Then at a bound she sprang out of bed, and stood upright in the autumn dawn.

"I hate myself!" she said fiercely—as she ran her hands through the mass of her dark hair, and threw it back upon her shoulders. Hurrying across the room in her night-gown, she threw back the curtains. A light autumnal mist, through which the sun was smiling, lay on the garden. Stately trees rose above it, and masses of flowers shewed vaguely bright; while through the blue distances beyond, the New Forest stretched to the sea.

But Delia was looking at herself, in a long pier-glass that represented almost the only concession to the typical feminine needs in the room. She was not admiring her own seemliness; far from it; she was rating and despising herself for a feather-brained waverer and good-for-nothing.

"Oh yes, you can talk!" she said, to the figure in the glass—"you are good enough at that! But what are you going to do!—Spend your time at Maple's and Waring—matching chintzes and curtains?—when you've promised—you've promised! Gertrude's right. There are all sorts of disgusting cowardices and weaknesses in you! Oh! yes, you'd like to go fiddling and fussing down here—playing the heiress—patronising the poor people—putting yourself into beautiful clothes—and getting heaps of money out of Mr. Winnington to spend. It's in you—it's just in you—to throw everything over—to forget everything you've felt, and everything you've vowed—and just wallow in luxury and selfishness and snobbery! Gertrude's absolutely right. But you shan't do it! You shan't put a hand to it! Why did that man take the guardianship? Now it's his business. He may see to it! But you—you have something else to do!"

And she stood erect, the angry impulse in her stiffening all her young body. And through her memory there ran, swift-footed, fragments from a rhetoric of which she was already fatally mistress, the formulae too of those sincere and goading beliefs on which her youth had been fed ever since her first acquaintance with Gertrude Marvell. The mind renewed them like vows; clung to them, embraced them.

What was she before she knew Gertrude? She thought of that earlier Delia as of a creature almost too contemptible to blame. From the maturity of her twenty-one years she looked back upon herself at seventeen or eighteen with wonder. That Delia had read nothing—knew nothing—had neither thoughts or principles. She was her father's spoilt child and darling; delighting in the luxury that surrounded his West Indian Governorship; courted and flattered by the few English of the colonial capital, and by the members of her father's staff; with servants for every possible need or whim; living her life mostly in the open air, riding at her father's side, through the sub-tropical forests of the colony; teasing and tyrannising over the dear old German governess who had brought her up, and whose only contribution to her education—as Delia now counted education—had been the German tongue. Worth something!—but not all those years, "when I might have been learning so much else, things I shall never have time to learn now!—things that Gertrude has at her finger's end. Why wasn't I taught properly—decently—like any board school child! As Gertrude says, we women want everything we can get! We must know the things that men know—that we may beat them at their own game. Why should every Balliol boy—years younger than me—have been taught his classics and mathematics,—and have everything brought to him—made easy for him—history, political economy, logic, philosophy, laid at his lordship's feet, if he will just please to learn!—while I, who have just as good a brain as he, have had to pick up a few scraps by the way, just because nobody who had charge of me ever thought it worth while to teach, a girl. But I have a mind!—an intelligence!—even if I am a woman; and there is all the world to know. Marriage? Yes!—but not at the sacrifice of everything else—of the rational, civilised self."

On the whole though, her youth had been happy enough, with recurrent intervals of ennui and discontent. Intervals too of poetic enthusiasm, or ascetic religion. At eighteen she had been practically a Catholic, influenced by the charming wife of one of her father's aides-de-camp. And then—a few stray books or magazine articles had made a Darwinian and an agnostic of her; the one phase as futile as the other.

"I knew nothing—I had no mind!"—she repeated with energy,—"till Gertrude came."

And she thought with ardour of that intellectual awakening, under the strange influence of the apparently reserved and impassive woman, who had come to read history with her for six months, at the suggestion of a friend of her father's, a certain cultivated and clever Lady Tonbridge, "who saw how starved I was."

So, after enquiry, a lady who was a B.A. of London, and had taken first-class honour in history—Delia's ambition would accept nothing less—had been found, who wanted for health's sake a winter in a warm climate, and was willing to read history with Governor Blanch-flower's half-fledged daughter.

The friendship had begun, as often, with a little aversion. Delia was made to work, and having always resented being made to do anything, for about a month she disliked her tutor, and would have persuaded Sir Robert to send her away, had not England been so far off, and the agreement with Miss Marvell, whose terms were high, unusually stringent. But by the end of the month the girl of eighteen was conquered. She had recognised in Gertrude Marvell accomplishments that filled her with envy, together with an intensity of will, a bitter and fiery purpose, that astounded and subdued a young creature in whom inherited germs of southern energy and passion were only waiting the touch that starts the ferment. Gertrude Marvell had read an amazing amount of history, and all from one point of view; that of the woman stirred to a kind of madness by what she held to be the wrongs of her sex. The age-long monopoly of all the higher forces of civilisation by men; the cruel and insulting insistence upon the sexual and maternal functions of women, as covering the whole of her destiny; the hideous depreciation of her as an inferior and unclean creature, to which Christianity, poisoned by the story of Eve, and a score of barbarous beliefs and superstitions more primitive still, had largely contributed, while hypocritically professing to enfranchise and exalt her; the unfailing doom to "obey," and to bring forth, that has crushed her; the labours and shames heaped upon her by men in the pursuit of their own selfish devices; and the denial to her, also by men, of all the higher and spiritual activities, except those allowed by a man-made religion:—this feminist gospel, in some respects so bitterly true, in others so vindictively false, was gradually and unsparingly pressed upon Delia's quick intelligence. She caught its fire; she rose to its call; and there came a day when Gertrude Marvell breaking through the cold reserve she had hitherto interposed between herself and the pupil who had come to adore her, threw her arms round the girl, accepting from her what were practically the vows of a neophyte in a secret and revolutionary service.

Joyous, self-dedicating moment! But it had been followed by a tragedy; the tragedy of Delia's estrangement from her father. It was not long before Sir Robert Blanchflower, a proud self-indulgent man, with a keen critical sense, a wide acquaintance with men and affairs, and a number of miscellaneous acquirements of which he never made the smallest parade, had divined the spirit of irreconcilable revolt which animated the slight and generally taciturn woman, who had obtained such a hold upon his daughter. He, the god of his small world, was made to feel himself humiliated in her presence. She was, in fact, his intellectual superior, and the truth was conveyed to him in a score of subtle ways. She was in his house simply because she was poor, and wanted rest from excessive overwork, at someone else's expense. Otherwise her manner suggested—often quite unconsciously—that she would not have put up with his household and its regulations for a single day.

Then, suddenly, he perceived that he had lost his daughter, and the reason of it. The last year of his official life was thenceforward darkened by an ugly and undignified struggle with the woman who had stolen Delia from him. In the end he dismissed Gertrude Marvell. Delia shewed a passionate resentment, told him frankly that as soon as she was twenty-one she should take up "the Woman's movement" as her sole occupation, and should offer herself wherever Gertrude Marvell, and Gertrude's leaders, thought she could be useful. "The vote must be got!"—she said, standing white and trembling, but resolute, before her father—"If not peaceably, then by violence. And when we get it, father, you men will be astonished to see what we shall do with it!"

Her twenty-first birthday was at hand, and would probably have seen Delia's flight from her father's house, but for Sir Robert's breakdown in health. He gave up his post, and it was evident he had not more than a year or two to live. Delia softened and submitted. She went abroad with him, and for a time he seemed to throw off the disease which had attacked him. It was during a brighter interval that, touched by her apparent concessions, he had consented to her giving the lecture in the Tyrolese hotel the fame of which had spread abroad, and had even taken a certain pleasure in her oratorical success.

But during the following winter—Sir Robert's last—which they spent at Meran, things had gone from bad to worse. For months Delia never mentioned Gertrude Marvell to her father. He flattered himself that the friendship was at an end. Then some accident revealed to him that it was as close as, or closer than ever; that they were in daily correspondence; that they had actually met, unknown to him, in the neighbourhood of Meran; and that Delia was sending all the money she could possibly spare from her very ample allowance to "The Daughters of Revolt," the far-spreading society in which Gertrude Marvell was now one of the leading officials.

Some of these dismal memories of Meran descended like birds of night upon Delia, as she stood with her arms above her head, in her long night-gown, looking intently but quite unconsciously into the depths of an old rosewood cheval glass. She felt that sultry night about her once more, when, after signing his will, her father opened his eyes upon her, coming back with an effort from the bound of death, and had said quite clearly though faintly in the silence—

"Give up that woman, Delia!—promise me to give her up." And Delia had cried bitterly, on her knees beside him—without a word—caressing his hand. And the cold fingers had been feebly withdrawn from hers as the eyes closed.

"Oh papa—papa!" The low murmur came from her, as she pressed her hands upon her eyes. If the Christian guesses were but true, and in some quiet Elysian state he might now understand, and cease to be angry with her! Was there ever a great cause won without setting kin against kin? "A man's foes shall be they of his own household." "It wasn't my fault—it wasn't my fault!"

No!—and moreover it was her duty not to waste her strength in vain emotion and regret. Her task was doing, not dreaming. She turned away, banished her thoughts and set steadily about the task of dressing.

* * * * *

"Please Miss Blanchflower, there are two or three people waiting to see you in the servants' hall."

So said the tall and gentle-voiced housekeeper, Mrs. Bird, whose emotions had been, in Miss Marvell's view, so unnecessarily exercised on the evening of Delia's home-coming. Being a sensitive person, Mrs. Bird had already learnt her lesson, and her manner had now become as mildly distant as could be desired, especially in the case of Miss Blanchflower's lady companion.

