"But what is it? What is it?" asked Lady Nottingham.

A hansom jingled round the corner and stopped just below at the front door.

"The girls are back," said Jeannie. "Daisy is sure to come and see if I am up. I wonder why they are home so early. You must go, dear Alice. I will tell you about it to-morrow. I am so tired, so suddenly and frightfully tired."

Lady Nottingham got up.

"Yes, I will go," she said. "Oh, Jeannie, you are not exaggerating things in your mind? Can't you tell me now?"

"No, my dear, it would take too long. Ah, there is Daisy."

A gentle tap sounded at the door; it was softly opened, and Daisy, seeing the light inside, came in.

"Ah, but how wicked of you, Aunt Jeannie," she said, "when you told me you were going to bed early. Yes, we are early too, but it was stupid and crowded, and so Gladys and I came away. Oh, you darling, it is nice to know you are here! But how tired you look!"

"Yes, dear, I am tired," said Jeannie. "I was just sending Aunt Alice away. And you must go away too. But it was dear of you just to look in to say good-night."

When the two had gone Jeannie sat down again in the window, her head resting on her hands, thinking vividly, intently.

"Thank Heaven she does not love him!" she said at length.



CHAPTER VIII.

The geography of breakfast at Lady Nottingham's was vague and shifting. Sometimes it all happened in the dining-room, sometimes, and rather oftener, little of it happened there, but took place, instead of on that continent, in the scattered islands of bedrooms. Gladys, however, was generally faithful to the continent, and often, as happened next morning, breakfasted there alone, while trays were carried swiftly upstairs to the bedrooms of the others. She alone of the inmates of the house had slept well that night. But she always slept well, even if she had the toothache.

Daisy had not slept at all well. It would be nearer the mark, indeed, to say that she had not even lain awake at all well, but had tossed and tumbled in a manner unprecedented. There was no wonder that it was unprecedented, since that which caused it had not occurred before to her. She had left the dance quite early, dragging Gladys away, because she had got something to think about which absorbed her. She had never been really absorbed before, though it was a chronic condition with her to be intensely and violently interested in a superficial manner. But this went deeper; from the springs of her nature now there came forth something both bitter and sweet, and tinged all her thoughts and her consciousness.

In herself, as she lay awake that night hearing the gradual diminuendo of the noises of traffic outside, till, when she thought there would be a hush, the crescendo of the work of the coming day began, she felt no doubt as to what this was which absorbed her and kept sleep so far aloof from her eyelids. It had started from as small a beginning as a fire that devastates a city, reducing it to desolation and blackened ash. A careless passenger has but thrown away the stump of a cigarette or a match not entirely extinguished near some inflammable material, and it is from no other cause than that that before long the walls of the tallest buildings totter and sway and fall, and the night is turned to a hell of burning flame. Not yet to her had come the wholesale burning, there was not yet involved in it all her nature; but something had caught fire at those few words of Lord Lindfield's; the heat and fever had begun.

Well she knew what it was that ailed her. Hitherto love was a thing that was a stranger to her, though she was no stranger to intense and impulsive affection like that which she felt for Aunt Jeannie. But how mysterious and unaccountable this was. It seemed to her that the phenomenon known as "love at first sight," of which she had read, was a thing far less to be wondered at. There a girl meets some one she has not seen before whom she finds holds for her that potent spell. That could be easily understood; the new force with which she comes in contact instantly exercises its power on her. But she, Daisy, had come across this man a hundred times, and now suddenly, without apparent cause, she who thought she knew him so well, and could appraise and weigh him and settle in her own mind, as she had done after her talk to Lady Nottingham the afternoon before, whether she would speak a word that for the rest of her life or his would make her fate and destiny, and fashion the manner of her nights and days, found that in a moment some change of vital import had come in turn on her, so that she looked on him with eyes of other vision, and thought of him in ways as yet undreamt of.

This was disquieting, unsettling; it was as if the house in which she dwelt—her own mind and body—which she had thought so well-founded and securely built—was suddenly shaken as by an earthquake shock, and she realized with a touch of panic-fear that outside her, and yet knit into her very soul, were forces unmanifested as yet which might prove to be of dominant potency.

Then, suddenly, her mood changed; their power was frightening no longer, they were wholly benignant and life-giving. It was not an earthquake shock that had frightened her, it was but the first beam of some new-rising sun that had struck on to the darkness of the world in which she had lived till now. She was smitten "by the first beam from the springing East," she who had never known before what morning was, or how fair was the light which it pours on to the world. And this morning beam was for her; it had not struck her fortuitously, shedding its light on her and others without choice. It had come to shine into her window, choosing that above all others. It was she that the first beam sought. It came to gild and glorify her house, her body and mind, the place where her soul dwelt.

How blind she had been! There was no difference in him; the difference had been in her alone. She had sat with sealed eyes at her window, or, at the most, with eyes that could but see the shadows and not the sun. Now they saw the sun only; there were no shadows, for the shadows had been but her own blindness.

Dawn was in the sky outside; here in the quiet, white-curtained room another dawn had come, not quiet, but with gleam of sun alternating with cloud and tempest, making the beholder wonder what the day would bring forth.

* * * * *

Aunt Jeannie, too, had lain long awake, but when sleep came it came deeply and dreamlessly, demanding the repair of two nights in the train and the agitation of her talk. She had given orders that she was not to be called till she rang, and when she woke the sun was already high, and the square outside lively with passengers and traffic. But it was with a sense of coming trial and trouble, if not quite of disaster, that she woke.

It was disaster she had to avert; she had to think and scheme. But had she known of Daisy's sleepless night, and the cause of that, she would have felt that the anchor which prevented the situation drifting into disaster had been torn up. For the anchor was the belief, as Lady Nottingham had told her, that Daisy was not in love with Tom Lindfield, and by one of fate's little ironies, at the very moment when she was comforting herself last night with that thought it was true no longer.

Her sleep had quite restored her, giving vigour to her body and the power of cool reflection to her brain, and when Victor came, according to promise, to see her during the morning there was no hint of trouble in her welcome of him, nor did he guess that any disquieting news had reached her. And his conclusion, though not actually true, was justly drawn, for the peace and the sense of security which she felt in his presence was of a kind that nothing else, except danger and disaster to it itself, could disturb.

It was a very tender, a very real part of her nature that was troubled, but the trouble did not reach down into these depths. Nor did she mean to speak of this trouble to him at all; a promise had been made by her to keep it as secret as could be. Hitherto the secret had been completely kept; it had passed the lips of none of the few who knew. But to-day she would be obliged to speak of it to Alice, for her plan to avert disaster was already half formed, but she dared not embark on it alone without counsel from another. For an utterly unlooked-for stroke of fate, supreme in its irony, that Daisy should be meditating marriage with the one man in the world whom it was utterly impossible that she should marry, had fallen, and at all costs the event must be averted.



CHAPTER IX.

The two girls, as had been already arranged, set off during the morning for the river-side house at Bray, where they would be joined next day by Lady Nottingham and the rest of her party; and Aunt Jeannie, returning home shortly before lunch, found that Daisy and Gladys had already gone, and that the hour for her consultation with her friend was come. For the situation admitted of no delay: in a sky that till yesterday had been of dazzling clearness and incomparable serenity there had suddenly formed this thunder-cloud, so to speak, hard, imminent, menacing. It was necessary, and immediately necessary (such was the image under which the situation presented itself to her mind), to put up a lightning-conductor over Daisy's room. It was the nature of the thunder-cloud that she had now to make known to Lady Nottingham: that done, between them they had to devise the lightning-conductor, or approve and erect that one which she had already designed in her mind during the sleepless hours of the night before. It was of strange design: she hardly knew if she had the skill to forge it. For the forging had to be done by her.

They lunched together, and immediately afterwards went to Lady Nottingham's sitting-room, where they would be undisturbed, for she had given orders that neither the most urgent of telephones nor the most intimate of callers were to be admitted. They drank their coffee in silence, and then Jeannie got up.

"I have got to tell you, Alice," she said, "about that which only yesterday I said I hoped I should never be obliged to speak of to anybody. I suppose the envious Fates heard me; certainly the words were scarcely out of my mouth before the necessity arose. What I have got to tell you about is that which all last autumn was harder for me to get over, I think, than all that I had been through myself. Only yesterday I believed it to be all dead; I believed it to be at most a memory from which time had already taken the bitterness. But I was completely and signally wrong. It is dead no longer; it is terribly alive, for it has had a resurrection which would convert a Sadducee. It is connected with the reason why Daisy can never marry Tom Lindfield. It is more than connected with it; it is the reason itself."

