From the garden, as an occasional whisper of wind lifted the down-dropping leaves of aspen and ash, the air came laden with the scent of damp earth (for since sunset the gardeners had been busy) and the spilt fragrance of sleeping flowers. Or occasionally a little draught would draw from the river itself, and that to Daisy's nostril was of even a more admirable quality, for it smelt of cool running water and nought besides. On the far bank the mists lay in wisps and streamers above the low-lying meadow, and the dark bulk of cattle and horses loomed through them like rocks in a vaporous sea. But a fathom from the ground the air was dry and clear; it was but in a shallow sea that these rocks were submerged, and on this side of the river where Daisy walked the banking-up of the path to form a protection to the garden against the spring and winter floods raised her above these damp breathings of the fruitful earth, and she moved in the clearness and austerity of starshine and moonlight. And not her body only, but her mind and soul walked in a light that was very romantic and wonderful, and seemed somehow to be attuned to this pale mysterious flame of the moon that flooded the heavens.

All the dim, intense happiness she first experienced two nights before had blazed up within her into a conflagration, the nature of which there was no mistaking, while the dim and almost intenser doubts and miseries of two nights before she saw now to be but the shadows cast by the first kindling of the other light. Now, as it blazed higher and more triumphantly, the shadows vanished. And though her consciousness of this was so vivid and alert, self-consciousness was almost altogether banished. She no longer made plans for herself in the future, as she had always done till now, seeing herself as the mistress of a great house, and filling that position, as, indeed, she was fitted to do, so well, or seeing herself always kind, always pleasant, always ready to smile on her adorer. Nor did she even see herself as mother of his children. She lost sight of herself altogether just now, and saw him only, but in that different light in which he had appeared so suddenly, so disconcertingly, at the ball two nights ago.

And he had wished, had preferred to come out here with her rather than go indoors and play billiards. Daisy, in a sudden mood of that exquisite humbleness which goes with love, blushed with pleasure that it should be so, but told herself that it was an incredible thing. Yet so it was. He would sooner have come out here (for he had said it) and talked to this goose of a girl than be with anybody else, even Aunt Jeannie. Daisy wished she had told Aunt Jeannie on the afternoon of her arrival what was the state of things between her and Lord Lindfield, for it was really rather too much of a good thing that Aunt Jeannie (the darling) should all innocently monopolize him the whole afternoon, drive down with him alone (taking hours and hours over it), and as soon as dinner was over (at which meal she sat next him) take him away to play billiards. But she had let that opportunity slip, and though she had hoped to tell Jeannie about it to-night she would not be able, since her aunt had cried off a bedroom talk on the plea of tiredness.

And then, quite suddenly, a thought occurred to Daisy of the most disagreeable kind. Aunt Jeannie had been too tired to talk to her, had meant to slip away and tumble into bed as soon as possible, yet within five minutes of her having made that declaration she had engaged herself to play pool and to follow that up by having a single with Lord Lindfield—an odd programme for a woman who was so fatigued that she was going to slip away and go to bed as soon as possible.

Then, almost without pause, Daisy pulled herself together again, banging the door of her mind, so to speak, on that unpleasant thought, and refusing to give it entrance or to hold parley with it. There were fifty explanations, if explanations were required, but for a loyal friend they were not, and Daisy refused to think more of the matter. But all the time some small prying denizen of her subconscious mind was wondering what these explanations could possibly be.

This unpleasant little moment, though she had dealt with it as loyally and speedily as she could, had rather spoilt the moonlight saunter—or, at any rate, Daisy was afraid of other similar intrusions, and she went back to the house. There she found the whole party engaged, for the bridge tables had been made up, one in the far end of the billiard-room, one out on the verandah, while the remaining three were still at their pool. Without more than half-conscious intention, Daisy strolled on round the house, meaning to look in at the billiard-room.

She had meant to go into the room in the natural, ordinary way, entering by the long French window, which gave on to the path, and would be sure on this warm evening to be open. But she did not do that, and instead, paused opposite the window, but at some little distance from it, so that she herself was probably invisible to eyes looking from that bright light inside into the dusk in which she stood. She wanted, in fact, to see what was going on without being seen. She saw.

Aunt Jeannie and Lord Lindfield were standing together by the marking-board, talking about some point which might or might not have been connected with billiards. The pool apparently was over, for Victor Braithwaite had put down his cue and had strolled over to the bridge table. And at that moment Jeannie raised her hand and laid it, just for a second, on the sleeve of Lindfield's shirt, for he was coatless. The action was infinitesimal and momentary, but it looked rather intimate.

And then poor Daisy had once more to take herself in hand. Whatever polite name might be found for her present occupation (you could call it strolling in the garden or looking at the moon, if you chose), there was a very straightforward and not very polite name that could be found for it, and that was "spying." She discontinued it, and entered the billiard-room, whistling, like a proper person.

The usual thing happened, and everybody became so stupidly and obstinately unselfish that it looked as if there would be no more billiards at all.

Lord Lindfield, without pause, said: "By Jove! how lucky, Miss Daisy. You've come in the nick of time. Just finished our pool. Now you and Mrs. Halton shall play a single and I shall mark for you."

But it appeared also that if there was a thing Mrs. Halton really enjoyed doing it was marking for other people, and she insisted that Daisy and Lord Lindfield should have a game. Daisy, of course, was equally altruistic, firmly refused to interfere with their previous arrangement, and eventually, a rubber just coming to an end, cut into the bridge table in the far corner of the room.

The rubber was fairly rapid, but before the end of it a footman had appeared with the bed-time tray of soda and whisky and lemons, followed by another man with bedroom candles. Mrs. Beaumont, the only other woman in the room besides Daisy and Mrs. Halton, and who had been yawning in a strangled manner during the course of the last two hands, instantly took her candle and departed, and Daisy, with more deliberation, drank some soda-water and looked on at the game for a few minutes.

"Daisy dear," said Jeannie, "is it too dreadful and wicked and fast of me to go on playing? I don't care if it is. I must finish the game, and I'm going to win.—Oh, Lord Lindfield, what a fluke! Do you mean to say you are going to count it?"

"By Jove! yes; charge three for that.—Miss Daisy, your aunt's giving me an awful hiding! There, I've left them again!"

Jeannie, as a matter of fact, was what may be called a very decent country-house player, quite capable of making her twenty-five break more than once in the course of a game. She selected this moment to do it now, and from seventy-six ran out. The other men had strolled out on to the terrace, and Daisy, after congratulations, lit a couple of candles, one for herself, one for her aunt.

"I say, Mrs. Halton, we might have one more game," said Lord Lindfield; "it's only half-past ten. Couldn't sleep if I had to finish up with such a whacking."

Jeannie's eyes were a-sparkle with enjoyment and triumph.

"Have a game with Daisy," she said. "Let me rest on my laurels."

Daisy shook her head.

"Not to-night," she said. "I really would rather not. Do play again, Aunt Jeannie. I am going to bed; I am, really."

"Fifty, then, Lord Lindfield," said Jeannie.

Daisy went straight up to her room, still making an effort to banish the thought that Aunt Jeannie had said she was tired, and slowly the house grew quiet. The steps of men going to their rooms tapped along the polished boards of the corridor outside, with now and then the rustle of a dress. Then all was still, and she sat, half-undressed, with a book on her lap that she was not reading, while a couple more quarters chimed from the clock above the stables. At last came the sound of steps again outside; the tap of a rather heavy tread, and with it the rustle of a dress. Then came Lindfield's laugh, merry and unmistakable.

"Good-night, Mrs. Halton," he said. "I've had a perfectly ripping time! Never enjoyed a day more."

Apparently she had gone down the passage some way, for her voice sounded more distant.

"And I also," she said. "Good-night."

Then came the sound of two doors shutting.



CHAPTER XIV.

It was about half-past three in the afternoon of the next day, and house and garden alike wore a rather uncomfortable air of heat fatigue and somnolence. The blinds were down in all the windows that faced south and west, with the object, no doubt, of keeping them cool—a most desirable condition of things, but one, on the present occasion, but imperfectly realized. Nor were things much better to the east of the house, where ran the deep verandah in which they had sat and from which Daisy had strayed the evening before; for the heat came no longer from the honest and scorching rays of the sun, but through a thick blanket of grey cloud, which all morning had been gradually forming over and obscuring the sky. Southwards there was rather an ugly glare in the day, a tawny, coppery-coloured light that spread from low on the horizon, where clouds of thicker and more palpable texture were piled together—clouds with hard edges and angry lights in them. It was certain there was going to be a storm somewhere, and that would be no bad thing, for the air was horribly sultry, and quite distinctly needed clearing.

Daisy was always susceptible to atmospheric conditions, and she had gone upstairs after lunch to her room, on the plea, a fairly true one, of thunder-headache. Aunt Jeannie had been eager with sympathy, smelling-salts, and offers to read, but Daisy had quietly rejected all these, saying that it was merely a question of thunderstorm. When the storm broke she would be better; till then smelling-salts would not help her.

"It's quite darling of you, Aunt Jeannie," she had forced herself to say at the end, with a cordiality that was somewhat hard to put into her voice; "but, really, I would sooner be alone. It isn't a bad headache either—only just a thunder one."

There was a window-seat in her room, well lined with cushions, and looking over the river, and it was here that Daisy was rather uneasily reclining herself. She had first tried lying on her bed, but the room was too airless except close by the window to be tolerable. Partly that, partly (half an hour ago) the sound of voices outside, had made her come over here, and it was to see what was happening to those whom she had heard talking, as well as to get what air there was, that kept her here now.