"People? What people?" asked Delia, looking round with a furrowed brow. She and Gertrude were sitting together on the sofa when the housekeeper entered, eagerly reading a large batch of letters which the London post had just brought, and discussing their contents in subdued tones.

"It's the cottages, Miss. Her Ladyship used always to decide who should have those as were vacant about this time of year, and two or three of these persons have been up several times to know when you'd be home."

"But I don't know anything about it"—said Delia, rising reluctantly. "Why doesn't the agent—why doesn't Mr. Frost do it?"

"I suppose—they thought—you'd perhaps speak a word to Mr. Frost, Miss," suggested Mrs. Bird. "But I can send them away of course, if you wish."

"Oh no, I'll come"—said Delia. "But it's rather tiresome—just as"—she looked at Gertrude.

"Don't be long," said Miss Marvell, sharply, "I'll wait for you here." And she plunged back into the letters, her delicate face all alive, her eyes sparkling. Delia departed—evidently on a distasteful errand.

But twenty minutes later, she returned flushed and animated.

"I am glad I went! Such tyranny—such monstrous tyranny!" She stood in front of Gertrude breathing fast, her hands on her hips.

"What's the matter?"

"My grandmother had a rule—can you imagine anything so cruel!—that no girl—who had gone wrong—was to be allowed in our cottages. If she couldn't be provided for in some Home or other, or if her family refused to give her up, then the family must go. An old man has been up to see me—a widower with two daughters—one in service. The one in service has come to grief—the son of the house!—the usual story!"—the speaker's face had turned fiercely pale—"and now our agent refuses to let the girl and her baby come home. And the old father says—'What am I to do, Miss? I can't turn her out—she's my own flesh and blood. I've got to stick to her—else there'll be worse happening. It's not justice, Miss—and it's not Gospel.' Well!"—Delia seated herself with energy,—"I've told him to have her home at once—and I'll see to it."

Gertrude lifted her eyebrows, a gesture habitual with her, whenever Delia wore—as now—her young prophetess look. Why feel these things so much? Human nerves have only a certain limited stock of reactions. Avenge—and alter them!

But she merely said—

"And the others?"

"Oh, a poor mother with eight children, pleading for a cottage with three bedrooms instead of two! I told her she should have it if I had to build it!—And an old woman who has lived fifty-two years in her cottage, and lost all her belongings, begging that she mightn't be turned out—for a family—now that it's too big for her. She shan't be turned out! Of course I suppose it would be common sense"—the tension of the speaker's face broke up in laughter—"to put the old woman into the cottage of the eight children—and put the eight children into the old woman's. But human beings are not cattle! Sentiment's something! Why shouldn't a woman be allowed to die in her old home,—so long as she pays the rent? I hate all this interference with people's lives! And it's always the women who come worst off. 'Oh Mr. Frost, he never pays no attention to us women. He claps 'is 'ands to his ears when he sees one of us, and jest runs for it.' Well, I'll make Mr. Frost listen to a woman!"

"I'm afraid Mr. Winnington is his master," said Gertrude quietly. Delia, crimson again, shrugged her shoulders.

"We shall see!"

Gertrude Marvell looked up.

"Look here, Delia, if you're going to play the part of earthly Providence to this village and your property in general—as I've said to you before—you may as well tell the 'Daughters' you can't do anything for them. That's a profession in itself; and would take you all your time."

"Then of course, I shan't do it," said Delia, with decision. "But I only want to put in an appearance—to make friends with the people—just for a time, Gertrude! It doesn't do to be too unpopular. We're not exactly in good odour just now, are we?"

And sitting down on a stool beside the elder woman, Delia leant her head against her friend's knee caressingly.

Gertrude gave an absent touch to the girl's beautiful hair, and then said—

"So you will take these four meetings?"

"Certainly!" Delia sprang up. "What are they? One at Latchford, one at Brownmouth—Wanchester—and Frimpton. All right. I shall be pelted at Brownmouth. But rotten eggs don't matter so much when you're looking out for them—except on your face—Ugh!"

"And the meeting here?"

"Of course. Can't I do what I like with my own house? We'll have the notices out next week."

Gertrude looked up—

"When did you say that man—Mr. Winnington—was coming?"

"His note this morning said 4:30."

"You'd better see him alone—for the first half hour anyway."

Delia made a face.

"I wish I knew what line to take up. You've been no use at all, Gertrude!"

Gertrude smiled.

"Wait till you see him," she said coolly. "Mother-wit will help you out."

"I wish I had anything to bargain with."

"So you have."

"Pray, what?"

"The meeting here. You could give that up. And he needn't know anything of the others yet awhile."

"What a charming opinion he will have of us both, by and bye," laughed Delia, quietly. "And by all accounts he himself is a simple paragon.—Heavens, how tiresome!"

Gertrude Marvell turned back to her letters.

"What does anyone know about a man?" she said, with slow deliberation.

The midday post at Maumsey brought letters just after luncheon. Delia turning hers over was astonished to see two or three with the local postmark.

"What can people from here be writing to me about?"

Gertrude absorbed in the new weekly number of the Tocsin took no notice, till she was touched on the shoulder by Delia.

"Yes?"

"Gertrude!—it's too amazing!" The girl's tone was full of a joyous wonder. "You know they told us at head-quarters that this was one of the deadest places in England—a nest of Antis—nothing doing here at all. Well, what do you think?—here are three letters by one post, from the village—all greeting us—all knowing perfectly who you are—that you have been in prison, etcetera—all readers of the Tocsin, and burning to be doing something—"

"Burning something?" interposed the other in her most ordinary voice.

Delia laughed, again with the note of constraint.

"Well, anyway, they want to come and see us."

"Who are they?"

"An assistant mistress at the little grammar-school—that's No. 1. No. 2—a farmer's daughter, who says she took part in one of the raids last summer, but nobody knows down here. Her father paid her fine. And No. 3. a consumptive dressmaker, who declares she hasn't much life left anyway, and she is quite willing to give it to the 'cause'! Isn't it wonderful how it spreads—it spreads!"

"Hm"—said Miss Marvell. "Well, we may as well inspect them. Tell them to come up some time next week after dusk."

As she spoke, the temporary parlour-maid threw open the door of the room which Delia had that morning chosen as her own sitting-room.

"Are you at home, Miss? Mrs. France would like to see you."

"Mrs. France?—Mrs. France? Oh, I know—the doctor's wife—Mrs. Bird was talking of him this morning. Well, I suppose I must go." Delia moved unwillingly. "I'm coming, Mary."

"Of course you must go," said Gertrude, a little peremptorily. "As we are here we may as well reconnoitre the whole ground—find out everything we can."

* * * * *

In the drawing-room, to which some flowers, and a litter of new books and magazines had already restored its inhabited look, Delia found a woman awaiting her, in whom the girl's first glance discerned a personality. She was dressed with an entire disregard of the fashion, in plain, serviceable clothes. A small black bonnet tied under the chin framed a face whose only beauty lay in the expression of the clear kind eyes, and quiet mouth. The eyes were a little prominent; the brow above them unusually smooth and untroubled, answering to the bands of brown hair touched with grey which defined it. But the rest of the face was marked by many deep lines—of experience, or suffering?—which showed clearly that its owner had long left physical youth behind. And yet perhaps youth—in some spiritual poetic sense—was what Mrs. France's aspect most sharply conveyed.

She rose as Delia entered, and greeted her warmly.

"It is nice to see you settled here! Dr. France and I were great friends of your old grandmother. He and she were regular cronies. We were very sorry to see the news of your poor father's death."

The voice was clear and soft, and absolutely sincere. Delia felt drawn to her. But it had become habitual to her to hold herself on the defensive with strangers, to suspect hostility and disapproval everywhere. So that her manner in reply, though polite enough, was rather chilly.

But—the girl's beauty! The fame of it had indeed reached Maumsey in advance of the heiress. Mrs. France, however, in its actual presence was inclined to say "I had not heard the half!" She remembered Delia's mother, and in the face before her she recognised again the Greek type, the old pure type, reappearing, as it constantly does, in the mixed modern race. But the daughter surpassed her mother. Delia's eyes, of a lovely grey blue, lidded, and fringed, and arched with an exquisite perfection; the curve of the slightly bronzed cheek, suggesting through all its delicacy the fulness of young, sensuous life; the mouth, perhaps a trifle too large, and the chin, perhaps a trifle too firm; the abundance of the glossy black hair, curling wherever it was allowed to curl, or wherever it could escape the tight coils in which it was bound—at the temples, and over the brow; the beauty of the uncovered neck, and of the amply-rounded form which revealed itself through the thin black stripe of the mourning dress:—none of these "items" in Delia's good looks escaped her admiring visitor.

"It's to be hoped Mr. Mark realises his responsibilities," she thought, with amusement.

Aloud, she said—

"I remember you as quite a little thing staying with your Grandmother—but you wouldn't remember me. Dr. France was grieved not to come, but it's his hospital day."

Delia thanked her, without effusion. Mrs. France presently began to feel conversation an effort, and to realise that the girl's wonderful eyes were very observant and very critical. Yet she chose the very obvious and appropriate topic of Lady Blanchflower, her strong character, her doings in the village, her relation to the labourers and their wives.

"When she died, they really missed her. They miss her still."

"Is it good for a village to depend so much on one person?" said Delia in a detached voice.

