Half-way home they met Mrs. Marland and the whole affair had to be explained to her. Charlie essayed the task.

"Still, I don't see how you managed to upset the canoe," observed Mrs. Marland.

"No more do I," said Victor Sutton. Charlie gave it up.

"I'm so sorry, Millie," he whispered. "You must try to forgive me."

So, once again, the coast was left clear for Agatha Merceron, if she came that night. But, whether she did or not, the other Agatha came no more, and Charlie's great resolve went unfulfilled. Yet the next evening he went: alone to the temple, and he found, lying on the floor, a little handkerchief trimmed with lace and embroidered with the name of "Agatha." This he put in his pocket, thanking heaven that his desperate manoeuvre had kept the shrine inviolate the day before.

"Poor Millie!" said he. "But then I had to do it."

"I hear," remarked Lady Merceron a few days later, "that one of Mr. Prime's friends has left him—not Willie's young lady—the other."

"Has she?" asked Charlie.

No one pursued the subject, and, after a moment's pause, Mrs. Marland, who was sitting next to Charlie, asked him in a low voice whether he had been to the Pool that evening—.

"No," answered Charlie. "I don't go every night."

"Oh, poor dear Miss Bushell!" laughed Mrs. Marland; and, when Charlie looked inquiringly at her, she shook her head.

"You see, I know something of young men," she explained.



CHAPTER V

AN UNFORESEEN CASE

"I wish to goodness," remarked the Reverend Sigismund Taylor rubbing the bridge of his nose with a corner of the Manual, "that the Vicar had never introduced auricular confession. It may be in accordance with the practice of the Primitive Church, but—one does meet with such very curious cases. There's nothing the least like it, in the Manual."

He opened the book and searched its pages over again. No, the case had not been foreseen. It must be included in those which were "left to the discretion of the priest."

"It's a poor Manual," said Mr. Taylor, throwing it down and putting his hands in the pocket of his cassock. "Poor girl! She was quite distressed, too. I must have something to tell her when she comes next week."

Mr. Taylor had, in face of the difficulty, taken time to consider, and the penitent had gone away in suspense. To represent oneself as a dressmaker—well, there was nothing very outrageous in that; it was unbecoming, but venial, to tell sundry fibs by way of supporting the assumed character—the Manual was equal to that; but the rest of the disclosure was the crux. Wrong, no doubt, was the conduct—but how wrong? That made all the difference. And then there followed another question: What ought to be done? She had asked for advice about that also, and, although such counsel was not strictly incumbent on him, he felt that he ought not to refuse it. Altogether he was puzzled. At eight-and-twenty one cannot be ready for everything; yet she had implored him to consult nobody else, and decide for her himself. "I've such trust in you," she had said, wiping away an incipient teardrop; and, although Mr. Taylor told her that the individual was nothing and the Office everything, he had been rather gratified. Thinking that a turn in the open air might clear his brain and enable him better to grapple with this very thorny question, he changed his cassock for a long tailed coat, put on his wide awake, and, leaving the precincts of St. Edward Confessor, struck across Park Lane and along the Row. He passed several people he knew, both men and women: Mrs. Marland was there, attended by two young men, and, a little farther on, he saw old Lord Thrapston tottering along on his stick. Lord Thrapston hated a parson, and scowled at poor Mr. Taylor as he went by. Mr. Taylor shrank from meeting his eye, and hurried along till he reached the Serpentine, where he stood still for a few minutes, drinking in the fresh breeze. But the breeze could not blow his puzzle out of his brain. Was it a crime, or merely an escapade? What had she said to the young man? What had her feelings been or become towards the young man? Moreover, what had she caused the young man's feelings to be for her? When he came to think it over, Mr. Taylor discovered, with a shock of surprise, that on all these distinctly material points the confession had been singularly incomplete. He was ashamed of this, for, of course, it was his business to make the confession full and exhaustive. He could only plead that, at the moment, it had seemed thorough and candid—an unreserved revelation. Yet those points did, as a fact, remain obscure.

"I wish I knew a little more about human nature," sighed Mr. Taylor: he was thinking of one division of human nature, and it is likely enough that he knew next to nothing of it.

A hand clapped him on the shoulder, and, with a start, he turned round. A tall young man, in a new frock-coat and a faultless hat, stood by him, smiling at him.

"What, Charlie, old fellow!" cried Taylor; "where do you spring from?"

Charlie explained that he was up in town for a month or two.

"It's splendid to meet you first day! I was going to look you up," he said.

Sigismund Taylor and Charlie had been intimate friends at Oxford, although Charlie was, as time counts there, very considerably the junior. For the last two or three years they had hardly met.

"But what are you up for?"

"Oh, well, you see, my uncle wants me to get called to the Bar, or something, so I ran tip to have a look into it."

"Will that take a month?"

"Look here, old fellow, I've got nothing else to do—I don't see why I shouldn't stretch it to three months. Besides, I want to spend some time with my ancestors."

"With your ancestors?"

"In the British Museum: I'm writing a book about them. Queer lot some of them were, too. Of course I'm specially interested in Agatha Merceron; but I suppose you never heard of her."

Mr. Taylor confessed his ignorance, and Charlie, taking his arm, walked him up and down the bank, while he talked on his pet subject. Agatha Merceron was always interesting, and just now anything about the Pool was interesting; for there was one reason for his visit to London which he had not disclosed. Nettie Wallace had, when he met her one day, incautiously dropped a word which seemed to imply that the other Agatha was often in London. Nettie tried to recall her words; but the mischief was done, and Charlie became more than ever convinced that he would grow rusty if he stayed always at Langbury Court. In fact, he could suffer it no longer, and to town he went.

For a long while Sigismund Taylor listened with no more than average interest to Charlie's story, but it chanced that one word caught his notice.

"She comes out of the temple," said Charlie, in the voice of hushed reverence with which he was wont to talk of the unhappy lady.

"Out of where?" asked Mr. Taylor.

"The temple. Oh, I forgot, the temple is—" and Charlie gave a description which need not be repeated.

Temple! temple! Where had he heard of a temple lately? Mr. Taylor cudgelled his brains. Why—why—yes, she had spoken of a temple. She said they met in a temple. It was a strange coincidence: the word had struck him at the time. But then everybody knows that, at a certain period, it was common enough to put up these little classical erections as a memorial or merely as an ornament to pleasure-grounds. It must be a mere coincidence. But—Mr. Taylor stopped short.

"What's up?" asked Charlie, who had finished his narrative, and was now studying the faces of the ladies who rode past.

"Nothing," answered Mr. Taylor.

And really it was not much—taken by itself, entirely unworthy of notice; even taken in conjunction with the temple, of no real significance, that he could see. Still, it was a whimsical thing that, as had just struck him, Charlie's spectre should be named Agatha. But it came; to nothing: how could the name of Charlie's spectre have anything to do with that of his penitent?

Presently Charlie, too, fell into silence. He beat his stick moodily against his leg and looked glum and absent.

"Ah, well," he said at last, "poor Agatha was hardly used: she paid part of the debt we owe woman."

Mr. Taylor raised his brows and smiled at this gloomily misogynistic sentiment. He had the perception to grasp in a moment what it indicated. His young friend was, or had lately been, or thought he was likely to be, a lover, and an unhappy one. But he did not press Charlie. Confessions were no luxury to him.

Presently they began to walk back, and Charlie, saying he had to dine with Victor Button, made an appointment to see Taylor again, and left him, striking across the Row. Taylor strolled on, and, finding Mrs. Marland still in her seat, sat down by her. She was surprised and pleased to hear that Charlie was in town.

"I left him at home in deep dumps. You've never been to Langbury Court, have you?"

Taylor shook his head.

"Such a sweet old place! But, of course, rather dull for a young man, with nobody hut his mother and just one or two slow country neighbors."

"Oh, a run 'll do him good."

"Yes; he was quite moped;" and Mrs. Marland glanced at her companion. She wanted only a very little encouragement to impart her suspicions to him. It must, in justice to Mrs. Marland, be remembered that she had always found the simplest explanation of Charlie's devotion to the Pool hard to accept, and the most elaborate demonstration of how a Canadian canoe may be upset unconvincing.

"You're a great friend of his, aren't you?" pursued Mrs. Marland. "So I suppose there's no harm in mentioning my suspicions to you. Indeed, I daresay you could be of use to him—I mean, persuade him to be wise. I'm afraid, Mr. Taylor, that he is in some entanglement."

"Dear, dear!" murmured Mr. Taylor.

"Oh, I've no positive proof, but I fear so—and a very undesirable entanglement, too, with someone quite beneath him. Yes, I think I had better tell you about it."

Mr. Taylor sat silent and, save for a start or two, motionless while his companion detailed her circumstantial evidence. Whether it was enough to prove Mrs. Marland's case or not—whether, that is, it is inconceivable that a young man should go to any place fourteen evenings running, and upset a friend of his youth out of a canoe, except there be a lady involved, is perhaps doubtful; but it was more than enough to show Mr. Sigismund Taylor that the confession he had listened to was based upon fact, and that Charlie Merceron was the other party to those stolen interviews, into whose exact degree of heinousness he was now inquiring. This knowledge caused Mr. Taylor to feel that he was in an awkward position.

"Now," asked Mrs. Marland, "candidly, Mr. Taylor, can you suppose anything else than that our friend Charlie was carrying on a very pronounced flirtation with this dressmaker?"

"Dressmaker?"

"Her friend was, and I believe she was too. Something of the kind, anyhow."

"You—you never saw the—the other person?"

"No; she kept out of the way. That looks bad, doesn't it? No doubt she was a tawdry vulgar creature. But a man never notices that!"

At this moment two people were seen approaching. One of them was a man of middle height and perhaps five-and-thirty years of age; he was stout and thick-built; he had a fat face with bulging cheeks; his eyes were rather like a frog's; he leant very much forward as he walked, and swayed gently from side to side with a rolling swagger; and as his body rolled, his eye rolled too, and he looked this way and that with a jovial leer and a smile of contentment and amusement on his face. The smile and the merry eye redeemed his appearance from blank ugliness, but neither of them indicated a spiritual or exalted mind.

By his side walked a girl, dressed, as Mrs. Marland enviously admitted, as really very few women in London could dress, and wearing, in virtue perhaps of the dress, perhaps of other more precious gifts, an air of assured perfection and dainty disdain. She was listening to her companion's conversation, and did not notice Sigismund Taylor, with whom she was well acquainted.

"Dear me, who are those, I wonder?" exclaimed Mrs. Marland. "She's very distinguee."

"It's Miss Glyn," answered he.