Jeannie had begun to speak standing by the fireplace and facing the full light of the window, but here she moved, and wheeling a chair with its back to the light, sat down in it. She wanted to be a voice and no more—a mere chronicle of a few hard, dry, irrevocable facts, things that had happened, and could not be altered or softened. There was no comment, no interpretation to be made. She had just to utter them; Alice Nottingham had just to hear them.

"You may have to give me time, my dear," she said, "for it will be as much as I can do, I am afraid, just to get through with the telling of it. Yes, I am already frightening you, I know. I do that on purpose, because I want to prepare you for a story that must shock and disturb you very much. I wondered last night whether I could manage without telling you, whether I could spare your hearing it all, but I find I can't. I can't act alone in this, on my own responsibility. Perhaps you may be able to think of some plan which will make mine unnecessary, and I would give a great deal for that to happen. But some plan must be made and carried out. Something has to be done."

She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then took them away, and spoke, slowly and carefully, so that there might be no need for further explanation of what she said.

"Of course you remember Diana, Daisy's sister," she said, "though you would remember her more as a name than as a person, for I think you never knew her at all well. She married very early, you know; she married that nice Frenchman, Monsieur Dupre. After that she lived abroad till the time of her death. The fact of that you will certainly remember, though it is now some years since it happened. Where are we? Yes, 1908. Then Diana died in 1903, five years ago. So at least we were told at the time. It was in 1903 that we, all of us, you, Daisy, and I, believed that Diana died."

Jeannie gave a long sigh.

"My story of why Daisy cannot marry Tom Lindfield has begun, dear Alice," she said, "for Diana did not die then. She lived for four years after that, and died last autumn only, in my arms, thank God! I thank God, my dear, that she died, and I thank God that I was with her. There was no one else, not her husband even."

Alice Nottingham turned on her a face that was puzzled, and was beginning to get frightened.

"But what does it all mean?" she said. "It is very disquieting, very strange, but what does it lead to? Daisy—Tom Lindfield."

"I am telling you as shortly as I can," said Jeannie. "Do not interrupt me, dear. It was last autumn she died, not five years ago as we had supposed. Five years ago she was—was found out, if you understand—she was found to have been living with another man not her husband. He learned that, and he forgave her, for he adored her with a tender, unwavering devotion that is very rare. She was to him like a child who has been naughty and must be forgiven. Then in a few weeks only after that she fell again. Even then he did not divorce her, or make her bear the shame and publicity of what she had done; he simply let her go."

Jeannie was still speaking slowly and quietly, as if reading out some report which had to be mastered by her friend. But on the words "let her go" her voice trembled a little. But then she again recaptured the completeness of her self-control.

"Whether that was wise or not," she said, "whether it might not have been better if he had let Diana bear the punishment that human law has ordained for those poor things who behave as she behaved, we need not inquire. Nor need I tell you the details of how it was all managed, which I learned from Diana so few weeks before she died last year. It is sufficient for me to say that they left their home near Amiens together, ostensibly for a long foreign travel. After some weeks he sent home the news of her sudden death; he sent the news also to us in England. You were told, I and Daisy were told. And Diana, poor, poor Diana, went and lived in Paris."

Again the bravely-suppressed emotion made Jeannie's voice to quiver.

"That is what I mean when I said that M. Dupre let her go," she said. "Often I think it was a barbarous kindness. He could not live with her any more—the fact that he loved her so much made that impossible—and he had either to divorce her or—or let her vanish into the glittering crowd of those who—who are made like that. He chose the latter: he accounted for her disappearance by the news, sent to Amiens and sent to us in England, that she had died.

"So five years ago Diana went to Paris, and for a time lived, not with the man who had taken her from her husband, but with another. During her married life she had lived in that beautiful country-house of his near Amiens, seldom going to Paris, and no one apparently ever found out who she really was. Then——"

Again Jeannie paused—paused a long time; and before she spoke she put her hands over her eyes, as if to shut out some dreadful vision.

"Then she left that man," she said, "and lived with another. You know him; I know him; Daisy also."

It was as if Lady Nottingham had caught sight of that which made Jeannie cover her eyes, for she winced and drew back.

"Don't—don't!" she said; "I can't bear that, please, Jeannie!"

At the sound of the beseeching voice Jeannie recovered all her self-control. She was wanted; Alice wanted her for comfort.

"Oh, my dear, you must not be afraid," she said. "We have to face the facts and not be afraid of them, but do our best, and see how we can arrest or alter the train of their consequences. It was he—Tom Lindfield."

Again she paused, and again continued, speaking quietly.

"I knew nothing of all this till a little over a year ago," she said; "for even as M. Dupre had wished to spare Diana shame and publicity, so, I suppose, he wished to spare us the knowledge of what Diana had done, and it was thus that neither you nor Daisy nor I knew anything of it. I think perhaps he ought to have told us—told you and me, anyhow. But he did not, and it is of no use to think what we should have done if he had. But rather more than a year ago Diana herself wrote to me—wrote me a pitiful, heart-breaking letter. I thought at first it must be some grim practical joke, though I could not imagine who had played so cruel a trick, or why the trick had been played at all. But it was Diana's handwriting, and she enclosed a photograph of herself, which I have now. It was impossible to mistake that: nothing could mar her beauty; and then it was signed and dated in her own hand. She wrote to say that she had been ill, that she was getting rapidly worse—it was of consumption, perhaps you remember, that her mother died—and she wanted to know if I would come to her. She wanted to tell me everything, and, thank God, she wanted me. So it was there that I went when I left England last year.

"I stayed with her till she died in that little gilded flat. And during that month she told me everything. It—it was a long story, Alice, and it was all set to one shameful tune. And I was not shocked; that would have made my being with her quite useless, to begin with, but, also, I did not feel inclined to be shocked. She was so like a child—a child that has gone wrong, if you will, but still a child. Whether she was ashamed or not I hardly know, for after she had told me of it all we never once spoke of it again. Certainly she wished, as passionately as she was capable in her poor dying state of wishing anything, that she should not bring shame or sorrow on others. Of all others that she wished to spare, most of all she wished to spare Daisy; and—a promise to a dying person is a very solemn thing—I promised that I would do all that lay in my power so that Daisy should not know. Till yesterday I thought that promise would never come up. But it has. Daisy must not conceivably marry him. Also, she must not know why. There is our crux.

"And one word more, in justice to him," she added. "I am convinced he does not to this day know who it was with whom he lived in Paris. He knew me, for instance, and liked me; and I am sure he would not have lived with her knowing who she was. Oh, but, Alice, the misery, the sorrow of it all! You don't know. You weren't with Diana at the end. And I loved her. And I think her—her going so utterly wrong like that made me love her more. The pity of it! The hopeless, helpless sorrow of it! She did not want to die——"

Jeannie's voice choked for a moment.

"She wanted life, she wanted love, poor child. She was like some beautiful wild thing, without law. She didn't think. She never loved her husband, who adored her. She didn't think. And she died frightened—frightened at what might be in front of her. As if the Infinite Tenderness was not in front of her! As if Jesus Christ, the Man of many sorrows, was not there! Oh, Alice, how can we judge?"

"Ah, my dear, we don't judge," said she. "Anyhow, no judgment of ours has any effect. It is done with as far as she is concerned."

Jeannie's face suddenly brightened into a semblance of a smile. It was veiled, but it was but the flesh that veiled it; at the core it was wholly loving.

"Then we are content to leave dear Diana in the hands of the Infinite Pity?" she said. "That must be certain before we can talk further."

"But with my whole heart," said Lady Nottingham.

Again there was silence; and in that Jeannie openly dried the tears that were on her face. She had been crying: there was no question about that.

"I had to tell you, dear Alice," she said at length. "I could not bear it alone. You see why it is impossible, beyond the bounds of speech, that Daisy should marry him. You see also why I thank Heaven that she does not love him. At all costs, also, Daisy must not know why it is impossible. That was my promise to Diana when she was dying. I would do anything within my power and the stretched-out limits of it to prevent her knowing. Diana, poor darling, wished for that. It was the last request she made. It is sacred to me, as sacred as my honour."

"Do you mean to tell him?" asked Alice.

"I hope not to. I want to keep poor Diana's secret as close as can be. And I am not in the least certain, from what I know of him, that it would do any good. If he wants Daisy, do you think a man like that would let that stand in his way? No, we must do better than that. Now, is he in love with her?"

"I can't say. It is clear, however, that he wants to marry her. He has been in love so many times that one doubts if he has been in love at all. There was——"

"Oh, spare me the list of his conquests. He has been in love many times. That is sufficient."

"Sufficient for what?"

"For the plan that has occurred to me as possible. I don't say it is easy; I don't say it is nice; but we want, above all things, to keep poor Diana's dreadful secret, to let no one, if possible—and, above all, Daisy—know that it was her sister who lived those years in Paris, and in that manner."