A breath-holding immobility lay over river and garden; no quiver moved in the aspens or shook the leaf-clad towers of the elms and chestnuts. It was as if, instead of being clad in soft and sensitive foliage, they were cast in iron. No note of birds came from the bushes, no ripple broke the metallic hardness of the river, and the reflections of the loose-strife and tall grasses along its edges, and the clump of chestnuts on the little promontory at the corner of the garden, were as clear-cut and unwavering as if they had been enamelled on steel. There was no atmosphere in the day; no mist or haze, in spite of the heat, shrouded or melted the distances; the trees and house-roofs of Maidenhead a mile away seemed as if a stretched-out finger could be laid on them. They were of Noah's Ark size; it was only minuteness that showed their remoteness.

There was a punt underneath these chestnuts at the corner of the garden, partly concealed by the low sweep of the boughs. Half an hour ago Daisy had heard Aunt Jeannie's voice below her window saying, "Yes, with pleasure. But we shall be wise not to go far, as I am sure there will be a storm." It was at that that Daisy had left her bed and come across to the window-seat, to see with whom Aunt Jeannie was not going far. But before she had got there another voice had told her who it was. They had not gone far; they had gone about fifty yards from the boathouse.

She could see the lines of the punt among the leaves; there was a great pile of crimson cushions and a woman's figure dressed in grey. In front of it sat a man's figure in flannels, with shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Even as Daisy looked, Aunt Jeannie passed him a couple of cushions, and he too sat down on the floor of the punt, close to and facing her. Daisy had said her headache was not bad, and that it was only thunder-headache. Neither of these assertions was quite true. Her headache was bad, and it was not, in the main, thunder-headache at all; it was headache born of trouble and perplexity and struggle. She did not in the least understand what was happening.

She had got up early that morning and had gone out before breakfast. Very likely she was out of sorts, and a row on the river in the coolness of the day was exactly the right thing to correct morbid and suspicious impressions, which were founded, so she told herself, not on facts, but on her own bilious interpretation of facts. And, indeed, in the fresh dewy morning she found, when she went out, that her imagination, which had been fairly busy most of the night fitting together, like a Chinese puzzle, the rather disturbing events of the day before, had been riotous and sensational. Lord Lindfield, for instance, it was true, had not come down here early yesterday, as he had suggested, but had gone with Aunt Jeannie to a concert. Clearly his coming down alone to spend the day with two (especially one) girls in the country would have been highly unconventional, and he was very wise not to. So that was disposed of. They had missed their train and motored down instead, arriving half-way through dinner. What of that? Unless she was prepared to aver that there had been no breakdown, what was there to build on here? So that was disposed of. They had played two games of billiards together last night—the second fifty, so it appeared, had been doubled—but why not? Before each game Daisy had been asked if she would not play, and had refused. Then he had said, as they parted on the landing, that he had never enjoyed a day more. And what of that? Did not Daisy herself have "the most heavenly evening I have ever spent" about seven times a week?

Like the sensible girl she was, she took her trouble to bits in that early morning row, as one may take the mechanism of a clock to bits, and found there was something faulty in every individual piece of its working. Clearly, therefore, the whole thing, when pieced together again, could not reasonably be considered a reliable clock, since there was something wrong with every single piece of it. But—here was the trouble of it—it seemed to her, when reconstructed and made into one, to keep excellent time, to be thoroughly dependable. Yet, since all its pieces were wrong, she would not accept the whole, and, tossing it overboard, so to speak, settled down for a spell of demon-dispersing exercise. It was still only a little after seven. She had two clear hours to get rid of her blues—for they already had become substantial enough to take this depressing colour—before breakfast.

She had returned, it must be confessed, in far more equable spirits; physical exercise had disposed her to a broader and more out-of-door attitude, while her determined effort not to be suspicious and maliciously constructive had done more.

Of all people in the world Aunt Jeannie was the least mean or ignoble-minded, and Daisy told herself that she had been measuring her actions by a standard so crooked that it would not lie straight along them. There should be no more such attempts, and no more looking from the dark into windows to see unseen what people were doing inside. Flushed and exhilarated by her row, Daisy's cheeks burnt a shade brighter that moment at the thought that it was indeed she who had done that.

It was still half an hour to breakfast-time when she got back to the boat-house, but already the heat of the day was begun, and the smell of the damp coolness of the night dried up. She strolled along the outside of the thick hedge that faced the river, and then, turning the corner, saw in front of her, not twenty yards distant, two figures standing alone together. The woman's two hands clasped those of the man, holding them against her breast. She was speaking softly and eagerly, smiling into his face.

Quick as a lizard, Daisy popped back behind the hedge before either seemed to have seen her, and went swiftly to the house. But this was more inexplicable yet—for the two figures she had seen were those of Aunt Jeannie and Victor Braithwaite. There was no questioning the intimacy of their attitude. Yet here again she had seen something she had not been meant to see; she would be a lamentable creature if she let her mind dwell on it, or try to construct its meaning and significance. It was not for her. But if the man's figure had been Lord Lindfield's she would have been less surprised.

She had earned an inactive morning by her expedition before breakfast, and announced her set determination to go no further than the elm-trees beyond the rose-garden, and when arrived there to do nothing whatever. From the other side of the table Lord Lindfield rose at this.

"Jove, Miss Daisy," he said. "I've been wondering since I got up, what's the matter with me, and now I know it's the need of sitting under a tree and doing nothing. I'll join your party, if you'll let me. Is talking allowed?"

"Yes, but nobody need answer. I usually shan't."

Jim Crowfoot got up.

"I'm not sure if I shall come or not," he said. "I think not. I feel rather inclined for conversation to-day."

"Better not come then, old chap," said Lindfield. "There's not much conversation usually when I'm with you. I never get a word in. Nor anybody else."

It was impossible to take offence at even this, so pure and friendly was the chaff. It may be said to Jim's credit that he did not even attempt to do so.

"What am I to do, then?" he asked. "I can't converse alone.—Mrs. Halton, will you talk to me?"

"No, Mrs. Halton's going to write letters all the morning," said Lindfield. "She told me so."

Just for a second Daisy allowed herself to think "So he already knew that," but it was but momentary. This mood of drawing inferences from infinitesimal data in other people's conduct was altogether detestable; she must not allow herself to do it.

"Yes, I'm going to be a virtuous woman," said Aunt Jeannie.—"Alice dear, will you get a nice dog-chain and fasten me down to a writing-table till I swear to you that I have written to everybody who ever writes to me?"

"If you wish, but if I chain you down you sacrifice the fineness of your virtue. You make a virtue of necessity."

"No," said Jeannie, "I make a necessity of virtue. I shan't be able to get up. Or is it the same thing?"

"You're clearly going to make a morning of it," remarked Lindfield.

Jeannie sighed.

"An afternoon as well," she said, "If my recollection of the size of a certain packet neatly labelled 'Unanswered' is at all correct."

"Shouldn't make a packet of unanswered letters," said Lindfield. "I burn them. Then you can start afresh."



CHAPTER XV.

The next hour or two had fairly fulfilled the breakfast plans. Daisy, after the tiger accident to her parasol at the Zoo, had fallen back, for country use anyhow, on an immense scarlet contadina umbrella, and had planted herself and this under the elm-tree as soon as breakfast was over. Almost immediately after Lord Lindfield had followed her, with not quite so rigid an interpretation of idleness as Daisy, for she had brought absolutely nothing with her to occupy her hands or her mind, whereas he had a daily paper.

"Not a word or a sigh or a sneeze, Miss Daisy," he said, in a whisper, "or we shall be discovered. Not brought anything whatever with you? That's right. Just you yourself."

"You forget my parasol," said Daisy, "and it really isn't an insignificant affair."

"I know it isn't. I don't like it. It hides too much of you."

Daisy laughed.

"I suppose that means I have to put it down," she said.

"Well, I think it would be kind of you," he said. "You've been hiding yourself too much lately to my mind."

Daisy could not let this pass.

"Well, I like that," she said. "You threw me over all yesterday, which you said you were going to spend down here; you arrived with Aunt Jeannie in the middle of dinner, and played five thousand up with her afterwards."

"Yes, and when I do hope to catch a glimpse of you you hide yourself under a scarlet umbrella," he said. "That's better; thanks awfully."

Daisy furled the big umbrella, and threw it down on the grass. For the moment her mind was absolutely at peace again, and went back with a tremulous sense of happiness to the mood of the ball, so few evenings ago. And as she faced him, she thought again that it was a different man from the one she had known, and again saw that the difference was in herself.

"We had a great discussion, Mrs. Halton and I," he went on, "when we were sitting like wayside flowers near Ealing yesterday, as to whether people were nicer in the country or in town. I wonder which of us you will agree with."

"Oh, with Aunt Jeannie, I expect," said Daisy, not without challenge in her voice.

"H'm. That's a nasty one for me. Well, let's put it to the proof, anyhow. We agreed that some people are nicer in town and others in the country, but there we parted company."

"Ah, don't tell me," said Daisy. "Let me think."

She plucked a long grass stem and drew it through her teeth.

"The people one really likes and loves are nicer in the country," she said at length. "The people who just amuse you are nicer in town."

"Hurrah!" said he. "That's first-rate! It's what I said myself. Mrs. Halton wouldn't have any of that. She says that she herself is so much nicer in town that she refused to accept such a classification. Else it would mean that none of us liked her. But she stuck to the fact that none of us would like her so much down here."

Daisy considered this.

"How funny of Aunt Jeannie," she said. "I wonder——"

Then a whole collection of the things that poor Daisy had tried to put away from her mind flashed into it again, giving her a feeling of sickness and insecurity. What did it all mean?

"I wonder what she meant?" she added, truthfully enough.

"Don't know. Here she comes. By Jove! Miss Daisy, how splendid she looks."