"What—Miss Agatha, Glyn?"

"Yes," he replied, wondering whether that little coincidence as to the 'Agatha' would suggest itself to anyone else.

"Lord Thrapston's granddaughter?"

"Yes."

"Horrid old man, isn't he?"

"I know him very slightly."

"And the man—who's he?"

"Mr. Calder Wentworth."

"To be sure. Why, they're engaged, aren't they? I saw it in the paper."

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mr. Taylor, in a voice more troubled than the matter seemed to require. "I saw it in the paper too."

"He's no beauty, at any rate; but he's a great match, I suppose?"

"Oh, perhaps it isn't true."

"You speak as if you wished it wasn't. I've heard about Mr. Wentworth from Victor Sutton—you know who I mean?" and Mrs. Marland proceeded to give some particulars of Calder Wentworth's career.

Meanwhile that gentleman himself was telling Agatha Glyn a very humorous story. Agatha did not laugh. Suddenly she interrupted him.

"Why don't you ask me more about it?"

"I thought you'd tell me if you wanted me to know," he answered.

"You are the most insufferable man. Don't you care in the least what I do or where I go?"

"Got perfect confidence in you," said Calder politely.

"I don't deserve it."

"Oh, I daresay not; but it's so much more comfortable for me."

"I disappeared—simply disappeared—for a fortnight; and you've never asked where I went, or what I did, or—or anything."

"Haven't I? Where did you go?"

"I can't tell you."

"There, you see! What the dickens was the good of my asking?"

"If you knew what I did I suppose you'd never speak to me again."

"All right. Keep it dark then, please."

"For one tiling, I met—No, I won't."

"I never asked you to, you know."

They walked on a little way in silence.

"Met young Sutton at lunch," observed Calder. "He's been rusticating with some relations of old Van Merceron's. They've got a nice place apparently."

"I particularly dislike Mr. Sutton."

"All right. He sha'n't come when we're married. Eh? What?"

"I didn't speak," said Miss Glyn, who had certainly done something.

"Beg pardon," smiled Calder. "Victor told me rather a joke. It appears there's a young Merceron, and the usual rustic beauty, don't you know—forget the name—but a fat girl, Victor said, and awfully gone on young Merceron. Well, there's a pond or something——"

"How long will this story last?" asked Miss Glyn with a tragic air.

"It's an uncommon amusing one," protested Calder. "He upset her in the pond, and——"

"Do you mind finishing it some other time?"

"Oh, all right. Thought it'd interest you."

"It doesn't."

"Never knew such a girl! No sense of humor!" commented Calder, with a shake of his head and a backward roll of his eye towards his companion.

But it makes such a difference whether a story is new to the hearer.



CHAPTER VI

THERE WAS SOMEBODY

Two worlds and half a dozen industries had conspired to shower gold on Calder Wentworth's head. There was land in the family, brought by his grandmother; there was finance on the paternal side (whence came a Portuguese title, carefully eschewed by Calder); there had been a London street, half a watering-place, a South African mine, and the better part of an American railway. The street and the watering-place remained; the mine and the railway had been sold at the top of the market. About the same time the family name became Wentworth—it had been Stripes, which was felt to be absurd—and the family itself began to take an exalted place in society. The rise was the easier because, when old Mr. Stripes-Wentworth died, young Mr. Calder S. Wentworth became the only representative; and a rich young bachelor can rise lightly to heights inaccessible to the feet of less happily situated folk. It seemed part of Providence's benevolence that when Lady Forteville asked how many 'Stripes women' there were, the answer could be 'None'; whereupon the countess at once invited Mr. Calder Wentworth to dinner. Calder went, and rolled his frog's eyes with much amusement when the lady asked him to what Wentworths he belonged, for, as he observed to Miss Glyn, whom he had the pleasure of escorting, his Wentworths were an entirely new brand, and Lady Forteville knew it as well as if she had read the letters patent and invented the coat-of-arms.

"Mr. Wentworth—Mr. Merceron," said Victor Sutton, with a wave of his hand.

"I believe I know an uncle of yours—an uncommon clever fellow," said Calder, unfolding his napkin and glancing round the dining-room of the Themis Club.

"Oh, Uncle Van? Yes, we consider him our——"

"Leading article? Quite so. I've heard a bit about you too—something about a canoe, eh?"

Charlie looked somewhat disturbed.

"Oughtn't Sutton to have told me? Well, it's too late now because I've told half a dozen fellows."

"But there's nothing to tell."

"Well, I told it to old Thrapston—you don't know him, do you? Cunningest old boy in London. Upon my honor, you know, I shouldn't like to be like old Thrapston, not when I was getting old, you know. He's too——"

"Well, what did he say?" asked Victor.

"He said what you never had the sense to see, my boy; but I expect Mr. Merceron won't be obliged to me for repeating it."

"I should like to hear it," said Charlie, with necessary politeness.

"Well, it's not me, its old Thrapston; and if you say it's wrong, I'll believe yon. Old Thrapston—hang it, Victor, that old man ought to be hanged! Why, only the other day I saw him——"

"Do stick to the point," groaned Victor.

"All right. Well, he said, 'I'll lay a guinea there was a'—and he winked his sinful old eye, you know, for all the world like a what-d'ye-call-it in a cathedral one of those hideous—I say, what is the word, Victor? I saw 'em when Agatha took me—beg pardon, Merceron?"

Was the world full of Agathas? If so, it would be well not to start whenever one was mentioned. Charlie recovered himself.

"I think you must mean a gargoyle," he said, wondering who this Agatha might be.

"Of course I do. Fancy forgetting that! Gargoyle, of course. Well, old Thrapston said, 'I'll lay a guinea there was a woman in that dashed summer house, Calder, my boy.'"

Victor Button's eyes lighted with a gleam,

"Well, I'm hanged if I ever thought of that! Charlie, you held us all!"

"Bosh!" said Charlie Merceron. "There was no one there."

"All right. But there ought to have been, you know—to give interest to the position."

"Honor bright, Charlie?" asked Victor Sutton.

"Shut up, Sutton," interposed Calder, "He's not in the Divorce Court, Let's change the subject."

Charlie was in a difficulty, but the better course seemed to be to allow the subject to be changed, in spite of the wink that accompanied Calder's suggestion.

"All right," said Victor. "How is Miss Glyn, Wentworth?"

"Oh, she's all right. She's been in the country for a bit, but she's back now."

"And when is the happy event to be?"

Calder laid down his knife and fork and remarked deliberately:

"I haven't, my dear boy, the least idea."

"I should hurry her up," laughed Sutton.

"I'd just like—now I should just like to put you in my shoes for half an hour, and see you hurry up Agatha."

"She couldn't eat me."

"Eat you? No, but she'd flatten you out so that you'd go under that door and leave room for the jolly draught there is all the same."

Sutton laughed complacently.

"Well, you're a patient man," he observed. "For my part, I like a thing to be off or on."

It came to Charlie Merceron almost as a surprise to find that Victor's impudence—he could call it by no other name—was not reserved for his juniors or for young men from the country; but Calder took it quite good-humoredly, contenting himself with observing, "Well, it was very soon off in your case, wasn't it, old fellow?"

Sutton flushed.

"I've told you before that that's not true," he said angrily.

Calder laughed.

"All right, all right. We used to think, once upon a time, Merceron, you know, that old Victor here was a bit smitten himself; but he hasn't drugged my champagne yet, so of course, as he says, it was all a mistake."

After dinner the three separated. Victor had to go to a party. Calder Wentworth proposed to Charlie that they should take a stroll together with a view to seeing whether, when they came opposite to the door of a music-hall, they would 'feel like' dropping in to see part of the entertainment. Charlie agreed, and, having lit their cigars, they set out. He found his now friend amusing, and Calder, for his part, took a liking for Charlie, largely on account of his good looks; like many plain people, he was extremely sensitive to the influence of beauty in women and men alike.

"I say, old fellow," he said, pressing Charlie's arm as if he had known him all his life, "there was somebody in that summer-house, eh?"

Charlie turned with a smile and a blush. He felt confidential.

"Yes, there was, only Victor——"

"Oh, I know. I nearly break his head whenever he mentions any girl I like."

"You know what he'd have thought—and it wasn't anything like that really."

"Who was she, then?"

"I—I don't know."

"Oh, I don't mean her name, of course. But what was she?"

"I don't know."

"Where did she come from?"

"London, I believe."

"Oh! I say, that's a queer go, Merceron."

"I don't know what to think about it. She's simply vanished," said poor Charlie, and no one should wonder if his voice faltered a little. Calder Wentworth laughed at many things, but he did not laugh now at Charlie Merceron. Indeed he looked unusually grave.

"I should drop it," he remarked. "It don't look—well—healthy."

"Ah, you've never seen her," said Charlie.

"No, and I tell you what—it won't be a bad thing if you don't see her again."

"Why?"

"Because you're just in the state of mind to marry her."

"And why shouldn't I?"

Mr. Wentworth made no answer, and they walked on till they readied Piccadilly Circus. Then Charlie suddenly darted forward.

"Hullo, what's up?" cried Calder, following him.

Charlie was talking eagerly to a very smart young lady who had just got down from an omnibus.

"By Jove! he can't have found, her!" thought Calder.

It was not the unknown, but her friend Nettie Wallace, whom Charlie's quick eye had discerned; and the next moment Willie Prime made his appearance. Charlie received them both almost with enthusiasm, and the news from Lang Marsh was asked and given. Calder drew near, and Charlie presented his friends to one another with the intent that he might get a word with Nettie while Calder engrossed her fiances attention.

"Have—have you heard from Miss Brown lately?" he was just beginning, when Calder, who had been looking steadily at Nettie, burst out:

"Hullo, I say, Miss Wallace, we've met before, haven't we? You know me, don't you?"

Nettie laughed.

"Oh, yes, I know you, sir. You're—-"

She paused abruptly, and glanced from Charlie to Calder, and back from Calder to Charlie. Then she blushed very red indeed.

"Well, who am I?"

"I—I saw you at—at Miss Glyn's, Mr. Wentworth."

"'Course you did—that's it;" and, looking curiously at the girl's flushed face, he added: "Don't be afraid to mention Miss Glyn; Mr. Merceron knows all about it."

"All about it, does he, sir?" cried Nettie. "Well, I'm glad of that. I haven't been easy in my mind ever since."

Calder's conformation of eye enabled him to express much surprise by facial expression, and at this moment he used his power to the full.

"Awfully kind of you, Miss Wallace," said he, "but I don't see where your responsibility comes in. Ever since what?"

