie. I would not have minded the thing itself,—it would have been absurd for me to have done so. But it hurt rather considerably that the person should have deceived me in the matter, in fact have acted a deliberate lie about it. I am honestly doing my best to forget the whole thing, but I am being constantly reminded of it."

Trix sat up very straight. So that was it, she told herself. How idiotic of her not to have guessed at once,—days ago, that is,—when she herself had made her marvellous discovery. It was now quite plain to her mind that Pia must have made it too. It was Doctor Hilary whom she believed to be the fraud, the friend whom she had trusted, and who had acted a lie. The whole oddness of Pia's behaviour became suddenly perfectly clear to her. Tibby had told her that it had begun on her return to Woodleigh. Well, that must have been when she first found out. How she'd found out, Trix didn't know. But that was beside the mark. She evidently had found out.

Trix's mind ran back over various little incidents. She remembered the snub administered to Father Dormer the evening after her arrival. The new under-gardener had been the subject of conversation then, of course reminding Pia of the Hall. And she had snubbed Father Dormer, as she had snubbed Doctor Hilary a few minutes ago. All Pia's snubs and sudden prickles came back to her mind. They all had their origin in some inadvertent remark regarding the Hall.

Yes; everything was as clear as daylight now. Pia had learnt of this business in some roundabout way that did not allow of her speaking openly to Doctor Hilary on the subject, so she saw merely the fraud, and had no idea that it was, in all probability, an entirely justifiable one, and that at all events no one had told any deliberate lie. Of course Pia was disturbed and upset. Wouldn't she have been herself, in Pia's place? And hadn't she felt quite unreasonably unhappy till Mr. Danver had assured her that Doctor Hilary had not spoken a single word of actual untruth?

Oh, poor Pia!

Now, it was not in the least astonishing that Trix's mind should have leapt to this entirely erroneous conclusion. For the last fortnight it had been full of her discovery. The smallest thing that seemed to bear on it, instantly appeared actually to do so. And everything in her present train of thought fitted in with astonishing accuracy. Each little incident in Pia's late behaviour fell into place with it.

She did not stop to consider that, if this were the sole cause of Pia's trouble, she—Pia—was unquestionably taking a very exaggerated view of it. It never occurred to Trix to do so. If she had considered the matter at all, it would have been merely to realize that Pia's attitude towards it was remarkably like what her own would have been. She would have known, had she attempted analysis of the subject, that she herself was frequently troubled about trifles, or what at any rate would have appeared to others as trifles, where any friend of hers was concerned. Her friends' actions and her own, in what are ordinarily termed little things, mattered quite supremely to her, most particularly in any question regarding honour. The smallest infringement of it would be enough to cause her sleepless nights and anxious days. Therefore, without attempting any analysis, she could perfectly well understand what she believed Pia's point of view to be. And her present distress was, that, in view of her promise, she could do nothing definite to help her.