Mrs. France looked at her curiously. Jealousy of one's grandmother is not a common trait in the young. It struck her that Miss Blanchflower was already defending herself against examples and ideals she did not mean to follow. And again amusement—and concern!—on Mark Winnington's account made themselves felt. Mrs. France was quite aware of Delia's "militant" antecedents, and of the history of the lady she had brought down to live with her. But the confidence of the doctor's wife in Winnington's powers and charm was boundless. "He'll be a match for them!" she thought gaily.

Meanwhile in reply, she smilingly defended her old friend Lady Blanchflower from the implied charge of pauperising the village.

"Not at all! She never gave money recklessly—and the do-nothings kept clear of her. But she was the people's friend—and they knew it. They're very excited about your coming!"

"I daresay I shall change some things," said Delia decidedly. "I don't approve of all Mr. Frost has been doing."

"Well, you'll have your guardian to help you," said Mrs. France quietly.

Delia flushed, straightened her shoulders, and said nothing.

This time Mrs. France was fairly taken by surprise. She knew nothing more of Sir Robert Blanchflower's will than that he had made Mr. Mark Winnington his daughter's guardian, till she reached the age of twenty-five. But that any young woman—any motherless and fatherless girl—should not think herself the most lucky of mortals to have obtained Mark Winnington as guide and defender, with first claim on his time, his brains, his kindness, seemed incredible to Mark's old friend and neighbour, accustomed to the daily signs of his immense and deserved popularity. Then it flashed upon her—"Has she ever seen him?"

The doubt led to an immediate communication of the news that Winnington had arrived from town that morning. Dr. France had seen him in the village.

"You know him, of course, already?"

"Not at all," said Delia, indifferently. "He and I are perfect strangers." Mrs. France laughed.

"I rather envy you the pleasure of making friends with him! We are all devoted to him down here."

Delia lifted her eyebrows.

"What are his particular virtues? It's monotonous to possess them all." The slight note of insolence was hardly disguised.

"No two friends of his would give you the same answer. I should give you a different catalogue, for instance, from Lady Tonbridge—"

"Lady Tonbridge!" cried Delia, waking up at last. "You don't mean that Lady Tonbridge lives in this neighbourhood?"

"Certainly. You know her?"

"She came once to stay with us in the West Indies. My father knew her very well before she married. And I owe her—a great debt"—the last words were spoken with emphasis.

Mrs. France looked enquiring.

"—she recommended to us the lady who is now living with me here—my chaperon—Miss Marvell?"

There was silence for a moment. Then Mrs. France said, not without embarrassment—

"Your father desired she should live with you?"

Delia flushed again.

"No. My father did not understand her."

"He did not agree with her views?"

"Nor with mine. It was horrid—but even relations must agree to differ. Why is Lady Tonbridge here? And where is Sir Alfred? Papa had not heard of them for a long time."

"They separated last year"—said Mrs. France gravely. "But Mr. Winnington will tell you. He's a great friend of hers. She does a lot of work for him."

"Work?"

"Social work!" smiled Mrs. France—"poor-law—schools—that kind of thing. He ropes us all in."

"Oh!" said Delia, with her head in the air.

Mrs. France laughed outright.

"That seems to you so unimportant—compared to the vote."

"It is unimportant!" said Delia, impetuously. "Nothing really matters but the vote. Aren't you a Suffragist, Mrs. France?"

Mrs. France smilingly shook her head.

"I don't want to meddle with the men's business. And we're a long way yet from catching up with our own. Oh, my husband has a lot of scientific objections. But that's mine." Then her face grew serious—"anyway, we can all agree, I hope, in hating violence. That can never settle it."

She looked a little sternly at her young companion.

"That depends," said Delia. "But we mustn't argue, Mrs. France. I should only make you angry. Ah!"

She sprang up and went to the window, just as steps could be heard on the gravel outside.

"Here's someone coming." She turned to Mrs. France. "Is it Mr. Winnington?"

"It is!" said her visitor, after putting on her glasses.

Delia surveyed him, standing behind the lace curtain, and Mrs. France was relieved to see that a young person of such very decided opinions could be still girlishly curious. She herself rose to go.

"Good-bye. I won't interrupt your talk with him."

"Good-looking?" said Delia, with mischief in her eyes, and a slight gesture towards the approaching visitor.

"Don't you know what an athlete he is—or was?"

"Another perfection? Heavens!—how does he endure it?" said the girl, laughing.

Mrs. France took her leave. She was a very motherly tender-hearted woman, and she would like to have taken her old friend's grandchild in her arms and kissed her. But she wisely refrained; and indeed the instinct to shake her was perhaps equally strong. "How long will she stand gossiping on the doormat with the paragon," said Delia savagely to herself, when she was left alone. "Oh, how I hate a 'charming man'!" She moved stormily to and fro, listening to the distant sounds of talk in the hall, and resenting them. Then suddenly she paused opposite one of the large mirrors in the room. A coil of hair had loosened itself; she put it right; and still stood motionless, interrogating herself in a proud concentration.

"Well?—I am quite ready for him."

But her heart beat uncomfortably fast as the door opened, and Mark Winnington entered.



Chapter V

As Winnington advanced with outstretched hand to greet her, Delia was conscious of a striking physical presence, and of an eye fixed upon her at once kind and penetrating.

"How are you? You've been through a terrible time! Are you at all rested? I'm afraid it has been a long, long strain."

He held her hand in both his, asking gentle questions about her father's illness, interrogating her looks the while with a frank concern and sympathy.

Delia was taken by surprise. For the first time that day she was reminded of what was really, the truth. She was tired—morally and physically. But Gertrude Marvell never recognised anything of the kind; and in her presence Delia rarely confessed any such weakness even to herself.

As it was, her eyes and mouth wavered a little under Winnington's look.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "I shall soon be rested."

They sat down. Delia was conscious—unwillingly conscious, of a nervous agitation she did her best to check. For Winnington also it was clearly an awkward moment. He began at once to talk of his old recollections of her parents, of her mother's beauty, of her father's reputation as the most dashing soldier on the North-West frontier, in the days when they first met in India.

"But his health was even then very poor. I suppose it was that made him leave the army?"

"Yes—and then Parliament," said Delia. "He was ordered a warm climate for the winter. But he could never have lived without working. His Governorship just suited him."

She spoke with charming softness, beguiled from her insensibly by Winnington's own manner. At the back of Winnington's mind, as they talked, ran perpetual ejaculations—ejaculations of the natural man in the presence of so much beauty. But his conversation with her flowed the while with an even gentleness which never for a moment affected intimacy, and was touched here and there with a note of deference, even of ceremony, which disarmed his companion.

"I never came across your father down here—oddly enough," he said presently. "He had left Sandhurst before I went to Eton; and then there was Oxford, and then the bar. My little place belonged then to a cousin, and I had hardly ever seen it. But of course I knew, your grandmother—everybody did. She was a great centre—a great figure. She has left her mark here. Don't you find it so?"

"Yes. Everybody seems to remember her."

But, in a moment, the girl before him had changed and stiffened. It seemed to Winnington, as to Mrs. France, that she pulled herself up, reacting against something that threatened her. The expression in her eyes put something between them. "Perhaps you know"—she said—"that my grandmother didn't always get on with my mother?"

He wondered why she had reminded him of that old family jar, which gossip had spread abroad. Did it really rankle in her mind? Odd, that it should!

"Was that so?" he laughed. "Oh, Lady Blanchflower had her veins of unreason. One had to know where to have her."

"She took Greeks for barbarians—my father used to say," said Delia, a little grimly. "But she was very good to me—and so I was fond of her." "And she of you. But there are still tales going about—do you mind?—of the dances you led her. It took weeks and months, they say, before you and she arrived at an armed truce—after a most appalling state of war! There's an old gardener here—retired now—who remembers you quite well. He told me yesterday that you used to be very friendly with him, and you said to him once—'I like Granny!—she's the master of me!'"

The laughter in Winnington's eyes again kindled hers.

"I was a handful—I know." There was a pause. Then she added—"And I'm afraid—I've gone on being a handful!" Gesture and tone showed that she spoke deliberately.

"Most people of spirit are—till they come to handle themselves," he replied, also with a slight change of tone.

"But that's just what women are never allowed to do, Mr. Winnington!" She turned suddenly red, and fronted him. "There's always some man, who claims to manage them and their affairs. We're always in leading-strings—nobody ever admits we're grown up. Why can't we be allowed like men—to stumble along our own way? If we make mistakes, let's pay for them! But let us at some time in our lives—at least—feel ourselves free beings!"

There was no mistaking the purport of these words. They referred clearly to her father's will, and her own position. After a moment's thought, Winnington bent forward.

"I think I understand what you mean," he said gravely. "And I sympathise with it more than you imagine."

Delia looked up impetuously—

"Then why, Mr. Winnington, did you consent to be my guardian?"

"Because—quite honestly—because I thought I could be of more use to you perhaps than the Court of Chancery; and because your father's letter to me was one very difficult to put aside."

"How could anyone in my father's state of health really judge reasonably!" cried Delia. "I daresay it sounds shocking to you, Mr. Winnington, but I can't help putting it to myself like this—Papa was always able to contrive his own life as he chose. In his Governorship he was a small king. He tried a good many experiments. Everybody deferred to him. Everybody was glad to help him. Then when his money came and the estate, nobody fettered him with conditions; nobody interfered with him. Grandpapa and he didn't agree in a lot of things. Papa was a Liberal; and Grandpapa was an awfully hot Conservative. But Grandpapa didn't appoint a trustee, or tie up the estates—or anything of that kind. It is simply and solely because I am a woman that these things are done! I am not to be allowed my opinions, in my life, though Papa was quite free to work for his in his life! This is the kind of thing we call tyranny,—this is the kind of thing that's driving women into revolt!"