Nettie shot a glance of inquiry at Charlie, but here too she met only bewilderment.

"Does he know that Miss Glyn is—-" she began.

"Engaged to me? Certainly."

"Oh!"

Willie stood by in silence. He had never heard of this Miss Glyn. Charlie, puzzled as he was, was too intent on Miss Brown to spend much time wondering why Miss Glyn's affairs should have been a trouble to Nettie.

"You'll let me know if you hear about her, won't you?" he asked in a low voice.

Nettie gave up the hope of understanding. She shook her head.

"I'll ask her, if I see her, whether she wishes it," she whispered back; and, with a hasty good-night, she seized Willie's arm and hurried him off. Charlie was left alone with Calder.

"What the deuce did she mean?" asked Calder.

"I don't know," answered Charlie.

"Where did you meet her?"

"Oh, down at home. The fellow she was with is a son of a tenant of ours; she's going to marry him."

"She's a nice little girl, but I'm hanged if I know what she meant."

And, as the one was thinking exclusively of Agatha Glyn, and the other spared a thought for no one but Agatha Brown, they did not arrive at an explanation.

One result, however, that chance encounter had. The next morning Miss Agatha Glyn received a letter in the following terms:

"Madam:—I hope you will excuse me intruding, but I think you would wish to know that Mr. Charles Merceron is in London, and that I met him this evening with Mr. Wentworth. As you informed me that you had passed Mr. Merceron on the road two or three times during your visit to Lang Marsh, I think you may wish to be informed of the above. I may add that Mr. Merceron is aware that you are engaged to Mr. Wentworth, but I could not make out how far he was aware of what happened at Lang Marsh. I think he does not know it. Of course you will know whether Mr. Wentworth is aware of your visit there. I should be much obliged if you would be so kind as to tell me what to say if I meet the gentlemen again. Mr. Merceron is very pressing in asking me for news of you. I am to be married in a fortnight from the present date, and I am, Madam, yours respectfully, Nettie Wallace."

"In London, and with Calder!" exclaimed Agatha Glyn. "Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! What is to be done? I wish I'd never gone near the wretched place!"

Then she took up the letter and reread it.

"He and I mustn't meet, that's all," she said.

Then she slowly tore the letter into very small pieces and put them in the waste-paper basket.

"Calder has no idea where I was," she said, and she sat down by the window and looked out over the Park for nearly ten minutes.

"Ah, well! I should like to see him just once again. Dear old Pool." said she.

Then she suddenly began to laugh—an action only to be excused in one in her position, and burdened with her sins, by the fact of her having at the moment a peculiarly vivid vision of Millie Bushell going head first out of a canoe.



CHAPTER VII

THE INEVITABLE MEETING

The first Viscount Thrapston had been an eminent public character, and the second a respectable private person; the third had been neither. And yet there was some good in the third. He had loved his only son with a fondness rare to find; and for ten whole years, while the young man was between seventeen and twenty-seven, the old lord lived, for his sake, a life open to no reproach. Then the son died, leaving a lately married wife and a baby-girl, and Lord Thrapston, deprived at once of hope and of restraint, returned to his old courses, till age came upon him and drove him from practice into reminiscence. Mrs. Glyn had outlived her husband fifteen years and then followed him, fairly snubbed to death, some said, by her formidable father-in-law. The daughter was of sterner stuff, and early discovered for herself that nothing worse than a scowl or a snarl was to be feared. On her, indeed, descended a relic of that tenderness her father had enjoyed, and Agatha used to the full the advantages it gave her. She knew her own importance. It is not every girl who will be a peeress in her own right, and she amused her grandfather by calmly informing him that it was not on the whole a subject for regret that she had not been a boy. "You see," said she, "we get rid of the new viscounty, and it's much better to be Warmley than Thrapston."

The fact that she was some day to be 'Warmley' was the mainspring of that hairbrained jaunt to Lang Marsh in company with Nettie Wallace. Nettie was the daughter of Lord Thrapston's housekeeper, and the two girls had been intimate in youth, much as Charlie Merceron and Willie Prime had been at the Court; and when Nettie, scorning servitude, set up in life for herself, Agatha gave her her custom and did not withdraw her friendship. In return, she received an allegiance which refused none of her behests, and a regard which abolished all formality between them, except when Nettie got a pen in her hand and set herself to compose a polite letter. The expedition was, of course, to see the Court—the old home of the Warmleys, for which Agatha felt a sentimental attraction. She had told herself that some day, if she were rich (and, Lord Thrapston not being rich, she must have had some other resource in her mind), she would buy back Langbury Court and get rid of the Mercerons altogether. There were only a widow and a boy, she had heard, and they should have their price. So she went to the Court in the business-like mood of a possible purchaser (Calder could afford anything), as well as in the romantic mood of a girl escaped from every-day surroundings and plunging into a past full of interest to her. Had not she also read of Agatha Merceron? And in this mixed mood she remained till one evening at the Pool she had met 'the boy', when the mood became more mixed still. She dared not now look back on the struggles she had gone through before her meeting with the boy became first a daily event, and then the daily event. She had indulged herself for once. It was not to last; but for once it was overpoweringly sweet to be gazed at by eyes that did not remind her of a frog's, and to see swiftly darting towards her a lithe straight figure crowned with a head that (so she said) reminded her of Lord Byron's. But alas! alas! why had nobody told her that the boy was like that before she went? Why did her grandfather take no care of her? Why did Calder never show any interest in what she did? Why, in fine, was everybody so cruel as to let her do exactly what she liked, and thereby get into a scrape like this?

One thing was certain. If that boy were in London, she must avoid him. They must never meet. It was nonsense for Mr. Sigismund Taylor to talk of making a. clean breast of it—of a dignified apology to Charlie, coupled with a no less dignified intimation that their acquaintance must be regarded as closed. Mr. Taylor knew nothing of the world. He even wanted her to tell Calder! No. She was truly and properly penitent, and she hoped that she received all he said in that line in a right spirit; but when it came to a question of expediency, she would rather have Mrs. Blunt's advice than that of a thousand Mr. Taylors. So she wrote to Mrs. Blunt and asked herself to lunch, and Mrs. Blunt, being an accomplished painstaking hostess, and having no reason to suppose that her young friend desired a confidential interview, at once cast about for some one whom Agatha would like to meet. She did not ask Calder Wentworth—she was not so commonplace as that—but she invited Victor Sutton, and, delighting in a happy flash of inspiration, she added Mr. Vansittart Merceron. The families were connected in some way, she knew, and Agatha certainly ought to know Mr. Merceron.

Accordingly, when Agatha arrived, she found Victor, and she had not been there five minutes before the butler, throwing open the door, announced "Mr. Merceron."

Uncle Van had reached that state of body when he took his time over stairs, and between the announcement and his entrance there was time for Agatha to exclaim, quite audibly, "Oh!"

"What's the matter, dear?" asked Mrs. Blunt; but Uncle Van's entrance forbade a reply, and left Agatha blushing but relieved.

Was she never to hear the end of that awful story? It might be natural that, her hereditary connection with the Mercerons being disclosed, Mr. Vansittart should discourse of Langbury Court, of the Pool, and of Agatha Merceron; but was it necessary that Victor Sutton should chime in with the whole history of the canoe and Miss Bushell, or joke with Mr. Merceron about his nephew's 'assignations'? The whole topic seemed in bad taste, and she wondered that Mrs. Blunt did not discourage it. But what horrible creatures men were! Did they really think it impossible for a girl to like to talk to a man for an hour or so in the evening without——?

"You must let me bring my nephew to meet Miss Glyn," said Uncle Van graciously to his hostess. "She is so interested in the family history that she and Charlie would get on like wildfire. He's mad about it."

"In fact," sniggered Victor (Miss Glyn always detested that man), "so interested that, as you hear, he went to meet Agatha Merceron every evening for a fortnight!"

"You'll be delighted to meet him, won't you, Agatha? We must arrange a day," said Mrs. Blunt.

"Calder knows him," added Victor.

"He's an idle young dog," said Uncle Van, "but a nice fellow. A little flighty and fanciful, as boys will be, but no harm in him. You mustn't attach too much importance to our chaff about his meetings at the Pool, Miss Glyn; we don't mean any harm."

Agatha tried to smile, but the attempt was not a brilliant success. She stammered that she would be delighted to meet Mr. Charles Merceron, swearing in her heart that she would sooner start for Tierra del Fuego. But her confession to Mrs. Blunt would save her, if only these odious men would go. They had had their coffee, and their liqueurs, and their cigarettes. What more, in Heaven's name, could even a man want to propitiate the god of his idolatry?

Apparently the guests themselves became aware that they were trespassing, for Uncle Van, turning to his hostess with his blandest smile, remarked, "I hope we're not staying too long. The fact is, my dear Mrs. Blunt, you're always so kind that we took the liberty of telling Calder Wentworth to call for us here. He ought to have come by now."

Mrs. Blunt declared that she would be offended if they thought of going before Calder came. Agatha rose in despair: the confession must be put off. She held out her hand to her hostess. At this moment the door-bell rang.

"That's him," said Victor.

"Sit down again for a minute, dear," urged Mrs. Blunt.

There was renewed hope for the confession. Agatha sat down. But hardly had she done so before the strangest presentiment came over her. She heard the door below open and shut, and it was borne in upon her mind that two men had entered. How she guessed it, she could not tell, but, as she sat there, she had no doubt at all that Charlie Merceron had come with Calder Went worth. Escape was impossible, but she walked across to the window and stood there, with her back to the door.

"Mr. Wentworth!" she heard, and then, cutting the servant short, came Calder's voice.

"I took the liberty—-" he began: and she did not know how he went on, for her head was swimming.

"Agatha! Agatha, dear!" called Mrs. Blunt.

Perforce she turned, passing her hand quickly across her brow. Yes! It was so. There he stood by Calder's side, and Calder was saying, "My dear Agatha, this is Charlie Merceron."

She would not look at Charlie. She moved slowly forward, her eyes fixed on Calder, and bowed with a little set smile. Luckily people pay slight attention to one another's expressions on social occasions, or they must all have noticed her agitation. As it was, only Calder Wentworth looked curiously at her before he turned aside to shake hands with Uncle Van.

Then she felt Charlie Merceron coining nearer, and, a second later, she heard his voice.

"Is it possible that it's you?" he asked, in a low tone.

Then she looked at him. His face was pale and his eyes eagerly straining to read what might be in hers.

"Hush!" she whispered. "Yes. Hush! hush!"

"But—but he told me your name was Glyn?"

"Yes."

"And he says you're engaged to him."