Jeannie got up.

"Clearly the easiest way of arriving at what we want is to make Daisy think that he has only been flirting with her," she said—"that he is not serious. It will hurt the poor child, I know; but if she were in love with him, which you think she is not, it would hurt her far, far more. Therefore, we must waste no time. Any day, any moment, she may fall in love with him. He is extremely attractive."

"Do you mean you will tell Daisy that he has only been flirting with her?" asked Alice.

"No, that would do no good. She would not believe it. Besides, any day also he may propose to her. No, it must be more convincing than that. She must see that which convinces her that he is not in earnest. We must make him, if we can, under Daisy's very nose, flirt with somebody else. We must make him neglect her. I don't know if it can be done, but we must try. At least, I can think of no other plan which will not involve telling Daisy all that we want to keep from her."

"But how—who?" asked Alice.

"He is coming to Bray—Lord Lindfield, I mean?"

"Yes; he is coming to-morrow evening with the others."

Jeannie paused in front of a mirror, looked long at herself, and spoke to her image there.

"Yes, passable yet—just passable yet," she said to herself.

Lady Nottingham got up and came across the room to her.

"Jeannie, what do you mean?" she asked. "What is it you mean?"

Jeannie turned round quickly.

"Ah! you guess," she said. "I don't say it is nice; I shan't like myself much, I can promise you. But it is not so long since he ran after me a good deal. Perhaps you remember the fact. He didn't receive much encouragement then. Well, I mean that he shall do it again. This time he shall receive much more encouragement. I will make it very easy for him. I will help him a great deal now. I will flirt with him all the time at Bray. Flirt—yes. Oh, it is not a nice word, and flirts are not nice people, as we settled only yesterday. We settled they were not worth talking about. But I am going to be one now—and a bad one, too—under Daisy's very nose. Perhaps I shan't succeed, but I shall do my best; and if I don't succeed, we must try to think of something else. But I want Daisy to see how easily and readily he makes love to a woman. I want her to see herself slighted and neglected. I want her to be hurt—and finally to be angry, to be furious, to see that he means nothing. Then, provided only she is not in love with him now, she will hate and despise him."

Jeannie spoke rapidly, excitedly, her face flushing.

"Or do you think it is a forlorn hope, Alice?" she said. "Am I but flattering myself that I am not quite passee yet? Oh, it is a heavy handicap, I know, for a woman of my age to try to cut out a brilliant young girl, and one who is beautiful; and, as you have told me, he never, as far as you know, flirted with a girl. Well, that proves he likes women best."

"Ah! but you can't do it, Jeannie," broke in Lady Nottingham. "Think of what you will appear to Daisy; think of your own self-respect; think of Victor. What will he make of it all? It is too dangerous."

"I have thought of all those things," said Jeannie. "I have weighed and balanced them; and they seem to me lighter than that promise I made to Diana. I may have to tell Victor; about that I don't know, but I shall do my utmost not to. It may not be necessary, for, Alice, I think he trusts me as utterly as I trust him. I think that if I saw him running after some other woman I should feel there must be some explanation, and I hope I should not ask him for it, or think he was faithless to me. And I believe he has that trust in me also. I don't know. If he demands to know what it all means I shall tell him, because if you are asked anything in the name of love it is not possible to refuse. Heaven knows, this is a desperate measure! But show me any other that has a chance of success and will still keep Diana's secret. This may fail; one cannot be sure of any plan going right. But show me any other plan at all, and from the bottom of my heart I will thank you."

Lady Nottingham shook her head.

"I can think of no other plan," she said; "but I can't approve of this one. You are playing with serious things, Jeannie; you are playing with love and other people's souls. Diana did not mean you to do anything like this in order to keep your promise to her."

"No, poor child! One does not easily see the consequences of one's acts, or how they go on long after they are committed, bringing joy or sorrow to others. Oh, Alice, there is such a dreadful vitality about evil. Acts that one thinks are all over and dead have an awful power of coming to life again. What one has done never dies. It may be forgiven—Heaven grant it may be forgiven—but it exists still in the lives of others."

"But it is not as if she were alive," said the other, "or as if she could suffer for it."

Jeannie shook her head.

"Ah, my dear," she said, "to my mind that is a reason the more for keeping my promise. Living people can defend themselves to some extent, or you can appeal to them and make them see, perhaps, that such a promise involves more than it is reasonable to demand. But the dead, Alice! The dead are so defenceless!"

Lady Nottingham was silent, knowing that it is useless to argue over questions of feeling; for no amount of reasoning, however admirable, can affect a question about which the heart has taken sides. And after a moment Jeannie went on:—

"And it is not the dead alone," she said. "There is Daisy also to consider. Had I made no promise at all, I think I would do anything as distasteful and odious to me as that which I am going to do, for the sake of keeping that dreadful knowledge from her. Alice, think if you had had a sister like that! Could you ever get rid of the poison of it? And it is an awful thing to let a young soul be poisoned. When we grow older, we get, I suppose, better digestions; poisons affect us less. That is the worst of growing old."

Again she paused.

"And now, dear—as they say at the end of sermons—let us talk no more about it. You will see me in an odious role down at Bray; but it will be something to know that you are aware it is a role, an odious role assumed for a good purpose. I shall seem detestable to Daisy, and she will not be able to believe her eyes, until she is forced to. I shall seem charming to him, Tom Lindfield, until at the end, when, as we hope, Daisy is convinced, I shall turn round like the flirt and say, 'What do you mean?' I shall seem odious to myself, but I do not believe I shall seem odious to Victor. I think he will know there is something he does not understand. Perhaps I shall do it all very badly, and not succeed in detaching him at all from Daisy. It is true I have not had much practice, for I assure you I am not a flirt by nature. Oh, Alice, can't you think of any other plan? I can't, and I have thought so hard. Have you got a very large party? I don't want a full house to witness this disgusting performance. I shall have to be so cheap. I wish Victor was not going to be there. At least, I am not sure. I think he will see he does not understand. It is bad luck, you know, that of all men in the world this should be the one whom Daisy thinks about marrying. Now let us dismiss it altogether."

Lady Nottingham felt a certain sense of injustice.

"Dear Jeannie," she said, "you have done all the talking, and, having expressed your views, you say, 'Let us dismiss it altogether.' By all means, if you choose; but I haven't had a chance. You have prophesied success to your scheme; I prophesy disaster. You are not fitted for your role; you will break down long before you accomplish anything. You will see Daisy looking at you with reproach; you will see Victor looking at you with wonder; you will see Lord Lindfield looking at you with—with admiration. You won't be able to bear any of those things, least of all the last. You will have some involuntary shudder of horror at him, or you will obey your heart and run to comfort Daisy, and give it all away. Yours is one of the schemes that don't come off, because they are unthinkable."

But Jeannie interrupted again.

"You mustn't discourage me," she said, "because I want all the spirits I am capable of to carry it through. It has to be done with a light heart, else it will deceive nobody. And so, my dear, to-morrow you will say 'good-bye' to me, and have a sort of wraith of me instead for a little while. Oh, Alice, I hope it won't take very long!"

The intense heat of the afternoon had a little abated, and after tea the two drove out for a while, returning early in order to dine and go to the opera. It began at eight, and Jeannie, after her year's sojourn in the country, demanded a full dose, and they arrived before the beginning of the first act. Outside it was still not quite the hour of sunset, and the streets and houses were gilded by the soft reddish glow of the superb summer evening. At the porch of the opera-house were a few men standing about, clearly waiting for friends, and for that purpose examining the disembarking carriages. As the two got out, one of these gently but quite firmly shouldered his way towards them.

"Looking out for an acquaintance, I find a friend, Lady Nottingham," he said. "That's my luck all over.—Why, Mrs. Halton! Have you the smallest remembrance of me?"

Jeannie had seen him, and for one moment of weakness and indecision had tried to pass by without seeming to recognize him. But it was impossible to ignore this, and though she had hoped her role would not begin till to-morrow, it was clear now that she must start to-day.

"Why, but how charming to see you, Lord Lindfield," she said. "I am delighted. I am only just home, you know—or perhaps you don't, for why should you? Do leave your acquaintance in the lurch, now you have found a friend—it would have been prettier of you, by the way, to have said two friends—and join us. Alice dear, carry Lord Lindfield off under your cloak to the box. Kidnap him."

"Jove! yes, I'll be kidnapped," said he. "Kidnap me quick, please, Lady Nottingham, because I see Mrs. Streatham's carriage. Too late; she sees me. May I come up for—for an hour or two, after the first act?"