Delia had risen. She stood in what Gertrude Marvell would have called her "pythian" attitude, hands behind her, her head thrown back, delivering her prophetic soul. Winnington, as he surveyed her, was equally conscious of her beauty and her absurdity. But he kept cool, or rather the natural faculty which had given him so much authority and success in life rose with a kind of zest to its new and unaccustomed task.

"May I perhaps suggest—that your father was fifty-two when he succeeded to this estate—and that you are twenty-one?"

"Nearly twenty-two," she interrupted, hastily.

"Nearly twenty-two," repeated Winnington. "And I assure you, that what with 'People's Budgets,' and prowling Chancellors, and all the new turns of the screw that the Treasury is for ever putting on, inheriting an estate nowadays is no simple matter. Your father thought of that. He wished to provide someone to help you."

"I could have found lawyers to help me."

"Of course you could. But my experience is that solicitors are good servants but bad masters. It wants a good deal of practical knowledge to direct them, so that you get what you want. I have gone a little way into the business of the estate this morning with Mr. Masham, and in town, with the Morton Manners people. I see already some complications which will take me a deal of time and thought to straighten out. And I am a lawyer, and if you will let me say so, just double your age."

He smiled at her, but Delia's countenance did not relax. Her mouth was scornful.

"I daresay that's quite true, Mr. Winnington. But of course you know it was not on that account—or at any rate not chiefly on that account, that my father left things as he did. He wished"—she spoke clearly and slowly—"simply to prevent my helping the Suffrage movement in the way I think best."

Winnington too had risen, and was standing with one hand on the mantelpiece. His brow was slightly furrowed, not frowning exactly, but rather with the expression of one trying to bring his mind into as close touch as possible with another mind.

"I must of course agree with you. That is evidently one of the objects of the will, though by no means—I think—the only one. And as to that, should you not ask yourself—had not your father a right, even a duty, to look after the disposal of his money as he thought best? Surely it was his responsibility—especially as he was old, and you were young."

Delia had begun to feel impatient—to resent the very mildness of his tone. She felt, as though she were an insubordinate child, being gently reasoned with.

"No, I don't admit it!" she said passionately. "It was tampering with the right of the next generation!"

"Might you not say the same of the whole—or almost the whole of our system of inheritance?" he argued. "I should put it—that the old are always trying to preserve and protect something they know is more precious to them than it can be to the young—something as to which, with the experience of life behind them, they believe they are wiser than the young. Ought the young to resent it?"

"Yes," persisted Delia. "Yes! They should be left to make their own experiments."

"They have life wherewith to make them! But the dead—" He paused. But Delia felt and quivered under the unspoken appeal; and also under the quick touch of something more personal—more intimate—in his manner, expressing, it seemed, some deep feeling of his own. He, in turn, perceived that she had grown very pale; he guessed even that she was suddenly not very far from tears. He seemed to realise the weeks, perhaps months, of conflict through which the girl had just passed. He was sincerely sorry for her—sincerely drawn to her.

Delia broke the silence.

"It is no good I think discussing this any more—is it? There's the will, and the question is"—she faced him boldly—"how are you and I going to get on, Mr. Winnington?"

Winnington's seriousness broke up. He threw her a smiling look, and with his hands in his pockets began to pace the room reflectively.

"I really believe we can pull it off, if we look at it coolly," he said at last, pausing in front of her. "I am no bigot on the Suffrage question—frankly I have not yet made up my mind upon it. All that I am clear about—as your father was clear—is that outrage and violence are wrong—in any cause. I cannot believe that we shan't agree there!"

He looked at her keenly. Delia was silent. Her face betrayed nothing, though her eyes met his steadily.

"And in regard to that, there is of course one thing that troubles me"—he resumed—"one thing in which I beg you to take my advice"—

Delia breathed quick.

"Gertrude Marvell?" she said. "Of course I knew that was coming!"

"Yes. That we must settle, I think." He kept his eyes upon her. "You can hardly know that she is mentioned by name in your father's last letter—the letter to me—-as the one person whose companionship he dreaded for you—the one person he hoped you would consent to part from."

Delia had turned white.

"No—I didn't know."

"For that reason, and for others, I do entreat you"—he went on, earnestly—"not to keep her here. Miss Marvell may be all that you believe her. I have nothing to say against her,—except this. I am told by those who know that she is already quite notorious in the militant movement. She has been in prison, and she has made extremely violent speeches, advocating what Miss Marvell calls war, and what plain people call—crime. That she should live with you here would not only prejudice your future, and divide you from people who should be your natural friends; it would be an open disrespect to your father's memory."

There was silence. Then Delia said, evidently mastering her excitement with difficulty.

"I can't help it. She must stay with me. Nobody need know—about my father. Her name is not mentioned in the will."

"No. That is true. But his letter to me as your guardian and trustee ought to be regarded equitably as part of the will; and I do not see how it would be possible for me to acquiesce in something so directly contrary to his last wishes. I beg you to look at it from my point of view—"

"I do"—said Delia, flushing again. "But my letter warned you—"

"Yes—but I felt on receiving it that you could not possibly be aware of the full strength of your father's feeling. Let me read you his words."

He took an envelope from his pocket, observing her. Delia hastily interposed.

"Don't, Mr. Winnington!—I'm sure I know."

"It is really my duty to read it to you," he said, courteously but firmly.

She endured it. The only sign of agitation she shewed was the trembling of her hands on the back of the chair she leant upon. And when he returned it to his pocket, she considered for a moment or two, before she said, breathing unevenly, and stumbling a little.—

"That makes no difference, Mr. Winnington. I expect you think me a monster. All the same I loved my father in my own way. But I am not going to barter away my freedom for anything or anyone. I am not part of my father, I am myself. And he is not here to be injured or hurt by anything I do. I intend to stick to Gertrude Marvell—and she to me."

And having delivered her ultimatum, she stood like a young goddess, expectant and defiant.

Winnington's manner changed. He straightened himself, with a slight shake of his broad shoulders, and went to look out of the window at the end of the room. Delia was left to contemplate the back of a very tall man in a serge suit and to rate herself for the thrill—or the trepidation—she could not help feeling. What would he say when he spoke again? She was angry with herself that she could not quite truthfully say that she did not care.

When he returned, she divined another man. The tone was as courteous as ever, but the first relation between them had disappeared; or rather it had become a business relation, a relation of affairs.

"You will of course understand—that I cannot acquiesce in that arrangement?"

Delia's uncomfortable sense of humor found vent in a laugh—as civil however as she could make it.

"I do understand. But I don't quite see what you can do, Mr. Winnington!"

He smiled—quite pleasantly.

"Nor do I—just yet. But of course Miss Marvell will not expect that your father's estate should provide her with the salary that would naturally fall to a chaperon whom your guardian could approve?"

"I shall see to that. We shall not trouble you," said Delia, rather fiercely.

"And I shall ask to see Miss Marvell before I go this morning—that I may point out to her the impropriety of remaining here against your father's express wishes."

Delia nodded.

"All right—but it won't do any good."

He made no reply, except to turn immediately to the subject of her place of residence and her allowance.

"It is I believe understood that you will live mainly here—at Maumsey."

"On the contrary!—I wish to spend a great part of the winter in London."

"With Miss Marvell?"

"Certainly."

"I cannot, I am afraid, let you expect that I shall provide the money."

"It is my own money!"

"Not legally. I hate insisting on these things; but perhaps you ought to know that the whole of your father's property—everything that he left behind him, is in trust."

"Which means"—cried Delia, quivering again—"that I am really a pauper!—that I own nothing but my clothes—barely those!"

He felt himself a brute. "Can I really keep this up!" he thought. Aloud, he said—"If you would only make it a little easy for your trustee, he would be only too thankful to follow out your wishes!"

Delia made no reply, and Winnington took another turn up and down before he paused in front of her with the words:—

"Can't we come to a compact? If I agree to London—say for six or seven weeks—is there no promise you can make me in return?"

With an inward laugh Delia remembered Gertrude's injunction to "keep something to bargain with."

"I don't know"—she said, reluctantly. "What sort of promise do you want?"

"I want one equal to the concession you ask me to make," he said gravely. "In my eyes nothing could be more unfitting than that you should be staying in London—during a time of particularly violent agitation—under the chaperonage of Miss Marvell, who is already committed to this agitation. If I agree to such a direct contradiction of your father's wishes, I must at least have your assurance that you will do nothing violent or illegal, either down here or in London, and that in this house above all you will take some pains to respect Sir Robert's wishes. That I am sure you will promise me?"

She could not deny the charm of his direct appealing look, and she hesitated.

"I was going to have a drawing-room meeting here as soon as possible"—she said, slowly.

"On behalf of the 'Daughters of Revolt'?"

She silently assented.

"I may feel sure—may I not?—that you will give it up?"

"It is a matter of conscience with us"—she said proudly—"to spread our message wherever we go."

"I don't think I can allow you a conscience all to yourself," he said smiling. "Consider how I shall be straining mine—in agreeing to the London plan!"

"Very well"—the words came out reluctantly. "If you insist—and if London is agreed upon—I will give it up."

"Thank you," he said quietly. "And you will take part in no acts of violence, either here or in London? It seems strange to use such words to you. I hate to use them. But with the news in this week's papers I can't help it. You will promise?"