Agatha clasped her hands, and Calder's voice broke in, between them: "Come along, Merceron, we're waiting for you."

"They've got into antiquities already," smiled Mrs. Blunt. "You must come again, Mr. Merceron, and meet Miss Glyn. Mustn't he, Agatha?"

Agatha threw one glance at him.

"If he will," she said.

Charlie pulled himself together, muttered something appropriate, and shuffled out tinder his uncle's wing. Mr. Vansittart was surprised to find him a trifle confused and awkward in society.

Outside the house, Charlie ranged up beside Calder "Wentworth, leaving Uncle Van and Sutton together.

"Well, what do you think of her?" asked Calder.

Charlie gave no opinion. He asked just one question:

"How long have you been engaged to her?"

"How long? Oh, let's see. About—yes, just about a year. I never knew that there was a sort of connection between you and her—sort of relationship, you know. I ain't strong on the Peerage."

"A sort of connection!" There was that in more senses than the one Calder had been told of by Uncle Van. There was a connection that poor Charlie thought Heaven itself had tied on those summer evenings by the Pool, which to strengthen and confirm forever he had sallied from his home, like a knight in search of his mistress the world over in olden days. And he found her—such as this girl must be! Stay! He did not know all yet. Perhaps she had been forced into a bond she hated. He knew that happened. Did not stories tell of it, and moralists declaim against it? This man—this creature, Calder Wentworth—was buying her with his money, forcing himself on her, brutally capturing her. Of course! How could he have doubted her? Charlie dropped Calder's arm as though it had been made of red-hot iron.

"Hullo!" exclaimed that worthy fellow, unconscious of offence.

Charlie stopped short. "I can't come," he said. "I—I've remembered an engagement;" and without more he turned away and shot out of sight round the nearest corner.

"Well, I'm hanged!" said Calder Wentworth, and, with a puzzled frown, he joined his other friends.



CHAPTER VIII

THE MORAL OF IT

Left alone with Mrs. Blunt, Agatha sank into the nearest chair.

"A very handsome young man, isn't he?" asked the good lady, pushing a chair back into its place. "He'll be an acquisition, I think."

Agatha made no answer, and Mrs. Blunt, glancing at her, found her devouring the carpet with a stony stare.

"What on earth's the matter, child?"

"I'm the wretchedest wickedest girl alive," declared Agatha.

"Good gracious!"

"Mrs. Blunt, who do you think was in the summer-house when Mr. Merceron went there?"

"My dear, are you ill? You jump about so from subject to subject."

"It's all one subject, Mrs. Blunt. There was a girl there."

"Well, my dear, and if there was? Boys will be boys; and I'm sure there was no harm."

"No harm! Oh!"

"Agatha, are you crazy?" demanded Mrs. Blunt, with an access of sternness.

"Could I fancy," pursued Agatha, in despairing playfulness mimicking Uncle Van's manner, "how Miss Bushell looked, and how Victor looked, and how everybody looked? Could I fancy it? Why, I was there!"

"There! Where?"

"Why, in that wretched little temple. I was the girl, Mrs. Blunt. I—I—I was the milkmaid, as Mr. Sutton says. I was the country wench! Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!"

Mrs. Blunt, knowing her sex, held out a bottle of salts.

"I'm not mad," said Agatha.

"You're nearly hysterical."

Agatha took a long sniff.

"I think I can tell you now," she said more calmly. "But was ever a girl in such an awful position before?"

It is needless to repeat what Mrs. Blunt said. Her censures will have been long ago anticipated by every right-thinking person, and if she softened them down a little more than strict justice allowed, it must have been because Agatha was an old favorite of hers, and Lord Thrapston an old antipathy. Upon her word, she always wondered that the poor child, brought up by that horrid old man, was not twice as bad as she was.

"But what am I to do about them?" cried Agatha.

'Them' evidently meant Calder and Charlie.

"Do! Why, there's nothing to do. You must just apologize to Mr. Merceron, and tell him that an end had better be put—"

"Oh, I know—Mr. Taylor said that; but, Mrs. Blunt, I don't want an end to be put to our acquaintance. I like him very very much. Oh, and he thinks me horrid! Oh!"

"Take another sniff," advised Mrs. Blunt, "Of course, if Mr. Merceron is willing to let bygones be bygones, and just be an acquaintance——"

"Oh, but I know he won't. If you knew Charlie

"Knew who, Agatha?"

"Mr. Merceron," said Agatha, in a very humble voice. "If you knew him at all, you'd know he wouldn't do that."

"Then you must send him about his business. Oh, yes, I know. You've treated him atrociously, but Calder Wentworth must be considered first; that is, if you care two straws for the poor fellow, which I begin to doubt."

"Oh, I do, Mrs. Blunt!"

"Agatha, you shameless girl, which of these men—-?"

"Don't talk as if there were a dozen of them, dear Mrs. Blunt. There are only two."

"One too many."

"Yes, I know. You—you see I'm—I'm accustomed to Calder."

"Oh, are you?"

"Yes. Don't be unkind, Mrs. Blunt. And then Charlie was something so new—such a charming change—that——"

"Upon my word, you might be your grandfather. Talk about heredity, and Ibsen, and all that!"

"Can't you help me, dear Mrs. Blunt?"

"I can't give you two husbands, if that's what you want. There, child, don't cry. Never mind me. Have another sniff."

"I shall go home," said Agatha. "Perhaps grandpapa may be able to advise me."

"Your grandfather! Gracious goodness, girl, you're never going to tell him?"

"Yes, I shall. Grandpapa's had a lot of experience: he says so."

"I should think he had!" whispered Mrs. Blunt with uplifted hands.

"Good-by, Mrs. Blunt. You don't know how unhappy I am. Thanks, yes, a hansom, please. Mrs. Blunt, are you going to ask Mr. Merceron here again?"

Mrs. Blunt's toleration was exhausted.

"Be off with you!" she said sternly, pointing a forefinger at the door.

By great good fortune Agatha found Lord Thrapston at home. Drawing a footstool beside his chair, she sat down. Her agitation was past, and she wore a gravely business like air.

"Grandpapa," she began, "I have got something to tell you."

"Go ahead, my dear," said the old gentleman, stroking her golden hair. Her father had curls like that when he was a boy.

"Something dreadful I've done, you know. But you won't be very angry, will you?"

"We'll see."

"You oughtn't to be, because you're not very good yourself, are you?" and she first glanced up into his burnt-out old eyes and then pressed her lips on his knotted lean old hand.

"Aggy," said he, "I expect you play the deuce with the young fellows, don't you?"

Agatha laughed softly, but a frown succeeded.

"That's just it," she said. "Now, you're to listen and not interrupt, or I shall never be able to manage it. And you're not to look at me, grandpapa."

The narrative—that thrice-told tale—began. As the comments of Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Blunt were omitted, those of Lord Thrapston may well receive like treatment, more especially as they tended not to edification; but before his granddaughter had finished her story the old man had sworn softly four times and chuckled audibly twice.

"I knew there was a girl in that temple, soon as Calder told me," said he.

"But you didn't know who it was. Oh, and Calder doesn't?"

"Not he. Well, you've made a pretty little fool of yourself, missie. What are you going to do now?"

"That's what you've got to tell me."

"I? Oh, I dare say. No, no; you got into the scrape and you can get out of it. And—-" He suddenly recollected his duties. "Look here, Agatha, I must—hang it, Agatha, I shouldn't be doing my duty as—as a grandfather if I didn't say that it's a monstrous disgraceful thing of you to have done. Yes, d——d disgraceful;" and he took a pinch of snuff with an air of severe virtue.

"Yes, dear; but you shouldn't swear, should you?"

Lord Thrapston felt that he had spoilt the moral effect of his reproof, and, without dwelling further on that aspect of the subject, he addressed his mind to the more practical question. The outcome, different as the source was, was the same old verdict.

"We must tell Calder, my dear. It isn't right to keep him in the dark."

"I can't tell him. Why must he be told?"

"Well," said Lord Thrapston, "it's just possible, Aggy, that he may have something to say to it, isn't it?"

"I don't mind what he says," declared Agatha.

"Eh? Why, I thought you were so fond of him."

"So I am."

"And as you're going to marry him

"I never said I was going to marry him. I only said he might be engaged to me, if he liked."

"Oho! So this young Merceron——"

"Not at all, grandpapa. Oh, I do wish somebody would help me!"

Lord Thrapston rose from his seat.

"You must do what you like," he said. "I'm going to tell Calder."

"Oh, why?"

"Because," he answered, "I'm a man of honor."

Before the impressive invocation of her grandfather's one religion, Agatha's opposition collapsed.

"I suppose he must be told," she admitted mournfully. "I expect he'll never speak to me again, and I'm sure Mr. Merceron won't;" and she sat on the footstool, the picture of dejection.

Lord Thrapston was moved to enunciate a solemn truth.

"Aggy," said he, shaking his finger at her, "in this world you can't have your fun for nothing." But then he spoilt it by adding regretfully, "More's the pity!" and off he hobbled to the club, intent on finding Calder Wentworth.

For some time after he went, Agatha sat on her stool in deep thought. Then she rose, sat down at the writing-table, took a pen, and began to bite the end of it. At last she started to write:

"I don't know whether I ought to write or not, but I must tell you how it happened. Oh, don't think too badly of me! I came down just because I had heard so much about the Court and I wanted to see it, and I came as I did with Nettie Wallace just for fun. I never meant to say I was a dress-maker, you know; but people would ask questions and I had to say something. I never, never thought of you. I thought you were about fifteen. And you know—oh, you must know—that I met you quite by accident, and was just as surprised as you were. And the rest was all your fault. I didn't want to come again; you know I refused ever so many times; and you promised you wouldn't come if I came, and then you did come. It was really all your fault. And I'm very, very sorry, and you must please try to forgive me, dear Mr. Merceron, and not think me a very wicked girl. I had no idea of coming every evening, but you persuaded me. You know you persuaded me. And how could I tell you I was engaged? You know you never asked me. I would have told you if you had. I am telling Mr. Wentworth all about it, and I don't think you ought to have persuaded me to meet you as you did. It wasn't really kind or nice of you, was it? Because, of course, I'm not very old, and I don't know much about the world, and I never thought of all the horrid things people would say. Do, please, keep this quite a secret. I felt I must write you just a line. I wonder what you're thinking about me, or whether you're thinking about me at all. You must never think of me again. I am very, very unhappy, and I do most earnestly hope, dear Mr. Merceron, that I have not made you unhappy. We were both very much to blame, weren't we? But we slipped into it without knowing. Good-by. I don't think I shall ever forget the dear old Pool, and the temple, and—the rest. But you must please forget me and forgive me. I am very miserable about it and about everything. I think we had better not know each other any more, so please don't answer this. Just put it in the fire and think no more about it or me. I wanted to tell you all this when I saw you to-day, but I couldn't. Good-by. Why did we ever meet?"