Aunt Jeannie certainly was looking her very best this morning. She was walking hatless in the blaze of the sun, and somehow the sunlight seemed not so much to shine on her as to shine from her. Flowers, garden, river, sky, sun, were all so much less splendid than she.

"I love this heat," she said, "and it saps my moral nature and leaves me a happy animal with no sense of responsibility. Daisy dear, you needn't answer. I won't invade you for long. But I sat down at my table with all the unanswered letters, I looked them through, and determined not to answer one. I'm going to have a holiday from being good. I've been good too long, I think. The joy of virtue palls. But there ought to be wind; there is sun and sky and water and all nice things, except wind. Can't you—what's the phrase?—can't you raise the wind, Lord Lindfield?"

Tom Lindfield clicked his finger and thumb together.

"Jove! Mrs. Halton," he said, "you always think of the right thing, or make me do so." He jumped up. "I'll order the motor at once," he said. "You and Miss Daisy and I, let's all go out for a run. Old Puffing Billy always goes well up to speed limit the day after he's broken down."

Daisy's effort with herself that morning on the river suddenly came to the limits of its energy. Once again she saw everything in that light which she had tried so hard to extinguish. And now there was more added, there were further features in the scene. Aunt Jeannie was too clever for her; with how natural an air she had come out and said that only wind was necessary to make the morning perfect; and how naturally and how unconsciously had he responded to that subtly conveyed suggestion, the very subtlety of which made him believe that he had thought of the plan himself. But outwardly Daisy still was mistress of herself; it was from the inside, not the outside, that her control was beginning to give way. She put up the red umbrella again.

"Thanks awfully, Lord Lindfield," she said, "but I can't think of the grilling roads and the dust without putting up my neat little parasol again. But you are too ingenious for words! Aunt Jeannie comes out here and demands wind, and you instantly think of the only plan of giving it her. No, for me the book of verses, or, rather, the newspaper, underneath the bough will last till lunch-time. Has anything happened?"

Daisy spoke in the lightest possible tone; it required a woman to hear that beneath the light words a troubled spirit spoke. And Jeannie was sick at heart at the success of her scheme. She had heard at breakfast how these two meant to spend their morning; she was aware that others knew of the situation which existed between them, and would surely avoid the elm-tree by the rose-garden like a plague-stricken spot, and so she had come out here on her hateful mission, interrupting and breaking up their dangerous companionship.

She had been prepared to go further than this—to ask, if necessary, point blank, for the use of his car, and hint at the pleasure of his company. Part of that had been spared her; he probably had no inkling of her design in coming out and demanding wind; indeed he thought he had thought of it himself. But Daisy knew.

The tragic farce had to preserve the tone required of public performances.

"Daisy dear, won't you come?" she asked. "Three is the best company of all, I think."

Daisy turned over a leaf of the paper rather too smartly for a public performance.

"Indeed, I think I won't, Aunt Jeannie," she said. "I had such a long row before breakfast. I feel frightfully disinclined to move."

And she waited to hear Lord Lindfield urge her to come. But he was already half-way towards the house. Daisy just raised her eyes, and saw him already distant, and she felt that which she had often heard of before, but passed over as unintelligible. Now she understood it, for her heart swelled.

Aunt Jeannie followed after a general remark or two, to which Daisy could scarcely reply. And after that more trials were in store, for Willie Carton brought his patient presence out under the elm-tree which had promised so well and performed so badly, and lay on the grass and pretended to read a book.

It was very stupid of him to come, so Daisy thought, and rather selfish. She had given him so firm an answer, and if he reopened the question again she was determined to speak even more plainly. But he did nothing of the kind, and Daisy, quieting down a little from the tumult of her private thoughts, began to feel a little compassionate.

She knew now, in some kind of way, what was going on inside him. She realized the nature of that which brought him out here, to pretend to read a book. He wanted to be near her. And there was something of the pathetic faithfulness of a dog about him—a dog that is beaten and repulsed but never falters, or can falter, in devotion to his master. She had begun to know what that unreasoning devotion meant.

"I know the compact of the elm-tree is not to talk or expect answers," said Willie quietly. "Don't let me disturb you."

Daisy looked up at him swiftly.

"But if I said that you do disturb me?" she said.

"Then I should go away," he said.

"Oh, Willie, you don't," she said.

"Right. Tell me when I do."

And then poor Daisy began to have a headache. It got worse, and before long she rose.

"What a beastly day," she said.

"It is rather," said he. "But it's all right here."

"It isn't all right anywhere," said Daisy. "I shall go indoors. I've got a headache."

"Wish I could take it," said he.

"Oh, don't be foolish. Thanks awfully; I know you mean it. But one can't take other people's burdens, you know. We are all saddled separately, and—and all we can do is to pretend we aren't saddled at all, and make grimaces and pretend to enjoy ourselves. Do pretend—we all pretend."

"Oh, I've been pretending a long time," said he.

Daisy's headache gave her a stab that was quite unsettling.

"Men always think about themselves," she remarked. "Don't answer. It is the elm-tree rule."

"I shall answer. Was your remark that men always think about themselves meant to apply to me? I only want to know."

Daisy had some little sense of justice left.

"No," she said. "I don't think it was."

* * * * *

The motorists came back very late for lunch, just as the evening before they had come back late for dinner.

* * * * *

Such was Daisy's morning; and she felt she had a perfect right to a headache. And with her headache she lay in the window-seat of her bedroom and watched the punt, with its crimson spots of cushions, unwaveringly reflected in the surface of the Thames. Above the sky grew darker with the approach of storm, and the light grew more coppery with the rising of that curious cloud out of the south. But still this dreadful clearness of air continued in spite of the growing darkness.

Maidenhead was still close and distinct, and closer and more distinct was the punt, where Aunt Jeannie handed Lindfield two crimson cushions. Then in that darkness below the chestnut-tree a match was struck, and he lit a cigarette, and dropped the still flaming vesta into the Thames. Then he shifted his position a little, and sat nearer to that other figure dressed in grey, whose arm was leaning over the side of the punt, and whose hand just dabbled in the water.

And then Daisy suddenly hid her face in the cushions of the window-seat and began to sob.



CHAPTER XVI.

Jeannie, as Daisy had heard, had advised that in view of the approaching storm they should not go far, and it was now about an hour since she and Tom Lindfield had, after this stipulation, gone down to the river. They had taken a punt, and pushed out from the hot, reeking boathouse that smelt strongly of the tar that was growing soft and viscous on its roof beneath the heat of the day, and slid down the backwater towards the river. The weeds here wanted cutting, and they wrapped themselves affectionately round the punt-pole, and dragged their green slender fingers along the bottom of the punt as if seeking to delay its passage. Then for a moment they had found a little coolness as they passed below the chestnut trees that extended their long boughs three-quarters of the way across the backwater, and Jeannie had said,—

"Lord Lindfield, you will certainly get very hot if you punt me up-stream, and we shall probably both get very wet before we get back. Let us stop here."

He had been by no means unwilling, and they had tied up.

"And sit down," she said; "out of these two thousand cushions I can spare you a few. There, on the bottom of the boat."

"I didn't suggest stopping," he said. "You mustn't be sarcastic afterwards over the immense expedition I took you."

"I promise not. I don't think I should ever be sarcastic to you, do you know? You would only laugh. The point of sarcasm is to give pain."

"And you don't want to give me pain? Hurrah!"

"Ah, I'm not sure that a little pain would not be rather good for you. I think you have almost too delightful a time. When did you last not enjoy yourself? And yet I don't know; perhaps you deserve it all. I am sure you give your friends a delightful time though you do have one yourself. Poor Daisy! I am afraid she isn't having a good time this afternoon; she has a headache. I offered sympathy and companionship, but she felt like being alone. Poor Daisy!"

Jeannie's voice suddenly died. She meant him to say something about Daisy, but for herself she felt as if she could not go on talking.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought she wasn't looking very brilliant. She should have come out with us for a run in the motor. Jove! it is hot even here. I think it was an excellent plan not to go any further; besides, I want to talk most awfully."

A week ago Jeannie had loathed the thought of this man even as, and for the same reason, she loathed the thought of Paris when she passed through it. But at the moment she did not loathe the thought of him at all, nor did she loathe him. She who so loved the sunshine and joy of life could not but like one who took so keen and boyish a pleasure in its pleasantness, and, boylike also, turned so uncompromising a back on all that was unpleasant or even puzzling.

He had no use for unpleasantness and no head for puzzles. From an intellectual point of view he might have been called stupid; but intellectual though Jeannie was, she never took her view of life or her estimate of people from that standpoint. Affection and simplicity and good-fellowship were things that seemed to matter to her much more.

From the human point of view, then, which does not concern itself with one's neighbour's intellectual qualities any more than it concerns itself with his morals, she had quickly grown to like this simple, pleasant man, who had so good an appetite for the joys of life. And her liking for him made her task far more difficult and far more repulsive to her than she had anticipated.

She had thought that as far as he was concerned she would find it perfectly easy to be ruthless, steeling herself to it by the memory of Diana. That memory had not in the least faded, but there had come into the foreground of her life this liking and sympathy for the man who she hoped was to be her victim.

It made what she was doing doubly odious to her, and yet, think and puzzle as she might, she could devise no plan but this, which, if it succeeded, would spare Daisy the knowledge that she herself had promised Diana to spare her.

As far as things had gone, she was fairly content with what she had accomplished. It was all horrible to her, but the plan was working quite well. He had scarcely seen Daisy since they had come down here, while he had seldom been out of her own company, and it was clear to Mrs. Halton that Daisy was certainly beginning to be puzzled, and, poor child, was beginning to feel hurt and slighted.