There was a short silence.

"I will join in nothing militant down here," said Delia at last. "I have already told Miss Marvell so."

"Or in London?"

She straightened herself.

"I promise nothing about London."

Guardian and ward looked straight into each other's faces for a few moments. Delia's resistance had stirred a passion—a tremor—in her pulses, she had never known in her struggle with her father. Winnington was clearly debating with himself, and Delia seemed to see the thoughts coursing through the grey eyes that looked at her, seriously indeed, yet not without suggesting a man's humorous spirit behind them.

"Very well"—he said—"we will talk of London later.—Now may we just sit down and run through the household arrangements and expenses here—before I see Miss Marvell. I want to know exactly what you want doing to this house, and how we can fix you up comfortably."

Delia assented. Winnington produced a note-book and pencil. Through his companion's mind was running meanwhile an animated debate.

"I'm not bound to tell him of those other meetings I have promised? 'Yes, you are!' No,—I'm not. They're not to be here—and if I once begin asking his leave for things—there'll be no end to it. I mean to shew him—once for all—that I am of age, and my own mistress. He can't starve me—or beat me!"

Her face broke into suppressed laughter as she bent it over the figures that Winnington was presenting to her.

* * * * *

"Well, I am rather disappointed that you don't want to do more to the house," said Winnington, as he rose and put up his note-book. "I thought it might have been an occupation for the autumn and winter. But at least we can decide on the essential things, and the work can be done while you are in town. I am glad you like the servants Mrs. Bird has found for you. Now I am going off to the Bank to settle everything about the opening of your account, and the quarterly cheque we have agreed on shall be paid in to-morrow."

"Very well." But instantly through the girl's mind there shot up the qualifying thought. "He may say how it is to be spent—but I have made no promise!"

He approached her to take his leave.

"My sister comes home to-night. Will you try the new car and have tea with us on Thursday?" Delia assented. "And before I go I should like to say a word about some of the neighbours."

He tried to give her a survey of the land. Lady Tonbridge, of course, would be calling upon her directly. She was actually in the village—in the tiniest bandbox of a house. Her husband's brutality had at last—two years before this date—forced her to leave him, with her girl of fifteen. "A miserable story—better taken for granted. She is the pluckiest woman alive!" Then the Amberleys—the Rector, his wife and daughter Susy were pleasant people—"Susy is a particular friend of mine. It'll be jolly if you like her."

"Oh, no, she won't take to me!" said Delia with decision.

"Why not?"

But Delia only shook her head, a little contemptuously.

"We shall see," said Winnington. "Well, good night. Remember, anything I can do for you—here I am."

His eyes smiled, but Delia was perfectly conscious that the eager cordiality, the touch of something like tenderness, which had entered into his earlier manner, had disappeared. She realised, and with a moment's soreness, that she had offended his sense of right—of what a daughter's feeling should be towards a dead father, at any rate, in the first hours of bereavement, when the recollections of death and suffering are still fresh.

"I can't help it," she thought stubbornly. "It's all part of the price one pays."

But when he was gone, she stood a long time by the window without moving, thinking about the hour which had just passed. The impression left upon her by Winnington's personality was uncomfortably strong. She knew now that, in spite of her bravado, she had dreaded to find it so, and the reality had more than confirmed the anticipation. She was committed to a struggle with a man whom she must respect, and could not help liking; whose only wish was to help and protect her. And beside the man's energetic and fruitful maturity, she became, as it were, the spectator of her own youth and stumbling inexperience.

But these misgivings did not last long. A passionate conviction, a fanatical affection, came to her aid, and her doubts were impatiently dismissed.

* * * * *

Winnington found Miss Blanchflower's chaperon in a little sitting-room on the ground floor already appropriated to her, surrounded with a vast litter of letters and newspapers which she hastily pushed aside as he entered. He had a long interview with her, and as he afterwards confessed to Lady Tonbridge, he had rarely put his best powers forward to so little purpose. Miss Marvell did not attempt to deny that she was coming to live at Maumsey in defiance of the wishes of Delia's father and guardian, and of the public opinion of those who were to be henceforward Delia's friends and neighbours.

"But Delia has asked me to live with her. She is twenty-one, and women are not now the mere chattels they once were. Both she and I have wills of our own. You will of course give me no salary. I require none. But I don't see how you're going to turn me out of Delia's house, if Delia wishes me to stay."

And Winnington must needs acknowledge, at least to himself, that he did not see either.

He put the lady however through a cross-examination as to her connection with militancy which would have embarrassed or intimidated most women; but Gertrude Marvell, a slight and graceful figure, sitting erect on the edge of her chair, bore it with perfect equanimity, apparently frank, and quite unashamed. Certainly she belonged to the "Daughters of Revolt," the record of her imprisonment was there to shew it; and so did Delia. The aim of both their lives was to obtain the parliamentary vote for women, and in her opinion and that of many others, the time for constitutional action—"for that nonsense"—as she scornfully put it, had long gone by. As to what she intended to do, or advise Delia to do, that was her own affair. One did not give away one's plans to the enemy. But she realised, of course, that it would be unkind to Delia to plunge her into possible trouble, or to run the risk herself of arrest or imprisonment during the early days of Delia's mourning; and of her own accord she graciously offered the assurance that neither she nor Delia would commit any illegality during the two months or so that they might be settled at Maumsey. As to what might happen later, she, like Delia, declined to give any assurances. The parliamentary situation was becoming desperate, and any action whatever on the part of women which might serve to prod the sluggish mind of England before another general election, was in her view not only legitimate but essential.

"Of course I know what your conscience says on the matter," she said, with her steady eyes on Winnington. "But—excuse me for saying so—your conscience is not my affair."

Winnington rose, and prepared to take his leave. If he felt nonplussed, he managed not to shew it.

"Very well. For the present I acquiesce. But you will scarcely wonder, Miss Marvell, after this interview between us, if you find yourself henceforward under observation. You are here in defiance of Miss Blanchflower's legal guardian. I protest against your influence over her; and I disapprove of your presence here. I shall do my best to protect her from you."

She nodded.

"There of course, you will be in your right."

And rising, she turned to the open window and the bright garden outside, with a smiling remark on the decorative value of begonias, as though nothing had happened.

Winnington's temperament did not allow him to answer a woman uncivilly under any circumstances. But they parted as duellists part before the fray. Miss Marvell acknowledged his "Good afternoon," with a pleasant bow, keeping her hands the while in the pockets of her serge jacket, and she remained standing till Winnington had left the room.

"Now for Lady Tonbridge!" thought Winnington, as he rode away. "If she don't help me out, I'm done!"

At the gate of Maumsey he stopped to speak to the lodge-keeper, and as he did so, a man opened the gate, and came in. With a careless nod to Winnington he took his way up the drive. Winnington looked after him in some astonishment.

"What on earth can that fellow be doing here?"

He scented mischief; little suspecting however that a note from Gertrude Marvell lay in the pocket of the man's shabby overcoat, together with that copy of the Tocsin which Delia's sharp eyes had detected the week before in the hands of its owner.

Meanwhile as he drove homeward, instead of the details of county business, the position of Delia Blanchflower, her personality, her loveliness, her defiance of him, absorbed his mind completely. He began to foresee the realities of the struggle before him, and the sheer dramatic interest of it held him, as though someone presented the case, and bade him watch how it worked out.



Chapter VI

The village or rather small town of Great Maumsey took its origin in a clearing of that royal forest which had now receded from it a couple of miles to the south. But it was still a rural and woodland spot. The trees in the fields round it had still a look of wildness, as survivors from the primeval chase, and were grouped more freely and romantically than in other places; while from the hill north of the church, one could see the New Forest stretching away, blue beyond blue, purple beyond purple, till it met the shining of the sea.

Great Maumsey had a vast belief in itself, and was reckoned exclusive and clannish by other places. It was proud of its old Georgian houses, with their white fronts, their pillared porches, and the pediment gables in their low roofs. The owners of these houses, of which there were many, charmingly varied, in the long main street, were well aware that they had once been old-fashioned, and were now as much admired in their degree, as the pictures of the great English artists, Hogarth, Reynolds, Romney, with which they were contemporary. There were earlier houses too, of brick and timber, with overhanging top stories and moss-grown roofs. There was a green surrounded with post and rails, on which a veritable stocks still survived, kept in careful repair as a memento of our barbarous forbears, by the parish Council. The church, dating from that wonderful fourteenth century when all the world must have gone mad for church-building, stood back from the main street, with the rectory beside it, in a modest seclusion of their own.

It was all very English, very spick and span, and apparently very well to do. That the youth of the village was steadily leaving it for the Colonies, that the constant marrying in and in which had gone on for generations had produced an ugly crop of mental deficiency, and physical deformity among the inhabitants—that the standard of morals was too low, and the standard of drink too high—were matters well known to the Rector and the Doctor. But there were no insanitary cottages, and no obvious scandals of any sort. The Maumsey estate had always been well managed; there were a good many small gentlefolk who lived in the Georgian houses, and owing to the competition of the railways, agricultural wages were rather better than elsewhere.

About a mile from the eastern end of the village was the small modernised manor-house of Bridge End, which belonged to Mark Winnington, and where his sister Alice, Mrs. Matheson, kept him company for the greater part of the year. The gates leading to Maumsey lay a little west of the village, while on the hill to the north rose, conspicuous against its background of wood, the famous old house of Monk Lawrence. It looked down upon Maumsey on the one hand and Bridge End on the other. It was generally believed that the owner of it, Sir Wilfrid Lang, had exhausted his resources in restoring it, and that it was the pressure of debt rather than his wife's health which had led to its being shut up so long.