"Agatha Glyn."

She read this rather confused composition over twice, growing more sorry for herself each time. Then she put it in an envelope, addressed it to Charlie, looked out Uncle Van in the Directory, and sent it under cover to his residence. Then she went and lay down on the hearth-rug, and began to cry, and through her tears she said aloud to herself,

"I wonder whether he'll write or come."

Because it seemed to her entirely impossible that, in spite of her prayer, he should put the letter in the fire and let her go. Surely he too remembered the dear old Pool, and the temple, and—the rest!



CHAPTER IX

TWO MEN OF SPIRIT

"The fact is," observed Lord Thrapston complacently, "the girl very much resembles me in disposition."

Calder's eyes grew larger and rounder.

"Do you really think so?" he asked anxiously.

"Well, this little lark of hers—hang me, it's just what I should have enjoyed doing fifty years ago."

"Ah—er—Lord—Thrapston, have you noticed the resemblance you speak of in any other way?"

"That girl, except that she is a girl, is myself over again—myself over again."

"The deuce!"

"I beg your pardon, Calder; I grow hard of hearing."

"Nothing. Lord Thrapston. Look here, Lord Thrapston——"

"Well, well, my dear boy?"

"Oh, nothing; that is—"

"But she'll be all right in your hands, my boy. You must keep an eye; on her, don't you know: she'll need a bit o' driving; but I really don't see why you should come to grief. I don't, 'pon my soul. No. With tact on your part, you might very well pull through."

"How d'ye mean tact, Lord Thrapston?"

"Oh, amuse her. Let her travel; give her lots of society; don't bother her with domestic affairs. Don't let her feel she's under any obligation. That's what she kicks against. So do I; always did."

Calder pulled his mustache. Lord Thrapston had briefly sketched the exact opposite of his ideal of married life.

"The fact is," continued the old man, "the boy's an uncommon handsome boy. She can't resist that. No more can I; never could."

There chanced to be a mirror opposite Calder, and he impartially considered himself. There was, he concluded, every prospect of Miss Glyn resisting any engrossing passion for him.

"It's very good of you to have told, me all about it," he remarked, rising. "I'll think it over."

"Yes, do. Of course, I admit she's given you a perfectly good reason for breaking off your engagement if you like. Mind that. We don't feel aggrieved, Calder. Act as you think best. We admit we're in the wrong, but we must stand by what we've done."

"I shouldn't like to give her any pain—"

"Pain! Oh, dear me, no, my dear boy. She won't fret. Make your mind easy about that."

Calder felt a sudden impulse to disclose to Lord Thrapston his secret opinion of him, and he recollected, with a pang, that in the course of so doing he would have to touch on more than one characteristic shared by the old man and Agatha. Where were his visions of a quiet home in the country, of freedom from the irksome duties of society, of an obedient and devoted wife, surrounded by children and flanked by jampots? He had once painted this picture for Agatha, shortly after she had agreed to that arrangement which she declined to call a promise of marriage; and it occurred to him now that she had allowed the subject to drop without any expression of concurrence. He took leave of Lord Thrapston and went for a solitary walk. He wanted to think. But the position of affairs was such that other persons also felt the need of reflection, and Calder had not been walking by the Row very long before, lifting his eyes, he saw a young man approaching. The young man was not attired as he ought to have been: he wore a light suit, a dissolute necktie, and a soft wideawake crammed down low on his head. He had obviously forsworn the vanities of the world and was wearing the willow. He came up to Calder and held out his hand.

"Wentworth," he said, "I left you rudely the other day. I was doing you an injustice. I have heard the truth from Mrs. Blunt. You are free from all blame. We—we are fellow-sufferers."

His tones were so mournful that Calder shook his hand with warm sympathy, and remarked, "Pretty rough, on us both, ain't it?"

"For me," declared Charlie, "everything is over. My trust in woman is destroyed; my pleasure in life is—"

"Well, I don't feel A1 myself, old chap," said Calder.

"I have written to—to her, to say good-by."

"No, have yon, though?"

"What else could I do? Wentworth, do you suppose that, even if she was free, I would think of her for another moment? Can there be love where there is no esteem, no trust, no confidence?"

"I was just thinking that when you came up," said Calder.

"No, at whatever cost, I—every self-respecting man—must consider first of all what he owes to his name, to his family, to his—Wentworth, to his unborn children."

Calder nodded.

"You, of course," pursued Charlie, "will be guided by your own judgment. As to that, the circumstances seal my lips."

"I don't like it, you know," said Calder.

"As regards you, she may or may not have excuses. I don't know; but she wilfully and grossly deceived me. I have done with her."

"Gad, I believe you're right, Merceron, old chap! A chap ought to stand up for himself, by Jove! You'd never feel safe with her, would you, by Jove?"

"Good-by," said Charlie suddenly. "I leave Paddington by the 4.15."

"Where are you off to?"

"Hell—I mean home," answered Charlie.

Calder beat his stick against his leg.

"I can't stay here either," he said moodily.

Charlie stretched out his hand again.

"Come with me," said he.

"Eh? what?"

"Come with me; we'll forget her together."

Calder looked at him.

"Well, you are a good chap. Dashed if I don't. Yes, I will. We'll enjoy ourselves like thunder. But I say, Merceron, I—I ought to write to her, oughtn't I?"

"I am just going to write myself."

"To—to say good-by, eh?"

"Yes."

"I shall write and break it off."

"Come along. We'll go to your rooms and got the thing done, and then catch the train. My luggage is at the station now."

"It won't take me a minute to get mine."

"Wentworth, I'm glad to be rid of her."

"All—oh, well—so am I," said Calder.

Late that evening the butler presented Miss Agatha Glyn with two letters on a salver. As her eye fell on the addresses, she started. Her heart began to beat. She sat and looked at the two momentous missives.

"Now which," she thought, "shall I read first? And what shall I do, if they are both obstinate?"

There was another contingency which Miss Glyn did not contemplate.

After a long hesitation, she took up Charlie's letter, and opened it. It was very short, and began abruptly without any words of address:

"I have received your letter. Your excuses make it worse. I could forgive everything except deceit. I leave London to-day. Good-by.—C. M."

"Deceit!" cried Agatha. "How dare he? What a horrid boy!"

She was walking up and down the room in a state of great indignation. She had never been talked to like that in her life before. It was ungentlemanly, cruel, brutal. She flung Charlie's letter angrily down on the table.

"I am sure poor dear old Calder won't treat me like that!" she exclaimed, taking up his letter.

It ran thus: "My dear Agatha:—I hope you will believe that I write this without any feeling of anger towards you. My regard for you remains very great, and I hope we shall always be very good friends; but, after long and careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the story Lord Thrapston told, me shows conclusively what I have been fearing for some time past—namely, that I have not been so lucky as to win a real affection from you, and that we are not likely to make one another happy. Therefore, thanking you very much for your kindness in the past, I think I had better restore your liberty to you. I shall hear with, very great pleasure of your happiness. I leave town to day for a little while, in order that you may not be exposed to the awkwardness of meeting me.

"Always your most sincerely,

"Calder Wentworth."

Agatha passed her hand across her brow; then she reread Calder's letter, and then Charlie's. Yes, there, was not the least doubt about it! Both of the gentlemen had well, what they had done did not admit of being put into tolerable words. With a little shriek, Agatha flung herself on the sofa.

The door opened and Lord Thrapston entered.

"Well, Aggy, what's the news? Still bothered by your two young men? Hullo! what's wrong?"

"Read them!" cried Agatha, with a gesture towards the table.

"Eh? Head what? Oh, I see."

He sat down at the table and put on his glasses. Agatha turned her face towards the wall; for her also everything was over. For a time no sound was audible save an occasional crackle of the note-paper in Lord Thrapston's shaking fingers. Then, to Agatha's indescribable indignation, there came another sort of crackle—a dry, grating, derisive chuckle—from that flinty-hearted old man, her grandfather.

"Good, monstrous good, 'pon my life!" said he.

"You're laughing at me!" she cried, leaping up.

"Well, my dear, I'm afraid I am."

"Oh, how cruel men are!"

"H'm! They're both men of spirit evidently."

"Calder I can just understand. I—perhaps I did treat Calder rather badly—-"

"Oh, you go so far as to admit that, do you, Aggy?"

"But Charlie! Oh, to think that Charlie should treat me like that!" and she threw herself on the sofa again.

Lord Thrapston sat quite still. Presently Agatha rose, came to the table, and took up her two letters. She looked at them both; and the old man, seeming to notice nothing, yet kept his eye on her.

"I shall destroy these things," said she; and she tore Calder's letter into tiny fragments, and flung them on the fire. Charlie's she crumpled up and held in her hand.

"Good-night, grandpapa," she said wearily, and kissed him.

"Good-night, my dear," he answered.

And, whatever she did when she went upstairs, Lord Thrapston was in a position to swear that Charlie's letter was not destroyed in the drawing-room.



CHAPTER X

THE INCARNATION OF LADY AGATHA

"She's such a dear good girl, Mr. Wentworth," said Lady Merceron. "She's the greatest comfort I have."

It was after luncheon at Langbury Court. Lady Merceron and Calder sat on the lawn: Mrs. Marland and Millie Bushell were walking up and down; Charlie was lying in a hammock. A week had passed since the two young men had startled Lady Merceron by their unexpected arrival, and since then the good lady had been doing her best to entertain them; for, as she could not help noticing-, they seemed a little dull. It was a great change from the whirl of London to the deep placidity of the Court, and Lady Merceron could not quite understand why Charlie had tired so soon of his excursion, or why his friend persisted with so much fervor that anything was better than London, and the Court was the most charming place he had ever seen. Of the two Charlie seemed to feel the ennui much the more severely. Yet, while Mr. Wentworth spoke of returning to town in a few weeks, Charlie asseverated that he had paid his last visit to that revolting and disappointing place. Lady Merceron wished she had Uncle Van by her side to explain these puzzling inconsistencies. However, there was a bright side to the affair: the presence of the young men was a godsend to poor Millie, who, by reason of the depressed state of agriculture, had been obliged this year to go without her usual six weeks of London in the season.

"And she never grumbles about it," said Lady Merceron admiringly. "She looks after her district, and takes a ride, and plays tennis, when she can get a game, poor girl, and is always cheerful and happy. She'd be a treasure of a wife to any man."