"Not for an hour, for two," said Jeannie, as Mrs. Streatham waved her hand to him, but without a smile, for she was busy wondering who Mrs. Halton was, and whether there was a chance of getting her to dine two or three times during the next week.

Mrs. Streatham used her friends and acquaintances much as a clematis uses the wires or trellis put up for it. She strongly and firmly climbed along them (without ever letting go), to find fresh friends and acquaintances.

"Who was that charming-looking woman you were talking to, Lord Lindfield," she said, "with Lady Nottingham? By the way, you lunch with us on Thursday, do you not?"

"Mrs. Halton," said he.

"Really! That sweetly pretty Miss—Miss Hanbury's aunt? Are she and Lady Nottingham in the stalls? They might like to come to my box instead. It is so far more comfortable in a box. Will you ask them? I do know Lady Nottingham. She dined with us last year—at least, I asked her."

"They have a box of their own," said he.

"Ah, what a pity! Let us go in. I expect a few friends this evening, but they will find their way. It is such a pity to miss a note of 'Faust.' Oh, I see, it is 'Lucia.' That is by Gounod too, is it not?"

Three hours later they were all standing in the vestibule waiting for the arrival of carriages. Mrs. Streatham had been unable to arrange anything definite with regard to Mrs. Halton lunching with her, but had just said she would write, and hope to find her disengaged the week after next, when her carriage was bawled out. Lord Lindfield shut her firmly into it, with profuse thanks, and returned to the others. Crowds of people—some of whom, apparently, Mrs. Streatham did not know by sight—had swarmed into her box during the evening, and he had spent most of it in Lady Nottingham's without any sense of deserting his hostess, since it was impossible even to stand in her box, far less sit down.

Then Lady Nottingham's carriage had come up too, and he put them into it.

"Till to-morrow, then," said Jeannie. "I am looking forward to it immensely. You lunch with us first, and then take me to the concert."

The motor bubbled and slid off, and she put down the window.

"It moves," she said laconically.



CHAPTER X.

Lady Nottingham's house at Bray was one of those styleless nondescript river-side residences which, apart from the incomparable beauty of their surroundings, have a charm of their own, elusive but distinct. Originally it had been no more than a couple of cottages, thatched and low-eaved, but her husband in his lifetime had dealt with these so successfully by building out a dining-room with bedrooms above on one side, a drawing-room and billiard-room, again with bedrooms above, on the other, and a long row of servants' rooms and offices, that now it was commodious enough to take in a tolerably large party in extreme comfort.

It is true that he might have built something quite as commodious at far less expense by pulling down the old and beginning again, but, on the other hand, the amusement and employment he got out of it was cheap at the additional price.

The house stood screened from the river by a thick-set hawthorn hedge, inside which was a garden of a couple of acres in extent, in which was combined the charm of antiquity with the technique of skilful modern gardening. Unlike many English gardens, which are laid out to be active in, this was clearly a place for the lazy and the lounger. There were no tennis courts, no croquet lawns, no place, in fact, where any game could be played that demanded either extent or uniformity of surface. A wavy, irregular lawn, all bays and angles and gulfs of green, was fitted into the headlands and promontories of garden beds, as the sea is fitted into the land; but the voyager never got to open sea, so to speak, but was always turning round corners into other gulfs.

It was impossible to imagine a place less formally laid out, or one, considering the extent of it, where you could walk so short a way in the same direction.

There were no straight lines anywhere, an omission fatal in the eyes of a formalist, but paths, broad paths of grass, or narrower paths of old paving-stone, meandered about in a manner that could hardly fail to please.

On each side of such paths were garden beds, no mere ribbons, but wide, deep spaces of well-nourished earth, where just now June made jungle. Here you could sit and become part of the general heat and fragrance, and lose your identity in summer, or, moving a little, find a tree, no shrub, but a big living elm in tower of leaf and panoply of spreading bough, to be cool under. Pigeons from the big dovecot in front of the house afforded to a leisure mind a sufficiency of general conversation, or formed a cooing chorus of approval if anybody wished to talk himself; but one thing clearly prohibited in these warm, green places was to be active. The actively inclined had to pass through the gate in the hedge, and there, by turning to the left, they would find a back-water with a whole village of boat-houses. There, to suit the measure of their activity, they could equip themselves with the required materials; there were punts at their disposal, or they could take unto themselves a canoe, or a portly, broad-beamed ark, or risk themselves in outriggers of extreme length and uncertain stability.

The house itself afforded no less scope for the various inclinations of its inhabitants. There was a charming drawing-room where any one could sit up, take notice, and be formal. There was an immense billiard-room, with an alcove containing a couple of card tables, so far away from the billiards that the sound of cannons reached the ear of the bridge-player in a manner that could not disconcert; while for wet days and the more exuberantly inclined there was a squash-racquet court where any amount of exercise could be enjoyed with the smallest possible expenditure of time.

The two original cottages had been run together, and a hall now comprised the whole ground floor of both. Wooden joists of the floors above made parallels down the ceiling, and it was still lit through the small-paned windows of the original cottages, through the squares of which the landscape outside climbed up and down over the ridges of the glass. At one end was the fireplace, which had once been a kitchen-range; but that removed, a large open hearth, burning a wood fire when fires were necessary, was flanked by two settles within the chimney-space.

At the other end, and facing it, the corresponding kitchen range of the second cottage had also been cleared out, but the chimney above it had been boarded in, and a broad, low settee ran round the three sides of it. Above this settee, and planted into the wall, so that the heads of those uprising should not come in contact with the shelves, was a bookcase full of delectable volumes, all fit to be taken down at random, and opened at random, all books that were familiar friends to any who had friends among that entrancing family. Tennyson was there, and all Thackeray; Omar Khayyam was there, and Alice in Wonderland; Don Quixote rubbed covers with John Inglesant, and Dickens found a neighbour in Stevenson.

But this was emphatically a room to sit down in, not to move about in, for the levels of the floor were precarious, and a sudden step would easily disconcert those who tried to make a promenade of it. It was as inactive in tendency as the garden.

Outside the house was charmingly irregular. The billiard-room with the bedrooms above it was so markedly Queen Anne that it was impossible to believe it could be Queen Anne. Nor was it, for it was Queen Victoria. Then came the cottage section, which had a thatched roof, on which grew wallflowers and the pink pincushions of valerian, and following that was a low, stern line of building containing kitchens and servants' rooms, which made no pretence to be anything except that which it was.

But over pseudo-Queen Anne, genuine George I. cottages, and frankly Edwardian kitchens, there rose a riot of delectable vegetation. White jasmine and yellow jasmine strove together like first cousins who hate each other, jackmanni and tropaeolum were rival beauties, and rambler roses climbed indifferently about, made friends where they could, and when they found themselves unable, firmly stabbed their enemies and strangled their remains.

Charming, however, as it all was, it had no mood to suggest. It but accentuated the moods of those who came there, and by its very vagueness and softness reflected the spirits of its visitors. It was impossible to imagine a place more conducive to foster and cherish a man's inclinations; to the lover it would be a place ideal for a honeymoon, to the studious an admirable study. In the Italian phrase the whole place was simpatico; it repeated and crooned over to every one the mood in which he came to it. And if a lover would find it an adorable setting for his beloved and himself, so, too, it would mock and rail in sympathy with one who was cynical and bitter. But since most people are not in any particular mood, and when they come into the country require light and agreeable diversion, Lord Nottingham had been quite right in providing so ample a billiard-room, so engaging a library, so varied a fleet of river-craft.

Daisy and Gladys had come down here the day before Lady Nottingham and the rest of the party were to arrive, and they found plenty to occupy them. The house had not been used since Easter, and wore that indescribable look of uninhabitableness which results from a thorough house-cleaning. Everything, even in the irregular hall, looked angular and uncomfortable; chairs were set square to tables; tables were set at mathematically precise angles; blinds were all drawn down exactly four inches from the tops of the windows; and all the books were in their shelves.

It was all too tidy to have been lived in, and, therefore, too tidy to live in, and it took Daisy nearly an hour to take the chill off the room, as she put it, though the heat here was nearly as intense as it had been in town. Gladys, who was no good at this subtle business of restoring life to a dead room, occupied herself with writing out the names of the guests very neatly on cards, which she then, with equal neatness, affixed to the doors of their rooms.

Daisy paused at the end of this hour and surveyed the room with satisfaction. "For one who has till so lately been a corpse it isn't bad," she said. "Don't you see the difference, Gladys? It was like a refrigerator before. Yes, let's have tea at once, shall we, and then go out? There's lots more to do. We must pick great boughs of laburnum and beech for all the big vases. Gardeners are no good at that; nor are you, dear, for that matter. You tell them to pick boughs, and they pick button-holes."