The dwellers in the village regarded it as the jewel in their landscape, their common heritage and pride. Lady Tonbridge, whose little drawing-room and garden to the back looked out on the hill and the old house, was specially envied because she possessed so good a view of it. She herself inhabited one of the very smallest of the Georgian houses, in the main street of Maumsey. She paid a rent of no more than L40 a year for it, and Maumsey people who liked her, felt affectionately concerned that a duke's grand-daughter should be reduced to a rent and quarters so insignificant.

Lady Tonbridge however was not at all concerned for the smallness of her house. She regarded it as the outward and visible sign of the most creditable action of her life—the action which would—or should—bring her most marks when the recording angel came to make up her account. Every time she surveyed its modest proportions the spirit of freedom danced within her, and she envied none of the noble halls in which she had formerly lived, and to some of which she still paid occasional Visits.

At tea-time, on the day following Winnington's first interview with his ward, Madeleine Tonbridge came into her little drawing-room, in her outdoor things, and carrying a bundle of books under the arm.

As far as such words could ever apply to her she was tired and dusty. But her little figure was so alert and trim, her grey linen dress and its appointments so dainty, and the apple-red in her small cheeks so bright, that one might have conceived her as just fresh from a maid's hands, and stepping out to amuse herself, instead of as just returning from a tedious afternoon's work, by which she had earned the large sum of five shillings. A woman of forty-five, she looked her age, and she had never possessed any positive beauty, unless it were the beauty of delicate and harmonious proportion. Yet she had been pestered with suitors as a girl, and unfortunately had married the least desirable of them all. And now in middle life, no one had more devoted men-friends; and that without exciting a breath of scandal, even in a situation where one might have thought it inevitable.

She looked round her as she entered.

"Nora!—where are you?"

A girl, apparently about seventeen, put her head in through the French window that opened to the garden.

"Ready for tea, Mummy?"

"Rather!"—said Lady Tonbridge, with energy, as she put a match to the little spirit kettle on the tea-table where everything stood ready. "Come in, darling."

And throwing off her hat and jacket, she sank into a comfortable arm-chair with a sigh of fatigue. Her daughter quietly loosened her mother's walking-shoes and took them away. Then they kissed each other, and Nora went to look after the tea. She was a slim, pale-faced school-girl, with yellow-brown eyes, and yellow-brown hair, not as yet very attractive in looks, but her mother was convinced that it was only the plainness of the cygnet, and that the swan was only a few years off. Nora, who at seventeen had no illusions, was grateful to her mother for the belief but did not share it in the least.

"I'm sure you gave that girl half an hour over time," she said reprovingly, as she handed Lady Tonbridge her cup of tea—"I can't think why you do it." She referred to the solicitor's daughter whom Lady Tonbridge had been that afternoon instructing in the uses of the French participle.

"Nor can I. A kind of ridiculous esprit de metier I suppose. I undertook to teach her French, and when after all these weeks she don't seem to know a thing more than when she began, I feel as if I were picking her dear papa's pockets."

"Which is absurd," said Nora, buttering her mother's toast, "and I can't let you do it. Half a crown an hour is silly enough already, and for you to throw in half an hour extra for nothing, can't be stood."

"I wish I could get it up to four hours a day," sighed the mother, munching happily at her toast, while she held out her small stockinged feet to the fire which Nora had just lit. "Just think. Ten shillings a day—six days a week—ten months in the year. Why it would pay the rent, we could have another servant, and I could give you twenty pounds a year more for your clothes."

"Much obliged—but I prefer a live Mummy—and no clothes—to a dead one. More tea?"

"Thanks. No chance, of course. Where could one find four persons a day, in Maumsey, or near Maumsey, who want to learn French? The notion's absurd. I shouldn't get the lessons I do, if it weren't for the 'Honourable.'"

"Snobs!"

"Not at all! Not a single family out of the people I go to deserve to be called snobs. It's the natural dramatic instinct in us all. You don't expect an 'Honourable' to be giving French lessons at half a crown an hour, and when she does, you say—'Hullo! Some screw loose, somewhere!'—and you at once feel a new interest in the French tongue, and ask her to come along. I don't mind it a bit. I sit and spin yarns about Drawing-rooms and Court balls, and it all helps.—When did you get home?"

For Nora attended a High School in a neighbouring town, some five miles away, journeying there and back by train.

"Half-past four. I met Mr. Winnington in his car, and he said he'd be here about six."

"Good. I'm dying to talk to him. I have written to the Abbey to say we will call to-morrow. Of course, I ought to be her nursing mother in these parts"—said Lady Tonbridge reflectively—"I knew Sir Robert in frocks, and we were always pals. But my dear, it was I who hatched the cockatrice!"

Nora nodded gravely.

"It was I," pursued Lady Tonbridge, penitentially,—"who saddled him with that woman—and I know he never forgave me. He as good as told me so when we last met—for those few hours—at Basle. But how could I tell? How could anybody tell—she would turn out such a creature? I only knew that she had taken all kinds of honours. I thought I was sending him a treasure."

"All the same you did it, Mummy. And it won't do to give yourself airs now! That's what Mr. Winnington says. You've got to help him out."

"I say, don't talk secrets!" said a voice just outside the room. "For I can't help hearing 'em. May I come in?"

And, pushing the half-open door, Mark Winnington stood smiling on the threshold.

"I apologise. But your little maid let me in—and then vanished somewhere, like greased lightning—after a dog."

"Oh, come in," said Lady Tonbridge, with resignation, extending at the same time a hand of welcome—"the little maid, as you call her, only came from your workhouse yesterday, and I haven't yet discovered a grain of sense in her. But she gets plenty of exercise. If she isn't chasing dogs, it's cats."

"Don't you attack my schools," said Winnington seating himself at the tea-table. "They're A1, and you're very lucky to get one of my girls."

Madeleine Tonbridge replied tartly, that if he was a poor-law guardian, and responsible for a barrack school it was no cause for boasting. She had not long parted with another of his girls, who had tried on her blouses, and gone out in her boots. She thought of offering the new girl a free and open choice of her wardrobe to begin with, so as to avoid unpleasantness.

"We all know that every mistress has the maid she deserves," said Winnington, deep in gingerbread cake. "I leave it there—"

"Yes, jolly well do!" cried Nora, who had come to sit on a stool in front of her mother and Winnington, her eager eyes glancing from one to the other—"Don't start Mummy on servants, Mr. Winnington. If you do, I shall go to bed. There's only one thing worth talking about—and that's—"

"Maumsey!" he said, laughing at her.

"Have you accomplished anything?" asked Lady Tonbridge. "Don't tell me you've dislodged the Fury?"

Winnington shook his head.

"J'y suis—j'y reste!"

"I thought so. There is no civilised way by which men can eject a woman. Tell me all about it."

Winnington, however, instead of expatiating on the Maumsey household, turned the conversation to something else—especially to Nora's first attempts at golf, in which he had been her teacher. Nora, whose reasonableness was abnormal, very soon took the hint, and after five minutes' "chaff" with Winnington, to whom she was devoted, she took up her work and went back to the garden.

"Nobody ever snubs me so efficiently as Nora," said Madeleine Tonbridge, with resignation, "though you come a good second. Discreet I shall never be. Don't tell me anything if you don't want to."

"But of course I want to! And there is nobody in the world so absolutely bound to help me as you."

"I knew you'd say that. Don't pile it on. Give me the kitten—and describe your proceedings."

Winnington handed her the grey Persian kitten reposing on a distant chair, and Lady Tonbridge, who always found the process conducive to clear thinking, stroked and combed the creature's beautiful fur, while the man talked,—with entire freedom now that they were tete-a-tete.

She was his good friend indeed, and she had also been the good friend of Sir Robert Blanchflower. It was natural that to her he should lay his perplexities bare.

* * * * *

But after she had heard his story and given her best mind to his position, she could not refrain from expressing the wonder she had felt from the beginning that he should ever have accepted it at all.

"What on earth made you do it? Bobby Blanchflower had no more real claim on you than this kitten!"

Winnington's grey eyes fixed on the trees outside shewed a man trying to retrace his own course.

"He wrote me a very touching letter. And I have always thought that men—and women—ought to be ready to do this kind of service for each other. I should have felt a beast if I had said No, at once. But I confess now that I have seen Miss Delia, I don't know whether I can do the slightest good."

"Hold on!" said Lady Tonbridge, sharply,—"You can't give it up—now."

Winnington laughed.

"I have no intention of giving it up. Only I warn you that I shall probably make a mess of it."

"Well"—the tone was coolly reflective—"that may do you good—whatever happens to the girl. You have never made a mess of anything yet in your life. It will be a new experience."

Winnington protested hotly that her remark only shewed how little even intimate friends know of each other's messes, and that his were already legion. Lady Tonbridge threw him an incredulous look. As he sat there in his bronzed and vigorous manhood, the first crowsfeet just beginning to shew round the eyes, and the first streaks of grey in the brown curls, she said to herself that none of her young men acquaintance possessed half the physical attractiveness of Mark Winnington; while none—old or young—could rival him at all in the humane and winning spell he carried about with him. To see Mark Winnington aux prises with an adventure in which not even his tact, his knowledge of men and women, his candour, or his sweetness, might be sufficient to win success, piqued her curiosity; perhaps even flattered that slight inevitable malice, wherewith ordinary mortals protect themselves against the favourites of the gods.