But there had been as yet no more than a beginning made; Lord Lindfield would have to be far more taken up with herself than he was now, and Daisy, poor dear, would have to be far more deeply wounded and hurt before the thing was accomplished. And already Mrs. Halton felt sick at heart about it all. Yet till a better plan could be thought of she had not to set her teeth, but to smile her best, and flirt, flirt, flirt.

There was but one bright spot in the whole affair, and that the few words which she had had with Victor early that morning before breakfast. She had asked him, not pointedly, but in a general way arising out of their talk, what he would think if in some way she completely puzzled him, and acted in a manner that was incomprehensible. And he had laughed.

"Why, my darling, what an easy question," he said. "I should know that there was something behind I didn't understand. I should wait for you to tell me about it."

"And if I never told you about it?" asked Jeannie.

"Then, dear, I should know you had some good reason for that. But I should never ask you, I think, and I know I should never cease to trust you or forget that we are—well, you and me."

That was wine to her.



CHAPTER XVII.

But she liked Lindfield; that made her task so much harder. It was shameful to treat a man like this, and yet—and yet there was still the memory of that dreadful gilded house in Paris and the dying voice of Diana.

So once more, and not for the last time, she settled down to the task that was so odious—odious because she liked him.

"We shall quarrel, then, I am afraid," she said, "because I want to talk too. We both want to talk—I to you, you to me."

He leant over her a moment, since the punt-pole had to be grounded at the stern of the boat, for he had tied the chain in the bow to an unearthed root of the tree. She leant a little sideways away from him, and this was done. It was then she gave him the few cushions out of the two thousand.

"Have you got anything very special to say?" she asked. "Because I have, and so I shall begin. Yet I don't know if it is special, except that between friends everything seems to be special."

Again Jeannie could not get on for a moment, but she proceeded without notable pause.

"The difference between friends and acquaintances is so enormous," she said, "and yet so many people confuse the two. One may meet another person a hundred times and be only an acquaintance; one may meet a person once and be a friend in a minute. Perhaps it is not the same with men. I don't think a man recognizes those who are going to be or are capable of being his friends at the first glance, whereas a woman does. She feels it to the end of her finger-tips."

Jeannie gave a quick glance at him, and saw that he was listening with considerable attention. She gave a little sigh, and clasped her hands behind her head.

"What an uneconomical world it is," she said, "and what a lot of affection and emotion Nature allows to run to waste. A man sees in some woman the one quality, the one character that he is for ever seeking; he sees that she is in some way the complement of himself, and perhaps the woman merely dislikes him. Or it may happen the other way round. What a waste of noble stuff that means. All his affection is poured away like a stream losing itself in the desert. It does seem a pity."

"Jove! yes, and I never thought of that," he said. "There must be a lot of that going on. So much, perhaps, that some day the desert will get quite damp, and then won't it cease to be a desert?"

She looked at him rather longer, letting her eyes rest on his.

"That is a much more hopeful solution," she said. "Perhaps it doesn't all go to waste. Or shall we say that Nature never throws things away, but puts all these odds and ends of affection in the stock-pot to make soup. But they will make soup for other people. Ah! there was lightning far off. The storm is beginning."

They waited in silence, till a long, drowsy peal of thunder answered.

"Oh, it is miles away yet," he said.

Jeannie arranged her cushions more comfortably. "And yet I rather like Nature's uneconomical habits," she said, "if we settle she is a spendthrift. There is something rather royal and large-handed about it. She is just the same in physical affairs. I saw in some snippety paper the other day that the amount of electricity discharged in a good thunderstorm would be sufficient to light every house in London for five hours, or run all the trains on all the tubes for about the same time. I should think you are rather spendthrift, too, Lord Lindfield."

He laughed.

"I? Oh, yes. I pour out gallons of affection in all directions. Always have."

Again Jeannie smiled at him.

"Ah, I like that," she said, softly. "And we won't think it goes to waste. It would be too sad. Go on, tell me about your pouring it out in all directions. I should like to hear about it."

Jeannie hated herself as she spoke; she was using all her woman's charm to draw him on, and—a thing which he could not follow, though she knew it well—she was using lightness of touch so that he should not see how much she was in earnest. She had used, too, that sacred name of friendship to encourage him to draw nearer her, for no man could listen to what she had been saying without reading into it some directly personal meaning; clearly the friendship she spoke of concerned him and her, for no woman talks to a man about friendship purely in the abstract unless she is his grandmother. And she was not; nobody could be less like a grandmother, as she sat there, in the full beauty of her thirty years and her ripened womanhood.

She was beautiful, and she knew it; she had charm, she was alone on this hot thundery day with him in the punt. Also she meant to use all power that was hers. The plan was to detach him from the girl, and the manner of his detachment was the attachment to her. Daisy must be shown how light were his attachments.

Indeed, the handicap of years did not seem so heavy now. She was perfectly well aware that men looked at her as she went by, and turned their heads after she had passed. And this hot, sweltering day, she knew, suited her and the ripe rather Southern beauty of her face, though in others it might only be productive of headache or fatigue. Indeed, it was little wonder that her plan had made so promising a beginning.

He moved again a little nearer her, clasping his knees in his hands.

"You've talked about friends," he said, "and you are encouraging me to talk about them. It's a jolly word; it means such a jolly thing. And I'm beginning to hope I have found one in this last day or two."

There was no mistaking this, nor was there any use in her pretending not to know what he meant; indeed, it was worse than useless, for it was for this she had been working. There was no touch or hint of passion in his voice; he was speaking of friends as a boy might speak. And she liked him.

She held out her hand with a charming frankness of gesture.

"That is a very good hearing," she said. "I congratulate you. And, Lord Lindfield, it isn't only you I congratulate; I congratulate myself most heartily."

He unclasped his knees and took her hand in both his.

"Thanks, most awfully," he said.

"Friends don't thank each other," she said. "One only thanks people who don't matter. Now go on. I have been doing all the talking these last two days. It is your turn; I want to know much more about you."

"I expect you won't like it."

"I must be the judge of that. I am willing to risk it."

"Well, I told you I wanted to talk most awfully," he said, "and now you've made it so much easier. I expect you know a certain amount about me, as it is. I've had a tremendously good time all my life. People have been very kind to me always. I expect they've been too kind. It's all been so confoundedly pleasant, I have let the years go by without ever thinking of settling down. But there's an awful lot to be said for it. And all my life—I'm thirty-eight already—I've shirked every responsibility under the sun."

Jeannie had a sudden sense that in spite of the promising beginning which she had half prided herself on and half loathed herself for, things were going quite completely wrong, and that she had as yet accomplished nothing whatever. It was but a momentary impression, and she had no time to reflect on or examine it, since she had to do her part in this sealed compact of friendship. But she did it with an uncourageous heart.

She laughed.

"I can't console you over that," she said, "or tell you that you do yourself an injustice, because I have always regarded you as the very type of the delectable and untrammelled life. You don't conform to the English standard, you know, and I expect you have no more acquaintance with your Wiltshire estates and all your people there than you have with the House of Lords. Have you ever taken your seat, by the way? No, I thought not. But, after all, if you don't know the House of Lords, you know London pretty well, and—and Paris."

He did not smile now, but looked at her gravely.

"Yes, worse luck," he said.

Jeannie nodded at him.

"Well, well," she said, quietly. "Never mind that now. You were speaking of settling down. Go on about that."

"One doesn't settle down alone," he said.

And then she knew that, so far, her plan had been a dead failure. His attitude towards her was perfectly clear; they were friends, and as friends should do, he was confiding in her, seeking from her the sympathy and counsel of a friend.

"You mean to marry, then?" she asked.

"I hope to marry."

Once again the lightning flickered in the sky, and the thunder gave a far more immediate response. That big coppery cloud which had been low on the horizon had spread upwards over the heavens with astonishing speed, and even as the thunder crackled a few big drops of rain splashed on the river outside their shelter under the chestnuts. The storm was quickly coming closer, and a big tree, as Jeannie remembered, is not a very desirable neighbourhood under the circumstances.

"We had better get home," she said. "There is going to be a storm."

He jumped up at once, loosed the chain, and with a few swift strokes took them back into the boathouse. There was no time just then for further conversation, and Jeannie, at any rate, did not wish for it. But it was as she had feared. All that she had done hitherto was nothing; the calamity she wished to avert had not yet been averted.

One thing only she had gained at present, the footing of a friend. Already, she was sure, he valued that, and on that she would have to build. But it was a precarious task; she could not see her way yet. Only she knew that such friendship as she had already formed with him was not enough. He was not detached from Daisy yet. For the last forty-eight hours, it is true, he had almost completely left her alone, but that was not enough. He still intended to marry her.

Jeannie went straight to her room on gaining the house, under pretence of changing her dress, which even in those few yards across from the boathouse had got wet with the first rain of the storm. But she wanted not that so much as to sit by herself and think. Matters were not so easy as she had hoped, for she knew now that she had let herself believe that by the mere formation of a friendship with her, she could lead him away from Daisy. And now, for the first time, she saw how futile such a hope had been. He could, in the pleasure of this new friendship, be somewhat markedly inattentive to Daisy for a day or two, but it could not permanently detach him. She must seem to offer something more than mere friendship.

That he was seriously in love with Daisy she did not wholly believe, but he meant to marry her; he meant, anyhow, to ask her to marry him, and Alice, who knew better than she what Daisy felt, was sure that Daisy would accept him. But something more than a mere flirtation was required; matters, she saw now, had to go deeper than that. She must make herself essential to him, and then, when he knew that she was essential, she would have to turn her back on him. It was not a pretty role.

There came a gentle tap at the door, and Daisy entered.