"You'd better persuade Charlie of that, Lady Merceron."

"Oh, Charlie never thinks of such a thing as marrying. He thinks of nothing but his antiquities."

"Doesn't he?" asked Calder, with apparent sympathy and a covert sad amusement.

"Mr. Wentworth," said Mrs. Marland, approaching, "I believe it's actually a fact that you've been here a week and have never yet been to the Pool."

At this fateful word, Calder looked embarrassed, Charlie raised his head from the hammock, and Millie glanced involuntarily towards him.

"We must take you," pursued Mrs. Marland, "this very evening. You'll come, Miss Bushell?"

"I don't think I care very much about the Pool," said Millie.

"We won't let Mr. Merceron take you in his canoe this time."

Charlie rolled out of the hammock and came up to them.

"You must take us to the Pool. I don't believe you've been there since you came back. Poor Agatha will quite—-"

"Agatha?" exclaimed Calder.

"Agatha Merceron, you know. Why, haven't you heard—-?"

"Oh, ah! Yes, of course. I beg your pardon."

"I hate that beastly Pool," said Charlie.

"How can you?" smiled Mrs. Marland. "You used to spend hours there every evening."

Charlie glanced uneasily at Calder, who turned very red.

"Times have changed, have they?" Mrs. Marland asked archly. "You've got tired of looking in vain for Agatha?"

"Oh, all right," said Charlie crossly, "we'll go after tea."

Anything seemed better than this rallying mood of Mrs. Marland's.

Presently the two young men went off together to play a game at billiards; but after half a dozen strokes Charlie plumped down in a chair.

"I say, Calder, old chap, how do you feel?" he asked.

Calder licked his cigar meditatively.

"Better," said he at last.

"Oh!"

"And you?"

"Worse—worse every day. I can't stand it, old chap. I shall go back."

"What, to her?"

"Yes."

"That's hardly sticking to our bargain, you know."

"But, hang it, what's the good of our both cutting her?"

"Oh, I thought you did it because you were disgusted with her. That was my reason."

"So it was mine, but—-"

"Probably she's got some other fellow by now," observed Calder calmly.

"The devil!" cried Charlie. "What makes you think so?"

"Oh, nothing. I know her way, you see."

"You think she's that sort of girl? Good heavens!"

"Well, if she wasn't, I'd like to know where you'd be, my friend. I shouldn't have the honor of your acquaintance."

Charlie ignored this point.

"And yet you wanted, to marry her?"

"I dare say I was an ass—like better men before me and—er—since me."

"Hang it!" cried Charlie. "I'm sick of the whole thing. I'm sick of life. I'm sick of all the nonsense of it. For two straws I'd have done with it, and marry Millie Bushell."

"What! Look here, Charlie—"

Calder left his sentence unfinished.

"Well?" said Charlie.

"If," said Calder slowly, "there are any girls, either down here or in London, whom you're quite sure you'll never want to marry, I should like to be introduced to one of 'em, Charlie, if you've no objections."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, in fact, during this last week, Charlie, I have come to have a great esteem for Miss Bushell. There's about her a something—a solidity—-"

"She can't help that, poor girl."

"A solidity of mind," said Calder, a little stiffly.

"Oh, I beg pardon. But I say, Calder, what are you driving at?"

"Charlie! Charlie!" sounded from outside. "Tea's ready."

Calder rose and took Charlie by the arm.

"Should I be safe," he asked solemnly, "in allowing myself to fall in love with Miss Bushell, or are you likely to step in again?"

"You mean it? Honor bright, Calder?"

"Yes."

"Where's Bradshaw? By Jove, where's Bradshaw?"

"Bradshaw? What the devil has Bradshaw——?"

"Why, a train, man—a train to town."

"I don't want to go to town, bless the man—-"

"You! No, but I do. To town, Calder—to Agatha, you old fool."

"Oh, that's your lay?"

"Yes, of course. I couldn't go back on you, but if you're off—-"

"Charlie, old fellow, think again."

"Go to the deuce! Where's that—-?"

"Charlie, Charlie! Tea!"

"Hang tea!" he cried; but Calder dragged him off, telling him that to-morrow would do for Bradshaw.

At tea Charlie's spirits were very much better, and it was observed that Calder Wentworth paid marked attention to Millie Bushell, so that, when they started for the Pool, Millie was prevailed upon to be one of the party, on the understanding that Mr. Went worth would take care of her. This time the expedition went off more quietly than it had previously, but at the last moment the ladies declared that they would, be late for dinner if they waited till it was time for Agatha Merceron to come.

"Oh, nonsense!" said Calder. "Come over to the temple, Miss Bushell. I won't upset the canoe."

"Well, if you insist," said Millie.

Then Mrs. Marland remarked in the quietest voice in the world—-

"There's some one in the temple."

"What?" cried Millie.

"Eh?" exclaimed Calder.

"Nonsense!" said Charlie.

"I saw a face at the window," insisted Mrs. Marland.

"Oh, Mrs. Marland! Was it very awful?"

"Not at all, Millie—very pretty," and she gave Charlie a look full of meaning.

"Look, look!" cried Millie in strong agitation.

And, as they looked, a slim figure in white came quietly out of the temple, a smile—and, alas! no vestige of a blush—on her face, walked composedly down the steps, and, standing on the lowest one, thence—did not throw herself into the water—but called, in the most natural voice in the world, "Which of you is coming to fetch me?"

Charlie looked at Calder. Calder said,

"I think you'd better put her across, old man. And—er—we might as well walk on."

They turned away, Millie's eyes wide in surprise, Mrs. Marland smiling the smile of triumphant sagacity.

"I was coming to you to-morrow," cried Charlie the moment his canoe bumped against the stops.

"What do you mean, sir, by staying away a whole week? How could you?"

"I don't know," said Charlie. "You see, I couldn't come till Calder——

"Oh, what about Calder?"

"He's all right."

"What? Miss—the girl you upset out of the canoe?"

"I think so," said Charlie.

"Ah, well!" said Agatha. "But how very curious!" Then she smiled at Charlie, and asked, "But what love can there be, Mr. Merceron, where there is deceit?"

Charlie took no notice at all of this question.

"Do you mind Calder going?" he whispered.

"Well, not much," said Miss Glyn.

Thus it was that the barony of Warmley returned to the house of Merceron, and the portrait of the wicked lord came to hang once more in the dining-room. So the curtain falls on the comedy; and what happened afterwards behind the scenes, whether another comedy, or a tragedy, or a mixed half-and-half sort of entertainment, now grave, now gay, sometimes perhaps delightful, and again of tempered charm—why, as to all this, what reck the spectators who are crowding out of the theatre and home to bed?

But it seems as if, in spite of certain drawbacks in Agatha Merceron's character, nothing very dreadful can have happened, because Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth, who are very particular folk, went to stay at the Court the other day, and their only complaint was that Charlie and his bride were always at the Pool!

And, for his own part, if he may be allowed a word (which some people say he ought not to be) here, just at the end, the writer begs to say that he once knew Agatha, and—he would have taken the risks. However, a lady to whom he has shown this history differs entirely from him, and thinks that no sensible man would have married her. But, then, that is not the question.



THE CURATE OF POLTONS

I must confess at once that at first, at least, I very much admired the curate. I am not referring to my admiration of his fine figure—six feet high and straight as an arrow—nor of his handsome, open, ingenuous countenance, or his candid blue eye, or his thick curly hair. No; what won my heart from an early period of my visit to my cousins, the Poltons of Poltons Park, was the fervent, undisguised, unashamed, confident, and altogether matter-of-course manner in which he made love to Miss Beatrice Queenborough, only daughter and heiress of the wealthy shipowner Sir Wagstaff Queenborough, Bart., and Eleanor his wife. It was purely the manner of the curate's advances that took my fancy: in the mere fact of them there was nothing remarkable. For all the men in the house (and a good many outside) made covert. stealthy, and indirect steps in the same direction; for Trix (as her friends called her) was, if not wise, at least pretty and witty, displaying to the material eye a charming figure, and to the mental a delicate heartlessness—both attributes which challenge a self-respecting mans best efforts. But then came the fatal obstacle. From heiresses in reason a gentleman need neither shrink nor let himself be driven; but when it comes to something like twenty thousand a year—the reported amount of Trix's dot—he distrusts his own motives almost as much as the lady's relatives distrust them for him. We all felt this—Stanton, Rippleby, and I; and, although I will not swear that we spoke no tender words and gave no meaning glances, yet we reduced such concessions to natural weakness to a minimum, not only when Lady Queenborough was by, but at all times. To say truth, we had no desire to see our scalps affixed to Miss Trix's pretty belt, nor to have our hearts broken (like that of the young man in the poem) before she went to Homburg in the autumn. With the curate it was otherwise. He—Jack Ives, by the way, was his name—appeared to rush, not only upon his fate, but in the face of all possibility and of Lady Queenborough. My cousin and hostess, Dora Polton, was very much distressed about him. She said that he was such a nice young fellow, and that it was a great pity to see him preparing such unhappiness for himself. Nay, I happen to know that she spoke very seriously to Trix, pointing out the wickedness of trifling with him; whereupon Trix, who maintained a bowing acquaintance with her conscience, avoided him for a whole afternoon and endangered all Algy Stanton's prudent resolutions by taking him out in the Canadian canoe. This demonstration in no way perturbed the curate. He observed that, as there was nothing better to do, we might as well play billiards, and proceeded to defeat me in three games of a hundred up (no, it is quite immaterial whether we played for anything or not), after which he told Dora that the vicar was taking the evening service—it happened to be the day when there was one at the parish church—a piece of information only relevant in so far as it suggested that Mr. Ives could accept an invitation to dinner if one were proffered to him. Dora, very weakly, rose to the bait; Jack Ives, airily remarking that there was no use in ceremony among friends, seized the place next to Trix at dinner (her mother was just opposite) and walked on the terrace after dinner with her in the moonlight. When the ladies retired he came into the smoking-room, drank a whiskey-and-soda, said that Miss Queenborough was really a very charming companion, and apologized for leaving us early on the ground that his sermon was still unwritten. My good cousin, the squire, suggested rather grimly that a discourse on the vanity of human wishes might be appropriate.

"I shall preach." said Mr. Ives thoughtfully, "on the opportunities of wealth."