She was determined however to help him if she could, and she put him through a number of questions. The girl then was as handsome as she promised to be? A beauty, said Winnington—and of the heroic or poetic type. And the Fury? Winnington described the neat, little lady, fashionably Pressed and quiet mannered, who had embittered the last years of Sir Robert Blanchflower, and firmly possessed herself of his daughter.

"You will see her to-morrow, at my house, when you come to tea. I carefully didn't ask her, but I am certain she will come, and Alice and I shall of course have to receive her."

"She is not thin-skinned then?"

"What fanatic is? It is one of the secrets of their strength."

"She probably regards us all as the dust under her feet," said Lady Tonbridge. "I wonder what game she will be up to here. Have you seen the Times this morning?"

Winnington nodded. It contained three serious cases of arson, in which Suffragette literature and messages had been discovered among the ruins, besides a number of minor outrages. An energetic leading article breathed the exasperation of the public, and pointed out the spread of the campaign of violence.

By this time Lady Tonbridge had carried her visitor into the garden, and they were walking up and down among the late September flowers. Beyond the garden lay green fields and hedgerows; beyond the fields rose the line of wooded hill, and, embedded in trees, the grey and gabled front of Monk Lawrence.

Winnington reported the very meagre promise he had been able to get out of his ward and her companion.

"The comfort is," said Lady Tonbridge, "that this is a sane neighbourhood—comparatively. They won't get much support. Oh, I don't know though—" she added quickly. "There's that man—Mr. Lathrop, Paul Lathrop—who took Wood Cottage last year—a queer fish, by all accounts. I'm told he's written the most violent things backing up the militants generally. However, his own story has put him out of Court."

"His own story?" said Winnington, with a puzzled look.

"Don't be so innocent!" laughed Lady Tonbridge, rather impatiently. "I always tell you you don't give half place enough in life to gossip-'human nature's daily food.' I knew all about him a week after he arrived. However, I don't propose to save you trouble, Mr. Guardian! Go and look up a certain divorce case, with Mr. Lathrop's name in it, some time last year—if you want to know. That's enough for that."

But Winnington interrupted her, with a disturbed look. "I happened to meet that very man you are speaking of—yesterday—in the Abbey drive, going to call."

Lady Tonbridge shrugged her shoulders.

"There you see their freemasonry. I don't suppose they approve his morals—but he supports their politics. You won't be able to banish him!—Well, so the child is lovely? and interesting?"

Winnington assented warmly.

"But determined to make herself a nuisance to you? Hm! Mr. Mark—dear Mr. Mark—don't fall in love with her!"

Winnington's expression altered. He did not answer for a moment. Then he said, looking away—

"Do you think you need have said that?"

"No!"—cried Madeleine Tonbridge remorsefully. "I am a wretch. But don't—don't!"

This time he smiled at her, though not without vexation.

"Do you forget that I am nearly old enough to be her father?"

"Oh that's nonsense!" she said hastily. "However—I'm not going to flatter you—or tease you. Forgive me. I put it out of my head. I wonder if there is anybody in the field already?"

"Not that I am aware of."

"Of course you know this kind of thing spoils a girl's prospects of marriage enormously. Men won't run the risk."

Winnington laughed.

"And all the time, you're a Suffragist yourself!"

"Yes, indeed I am," was the stout reply. "Here am I, with a house and a daughter, a house-parlourmaid, a boot-boy, and rates to pay. Why shouldn't I vote as well as you? But the difference between me and the Fury is that she wants the vote this year—this month—this minute—and I don't care whether it comes in my time—or Nora's time—or my grandchildren's time. I say we ought to have it—that it is our right—and you men are dolts not to give it us. But I sit and wait peaceably till you do—till the apple is ripe and drops. And meanwhile these wild women prevent its ripening at all. So long as they rage, there it hangs—out of our reach. So that I'm not only ashamed of them as a woman—but out of all patience with them as a Suffragist! However for heaven's sake don't let's discuss the horrid subject. I'll do all I can for Delia—both for your sake and Bob's—I'll keep my best eye on the Fury—I feel myself of course most abominably responsible for her—and I hope for the best. Who's coming to your tea-party?"

Winnington enumerated. At the name of Susy Amberley, his hostess threw him a sudden look, but said nothing.

"The Andrews'—Captain, Mrs. and Miss—," Lady Tonbridge exclaimed.

"Why did you ask that horrid woman?"

"We didn't! Alice indiscreetly mentioned that Miss Blanchflower was coming to tea, and she asked herself."

"She's enough to make any one militant! If I hear her quote 'the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world' once more, I shall have to smite her. The girl's down-trodden I tell you! Well, well—if you gossip too little, I gossip too much. Heavens!—what a light!"

Winnington turned to see the glow of a lovely afternoon fusing all the hill-side in a glory of gold and amethyst, and the windows in the long front of Monk Lawrence taking fire under the last rays of a fast-dropping sun.

"Do you know—I sometimes feel anxious about that house!" said Madeleine Tonbridge, abruptly. "It's empty—it's famous—it belongs to a member of the Government. What is to prevent the women from attacking it?"

"In the first place, it isn't empty. The Keeper, Daunt, from the South Lodge, has now moved into the house. I know, because Susy Amberley told me. She goes up there to teach one of my cripples—Daunt's second girl. In the next, the police are on the alert. And last—who on earth would dare to attack Monk Lawrence? The odium of it would be too great. A house bound up with English history and English poetry—No! They are not such fools!"

Lady Tonbridge shook her head.

"Don't be so sure. Anyway you as a magistrate can keep the police up to the mark."

Winnington departed, and his old friend was left to meditate on his predicament. It was strange to see Mark Winnington, with his traditional, English ways and feelings—carried, as she always felt, to their highest—thus face to face with the new feminist forces—as embodied in Delia Blanchflower. He had resented, clearly resented, the introduction—by her, Madeleine—of the sex element into the problem. But how difficult to keep it out! "He will see her constantly—he will have to exercise his will against hers—he will get his way—and then hate himself for conquering—he will disapprove, and yet admire,—will offend her, yet want to please her—a creature all fire, and beauty, and heroisms out of place! And she—could she, could I, could any woman I know, fight Mark Winnington—and not love him all the time? Men are men, and women are women—in spite of all these 'isms,' and 'causes.' I bet—but I don't know what I bet!—" Then her thoughts gradually veered away from Mark to quite another person.

How would Susan Amberley be affected by this new interest in Mark Winnington's life? Madeleine's thoughts recalled a gentle face, a pair of honest eyes, a bearing timid and yet dignified. So she was teaching one of Mark's crippled children? And Mark thought no doubt she would have done the like for anyone else with a charitable hobby? Perhaps she would, for her heart was a fount of pity. All the same, the man—blind bat!—understood nothing. No fault of his perhaps; but Lady Tonbridge felt a woman's angry sympathy with a form of waste so common and so costly.

And now the modest worshipper must see her hero absorbed day by day, and hour by hour, in the doings of a dazzling and magnificent creature like Delia Blanchflower. What food for torment, even in the meekest spirit!

So that the last word the vivacious woman said to herself was a soft "Poor Susy!" dropped into the heart of a September rose as she stooped to gather it.



Chapter VII

A small expectant party were gathered for afternoon tea in the book-lined sitting-room—the house possessed no proper drawing-room—of Bridge End. Mrs. Matheson indeed, Mark's widowed sister, would have resented it had anyone used the word "party" in its social sense. Miss Blanchflower's father had been dead scarcely a month; and Mrs. Matheson in her quiet way, held strongly by all the decencies of life. It was merely a small gathering of some of the oldest friends and neighbours of Miss Blanchflower's family—those who had stood nearest to her grandparents—to welcome the orphan girl among them. Lady Tonbridge—of whom it was commonly believed, though no one exactly knew why, that Bob Blanchflower, as a youth had been in love with her, before ever he met his Greek wife; Dr. France, who had attended both the old people till their deaths, and had been much beloved by them; his wife; the Rector, Mrs. Amberley, and Susy:—Mrs. Matheson had not intended to ask anyone else. But the Andrews' had asked themselves, and she had not had the moral courage to tell them that the occasion was not for them. She was always getting Mark into difficulties, she penitently reflected, by her inability to say No, at the right time, and with the proper force, Mark could always say it, and stick to it smiling—without giving offence.

Mrs. Matheson was at the tea-table. She was tall and thin, with something of her brother's good looks, but none of his over-flowing vitality. Her iron-grey hair was rolled back from her forehead; she wore a black dress with a high collar of white lawn, and long white cuffs. Little Mrs. Amberley, the Rector's wife, sitting beside her, envied her hostess her figure, and her long slender neck. She herself had long since parted with any semblance of a waist, and the boned collars of the day were a perpetual torment to one whose neck, from the dressmaker's point of view, scarcely existed. But Mrs. Amberley endured them, because they were the fashion; and to be moderately in the fashion meant simply keeping up to the mark—not falling behind. It was like going to church—an acceptance of that "general will," which according to the philosophers, is the guardian of all religion and all morality.

The Rector too, who was now handing the tea-cake, believed in fashion—ecclesiastical fashion. Like his wife, he was gentle and ineffective. His clerical dress expressed a moderate Anglicanism, and his opinions were those of his class and neighbourhood, put for him day by day in his favourite newspaper, with a cogency at which he marvelled. Yet he was no more a hypocrite than his wife, and below his common-places both of manner and thought there lay warm feelings and a quick conscience. He was just now much troubled about his daughter Susy. The night before she had told her mother and him that she wished to go to London, to train for nursing. It had been an upheaval in their quiet household. Why should she dream of such a thing? How could they ever get on without her? Who would copy out his sermons, or help with the schools? And her mother—so dependent on her only daughter! The Rector's mind was much disturbed, and he was accordingly more absent and more ineffective than usual.