"Ah! you have come in, Aunt Jeannie," she said. "Did you get caught in the storm?"

"Not to speak of. We did not go far. Lord Lindfield offered to take me up to Maidenhead, but, as a matter of fact, we went to the corner of the backwater. Oh, I promised not to laugh at him for the immensity of the expedition, because it was I who proposed stopping under the chestnuts. How charming he is, Daisy! And how is the headache?"

"Rather brilliant still, but it will get better. Aunt Jeannie, how quickly you make friends with people."

There was something tearing to Jeannie's tender heart about this. Daisy looked so white and tired, and so helpless, she who was usually a perfect well-spring of high spirits and enjoyment. Jeannie longed to take that dear head in her hands and kiss its trouble away, but it was just that which she could not do. This trouble could not be kissed away; it had to be burnt away—by a hand, too, that seemed unconscious of its cruel work.

"With him, do you mean?" she asked lightly. "You can scarcely say I have only now been making friends with him. I saw a good deal of him at one time; in fact, he was rather devoted to me. But my eagle eye sees no sign of a return of it. Does yours?"

The room was very dark with the blackness of the sky outside, and Jeannie could see Daisy but indistinctly. Then with a wicked flare of lightning it leaped into light, and the thunder rattled round the eaves. But in that moment's flash Jeannie saw Daisy's face again, mute, white, and appealing, and it was intolerable to her. Besides, anything was better and less dangerous than a tete-a-tete with Daisy. At any moment she might tell her about Lord Lindfield and the offer she expected. That would make her part infinitely worse to play; it would make it impossible. At present, anyhow, so far as Daisy knew, she was ignorant of it all.

She jumped at the appalling racket overhead.

"Oh, I hate thunder—I hate thunder," she said. "Let us come downstairs, Daisy, where there are people. Besides, it is tea-time, is it not? Let us go down. I came straight to my room, and Lord Lindfield, I think, went to his. Alice will be anxious if she thinks we are still out. Listen to the rain. How it will beat the flowers down! Come, dear."

"I have hardly had a word with you since you came back, Aunt Jeannie," said Daisy.

"I know, dear, but in a house full of people what can one expect? We must have a great talk when we get back to London. Every moment seems occupied here. Dear child, I hope your headache will be better soon. Will you not go and lie down? Or shall I tell Alice you are not well, and won't you have a little dinner quietly in your room by yourself? No? Let us go down, then."



CHAPTER XVIII.

The storm was violent for an hour or two, but before sunset it had moved away again, and a half-hour of sunshine, washed, clean sunshine, preceded sunset. But somehow the storm had not done its proper work; it had scolded and roared and wept, but it had not quite got the trouble out of the air. There was more to come.

The same sense that there was more to come invaded the spirits of Lady Nottingham's guests. She herself was a little distraite, Daisy's headache had left her rather white and tired, Gladys lamented the wreck of the garden, and there was not much life about. Then after dinner it clouded over again, the clouds regathered, lightning began to wink remotely and thunder to grumble, and even Mrs. Halton, whom the sultry heat had so invigorated, according to her own account, that afternoon, was inclined to join in the rather early move to bed. Also, the next day was Sunday, and Sunday was not particularly wanted. The fact of it was felt to be a little depressing, and nobody quite knew what was the matter with everybody else.

It is a fact that in every gathering of friends and acquaintances there is some one person who makes la pluie et le beau temps, and in this party it was emphatically Jeannie Halton who arranged the weather. The spirits of every person are, to a certain extent, infectious, but the spirits of some few people run through a house like influenza, and there was no doubt that she had, all the evening, been in a rather piano mood. She had not, of course, committed the unpardonable social crime of showing that she was depressed, but she had been a little retrospective, and tended to "remember how" in general conversation, rather than to "hope that."

But it must not be supposed that she had behaved in any way outside the lines of normal social intercourse. She had, for instance, just gone out into the garden after dinner with Lord Lindfield, and had quoted the line, "In the darkness thick and hot." It was apt enough and harmless enough, but it had vaguely made him feel that something was a little wrong. Then she had made him and Daisy play billiards together, while she marked for them. She marked with weary accuracy, and said, "Oh, what a beautiful stroke" rather too often to make it credible that she always meant it. And with the rest of the women she had gone up to bed rather early.

Tom Lindfield, on the other hand, though he did not feel at all inclined to go to bed early, felt that there was trouble somewhere. He could not date it in the least, nor could he put his finger on the moment when trouble began. Or could he? He asked himself that question several times. Jeannie had been so pleasant and so good a comrade till they had gone out in the punt. Then came the compact of friendship, and somehow at once almost she seemed to slip away from him. He had wanted to tell her much more, to tell her even how in Paris he had been desperately in love, and that what he felt now for Daisy was not that. Somehow that woman in Paris reminded him of Daisy, and yet what two women could be more different than these! She had an apartment in the Rue Chalgrin. It was very much gilded, and yet very simple.

That did not occupy him much. What occupied him so much more was that till the storm had begun, till he and Jeannie had run hurriedly to the house, he had found such an extreme content in her society. She had been—for these last thirty hours or so—such an admirable comrade. There was the Brahms concert, the ridiculous motor-drive, the evening at billiards, the morning in the motor, the afternoon in the punt. Then quite suddenly she had seemed to shut up, to enclose herself from him. Yet some little spirit of companionship had escaped her again, when she quoted the line, "In the darkness thick and hot." And then, after that, she had walked back to the house, made him play billiards with Daisy, and had gone upstairs at the earliest possible opportunity.

Nobody with the slightest prospect of winning his case could have accused Tom Lindfield of being sensitive in his perceptions, but nobody without the certainty of losing it could have accused him of not being fairly sound in his conclusions. What had happened to Mrs. Halton to make her so different to him (and, for that matter, to everybody else) since four o'clock that afternoon he did not try to decide, since he had no means of knowing.

But what he did know was that this was a woman of enchanting moods. At one time she was good comrade, then she was friend, then for some reason she was some sort of shadow of these excellent things. They were there, but they were obscured by something else. And that obscuration rendered her the more enchanting. He did not understand her; she was away somewhere beyond him, and he longed to follow her.

All his life women had been to him the most delectable of riddles, and his expressed desire to marry and settle down was perhaps only another statement of the fact that he longed to solve one example of the riddle, one form in which it was presented to him. He felt now that he wished he had married years ago, that he had already become quiet and domesticated. There was a time for youth's fiery passions, its ecstatic uncontent, and there was also most assuredly a time when those fevers should cease.

He had so repeatedly told himself that it was time they should cease for him, that of late he had come to believe it. He believed it still, and it was for that reason that he had determined to settle down, to choose, as he had done in his own mind, this pretty and charming girl, much younger than himself, as was right, and ask her to settle down with him.

He was not in love with her in any absorbed or tumultuous way, but he meant to do his best to make her happy, and looked forward to being immensely happy himself. All that had seemed very right and reasonable and satisfactory, but to-night, in some way, the mirror of his future tranquillity was disturbed; it was as if little sudden puffs of wind, like those that rustled every now and then through "the darkness thick and hot" outside, ruffled and broke its surface, making it dim and full of shattered images that seemed to have swum up from below.

Was it that once again he was beginning to fall in love with Daisy in the old passionate way? But at that moment he was aware that he was not thinking about Daisy at all.

All this passed very rapidly through his mind; it was no effort of conscious or reasoned thought, but more as if without volition of his own these pictures had been drawn across his brain, as he stood in the hall while the rustling procession of women went upstairs. And with their going, he became aware that the rest of the evening was likely to be rather boring.

It was still not after half-past ten, an hour impossible to go to bed at, impossible, anyhow, to go to sleep at, and he fancied that his own company and his own thoughts were not likely to be very comfortable or very profitable. He did not want to think; he wanted the hours to pass as quickly and unreflectingly as possible until it was morning again. No doubt then things would present themselves in a more normal light. Certainly the events of the day had proved rather exciting and unsettling, or, to be perfectly honest, Jeannie had somehow unsettled him. How quickly their friendship had sprung up! And what had happened then? She seemed to have left him altogether, glided away from him.

He strolled back into the billiard-room, where he would find company of some sort, but there already the hour of yawns and fitful conversation had begun, and first one and then another man nodded good-night and left the room. Jim Crowfoot, however, who hated going to bed as much as he disliked getting up, had a brilliant cargo of conversation on board, which he proceeded to unload. The two knew each other well, and when they were left alone conversation rapidly became intimate.

"Thunderstorms always are simultaneous with sombreness," he said, "and I sometimes wonder whether it is our sombreness that produces the storm or the storm that produces sombreness. Every one has been sombre to-day, except, perhaps, you, Tom, and the merry widow."

"Are you referring to Mrs. Halton?"

"I don't know of any other. Lady Nottingham isn't merry. I can't think how you manage to produce so much impression with so little material. I have to talk all the time to produce an impression at all, and then it is usually an unfortunate one."

"I think your description of Mrs. Halton as the merry widow is a particularly unfortunate one," remarked Lindfield.

"You guessed whom I meant," said Jim.

"I know. It was characteristic of you if not of her. You always see people in—in caricature. Besides, I thought Mrs. Halton was anything but merry."

"You should know best."

"Why?"

"Because you have spent the entire day with her, chiefly tete-a-tete. Also yesterday."

Tom Lindfield was apparently not in a very genial frame of mind to-night. He let this remark pass in silence, and then went back to what Jim had previously said.

"You always talk a good lot of rot, old chap," he said, "and I want to know if you were talking rot when you said something about my producing an impression with little material. It sounds pretty good rot, but if you meant something by it, I wish you would tell me what it was. Does it have any special application?"