"I hate picking flowers at all," said Gladys. "They are so much nicer where they are."

Daisy poured out tea.

"I know you think that," she said, "and I entirely disagree. Whenever you see flowers in a house you think what a pity they are not growing in the garden; whereas, whenever I see flowers in a garden, it seems to me such a pity they are not in the house. Of course, when the house is quite, quite full, I don't mind the rest remaining in the garden."

Gladys laughed.

"I think that's like you," she said. "You want to use things on the whole, and I on the whole want to let them enjoy themselves."

"That sounds as if you thought yourself a perfect saint of unselfishness and me a greedy pig," remarked Daisy. "If you don't come to tea I shall eat all the strawberries. Perhaps you wish they had never been picked, and left to rot on their stems by way of enjoying themselves."

Gladys finished the last name on her packet of cards for guests' rooms.

"No, I don't go as far as that," she said, "because I like the taste of them, which you can't get at unless you eat them. Now flowers look much nicer when they are growing."

"Yes, but they are not yours so much when they are growing," said Daisy. "I like them in my house, in my vases. Yes, I suppose I am greedy. Oh, I am going to enjoy myself these next few days. All the people I like best are coming, and they mostly like me best. That is such an advantage. Wouldn't it be awful to like somebody very much and find he didn't like you? What a degrading position! Oh dear, what a nice world!"

"More than usual?"

"Much more. I'm dreadfully happy inside. Don't you know how you can be immensely happy outside and not really be happy at all? But when you are happy inside you are happy altogether, and don't mind a wet day or going to the dentist's one scrap. Isn't it funny how one gets happy inside all in a moment? I suppose there is a cause for everything, isn't there? Ugh! there's an earwig. Oh, it's going your way, not mine. I wonder what the cause of earwigs is. I wish they would find it out and reason it away."

Gladys put an empty inverted teacup over the earwig.

"What made you happy inside?" she asked.

"Well, darling Aunt Alice started it two afternoons ago when we came back from the Zoo. I had a delightful talk, and she gave me some excellent advice. She quite realized that I wasn't exactly what most people would call being in love with him, but she advised me anyhow to make up my mind whether I would say 'yes' or 'no,' and recommended 'yes.' And so I did make up my mind, and the very next day, do you know, Gladys, when I dragged you away from the ball so early——"

"Because you had a headache," said Gladys, ruthlessly.

She had been enjoying herself, and still a little resented Daisy's imperious order to go away.

"You needn't rub it in, darling. Well, that very night something happened to me that frightened me at first. I began to feel quite differently about him."

Daisy got up quickly.

"I've been so dreadfully happy ever since," she said, "although sometimes I've felt quite miserable. Do you see the difference, or does it sound nonsense? Let me explain. I've only felt miserable, but I was happy. Gladys, I do believe it's It. It does make one feel so infinitesimal, and so immense."

Gladys looked up quickly at her cousin. Whatever It was, this was certainly a Daisy who was quite strange to her—Daisy with a strange, shy look in her eyes, half exulting in this new feeling, half ashamed of it.

"I hardly slept at all that night," she said, "and yet the night didn't seem in the least long. And I don't think I wanted to sleep except now and then when I felt miserable. And I believe it's the same thing that makes me feel miserable which makes me so happy. Gladys, I shall be so shy of him to-morrow when he comes here that he will probably think I'm in the sulks. And he's coming early probably, before any of the others—before lunch, in fact."

Gladys got up.

"Oh, Daisy, I don't think you ought to have arranged that," she said. "Do you mean he will find just you and me here?"

Daisy laughed.

"He needn't find you unless you like," she said. "And I didn't exactly arrange it. I told him you and I would be alone here, and he asked if he might get down early. I couldn't exactly forbid him; besides, darling, I didn't want to."

"Mother wouldn't like it," said Gladys.

"So please don't tell her," remarked Daisy. "I hate vexing people. She won't find out either. We shall go on the river or something, and come back after the rest of the people have arrived. You are so old-fashioned, Gladys; besides, it isn't certain that he will come. He only said he would if he could. But he is the sort of man who usually can when he wishes."

"I ought to tell mother," said Gladys.

"I know, but you won't."

Daisy laughed again, and then suddenly, without reason, her spirits fell.

"Oh dear, what a little beast I have been!" she said. "I did arrange that he should come, Gladys; at least, I made it imperative that he should ask if he might, and now it seems so calculating and cold-blooded. Girls like whom I used to be till—till about forty-eight hours ago are such brutes. They plot and scheme and entrap men. Pigs! I almost hope he won't come. I do, really. And yet that wouldn't do either, for it would look as if he had found me out and was disgusted with me. I believe you are all wrong, both you and Aunt Alice, and that he doesn't care for me in the least. He has flirted with half London. It isn't his fault; women have always encouraged him, just as I have done. What beasts we are!"

"Oh, well, come and pick boughs of laburnum," said Gladys. "Let's go and do something. We've been indoors all the afternoon."

"But I don't want to pick boughs of laburnum," said Daisy. "Why should we do the gardener's work? I want to cry."

"Very well, cry," said Gladys. "Oh, Daisy, I'm not a brute. I am so sorry you feel upset. But you know you are very happy; you have told me so. I should like to be immensely sympathetic, but you do change so quickly, I can't quite keep up. It must be very puzzling. Do you suppose everybody is like you when she falls in love?"

"And I wish I was dead," said Daisy, violently, having arrived at that dismal conclusion by some unspoken train of thought. "I wish I was a cow. I wish I was a boy."

"But you can't be a cow or a boy," said Gladys, gravely, "and you don't really wish you were dead."

Daisy suddenly had a fit of the giggles, which before long infected her cousin also, and they both lay back in their chairs in peals of helpless laughter. Now and then one or other would recover a little, only to be set off again by the temporarily hopeless case, and it was not till they had laughed themselves tired that the fit subsided.

Daisy mopped her streaming eyes.

"L-let's pick laburnum," she said at length. "How silly you are! But it would save such a lot of trouble to be a cow. If I laugh any more I shall be sick."

"Come into the garden, then," said Gladys. "Oh dear! I didn't mean that. Don't laugh again, Daisy; it does hurt so dreadfully."



CHAPTER XI.

Whatever might prove to be the conduct of others, it seemed clear next morning that the weather meant to do all in its power to help Daisy to have a happy time, and another hot and cloudless day succeeded. The girls intended originally to lunch at one, since that gave a longer afternoon; but at one, since nobody had appeared, it seemed wiser to put off lunch till half-past, since that was the hour at which they lunched in London. Eventually they sat down alone to a meal even more belated. But at present nothing could touch or mar Daisy's happiness.

"It is much better that he shouldn't come," she said, with an air of decision. "I daresay Aunt Alice wouldn't like it, though it couldn't have been supposed to be my fault. Very likely his motor has broken down; he told me it usually did."

She laughed quite naturally; there was no sting in his absence.

"In fact, he told me he usually sent it on ahead," she said, "and started walking after it about half an hour later. In that way, by the time he arrived his chauffeur had generally put it to rights again, and he got in."

"Then he ought to be here in half an hour," remarked Gladys.

"Yes. Shall we have lunch kept cold for him? It would be hot by the time he arrived if we didn't. Oh, Gladys, I believe you are laughing at me. How horrid of you!"

"Not in the least. But I am rather glad he didn't come. I hate concealing things from mother."

Daisy put her nose in the air.

"Oh, you needn't have worried. He would have been quite certain to have told Aunt Alice himself."

"You didn't think of that yesterday," said Gladys.

"No. What disgusting salad! I believe it's made of turnip-tops. I'm very glad he didn't come to lunch."

"Men are so greedy about their food," said Gladys. "I don't mind what I eat."

"Evidently, since you can eat that. Oh, Gladys, I don't mean to be cross, but when you say things on purpose to annoy me it would be such bad manners in me not to appear to be annoyed. Do you think his motor has broken down? Fancy him tramping down the Bath road on a day like this! He hates walking unless he is going to kill something. He was charged by a rhinoceros once. If you try to shoot them and miss, they charge. How awfully tiresome of them! He killed it afterwards, though. It was quite close. You never heard anything so exciting."

Gladys laughed.

"Oh, Daisy," she said, "you told me that before, and you said it was so hard to know what to say if you didn't know a rhinoceros from a hippopotamus. And now you find it too exciting."

"Well, what then?" said Daisy, with dignity. "I think one ought to take an interest in all sorts of subjects. It is frightfully suburban only to be interested in what happens in your own parish. Somebody said that the world was his parish."

"I don't know what parish Grosvenor Square is in," said Gladys, parenthetically.