This resolution he carried out on the next day but one, that being a Sunday. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Miss Trix, and I watched her with some interest as Mr. Ives developed his theme. I will not try to reproduce the sermon, which would have seemed by no means a bad one, had any of our party been able to ignore the personal application which we read into it: for its main burden was no other than this—that wealth should be used by those who were fortunate enough to possess it (here Trix looked down and fidgeted with her prayer-book) as a means of promoting greater union between themselves and the less richly endowed, and not—as, alas, had too often been the case—as though it were a new barrier set up between them and their fellow—creatures. (Here Miss Trix blushed slightly, and had recourse to her smelling-bottle.) "You," said the curate, waxing rhetorical as he addressed an imaginary, but bloated, capitalist, "have no more right to your money than I have. It is intrusted to you to be shared with me." At this point I heard Lady Queenborough sniff, and Algy Stanton snigger. I stole a glance at Trix and detected a slight waver in the admirable lines of her mouth.

"A very good sermon, didn't you think?" I said to her, as we walked home.

"Oh, very, she replied demurely.

"Ah, if we followed all we heard in church!" I sighed.

Miss Trix walked in silence for a few yards. By dint of never becoming anything else, we had become very good friends; and presently she remarked, quite confidentially, "He's very silly, isn't he?"

"Then you ought to snub him," said I, severely.

"So I do—sometimes. He's rather amusing, though.

"Of course, if you're prepared to make the sacrifice involved—-"

"Oh, what nonsense!"

"Then you've no business to amuse yourself with him."

"Dear, dear! how moral you are!" said Trix.

The next development in the situation was this. My cousin Dora received a letter from the Marquis of Newhaven, with whom she was acquainted, praying her to allow him to run down to Poltons for a few days: he reminded her that she had once given him a general invitation: if it would not be inconvenient—and so forth. The meaning of this communication did not, of course, escape my cousin, who had witnessed the writers attentions to Trix in the preceding season, nor did it escape the rest of us (who had talked over the said attentions at the club) when she told us about it, and announced that Lord Newhaven would arrive in the middle of next day. Trix affected dense unconsciousness; her mother allowed herself a mysterious smile—which, however, speedily vanished when the curate (he was taking lunch with us) observed in a cheerful tone, "Newhaven! oh, I remember the chap at the House—ploughed twice in Smalls—stumpy fellow, isn't he? Not a bad chap, though, you know, barring his looks. I'm glad he's coming."

"You won't be soon, young man," Lady Queenborough's angry eye seemed to say.

"I remember him," pursued Jack, "awfully smitten with a tobacconist's daughter in the Corn—oh, it's all right, Lady Queenborough—she wouldn't look at him."

This quasi-apology was called forth by the fact of Lady Queenborough pushing back her chair and making for the door. It did not at all appease her to hear of the scorn of the tobacconist's daughter. She glared sternly at Jack, and disappeared. He turned to Trix and reminded her—without diffidence and coram populo, as his habit was, that she had promised him a stroll in the west wood.

What happened on that stroll I do not know; but meeting Miss Trix on the stairs later in the afternoon, I ventured to remark, "I hope you broke it to him gently, Miss Queenborough?"

"I don't know what you mean," replied Trix, haughtily.

"You were out nearly two hours," said I.

"Were we?" asked Trix with a start. "Good gracious! Where was mamma, Mr. Wynne?"

"On the lawn—watch in hand."

Miss Trix went slowly upstairs, and there is not the least doubt that something serious passed between her and her mother, for both of them were in the most atrocious of humors that evening; fortunately the curate was not there. He had a Bible class.

The next day Lord Newhaven arrived. I found him on the lawn when I strolled up, after a spell of letter-writing, about four o'clock. Lawn-tennis was the order of the day, and we were all in flannels.

"Oh, here's Mark," cried Dora, seeing me.

"Now, Mark, you and Mr. Ives had better play against Trix and Lord Newhaven. That'll make a very good set."

"No, no, Mrs. Polton," said Jack Ives. "They wouldn't have a chance. Look here, I'll play with Miss Queenborough against Lord Newhaven and Wynne."

Newhaven—whose appearance, by the way, though hardly distinguished, was not quite so unornamental as the curate had led us to expect—looked slightly displeased, but Jack gave him no time for remonstrance. He whisked Trix off, and began to serve all in a moment. I had a vision of Lady Queenborough approaching from the house with face aghast. The set went on; and, owing entirely to Newhaven's absurd chivalry in sending all the balls to Jack Ives instead of following the well-known maxim to "pound away at the lady," they beat us. Jack wiped his brow, strolled up to the tea-table with Trix, and remarked in exultant tones:

"We make a perfect couple, Miss Queenborough; we ought never to be separated."

Dora did not ask the curate to dinner that night, but he dropped in about nine o'clock to ask her opinion as to the hymns on Sunday; and finding Miss Trix and Newhaven in the small drawing-room he sat down and talked to them. This was too much for Trix; she had treated him very kindly and had allowed him to amuse her; but it was impossible to put up with presumption of that kind. Difficult as it was to discourage Mr. Ives, she did it, and he went away with a disconsolate, puzzled expression. At the last moment, however, Trix so far relented as to express a hope that he was coming to tennis to-morrow, at which he brightened up a little. I do not wish to be uncharitable—least of all to a charming young lady—but my opinion is that Miss Trix did not wish to set the curate altogether adrift. I think, however, that Lady Queenborough must have spoken again, for when Jack did come to tennis, Trix treated him with the most freezing civility and a hardly disguised disdain, and devoted herself to Lord Newhaven with as much assiduity as her mother could wish. We men, over our pipes, expressed the opinion that Jack Ives's little hour of sunshine was passed, and that nothing was left to us but to look on at the prosperous uneventful course of Lord Newhaven's wooing. Trix had had her fun (so Algy Stanton bluntly phrased it) and would now settle down to business.

"I believe, though," he added, "that she likes the curate a bit, you know."

During the whole of the next day—Wednesday—Jack Ives kept away; he had, apparently, accepted the inevitable, and was healing his wounded heart by a strict attention to his parochial duties. Newhaven remarked on his absence with an air of relief; and Miss Trix treated it as a matter of no importance; Lady Queenborough was all smiles; and Dora Polton restricted herself to exclaiming, as I sat by her at tea, in a low tone and a propos of nothing in particular, "Oh, well—poor Mr. Ives!"

But on Thursday there occurred an event, the significance of which passed at the moment unperceived, but which had, in fact, most important results. This was no other than the arrival of little Mrs. Wentworth, an intimate friend of Dora's. Mrs. Wentworth had been left a widow early in life; she possessed a comfortable competence; she was not handsome, but she was vivacious, amusing, and, above all, sympathetic. She sympathized at once with Lady Queenborough in her maternal anxieties, with Trix on her charming romance, with Newhaven on his sweet devotedness, with the rest of us in our obvious desolation—and, after a confidential chat with Dora; she sympathized most strongly with poor Mr. Ives on his unfortunate attachment. Nothing would satisfy her, so Dora told me, except the opportunity of plying Mr. Ives with her soothing balm; and Dora was about to sit down and write him a note, when he strolled in through the drawing-room window, and announced that his cooks mother was ill, and that he should be very much obliged if Mrs. Polton would give him some dinner that evening. Trix and Newhaven happened to enter by the door at the same moment, and Jack darted up to them, and shook hands with the greatest effusion. He had evidently buried all unkindness—and with it, we hoped, his mistaken folly. However that might be, he made no effort to engross Trix, but took his seat most docilely by his hostess—and she, of course, introduced him to Mrs. Wentworth. His behavior, was, in fact, so exemplary, that even Lady Queenborough relaxed her severity, and condescended to cross-examine him on the morals and manners of the old women of the parish. "Oh, the Vicar looks after them," said Jack; and he turned to Mrs. Wentworth again.

There can be no doubt that Mrs. Wentworth had a remarkable power of sympathy. I took her into dinner, and she was deep in the subject of my "noble and inspiring art," before the soup was off the table. Indeed, I'm sure that my life's ambitions would have been an open book to her by the time that the joint arrived, had not Jack Ives, who was sitting on the lady's other side, cut into the conversation just as Mrs. Wentworth was comparing my early struggles with those of Mr. Carlyle. After this intervention of Jack's I had not a chance. I ate my dinner without the sauce of sympathy, substituting for it a certain amusement which I derived from studying the face of Miss Trix Queenborough, who was placed on the opposite side of the table. And if Trix did look now and again at Mrs. Wentworth and Jack Ives, I cannot say that her conduct was unnatural. To tell the truth, Jack was so obviously delighted with his new friend that it was quite pleasant—and, as I say, under the circumstances, rather amusing—to watch them. We felt that the Squire was justified in having a hit at Jack when Jack said, in the smoking-room, that he found himself rather at a loss for a subject for his next sermon.

"What do you say," suggested my cousin, puffing at his pipe, "to taking constancy as your text?"

Jack considered the idea for a moment, but then he shook his head.

"No. I think," he said, reflectively, "that I shall preach on the power of sympathy."

That sermon afforded me—I must confess it, at the risk of seeming frivolous—very great entertainment. Again I secured a place by Miss Trix—on her left, Newhaven being on her right, and her face was worth study when Jack Ives gave us a most eloquent description of the wonderful gift in question. It was, he said, the essence and the crown of true womanliness, and it showed itself—well, to put it quite plainly, it showed itself, according to Jack Ives, in exactly that sort of manner and bearing which so honorably and gracefully distinguished Mrs. Wentworth. The lady was not, of course, named, but she was clearly indicated. "Your gift, your precious gift," cried the curate, apostrophizing the impersonation of sympathy, "is given to you, not for your profit, but for mine. It is yours, but it is a trust to be used for me. It is yours, in fact, to share with me." At this climax, which must have struck upon her ear with a certain familiarity, Miss Trix Queenborough, notwithstanding the place and occasion, tossed her pretty head and whispered to me, "What horrid stuff!"

In the ensuing week Jack Ives was our constant companion; the continued illness of his servant's mother left him stranded, and Dora's kind heart at once offered him the hospitality of her roof. For my part I was glad, for the little drama which now began was not without its interest. It was a pleasant change to see Jack genially polite to Trix Queenborough, but quite indifferent to her presence or absence, and content to allow her to take Newhaven for her partner at tennis as often as she pleased. He himself was often an absentee from our games.

Mrs. Wentworth did not play, and Jack would sit under the trees with her, or take her out in the canoe. What Trix thought I did not know, but it is a fact that she treated poor Newhaven like dirt beneath her feet, and that Lady Queenborough's face began to lose its transiently pleasant expression. I had a vague idea that a retribution was working itself out, and disposed myself to see the process with all the complacency induced by the spectacle of others receiving punishment for their sins.

A little scene which occurred after lunch one day was significant. I was sitting on the terrace, ready booted and breeched, waiting for my horse to be brought round. Trix came out and sat down by me.