"Yes, certainly. I referred to your 'Veni, vidi, vici' with Mrs. Halton. You laid firm hold of her yesterday, and have not let her go since. I don't imply that she has wanted to go."

Jim, in spite of the large quantities of outrageous nonsense which he often talked, had a very fair allowance of brains, and when he chose to talk sense was worth listening to. So, at any rate, Tom Lindfield thought now.

"I wish you'd go on," he said, "and just tell me all that is in your mind."

"By all means, if you promise not to knock me down or anything. It's just this—that we've all been asking ourselves, 'Is it to be the aunt or the niece?'"

"And who has been asking themselves that?" asked Lindfield.

"Oh, everybody except, perhaps, Braithwaite and poor wandering Willie. Mrs. Beaumont and Lady Sybil were hard at it when you and Mrs. Halton strolled out after dinner. They tore Mrs. Halton open as you tear open a—a registered envelope. With the same greed, you understand."

"Cats!" remarked Lindfield.

"Oh, yes. But I like to hear them 'meaow.' Braithwaite didn't; he listened to just one remark and then went away looking black."

"What has he got to do with it?" asked Tom.

"Oh, he's great friends with the M. W.," said Jim, "and he is one of those nice old-fashioned people who never talk evil of people behind their backs. But where are you to talk evil of people except behind their backs? That's what I want to know. You can't do it in front of their faces, as it would not be polite."

"Don't be epigrammatic, there's a good fellow," said Tom. "It only confuses me."

"Well, you've confused us. You were supposed to be walking out, so to speak, with Miss Daisy. Instead of which you leave her completely alone, and walk out all the time with Mrs. Halton. Oh, I don't deny that she is running after you. She is; at least, so the cats said. It's confusing, you know; I don't think any one knows where we all are."

Lindfield took a turn or two up and down the room, took up a cue, and slapped the red ball into a pocket.

"I'm sure I don't know where I am," he said, "but I expect we shall all be in the deuce of a mess before long. About Mrs. Halton running after me, that is absolutely all rot. What brutes women are to each other! And they say, to use your expression, that I've been walking out with Miss Daisy?"

"It has been supposed that you were going to ask her to marry you."

Lindfield sent one of the white balls after the red.

"And they weren't far wrong," he said. "Well, I shall go to bed, Jim. Your conversation is too sensational."

"Good-night. Mind you let me know when you have made up your mind," said Jim.



CHAPTER XIX.

It was this certainty that he had got to make up his mind, whereas till to-day he had believed that his mind was made up, that Lindfield carried upstairs with his bedroom candle. But, unlike that useful article, which could be put out at will, the question refused to be put out, and burnt with a disconcerting and gem-like clearness. It was perfectly true, and he confessed it to himself, that for the last two days he had distinctly preferred to cultivate this wonderful quick-growing friendship which had shot up between him and Jeannie, rather than bring things to a head with Daisy.

He had meant while down here to ask her to marry him; now, if he looked that intention in the face, he was aware that though it was still there (even as he had begun to tell Mrs. Halton that afternoon), it had moved away from the immediate foreground, and stood waiting at a further distance. The cats and Jim Crowfoot, he told himself with some impatience, were altogether at fault when they so charmingly said that he had to make up his mind between aunt and niece. It was not that at all; the only question with which the making up of his mind was concerned was whether he was going to ask Daisy now, to-morrow, to be his wife. And the moment he asked himself that question it was already answered. But that he did not know.

As always, he was quite honest with himself, and proceeded ruthlessly to find out what had occasioned the postponement of his intention. That was not hard to answer; the answer had already been indirectly given. It was the enchantment of this new friendship which had forced itself into the foreground.

That friendship, however, was now agreed upon and ratified, and the postponed intention should come forward again. But these last few hours had made him feel uncertain about that friendship. There was no use in denying it; she had been quite different since they came in from the punt. How maddening and how intoxicating women were! How they forced you to wonder and speculate about them, to work your brain into a fever with guessing what was going on in theirs.

He turned over in bed with his face to the wall, and shut his eyes with the firm and laudable intention of not bothering any more about it, but of letting sleep bring counsel. He did intend to ask Daisy to marry him, but he was not quite certain when he should do so. And then there outlined itself behind the darkness of his closed lids Jeannie's face, with its great dark eyes, its mass of hair growing low on the forehead, the witchery of its smiling mouth.

So perhaps the cats and Jim Crowfoot, though a little "previous," were not so wrong about the reality of the question on which he must make up his mind.

* * * * *

Jeannie announced her intention of going to church next morning at breakfast, and Victor Braithwaite, who was sitting by her, professed similar ecclesiastical leanings. Jeannie had apparently completely recovered from the piano mood of the evening before, and commented severely on the Sunday habits of this Christian country. She personally taxed every one who had at present come down with having had no intention whatever of going to church, and her accusations appeared particularly well founded. In the middle of this Lord Lindfield entered.

"Good-morning, Lord Lindfield," said Alice. "We are all catching it hot this morning from Jeannie, who has been accusing us by name and individually of being heathens."

"Worse than heathens," said Jeannie, briskly.—"Oh, good-morning, Lord Lindfield. I didn't see you.—Worse than heathens, because heathens don't know any better. Alice, you must come. You are a landlady of Bray, and should set an example."

"But it is so hot," said Alice, "and I don't take out the carriage on Sunday. I like to give the coachman an—an opportunity of going to church."

"You give him fifty-two every year," said Jeannie.

"The motor is eating its head off," remarked Lindfield. "I'll drive you. Do come with me, Mrs. Halton."

"Oh, thanks, no. I'll walk," she said. "Mr. Braithwaite is coming with me."

Jeannie rose as she spoke, and went out through the French window into the garden.

"Half-past ten, then, Mr. Braithwaite," she said.

Lindfield helped himself to some dish on the side-table.

"Can't stand being called a heathen," he said. "I shall go to church too."

Victor soon strolled out after Jeannie.

"Hang it all, Jeannie!" he said. "I want to go to church with you, and now Tom Lindfield says he is coming. Considering how much—oh, well, never mind."

Jeannie looked hastily round, found they had the garden to themselves, and took his arm.

"How much he has seen of me, and how little you have," she said.

"Quite correct. But it wasn't a difficult guess."

"No. We will be cunning, Victor. I said half-past ten quite loud, didn't I? Let us meet in the manner of conspirators at the garden-gate at a quarter-past."

They turned towards the house again, and Jeannie detached her arm from his.

"Remember your promise, dear," she said. "I am I, and I am yours. Never doubt that."

All that day there was no possible cause for his doubting it. The conspirator-plan succeeded to admiration, and Lord Lindfield and Daisy, with a somewhat faint-intentioned Gladys, had waited in the hall till a quarter to eleven. Then it was discovered that Jeannie had not been seen in the house since ten, and Gladys, victorious over her faint intentions, had stopped at home, while Daisy and Lord Lindfield walked rapidly to church, arriving there in the middle of the psalms.

Jeannie had been gaily apologetic afterwards. She had not heard at breakfast that anybody except herself and Mr. Braithwaite meant to go to church, and, coming home, she paired herself off with Daisy. At lunch again there were, when she appeared, two vacant places, one between Willie Carton and one of the cats, the other next Lord Lindfield. She walked quietly round the table to take the first of these, instead of going to the nearest chair.

For the afternoon there were several possibilities. Jeannie, appealed to, said she would like to go up to Boulter's Lock and see the Ascot Sunday crowd. That, it appeared, was very easy of management, as Lord Lindfield would punt her up.

"That will be delightful," said Jeannie. "Daisy dear, I haven't simply set eyes on you. Do let us go up together, and Lord Lindfield will punt us. We will be the blest pair of sirens, of extraordinarily diverse age, and he shall give the apple of discord to one of us. If he gives it you I shall never speak to you again.—Lord Lindfield, will you take us up?"

"I shall have two apples," said he.

"Then Daisy and I will each of us want both."

This had been the last of the arrangements, and it was like Mrs. Halton, such was the opinion of the cats, to manage things like that. There could be no doubt that when the launch and the Noah's Ark and the punt met below Boulter's, it would be found that Daisy had another convenient headache.

The three vessels met there. But on the punt were Lord Lindfield and Daisy all alone. Mrs. Halton, it seemed, had stopped at home. There was no explanation; she had simply not come, preferring not to.

Nobody could understand, least of all Lord Lindfield. She had swum further away.

But Daisy had not had a very amusing time. Punting appeared to monopolize the attention of the punter.



CHAPTER XX.

All that day and throughout the greater part of the next Jeannie kept up with chill politeness and composure this attitude towards Lord Lindfield, which he, at any rate, found maddening. What made it the more maddening was that to all the rest of the party she behaved with that eager geniality which was so characteristic of her. Only when he was there, and when he addressed her directly, something would come over her manner that can only be compared to the forming of a film of ice over a pool. To an acquaintance merely it would have been unnoticeable; even to a friend, if it had happened only once or twice, it might have passed undetected; as it was, he could not fail to see that it was there, nor could he fail to puzzle his wits over what the cause of it might be.

During the day he tried to get a word with her in private, but she seemed to anticipate his intention, and contrived that it should be impossible for the request to be made. Once, however, just after the return that afternoon from Boulter's Lock, he had managed to say to her: "There is nothing the matter, is there?" and with complete politeness she had replied: "I have just a touch of a cold. But it is nothing, thanks." And thereupon she had taken up a newspaper, and remarked to Lady Nottingham that the Eton and Harrow match seemed to have been extraordinarily exciting.

Now, no man, unless he is definitely in love with and enthralled by a woman, will, if he has anything which may be called spirit, stand this sort of thing tamely. Lindfield honestly examined himself to see "if in aught he had offended," could find no cause of offence in himself, and then went through a series of conflicting and unsettling emotions.