Somehow Daisy, in this new mood, was far less formidable than the glittering crystal which had been Daisy up till now. She seemed to have rubbed shoulders with the world, instead of streaking the sky above it. Her happiness, you would say, even in the moment of its birth, had humbled and softened her. Gladys found she had not the slightest fear of being snapped up. Several times during lunch Daisy had snapped, but she had snapped innocuously. They had finished now, and she rose.

"I expect him in about an hour," said Daisy, rather magisterially. "Let us finish the flowers. I love flowers in my bedroom, don't you? Do let us put a dish of them in everybody's bedroom. It looks so welcoming. Books, too; everybody likes a book or two in his room. It's so easy to do little things like that, and people appreciate it enormously. There's the whole of the afternoon before us; nobody will arrive till the five o'clock train."

"But I thought you said you expected him——" began Gladys.

"Darling, pray don't criticize my last remark but three. Every remark becomes obsolete as soon as another remark is made."

* * * * *

Daisy's last conjecture was correct, and it was not till after five, when tea had been laid on the broad, creeper-covered verandah to the east of the house, that any one appeared. Then, however, they appeared in large numbers, for most of Lady Nottingham's guests had chosen the train she recommended to travel by. Every one, in fact, arrived by it with the exception of Jeannie Halton and Lord Lindfield.

"I knew Jeannie would miss it," Lady Nottingham said, "but as she was equally certain she would not the thing had to be put to the proof. Daisy darling, how are you? She insisted on being taken to the symphony concert; at least, she didn't so much insist as Lord Lindfield insisted on taking her. They were to meet us at Paddington, and in case—Jeannie went so far as to provide for that contingency—in case they missed it, he was to drive her down in his motor."

Victor Braithwaite, who had come with the party, joined in.

"I know that motor," he said. "It can do any journey the second time it tries, but no journey the first time. He took me the other day from Baker Street to South Audley Street, and it stuck in the middle of Oxford Street."

Jim Crowfoot helped himself largely to strawberries, and turned to Daisy. He was a slim, rather small young man, with a voice some two sizes too large for him. He was supposed to be rather a good person to have in the house, because he never stopped talking. Had it been possible to cover him over with a piece of green baize, like a canary, when one had had enough, he would have been even more desirable.

"I suppose that's what they mean by second thoughts being the best," he said. "It isn't usually the case; at least, I find that if ever I think right, it's always when I don't give the matter any consideration. I came down here without considering that I promised to dine with Mrs. Streatham this evening, and it was an excellent plan."

Mrs. Beaumont broke in. Her plan was always to be tremendously appreciative of everybody for two sentences, in order to enhance the effect of the nasty things she said of everybody the moment afterwards. It set the nasty things off better.

"I think every one is too horrid about our dear kind Mrs. Streatham," she said. "She is the most hospitable woman I know, and you, for instance, Jim, go and eat her cutlets and then laugh at her. She asked me to dine with her next Friday, but I said I couldn't, as I remembered I was already engaged. When I looked at my book I found it was with her that I had already promised to dine. I like being asked twice; it shows one is really wanted."

"Oh, we're all really wanted," said Jim. "But we don't always want the people who want us. That is the tragedy. If you'll ask me to dinner once, Mrs. Beaumont, I will transfer two of Mrs. Streatham's invitations to you."

"There you are again! You are not kind. It would upset her table."

"Not at all. Her husband would dine downstairs, and her daughter would dine upstairs. That is the advantage of having a family. You can always make things balance."

"I have a family," said she, "and that is exactly why my bank-book won't balance. But when I overdraw I always threaten to transfer my account. Bankers will stand anything but that, won't they, Mr. Braithwaite? Let us go and stroll. Dear Jim always talks so loud that I can't hear myself think. And if I don't hear myself think I don't know what I shall say next. Do tell me, was it on purpose, do you think, that Mrs. Halton and Lord Lindfield missed their train? I may be quite wrong, but didn't you think that Alice said it as if she had rather expected it?"

"Surely, she said she expected it."

"How interesting! What a heavenly garden! I only have just met Mrs. Halton. Every one says she is too fascinating."

"She is perfectly charming," said he. "Is that the same thing?"

"Oh, not at all; you may be perfectly charming without being the least fascinating. No man ever wants to marry a perfectly charming woman; they only think it delightful when one of their friends does so."

Daisy had heard most of this as the two left the verandah and strolled off down the garden, and the effect that it had on her was to make her label Mrs. Beaumont as "horrid." She was quite aware that three-quarters of the ordinary light conversation that went on between people who were not friends but only acquaintances was not meant to be taken literally, and that no one of any perception took it otherwise. Tribute to Aunt Jeannie's charms had been paid on both sides; the woman had heard of her as "too fascinating," Victor had found her charming. Daisy herself, from her own point of view, could find no epithet too laudatory, and she endorsed both the "fascinating" and the "charming." But she was just conscious that she would have preferred that Victor should have called her fascinating, and Mrs. Beaumont charming, rather than that it should have been the other way about.

But it was not because Mrs. Beaumont called her fascinating that Daisy labelled that unconscious lady as horrid; it was because she had made the suggestion that Lord Lindfield and her aunt had missed the train on purpose, in order, so it followed, that they should drive down together in the motor whose second thoughts were so admirable. Daisy scorned the insinuation altogether; she felt that she degraded herself by allowing herself to think of it. But that had been clearly implied.

The group round the tea-table had dispersed, and she easily found herself next Aunt Alice.

"Everything is in order, dear Aunt Alice," she said, "and Gladys has worked so hard. But I don't think I should have come down yesterday if I had known there was a symphony concert this afternoon. What did they have?"

"Brahms, I think," said Lady Nottingham, vaguely. "There is Brahms, isn't there? Neither Jeannie nor Lord Lindfield quite knew. They went to see."

"But when did they settle to go and see?" asked Daisy.

"Last night, I think. Oh, yes, at the Opera last night.—Yes, Mr. Crowfoot, of course you may have another cup. Sugar?—He came to my box—Lord Lindfield, I mean—and was so delighted to meet your Aunt Jeannie again.—Yes, I put in one lump, Mr. Crowfoot. Is that right?"

Lady Nottingham certainly succeeded admirably in the lightness of touch she gave to the little speech. She knew, as well as if Daisy had told her in so many words, the sort of feeling that had dictated Daisy's rather catechism-questions about the manner of Jeannie and Lindfield settling to go to the concert, and what there was at the concert. But the lightness of touch was not easy; she knew quite well, and did not fail to remember, that a few days ago only she had advised Daisy to have her answer ready when (not "if") Lord Lindfield proposed to her. He had certainly not done so, but Daisy had evidently not expected him to go to a concert with her aunt and miss his train and drive down with her. She had no reason to suppose that anything that could be called jealousy was as yet existent in Daisy's mind. She only, perhaps, wanted to know exactly what had happened.

Jim Crowfoot had only paused like a bird on the wing, pouncing on morsels of things to eat, and having got his second cup of tea he flew off again instantly to Mrs. Majendie, whom he was regaling with a shrill soliloquy. Thus for a moment Daisy and Aunt Alice were alone at the tea-table.

Daisy dropped into a chair at Lady Nottingham's side.

"I am so glad he likes Aunt Jeannie," she said in her best and quickest style, "and that she likes him. I suppose they do like each other, since they go to a concert together and miss a train together. You never miss trains with people you don't like, do you, Aunt Alice? I was rather afraid, do you know, that Aunt Jeannie wouldn't like him. I am so glad I was wrong. And they knew each other before, did they?"

Lady Nottingham paused a moment. She never devoted, as has been said, more of her brain than was necessary to deal with the subject in hand, but it appeared to her that a good deal of brain was required here. Daisy, poor undiplomatic Daisy, had tried so hard in this rapid, quick-witted little speech to say all the things she knew she ought to feel, and which, as a matter of fact, she did not feel. Superficially, it was no doubt delightful that Aunt Jeannie should like Tom Lindfield; it was delightful also that he should like her. The speech was all quite correct, quite sincere as far as it went, but if one took it further it was all quite insincere. She said all that the surface felt in order to conceal what she really felt.

And the light reply again was not easy to Lady Nottingham. She had considered Jeannie's plan in all its bearings, and neither then nor now could she think of a better plan. But already Daisy was watching; she said it was so nice that the two should be friends. She meant it, as far as it went, but no further. She would have to learn to mean it less and less; she would have to dislike and then to hate the idea of their being friends, if Jeannie's plan was to succeed. She would also have to hate one, anyhow, if not both, of the two whom she liked so much. The curtain had gone up on a tragic little farce. It was in order to avoid a tragedy, however, that the farce had been planned. It was in order to save Daisy that she was being sacrificed now.