"Where's Newhaven?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't always want Lord Newhaven," she exclaimed petulantly; "I sent him off for a walk—I'm going out in the Canadian canoe with Mr. Ives."

"Oh, you are, are you?" said I smiling. As I spoke, Jack Ives ran up to us.

"I say, Miss Queenborough," he cried, "I've just got your message saying you'd let me take you on the lake."

"Is it a great bore?" asked Trix, with a glance—a glance that meant mischief.

"I should like it awfully, of course," said Jack; "but the fact is I've promised to take Mrs. Wentworth—before I got your message, you know."

Trix drew herself up.

"Of course, if Mrs. Wentworth—-" she began.

"I'm very sorry," said Jack.

Then Miss Queenborough, forgetting—as I hope—or choosing—to disregard my presence, leant forward and asked in her most coaxing tones, "Don't you ever forget a promise, Mr. Ives?"

Jack looked at her. I suppose her dainty prettiness struck him afresh, for he wavered and hesitated.

"She's gone upstairs," pursued the tempter, "and we shall be safe away before she comes down again."

Jack shuffled with one foot on the gravel.

"I tell you what," he said. "I'll ask her if she minds me taking you for a little while before I——"

I believe he really thought that he had hit upon a compromise satisfactory to all parties. If so, lie was speedily undeceived. Trix flushed rod and answered angrily, "Pray don't trouble. I don't want to go."

"Perhaps afterwards you might—" suggested the curate, but now rather timidly.

"I'm going out with Lord Newhaven," said she. And she added in an access of uncontrollable annoyance, "Go, please go. I—I don't want you."

Jack sheered off, with a look of puzzled shamefacedness. He disappeared into the house. Nothing passed between Miss Trix and myself. A moment later Newhaven came out.

"Why, Miss Queenborough," said he, in apparent surprise, "Ives is going with Mrs. Wentworth in the canoe!"

In an instant I saw what she had done. In rash presumption she had told Newhaven that she was going with the curate—and now the curate had refused to take her—and Ives had met him in search of Mrs. Wentworth. What could she do? Well, she rose—or fell—to the occasion. In the coldest of voices she said, "I thought you'd gone for your walk."

"I was just starting," he answered apologetically, "when I met Ives. But, as you weren't going with him—-" He paused, an inquiring look in his eyes. He was evidently asking himself why she had not gone with the curate.

"I'd rather be left alone, if you don't mind," said she. And then, flushing red again, she added. "I changed my mind and refused to go with Mr. Ives. So he went off to get Mrs. Wentworth instead."

I started. Newhaven looked at her for an instant, and then turned on his heel. She turned to me, quick as lightning and with her face all aflame, "If you tell, I'll never speak to you again," she whispered.

After this there was silence for some minutes.

"Well?" she said, without looking at me.

"I have no remark to offer, Miss Queenborough," I returned.

"I suppose that was a lie, wasn't it?" she asked, defiantly.

"It's not my business to say what it was," was my discreet answer.

"I know what you're thinking."

"I was thinking-," said I, "which I would rather be—the man you will marry, or the man you would like—-"

"How dare you? It's not true. Oh, Mr. Wynne, indeed it's not true!"

Whether it were true or not I did not know. But if it had been, Miss Trix Queenborough might have been expected to act very much in the way in which she proceeded to act: that is to say, to be extravagantly attentive to Lord Newhaven when Jack Ives was present, and markedly neglectful of him in the curate's absence. It also fitted in very well with the theory which I had ventured to hint, that her bearing towards Mrs. Went worth was distinguished by a stately civility, and her remarks about that lady by a superfluity of laudation; for if these be not two distinguishing marks of rivalry in the well-bred, I must go back to my favorite books and learn from them—more folly. And if Trix's manners were all that they should be, praise no less high must be accorded to Mrs. Wentworth's; she attained an altitude of admirable unconsciousness, and conducted her flirtation (the poverty of language forces me to the word, but it is over flippant) with the curate in a staid, quasi-maternal way. She called him a delightful boy, and said that she was intensely interested in all his aims and hopes.

"What does she want?" I asked Dora, despairingly. "She can't want to marry him." I was referring to Trix Queenborough, not to Mrs. Wentworth.

"Good gracious, no!" answered Dora, irritably. "It's simple jealousy. She won't let the poor boy alone till he's in love with her again. It's a horrible shame!"

"Oh, well, he has great recuperative power," said I.

"She'd better be careful, though. It's a very dangerous game. How do you suppose Lord Newhaven likes it?"

Accident gave me that very day a hint how little Lord Newhaven liked it, and a glimpse of the risk Miss Trix was running. Entering the library suddenly, I heard Newhaven's voice raised above his ordinary tones.

"I won't stand it," he was declaring. "I never know how she'll treat me from one minute to the next."

My entrance, of course, stopped the conversation very abruptly. Newhaven had come to a stand in the middle of the room, and Lady Queenborough sat on the sofa, a formidable frown on her brow. Withdrawing myself as rapidly as possible, I argued the probability of a severe lecture for Miss Trix, ending in a command to try her noble suitor's patience no longer. I hope all this happened, for I, not seeing why Mrs. Wentworth should monopolize the grace of sympathy, took the liberty of extending mine to Newhaven. He was certainly in love with Trix, not with her money, and the treatment he underwent must have been as trying to his feelings as it was galling to his pride.

My sympathy was not premature, for Miss Trix's fascinations, which were indubitably great, began to have their effect. The scene about the canoe was re-enacted, but with a different denouement. This time the promise was forgotten, and the widow forsaken. Then Mrs. Wentworth put on her armor. We had, in fact, reached this very absurd situation that these two ladies were contending for the favors of, or the domination over, such an obscure, poverty-stricken, hopelessly ineligible person as the curate of Poltons undoubtedly was. The position seemed to me then, and still seems, to indicate some remarkable qualities in that young man.

At last Newhaven made a move. At breakfast, on Wednesday morning, he announced that, reluctant as he should be to leave Poltons Park, he was due at his aunt's place, in Kent, on Saturday evening, and must therefore make his arrangements to leave by noon on that day. The significance was apparent. Had he come down to breakfast with "Now or Never!" stamped in fiery letters across his brow, it would have been more obtrusive, indeed, but not a whit plainer. We all looked down at our plates, except Jack Ives. He flung one glance (I saw it out of the corner of my left eye) at Newhaven, another at Trix; then he remarked kindly—

"We shall be uncommonly sorry to lose you, Newhaven."

Events began to happen now, and I will tell them as well as I am able, supplementing my own knowledge by what I learnt afterwards from Dora—she having learnt it from the actors in the scene. In spite of the solemn warning conveyed in Newhaven's intimation, Trix, greatly daring, went off immediately after lunch for what she described as 'a long ramble' with Mr. Ives. There was, indeed, the excuse of an old woman at the end of the ramble, and Trix provided Jack with a small basket of comforts for the useful old body; but the ramble was, we felt, the thing, and I was much annoyed at not being able to accompany the walkers in the cloak of darkness or other invisible contrivance. The ramble consumed three hours—full measure. Indeed, it was half-past six before Trix alone, walked up the drive. Newhaven, a solitary figure, paced up and down the terrace fronting the drive. Trix came on, her head thrown back and a steady smile on her lips. She saw Newhaven: he stood looking at her for a moment with what she afterwards described as an indescribable smile on his face, but not, as Dora understood from her, by any means a pleasant one. Yet, if not pleasant, there is not the least doubt in the world that it was highly significant; for she cried out nervously, "Why are you looking at me like that? What's the matter?"

Newhaven, still saying nothing, turned his back on her and made as if he would walk into the house and leave her there, ignored, discarded, done with. She, realizing the crisis which had come, forgetting everything except the imminent danger of losing him once for all, without time for long explanation or any round—about seductions, ran forward, laying her hand on his arm and blurting out, "But I've refused him."

I do not know what Newhaven thinks now, but I sometimes doubt whether he would not have been wiser to shake off the detaining hand and pursue his lonely way, first into the house, and ultimately to his aunt's. But (to say nothing of the twenty thousand a year, which, after all, and lie you as romantic as you may please to be, is not a thing to be sneezed at) Trix's face, its mingled eagerness and shame, its flushed cheeks and shining eyes, the piquancy of its unwonted humility, overcame him. He stopped dead.

"I—I was obliged to give him an—an opportunity," said Miss Trix, having the grace to stumble a little in her speech. "And—and it's all your fault."

The war was thus, by happy audacity, carried into Newhaven's own quarters.

"My fault!" he exclaimed. "My fault that you walk all day with that curate!"

Then Miss Trix—and let no irrelevant considerations mar the appreciation of line acting—dropped her eyes and murmured softly, "I—I was so terribly afraid of seeming to expect you."

Wherewith she (and not he) ran away, lightly, up the stairs, turning just one glance downwards as she reached the landing. Newhaven was looking up from below with an 'enchanted' smile—the word is Trix's own: I should probably have used a different one.

Was then the curate of Poltons utterly defeated—brought to his knees, only to lie spurned? It seemed so: and he came down to dinner that night with a subdued and melancholy expression. Trix, on the other hand, was brilliant and talkative to the last degree, and the gayety spread from her all round the table, leaving untouched only the rejected lover and Mrs. Wentworth; for the last-named lady, true to her distinguishing quality, had begun to talk to poor Jack Ives in low soothing tones.

After dinner Trix was not visible; but the door of the little boudoir beyond stood half-open, and very soon Newhaven edged his way through. Almost at the same moment Jack Ives and Mrs. Wentworth passed out of the window and began to walk up and down the gravel. Nobody but myself appeared to notice these remarkable occurrences, but I watched them with keen interest. Half an hour passed and then there smote on my watchful ear the sound of a low laugh from the boudoir. It was followed almost immediately by a stranger sound from the gravel walk. Then, all in a moment, two things happened. The boudoir door opened, and Trix, followed by Newhaven, came in smiling; from the window entered Jack Ives and Mrs. Wentworth. My eyes were on the curate. He gave one sudden comprehending glance towards the other couple; then he took the widows hand, led her up to Dora, and said, in low yet penetrating tones, "Will you wish us joy, Mrs. Polton?" The Squire, Rippleby, and Algy Stanton were round them in an instant. I kept my place, watching now the face of Trix Queenborough. She turned first flaming red, then very pale. I saw her turn to Newhaven and speak one or two urgent imperative words to him. Then, drawing herself up to her full height, she crossed the room to where the group was assembled round Mrs. Wentworth and Jack Ives.