He told himself that for some reason she had wished to get on intimate terms with him, and then, her curiosity or whatever it was being satisfied, she had merely opened the hand into which she had taken his and, so to speak, wiped his hand off. This seemed to him a very mean and heartless proceeding, but there it was. She had clearly done this, and if a woman chose to behave like that to a man the only rejoinder consistent with ordinary dignity and self-respect was to take no notice at all, and dismiss her from his mind.

Clearly that was the right thing to do, but instead of doing the right thing he first felt angry, and then sick at heart. Women—those witches—were really rather cruel. They cast a spell over one, and then rode away on their broomsticks, disregarding the poor wretch over whom they had cast it. He was left to go mooning about, until in the merciful course of Nature the spell began to lose its potency and die out. Then, again, he would remember the dignity of man, and repeat to himself his determination to dismiss her and her incomprehensibilities from his mind, and challenge Daisy to some silly game. She, poor wretch, would accept with avidity; but the game, whatever it was, soon seemed to lose its edge and its gaiety. There was something that had clearly gone wrong.

Daisy guessed what that was, and her guess was fairly correct. It seemed to her that for a couple of days Aunt Jeannie had, to put it quite bluntly, run after Lord Lindfield. She had pretty well caught him up, too, for Daisy was fair-minded enough to see that he had not been very agile in getting away from her. He had been quite glad to be caught up, and was evidently charmed by her.

Then, clearly, about the time of her own headache, something had happened; Daisy could see that. Aunt Jeannie, though positively melting with geniality and charming warmth to everybody else, turned on him a shoulder that was absolutely frozen. Why she had done this Daisy could not help guessing, and her solution was that Jeannie had been tremendously attracted by him, and then suddenly seen that somehow it "wouldn't do." Perhaps at this point the sight that Daisy had caught of her aunt and Victor Braithwaite together in the garden supplied a gap in the explanation. Daisy did not like to think that that was it; for, in truth, if it was, there was no doubt whatever that darling Aunt Jeannie had been flirting. But, as Aunt Jeannie had quite ceased to flirt, Daisy was more than willing to forgive her for the miseries of those two dreadful days; she was even willing to forget.

Only Lord Lindfield, it was clear to her, did not quite forget. He was altogether unlike himself. For a little while he would be uproariously cheerful, then his gaiety would go out without a gutter, like a candle suddenly taken out into a gale of wind. And then, perhaps, his eyes would stray about till, for a moment, they fastened on Jeannie, who was probably as entranced by the general joy of life as he had been a minute before. Then he would look puzzled, and then angry, and then puzzled again.

Whatever was passing in Jeannie's mind, she concealed it with supreme success, so that nobody could possibly tell that anything was passing there, or that she had any currents going along below the surface. But she had—currents that were going in the direction she had willed to set them; but for all that they flowed in so strong a tide she hated the flowing of them, and hated herself who had set them moving. She was playing a deep game, and one that had required all her wit to invent, and all her tact to play; but during all this Sunday and the day that followed she observed the effect of her moves, and, though hating them, was well satisfied with their result.

With the tail of her eye, or with half an ear, even while she was in full swing of some preposterous discussion, punctuated with laughter, with Jim Crowfoot, she could observe Lord Lindfield, could see his perplexity and his anger, could hear his attempts to talk and laugh, as if there was nothing to trouble him; could note, before long, the sudden change in his tone, the short monosyllables of answers, the quenched laugh. He was much with Daisy, but Mrs. Halton did not mind that; indeed, it was as she would have had it, for it was clear how little Daisy had the power to hold him, and it was just that which he was beginning now to perceive. She wanted him to understand that very completely, to have it sink down into his nature till it became a part of him.

Yes, her diplomacy was prospering well; already the fruit of it was swelling on the tree. It might be salutary; it was certainly bitter.



CHAPTER XXI.

Jeannie went that night to Lady Nottingham's room to talk to her. She herself was feeling very tired, not with the sound and wholesome tiredness that is the precursor of long sleep and refreshed awakening, but with the restless fatigue of frayed nerves and disquiet mind that leads to intolerable tossings and turnings, and long vigils through the varying greys of dawn and the first chirrupings of birds.

"I have not come for long, dear," she said, "but I had to tell somebody about—about what is happening. It's going so well, too."

Alice saw the trouble in Jeannie's face, and, as a matter of fact, had seen trouble in other faces.

"I haven't had a word with you," she said, "and I don't know what is happening. You seem to have had nothing to say to Lord Lindfield all day. I thought, perhaps, you had given it up. It was too hard for you, dear. I don't wonder you found you could not compass it."

Jeannie gave a little impatient sound; her nerves were sharply on edge.

"Dear Alice," she said, "that is not very clever of you. I thought you would see. However, I am quite glad you don't, for if you don't I am sure Daisy doesn't. I am getting a respite from Daisy's—well, Daisy's loathing of me and my methods. She, like you, probably thinks I have given him back to her."

Jeannie was prowling up and down the room rather in the manner of some restless caged thing. In spite of her tiredness and her disquietude, it seemed to Lady Nottingham that she had never seen her look so beautiful. She looked neither kind nor genial nor sympathetic, but for sheer beauty, though rather formidable, there were no two words to it.

"Sit down, Jeannie," said Alice quietly. "You are only exciting yourself. And tell me about it all. I understand nothing, it seems."

Jeannie paused a moment in her walk, and then fell to pacing the room again.

"No, I'm not exciting myself," she said, "but it is exciting me. I don't stir myself up by walking; I am merely attempting, not very successfully, to walk my excitement off. Oh, Alice, what wild beasts we are at bottom! Prey! Prey! Prey! It is one of the instincts that we—you and I, nice women—are rarely conscious of; but I doubt whether it is ever quite dormant. Yes, that comes later; I will explain from the beginning.

"The beginning of it all was easy," she said. "It is perfectly easy for any woman to capture the attention of a man like that, even when he is seriously thinking of getting married to a girl. There was no difficulty in making him take me to the concert, in making him neglect Daisy those first two days. He liked me immensely, and, oh! Alice, here was the first extra difficulty, I liked him. We became friends. We mentioned the word friend openly as applied to us. And I felt like—like a man who gets a wild bird to sit on his hand and eat out of it, in order to grab it, and if not to wring its neck, to put it into a cage. I meant to put him into a cage, shut the door, and go away. And then yesterday afternoon in the punt, just after we had made our discovery that we were friends, he confided in me. He told me he was going to settle down and marry! Judge of my rage, my disappointment! I saw that all my efforts up till then had been quite useless. He was still meaning to marry, and, as was right, poor dear, he told the news to his friend. Daisy's name did not come in. Something made us break off—a flash of lightning, I think, and the beginning of the storm. I should have found something to divert the conversation otherwise. It was much better, in view of what I have to do, that I should not officially know to whom he hoped to be married."

Already the calming effect of telling a trouble to a friend was being felt by Jeannie, and she sat down on the sofa near the window, clasping her hands behind her head, and looking not at Alice, but into the dark soft night. A little rain was falling, hissing among the bushes.

"I saw then," she said, "that I had made a stupid mistake. I had thought that by mere friendliness and sympathy and making myself agreeable, and making him admire me (which he did and does), I could get him away from Daisy. I see now how impossible that was. If it is I who am going to take him away, he must feel more than that. He will not leave the girl he intended to marry unless he falls in love in his own manner with some one else. Alice, I believe he is doing so."

Jeannie paused a moment.

"I hate it all," she said, "but I can't help being immensely interested. Now for the part you don't understand, the part that made you think that I had given it all up. It was a bold game, and, I believe, a correct one. I dropped him—d-r-o-p, drop. Why? Simply in order that he might miss me. Of course, I risked failure. He might have shrugged his shoulders, and wondered why I had taken so much trouble to flirt with him, and gone straight away and resumed operations with Daisy. He did go straight back to Daisy, but do you think they are getting on very nicely? I don't. The more he sees of her now, the more he thinks about me. I don't say he has kind thoughts of me; he is puzzled, but he doesn't dismiss me. He is angry instead, and hurt. That shows he wants me. He will never propose to Daisy while he feels like that."

There was a short silence. Then Lady Nottingham said,—

"Do you mean you want to make him propose to you?"

"Yes."

The monosyllable came very dryly and unimportantly, as if to a perfectly commonplace inquiry. Then Lady Nottingham, in her turn, got up. Jeannie's restlessness and disquiet seemed to have transferred themselves to her.

"But it is an intolerable role," she said. "You cannot play with love like that. It is playing heads and tails with a man's life, or worse. You are playing with his very soul."

"And a month afterwards it will be he who will be playing with another woman's soul," said Jeannie quietly. "You cannot call it love with that sort of man. How many times has he been in love, and what has happened to it all? I am only making myself the chance woman with whom he happens to think himself in love at the time when he proposes to settle down and marry. He shall propose marriage, therefore, to me."

Lady Nottingham's air of comfort had quite left her. Her plump, contented face was puckered into unusual wrinkles.

"No, no, no," she said. "I can't imagine you act like that, Jeannie. It isn't you."

Jeannie's eyes grew suddenly sombre.

"Oh, my dear, it is me," she said, "though I am glad it is a me which is a stranger to you. I hope, as a rule, I don't play pitch-and-toss with other men's souls; but there are circumstances—and those have now arisen—in which I see no other way. At all costs to him I will fulfil my promise to Diana. I will do my best that Daisy shall never know. I do not care what it costs him. And yet that is not quite true. I do care, because I like him. But I cannot measure his possible suffering against Daisy's. It is through him that the need of doing this has come. He has got to suffer for it; and I assure you it isn't he alone who pays, it is I also."