Susy herself, in a white frock, with touches of blue at her waist, and in her shady hat, was moving about with cups of tea, taking that place of Mrs. Matthews's lieutenant, which was always tacitly given her by Winnington and his sister on festal occasions at Bridge End. As she passed Winnington, who had been captured by Mrs. Andrews, he turned with alacrity—

"My dear Miss Susy! What are you doing? Give me that cup!"

"No—please! I like doing it!" And she passed on, smiling, towards Lady Tonbridge, whose sharp eyes had seen the trivial contact between Winnington and the girl. How the mere sound of his voice had changed the aspect of the young face! Poor child—poor child!

"How well you look Susy! Such a pretty dress!" said Madeleine tenderly in the girl's ear.

Susy flushed.

"You really think so? Mother gave it me for a birthday present." She looked up with her soft, brown eyes, which always seemed to have in them, even when they smiled, a look of pleading—as of someone at a disadvantage. At the same moment Winnington passed her.

"Could you go and talk to Miss Andrews?" he said, over his shoulder, so that only she heard.

Susy went obediently across the room to where a silent, dark-haired girl sat by herself, quite apart from the rest of the circle. Marion Andrews was plain, with large features and thick wiry hair. Maumsey society in general declared her "impossible." She rarely talked; she seemed to have no tastes; and the world believed her both stupid and disagreeable. And by contrast with the effusive amiabilities of her mother, she could appear nothing else. Mrs. Andrews indeed had a way of using her daughter as a foil to her own qualities, which must have paralysed the most self-confident, and Marion had never possessed any belief in herself at all.

As Susy Amberley timidly approached her, and began to make conversation, she looked up coldly, and hardly answered. Meanwhile Mrs. Andrews was pouring out a flood of talk under which the uncomfortable Winnington—for it always fell to him as host to entertain her—sat practising endurance. She was a selfish, egotistical woman, with a vast command of sloppy phrases, which did duty for all that real feeling or sympathy of which she possessed uncommonly little. On this occasion she was elaborately dressed,—overdressed—in a black satin gown, which seemed to Winnington, an ugly miracle of trimming and tortured "bits." Her large hat was thick with nodding plumes, and beside her spotless white gloves and showy lace scarf, her daughter's slovenly coat and skirt, of the cheapest ready-made kind, her soiled gloves, and clumsy shoes, struck even a man uncomfortably. That poor girl seemed to grow plainer and more silent every year.

He was just shaking himself free from the mother, when Dr. and Mrs. France were announced. The doctor came in with a furrowed brow, and a preoccupied look. After greeting Mrs. Matheson, and the other guests, he caught a glance of enquiry from Winnington and went up to him.

"The evening paper is full of the most shocking news!" he said, with evident agitation. "There has been an attempt on Hampton Court—and two girls who were caught breaking windows in Piccadilly have been badly hurt by the crowd. A bomb too has been found in the entrance of one of the tube stations. It was discovered in time, or the results might have been frightful."

"Good Heavens—those women again!" cried Mrs. Andrews, lifting hands and eyes.

No one else spoke. But in everyone's mind the same thought emerged. At any moment the door might open, and Delia Blanchflower and her chaperon might come in.

The doctor drew Winnington aside into a bow-window.

"Did you know that the lady living with Miss Blanchflower was a member of this League of Revolt?"

"Yes. You mean they are implicated in these things?"

"Certainly! I am told Miss Marvell was once an official—probably is still. My dear Winnington—you can't possibly allow it!" He spoke with the freedom of an intimate friend.

"How can I stop it," said Winnington, frowning. "My ward is of age. If Miss Marvell does anything overt—But she has promised to do nothing violent down here—they both have."

The doctor, an impetuous Ulsterman with white hair, and black eyes, shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "When women once take to this kind of thing"—he was interrupted by Mrs. Andrews' heavy voice rising above the rather nervous and disjointed conversation of the other guests—"If women only knew where their real power lies, Mrs. Matheson! Why, 'the hand that rocks the cradle'—"

A sudden crash was heard.

"Oh, dear"—cried Lady Tonbridge, who had upset a small table with a plate of cakes on it across the tail of Mrs. Andrews' dress—"how stupid I am!"

"My gown!—my gown!" cried Mrs. Andrews in an anguish, groping for the cakes.

In the midst of the confusion the drawing-room door had opened, and there on the threshold stood Delia Blanchflower, with a slightly-built lady behind her.

Winnington turned with a start and went forward to greet them. Dr. France left behind in the bow-window observed their entry with a mingling of curiosity and repulsion. It seemed to him that their entry was that of persons into a hostile camp,—the senses all alert against attack. Delia was of course in black, her face sombrely brilliant in its dark setting of a plain felt hat, like the hat of a Cavalier without its feathers. "She knows perfectly well we have been talking about her!" thought Dr. France,—"that we have seen the newspapers. She comes in ready for battle—perhaps thirsty for it! She is excited—while the woman behind her is perfectly cool. The two types!—the enthusiast—and the fanatic. But, by Jove, the girl is handsome!"

Through the sudden silence created by their entry, Delia made her way to Mrs. Matheson. Holding her head very high, she introduced "My chaperon—Miss Marvell." And Winnington's sister nervously shook hands with the quietly smiling lady who followed in Miss Blanchflower's wake. Then while Delia sat down beside the hostess, and Winnington busied himself in supplying her with tea, her companion fell to the Rector's care.

The Rector, like Winnington, was not a gossip, partly out of scruples, but mainly perhaps because of a certain deficient vitality, and he had but disjointed ideas on the subject of the two ladies who had now settled at the Abbey. He understood, however, that Delia, whom he remembered as a child, was a "Suffragette," and that Mr. Winnington, Delia's guardian, disapproved of the lady she had brought with her, why, he could not recollect. This vague sense of something "naughty" and abnormal gave a certain tremor to his manner as he stood beside Gertrude Marvell, shifting from one foot to the other, and nervously plying her with tea-cake.

Miss Marvell's dark eyes meanwhile glanced round the room, taking in everybody. They paused a moment on the figure of the doctor, erect and spare in a closely-buttoned coat, on his spectacled face, and conspicuous brow, under waves of nearly white hair; then passed on. Dr. France watched her, following the examining eyes with his own. He saw them change, with a look—the slightest passing look—of recognition, and at the same moment he was aware of Marion Andrews, sitting in the light of a side window. What had happened to the girl? He saw her dark face, for one instant, exultant, transformed; like some forest hollow into which a sunbeam strikes. The next, she was stooping over a copy of "Punch" which lay on the table beside her. A rush of speculation ran through the doctor's mind.

"And you are settled at Maumsey?" Mrs. Matheson was saying to Delia; aware as soon as the question was uttered that it was a foolish one.

"Oh no, not settled. We shall be there a couple of months."

"The house will want some doing up, Mark thinks."

"I don't think so. Not much anyway. It does very well."

There was an entire absence of girlish softness or shyness in the speaker's manner, though it was both courteous and easy. The voice—musically deep—and the splendid black eyes, that looked so steadily at her, intimidated Mark Winnington's gentle sister.

Mrs. Andrews, whose dress, after Susy's ministration, had been declared out of danger, bent across the tea-table, all smiles and benevolence again, the plumes in her black hat nodding—

"It's like old times to have the Abbey open again, Miss Blanchflower! Every week we used to go to your dear grandmother, for her Tuesday work-party. I'm afraid you'll hardly revive that!"

Delia brought a rather intimidating brow to bear upon the speaker.

"I'm afraid not."

Lady Tonbridge, who had already greeted Delia as a woman naturally greets the daughter of an old friend, came up as Delia spoke to ask for a second cup of tea, and laid her hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Very sorry to miss you yesterday. I won't insult you by saying you've grown. How about the singing? You used to sing I remember when I stayed with you."

"Yes—but I've given it up. I took lessons at Munich last spring. But I can't work at it enough. And if one can't work, it's no good."

"Why can't you work at it?"

Delia suddenly looked up in her questioner's face. Her gravity broke up in a broad smile.

"Because there's so much else to do."

"What else?"

The look of excited defiance in the girl's eyes sharpened.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Certainly. The Suffrage and that kind of thing?" said Madeleine Tonbridge lightly.

"The Suffrage and that kind of thing!" repeated Delia, still smiling.

Captain Andrews who was standing near, and whose martial mind was all in confusion, owing to Miss Blanchflower's beauty, put in an eager word.

"I never can understand, Miss Blanchflower, why you ladies want the vote! Why, you can twist us round your little fingers!"

Delia turned upon him.

"But I don't want to twist you round my little finger!" she said, with energy. "It wouldn't give me the smallest pleasure."

"I thought you wanted to manage us," said the Captain, unable to take his eyes from her. "But you do manage us already!"

Delia's glance showed her uncertain whether the foe was worth her steel.

"We want to manage ourselves," she said at last, smiling indifferently. "We say you do it badly."

The Captain attempted to spar with her a little longer. Winnington meanwhile stood, a silent listener, amid the group round the tea-table. He—and Dr. France—were both acutely conscious of the realities behind this empty talk; of the facts recorded in the day's newspapers; and of the connection between the quiet lady in grey who had come in with Delia Blanchflower, and the campaign of public violence, which was now in good earnest alarming and exasperating the country.