Lady Nottingham took up Daisy's last question.

"Oh, yes, they have known each other for years," she said, helping the plan forward. "They met quite like old friends. I was completely out of it last night. We were just us three in the box, and I was the 'shadowy third.'"

Daisy stamped, figuratively speaking, on what was in her mind, and compelled her loyalty to triumph.

"I don't wonder at everybody simply loving Aunt Jeannie," she said. "We all do, don't we? But I don't love Lord Lindfield's motor. I do hope they will be in time for dinner. Otherwise the table is absolutely upset, and I shall have to settle it all over again. Isn't it rather inconsiderate of them, Aunt Alice? I think they ought to have caught their train, whether it was Brahms or not."

But the loyalty was an effort. Lady Nottingham felt that, and applauded the effort.

"Poor Daisy!" she said, speaking in these two words her unspoken thought. "It is too bad of them to give you more trouble."

"Oh, I don't mind just arranging the table again," said Daisy, quickly.



CHAPTER XII.

A rearrangement of the table proved to be necessary, since at half-past eight Lord Lindfield's motor had not yet been heard of. But in spite of the absentees, it was a hilarious party that sat down. Some had been on the river, some had strolled about the garden, and all were disposed to enjoy themselves immensely. Jim Crowfoot had not ceased talking at all, and showed at present not the slightest sign of doing so. He took Daisy in to dinner.

"They are probably sitting by the roadside," he said, "singing Brahms to each other, while the chauffeur lies underneath the car hammering it, with his feet just sticking out, and trying to screw the throttle into the waste-pipe of the carburetter. Why does nobody invent a motor car without a carburetter? It is always that which is at the root of the trouble. And the shades of evening will thicken, and they will sing louder and louder, as night draws on, to check their rising sensations of cold and hunger and fear, while the chauffeur swiftly and firmly reduces the car to scrap-iron. I think it is so interesting when somebody doesn't arrive. Their absence gives rise to so many pleasing conjectures. What are we going to do to-morrow, Miss Daisy?"

"Oh, nothing, I hope," said she. "Why? Do you want to do anything?"

"No, but if I was expected to do anything, I wished to know the worst at once. What I like best of all is to sit in a chair and not read. The chair ought to be placed at some railway station, and a succession of people should be provided to run by me with heavy bags in their hands just missing their trains. The next best thing to doing nothing yourself is to observe everybody else trying to do something, like catching trains, and not succeeding. My uncle once missed eight trains in one day, and then tried to commit suicide. But next day he caught nine trains and a motor 'bus, which reconciled him to living, which he is still doing."

"Are you sure he was your uncle?" asked Daisy.

"Not quite; but it is much better style to say a thing happened to your uncle than to confess that you made it up. If you make things up people expect you to write a novel or something, whereas nothing can be expected from you if you say it happened to your uncle. I haven't got any uncles. That is such a good thing; I can't be an anxiety to them. And nobody is an anxiety to me."

The dining-room looked towards the front of the house, and Daisy turned suddenly.

"Ah! surely that is the crunch of a motor on the gravel," she said. "I expect it is they."

That it was a motor was at once put beyond the region of doubt by a succession of loud hoots, and in a couple of minutes Jeannie appeared in the doorway.

"Dear Alice," she said, "I apologize most abjectly; at least, the motor apologizes. Lord Lindfield made it apologize just now at the top of its voice. Didn't you hear it? Don't scold us. We missed the train by about twenty minutes, as it is always best to do things thoroughly. Shall we dress, or may we come into dinner just as we are?"

Jeannie looked radiantly round while chairs and places were being laid for them, shaking hands with those nearest her, smiling at others, and kissing her hand across the table to Daisy. The swift movement—it had been extremely swift for the last ten miles after the car had got to work again—and the change from the cool night air into this warm bright room had brought the blood to her cheeks, and gave a wonderful sparkle and youthfulness to her face, and she sat down at the top of one of the sides of the table with Lord Lindfield between her and Alice.

"And we are so hungry," she said; "for the last half-hour we have talked of nothing but food. I couldn't look at the pink after-glow of the sunset because it reminded me of strawberry fool, and Lord Lindfield nearly burst into tears because there was a cloud shaped like a fish. And we had no tea, you see, because we were missing our train at tea-time."

Dinner went on its usual way after this, and Daisy succeeded in giving a less distracted attention to Jim Crowfoot, for up till their arrival she knew that she had really been thinking about them only. She still felt a little hurt that instead of coming down here early to-day Lord Lindfield had been prevented from doing that only by his subsequent engagement to take Aunt Jeannie to a concert; but very likely he had thought over his half promise to arrive early, and seen, which was indeed the case, that it was not quite a usual thing to do.

No doubt that was it; no doubt he would explain it to her afterwards, and Daisy settled in her own mind that she would at once admit the reasonableness of it, though she would let it appear that she was a little disappointed. And she was delighted that Aunt Jeannie liked him; she had said that before to Lady Nottingham, but it was truer now than when she had said it. For she had been conscious then of something in her own mind that did not agree with the speech; she had been glad that Aunt Jeannie liked him, but she would have been quite equally glad if she did not.

It was not quite a nice feeling; there was something in common between it and jealousy, and it had required a certain effort, which she had gladly made, to put it away from her. That she had done.

From where she sat she could just see him at the head of the table, side by side with Lady Nottingham; but she let herself look at him no more than she looked, with but casual glances, at any of the others. But it was very often that she heard, and allowed herself to listen for, that great boisterous laugh which contained so much enjoyment. Her rare glances in his direction, however, told her that it was Aunt Jeannie to whom he was talking, for after a word or two to Lady Nottingham just after he came in they had had no further conversation together. It was clear, then, that he liked Aunt Jeannie. That was a good thing also.

The door from the dining-room was at that end of the room at which he was sitting, and Daisy, on her way out, had to pass close to him. He had not finished his talk with her aunt even then, for they both stood by their chairs, she waiting till others had passed out. But as Daisy came up he saw her.

"Why, Miss Daisy," he said, "haven't seen or heard you all dinner-time. Been practising for a future incarnation as a mouse or some dumb animal? Well, this is jolly, isn't it? And Mrs. Halton's forgiven me for having a motor that breaks down, on condition of my getting one that doesn't."

"Daisy darling," said Aunt Jeannie, putting her arm round the girl's waist, "how are you? You must take my side. After having stuck for an hour on a perfectly flat road, is it unreasonable that I couple my forgiveness with a new car?—You shall have our ultimatum afterwards, Lord Lindfield. Daisy may make harder conditions than I, and if she does, I shall certainly adopt them. Now, do look bored pretty soon, and come out of the dining-room quickly. It is barbarous this separation of the sexes after dinner. You don't stop behind after breakfast to drink tea."

The others had passed out, and Daisy and Mrs. Halton brought up a rather detached rearguard. The rest had gone straight out of the house into the verandah, where they had had tea, for the night was exquisitely soft and warm, and they followed them there.

"Ah! such a concert, Daisy," said Jeannie. "I wish you could have been there. And such a ludicrous drive as we had. It is so pleasant meeting Tom Lindfield again; we were great friends a year or two ago, and I think we are great friends still. But, my dear, our drive! We went for the first hour well inside the four-miles-an-hour limit, and eventually stuck on a perfectly flat road. Then the chauffeur chauffed for an hour or two, and after that we came along a shade above the fifty-miles-an-hour limit. Our limitations were our limits throughout. And such nonsense as we talked!"

"Oh, do tell me," said Daisy. "Nonsense is the only thing I care to hear about."

"I couldn't. I can't remember anything. I only know I laughed quite enormously and causelessly. Ah, here they all are.—Alice, what a divine place, and how it has grown up? Like Daisy. I was telling her about my ridiculous drive with Lord Lindfield."

Jeannie sat down in a big basket-chair and became suddenly silent. She felt queerly tired; she felt also rather sick at heart, and looking at Daisy, she could not bear the thought of the trouble and disquietude she must bring to the girl whom she so loved. She had saddled herself with a load that already galled her, though she had barely taken it up, and even as she spoke of her ludicrous drive there came to her mind an aspect of it, namely, the purpose for which she had driven down with him, which was not ludicrous at all.

And here, in this starlit garden, with friends on all sides of her, it seemed an incredible thing that she had got to sow suspicion and discord. Trouble and sorrow seemed so remote, so utterly alien. Security and serenity had here their proper home; it was a place of pleasantness and friends and rest. She felt much inclined to yield to its influences, to put off the execution of her scheme, saying to herself that it was wiser to think over it again, and see if there was not, as surely there must be, some other possibility of detaching Daisy from the man whom it seemed certain she would otherwise marry, and whom it was quite impossible she should marry. Even now Daisy was standing near her, trusting her so implicitly, loving her so well. That love and trust, so intensely dear to her, she had to risk disturbing; indeed, it was scarcely a risk she ran, it was a certainty she courted.