Jeannie rose.

"And I do not yet know if I shall succeed," she said. "He may look with a scornful wonder on my—my somewhat mature charms. He may—though I do not really expect it—still intend to settle down and marry—Daisy. She will accept him, if he does—I have seen enough to know that—and we shall then have to tell her. But I hope that may not happen."

She took up her candle.

"I must go to bed," she said, "for I am dog-tired. But I don't feel so fretted now I have told you. I wish I did not like him. I should not care if I did not. Good-night, dear Alice."

* * * * *

All next day until evening Jeannie continued these tactics. Genial, eager, sympathetic with others, she treated Lord Lindfield, whenever it was necessary to speak to him at all, with the unsmiling civility which a well-bred woman accords to a man she scarcely knows, and does not wish to know better. And all day she saw the growing effect of her policy, for all day he grew more perplexed and more preoccupied with her. She gave him no opportunity of speaking with her alone, for she had planned her day and occupations so that she was all the time in the company of others, and hour by hour his trouble increased. Nor did the trouble spare Daisy. Nothing could be clearer to her eye, with such absolute naturalness did Jeannie manage the situation, than that she now, at any rate, was standing quite aloof from Lord Lindfield.

A few days ago Daisy had told herself that she was glad her aunt liked him, but it should be added that to-day she was equally glad that Jeannie apparently did not. Yet the trouble did not spare Daisy, for if Aunt Jeannie was utterly changed to Lindfield, he seemed to be utterly changed too. He was grave, anxious, preoccupied, and the meaning of it escaped the girl, even as it had escaped Lady Nottingham.

The party had been gradually gathering in the verandah before it was time to dress for dinner that night, and Jeannie, a propos of the dressing-bell, had just announced that a quarter of an hour was enough for any nimble woman, with a competent maid.

"She throws things at me, and I catch them and put them on," she said. "If I don't like them I drop them, and the floor of the room looks rather like Carnival-time until she clears up."

But the sense of the meeting was against Jeannie; nobody else could "manage," it appeared, under twenty minutes, and Jim Crowfoot stuck out for half an hour.

"You've got soft things to put on," he said; "but imagine a stiff shirt-cuff hitting you in the eye when your maid threw it. The floor of my room would look not so much like Carnival-time as a shambles."

Lord Lindfield, indeed, alone supported Jeannie.

"I want ten minutes," he said; "neither more nor less. Jim, it's time for you to go, else you will keep us waiting for dinner. I see that Mrs. Halton and I will be left alone at ten minutes past eight, and I at a quarter past."

Jeannie heard this perfectly, but she turned quickly to Lady Nottingham.

"Alice, is it true that you have a post out after dinner?" she said. "Yes? I must go and write a letter, then, before dressing; I particularly want it to get to town to-morrow."

She rose and went in. And at that Lindfield deliberately got up too and followed her. She walked straight through the drawing-room, he a pace or two behind, and out into the hall. And then he spoke to her by name.

She turned round at that. There was no way to avoid giving a reply, and, indeed, she did not wish to, for she believed that the policy of the last two days had ripened.

"Yes, Lord Lindfield?" she said.

"Am I ever going to have a word with you again?" he asked.

Jeannie leant over the banisters; she had already gone up some six stairs.

"But by all means," she said. "I—I too have missed our talks. Things have gone wrong a little? Let us try after dinner to put them straight. We shall find an opportunity."

"Thanks," he said; and it was not only the word that thanked her.

Jeannie's maid must have been a first-rate hand at throwing, if by that simple process she produced in a quarter of an hour that exquisite and finished piece of apparelling which appeared at half-past eight. True, it was Jeannie who wore the jewels and the dress, and her hair it was that rose in those black billows above her shapely head; and the dress, it may be said, was worthy of the wearer. Still, if this was to be arrived at by throwing things, the maid, it was generally felt, must be a competent hurler.

It so happened that everybody was extremely punctual that night, and Jeannie, though quite sufficiently so, the last to appear. Lady Nottingham was even just beginning to allude to the necessary quarter of an hour when she came in.

Lord Lindfield saw her first; he was talking to Daisy. But he turned from her in the middle of a sentence, and said,—

"By Gad!"

It might have been by Gad, but it was by Worth. Four shades of grey, and pearls. Mrs. Beaumont distinctly thought that this was not the sort of dress to dash into the faces of a quiet country party. It was like letting off rockets at a five o'clock tea. Only a woman could dissect the enormity of it; men just stared.

"I know I am not more than one minute late," she said. "Lord Lindfield, Alice has told me to lead you to your doom, which is to take me in.—Alice, they have told us, haven't they?"



CHAPTER XXII.

It seemed to Lord Lindfield that dinner was over that night with unusual swiftness, and that they had scarcely sat down when they rose again for the women to leave the room. Yet, short though it seemed, it had been a momentous hour, for in that hour all the perplexity and the anger that had made his very blood so bitter to him during these last two days had been charmed away from him, and instead, love, like some splendid fever of the spirit, burned there.

Until Jeannie had been friendly, been herself with him again, he had not known, bad as the last two days had been, how deeply and intimately he missed her friendship. That, even that, merely her frank and friendly intercourse, had become wine to him; he thirsted and longed for it, and even it, now that it was restored to him, mounted to his head with a sort of psychic intoxication. Yet that was but the gift she had for the whole world of her friends; what if there was something for him behind all that, which should be his alone, and not the world's—something to which this wine was but as water?

At dinner this had been but the side she showed to all the world, but there was better coming. She had promised him a talk that night, and by that he knew well she did not mean just the intercourse of dinner-talk, which all the table might share in, but a talk like those they had had before by the roadside when the motor broke down, or in the punt while the thunderstorm mounted in hard-edged, coppery clouds up the sky. The last thing they had spoken of then was friendship, and he had told her, he remembered, how he hoped to settle down and marry. He hoped that she would of her own accord speak of friendship again; that would be a thing of good omen, for again, as before, he would speak of his hope of settling down and marrying. Only he would speak of it differently now.

For him the hour had struck; there was no choice of deliberation possible any more to him. He did not look on the picture of quiet domesticity any more, and find it pleasing; he did not look on himself, count up his years, and settle, with a content that had just one grain of resignation in it, that it was time for him to make what is called a home. He looked at Jeannie, and from the ocean of love a billow came, bore him off his feet, and took him seawards. She, the beauty of her face, the soft curves of her neck, the grace and suppleness of her body, were no longer, as had been the case till now, the whole of the woman whom he loved. Now they were but the material part of her; he believed and knew that he loved something that was more essentially Jeannie than these—he loved her soul and spirit.

Late this love had come to him, for all his life he had stifled its possibility of growth by being content with what was more material; but at last it had dawned on him, and he stood now on the threshold of a world that was as new as it was bewildering. Yet, for all its bewilderment, he saw at a glance how real it was, and how true. It was the light of the sun that shone there which made those shadows which till now he had thought to be in themselves so radiant.

It was about half-past ten when Jeannie and Lord Lindfield cut out of a bridge-table simultaneously. They had been playing in the billiard-room, and strolled out together, talking. In the hall outside, that pleasant place of books and shadows and corners, Jeannie paused and held out her hand to him.

"Lord Lindfield," she said, "I have been a most utter beast to you these last two days, and I am sorry—I am indeed. You have got a perfect right to ask for explanations, and—and there aren't any. That is the best explanation of all; you can't get behind it. Will you, then, be generous and shake hands, and let us go on where we left off?"

He took her hand.

"That is exactly the condition I should have made," he said.

"What?"

"That we should go on where we left off. Do you remember what you were talking about?"

She had sat down in a low chair by the empty fireplace, and he drew another close up to hers, and at right angles to it. Just above was a pair of shaded candles, so that he, sitting a little further off, was in shadow, whereas the soft light fell full on to her. Had she seen his face more clearly, she might have known that her task was already over, that Daisy had become but a shadow to him, and that he was eager and burning to put the coping-stone on to what she had accomplished. But she remembered the scene in the punt; she remembered that immediately after she had spoken of friendship, he, like a friend, had confided to her his intention of settling down and marrying. This time, therefore, she would speak in a more unmistakable way.

"Yes, yes, I remember indeed," she said; "and it was the last good hour I have had between that and this. But I am not blaming you, Lord Lindfield, except, perhaps, just a little bit."

He leant forward, and his voice trembled.

"Why do you blame me," he asked, "even a little bit?"

Jeannie laughed.

"No, I don't think I can tell you," she said. "I should get scarlet. Yet, I don't know; I think it would make you laugh, too, and it is always a good thing to laugh. So turn away, and don't look at me when I am scarlet, since it is unbecoming. Well, I blame you a little bit, because you were a little bit tactless. A charming woman—one, anyhow, who was trying to be charming—had just been talking to you about friendship, and you sighed a smile in a yawn, as it were—do you know Browning?—he is a dear—and said: 'I am going to settle down and marry.' Now, not a word. I am going to scold you. Had we been two girls talking together, and had just made vows of friendship, it would have been utterly tactless for the one to choose that exact moment for saying she was going to be married; and I am sure no two boys in similar conditions would ever have done such a thing."

Again Jeannie laughed.

"It sounds so funny now," she said. "But it was such a snub. I suppose you thought we were getting on too nicely. Oh, how funny! I have never had such a thing happen to me before. So I blame you just a little bit. I was rather depressed already. A thunderstorm was coming, and it was going to be Sunday, and so I wanted everybody to be particularly nice to me."

He gave a little odd awkward sort of laugh, and jerked himself a little more forward in his chair.

"Mayn't I look?" he said. "I don't believe you are scarlet. Besides, I have to say I am sorry. I can't say I am sorry to the carpet."