However quietly and well she did her part it was impossible that Daisy should not see that she was encouraging Tom Lindfield, was using a woman's power of attraction to draw him towards her. True, Daisy had not as yet told her that she expected to marry him; officially, as far as Daisy was concerned, she herself was ignorant of that. But supposing Daisy confided in her? There was nothing more likely. Within the next four-and-twenty hours Daisy would quite certainly see that her aunt was very intimate with Lord Lindfield. That very intimacy would encourage Daisy to tell her. Or, on the other hand, Lord Lindfield, while still thinking that she was only a very pleasant, sympathetic woman, might tell her his hopes with regard to Daisy. That was a very possible stage in the process of his detachment.

Yet she knew that personally she could make no better plan than that which she had already begun to carry out. She had thought over it, and thought over it, and one consideration remained paramount, namely, that Daisy must never know why this marriage was so unthinkably impossible. If he proposed to her, it seemed certain that she would accept him. In that case she would have to be told. Clearly, then, his proposal must be averted. She could find no other plan to avert that than the one she was pursuing, and already, partly to her relief, partly to an added sense of the meanness of her own role, she believed that his detachment would not be so difficult to manage. He had responded very quickly and readily to her advances; he had come to the concert with her and was delighted to miss the train, having told her also that he had "thought" of going down early to Bray. He had said no more than that, and she had quite legitimately laughed at the idea of his spending the day alone with two girls, had professed herself as pleased to have upset so preposterous an arrangement. Yet this, too, though she was glad to have stopped it, added to her heart-sickness. He would not have made such an arrangement unless Daisy had allowed it. And if Daisy permitted him to come down to spend the day with her and Gladys, it surely implied that Daisy wanted very much to see him. But Lady Nottingham had told her that Daisy was not in love with him. That was still an anchor of consolation.

All this was no effort of consecutive thought which required to be reasoned out. It was all in front of her, spread out like a landscape, to be grasped in a moment. There was Victor, too....

Daisy moved a step nearer her chair.

"It's three days since you got back, Aunt Jeannie," she said, "and I haven't had a real word with you yet. May I come and talk to you this evening when we go up to bed? I have such heaps to say."

This was too dangerous. At any cost Jeannie wanted to avoid an intimate conversation with Daisy. She had her work to do, and she did not think she could go through with it if Daisy told her in her own dear voice what she already knew. She herself had to be a flirt, had to exhibit this man to Daisy in another light, to make her disgusted with him. That was a hard row to hoe; she did not want it made more difficult.

Luckily, even as Daisy spoke, an interruption came. The sound of men's voices sounded from an open door.

"My darling, how I long to talk to you," she said, "or, rather, to have you talk to me. But to-night, Daisy, I am so tired. When I can escape and go to my bedroom, I shall just tumble into bed. You look so well, dear, and so happy. You couldn't tell me anything nicer than that. Ah! here are the men. Let us multiply ourselves."



CHAPTER XIII.

Lord Lindfield had carried out Jeannie's instructions to the letter, and after the women had left the dining-room had relapsed into a state of supreme boredom. It had not been a difficult task; his boredom was quite genuine, for he did not in the least wish to talk to Victor Braithwaite or to listen to Jim Crowfoot, or pass the wine to two or three other men. He wanted to tell Daisy how impossible it had been to get down earlier in the day; he wanted also to tell Mrs. Halton what a jolly drive they had had together. It had been jolly; there was no question whatever about it. She had been so delightful, too, about the breakdown of that wretched motor car. Other women might have been annoyed, and audibly wondered when it was going to start again. But she had not been the least annoyed. She had said, "Oh, I hope it will take a long time to mend! Isn't it heavenly sitting by the roadside like tramps?"

They had sat like tramps for an hour or two. She did not look particularly like a tramp, for she had a huge fur cloak on at first, designed originally to defeat the cold wind occasioned by the speed at which they hoped to travel, which up till then had been about three miles an hour. This she had taken off, and sat on a rug taken from the disgraceful car, and treated the whole affair like a huge joke. There never was such a good comrade; if she had been a boy, out on a motor for the first time, she could not have adopted a franker air of amused enjoyment at these accidents of the road. They had made periodic visits to the car and the hammering chauffeur, and then the Great Hunger, about which she had already spoken, had begun. She had confessed to an awful inanition, and had suggested things to eat, till the fact that other people were already sitting down to dine, having had tea, became absolutely unbearable. Then suddenly she had stopped the nonsense and said, "I am so glad that this has happened. Being left in the Bath Road like this makes one know a man better, doesn't it? I always wanted to know you better. Oh, the compliment is ambiguous. I haven't told you yet whether you improve on acquaintance."

And then, just as they stopped at the door and the motor hooted its apologies, she turned to him.

"What a pity!" she had said. "I hate nice things coming to an end."

That particular nice thing had certainly come to an end, but he was firmly determined that there were a quantity of nice things not yet begun. He was genuinely attached to Daisy; he fully intended to ask her to be his wife, and contemplated, in case he was so fortunate as to obtain a "yes" from her, many serene and happy years. And, indeed, he was no coxcomb; he did not fancy that any girl he saw was willing to marry him if he wished to marry her, but at the same time he did not feel that it was in the least likely that Daisy would refuse him. And as he came out after dinner that night, after so successfully looking bored in the dining-room, he had not altered his mind in the least; his intentions were still all fully there. But that was no reason why he should not talk to Mrs. Halton. He was quite capable even of talking to her about Daisy.

It was then that the action of the tragic little farce really began. Daisy had heard the sound of his voice before they turned the corner of the house, and by design moved away from her aunt's side to the far end of the verandah, from where a path led down to the edge of the river. The verandah was well lit; there could be no question that when he came round the corner he would see her. There was no question, moreover, in her own mind, that he would join her.

Jeannie was sitting at the end of the verandah near to the corner round which they came. Victor Braithwaite stopped on one side of her chair, Lord Lindfield stopped on the other. The latter had looked up, and, Daisy felt sure, had seen her. Then, after a few minutes' chat, Daisy saw her aunt get out of her chair and heard her laugh.

"But I challenge you, Lord Lindfield," Daisy heard her say; "and, apart from all chivalrous instincts, if you don't accept my challenge it will be because you know you will be beaten. We will have a game of pool first, and then, when everybody else is tired, you and I will play a serious hundred. You probably think that because I am a woman I can't play games. Very well. I say to that, 'Let us put it to the proof.'—Mr. Braithwaite, come and play pool first, won't you?—Dear Alice, may we go and play pool? Is nobody else coming? Let us begin at once."

All this Daisy heard; and once again she saw Lord Lindfield look up towards the end of the verandah where she was standing, and then call some laughing reply after Mrs. Halton, who was already just vanishing indoors. For a couple of steps he followed her, then turned round and came up the verandah towards Daisy.

"Mrs. Halton has arranged a regular night of it, Miss Daisy," he said, "and has challenged me to a game of billiards in such a way that I can't refuse. We're going to have a game of pool first. Won't you come and take a hand? You and I will play Mrs. Halton and Braithwaite."

"Sides at pool?" asked Daisy.

"Why shouldn't we? But probably you think it's stupid to go indoors on such a night. So it is. I would much sooner stroll about or go on the river, but, you see, I can't help myself. Let's go in the punt to-morrow. Please keep a punt for you and me. Put a label on—'You and Me.'"

Daisy smiled. She would not have allowed that she needed cheering up at all, but it is a fact that this cheered her up.

"Yes, do let us spend all day on the river to-morrow," she said. "But you must go and play your pool now. I don't think I shall come in; it is so heavenly out here."

Lord Lindfield wavered; the girl looked enchantingly pretty. "Upon my word, so it is," he said; "and you look just like a summer evening yourself, Miss Daisy. Wonder if I could get some one to take my place at pool before I play a single with Mrs. Halton, and stop out here with you?"

Pleasant though the deed would have been to Daisy, his wish and his desire were more essential. She could without struggle forgo the pleasure of being with him, now that he had said that it was this that he preferred.

"But indeed you mustn't do anything of the kind," she said. "Aunt Jeannie wants you to play; she asked you. You must go in at once."

The fact that Mrs. Halton had carried off two men to the billiard-room left the rest of the party out of the square; but Daisy, quite willing to be the odd unit, strolled very contentedly out along the path that led to the river. The moon had not long risen and shone very large and low in the east, burning dimly and red through the heat haze and vapours from the Thames. The air was very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the acute ear could hear them.