Eugene gently laughed.

"Of course you put it as unattractively as you can."

"Yes; but I can't put it unattractively enough to be true. I used to fret and strive, and think archangels hung on my actions. There are none; and if there were, what would they care for me? I am a part of it, I suppose—a part of the Red King's dream, as Alice says. But what a little part! I do well if I suffer little and give little suffering, and so quietly go to help the cabbages."

"I don't think I believe it," said Eugene.

"I suppose not. It's hard to believe and impossible to disbelieve."

Stafford listened intently. Memories came back to him of books he had read and put behind him; books wherein Ayre had found his creed, if the thing could be called a creed. Was that true? Was he rending his soul for nothing? A day earlier such a thought would have been to him at once a torture and a sin. Now he found a strange comfort in it. Why strive and cry, when none watched the effort or heard the agony? Why torture himself? Why torture others? If the world were good, why was he not to have his part? If it were bad, might he not find a quiet nook under the wall, out of the storm? Why must he try to breast it? If Ayre was right, what a tragical farce his struggle was, what a perverse delusion, what an aimless flinging away of the little joy his little life could offer! If this were so, then was he indeed alone in the world—except for Claudia. Was his choice in truth between this world and the next? He might throw one away and never find the other.

Then he cursed the voice, and himself for listening to it, and fell again to vehement prayers and self-reproaches, trying to drown the clamor of his heart with his insistent petitions. If he could only pray as he had been wont to pray, he was saved. There lay a respite from thought and a refuge from passion. Why could he not abandon his whole soul to communion with God, as once he could, shutting out all save the sense of sin and the conviction of forgiveness? He prayed for power to pray. But, like the guilty king, he could not say Amen. He could not bind his wandering thoughts, nor dispel the forward imaginings of his distempered mind. He asked one thing, and in his heart desired another; he prayed, and did not desire an answer to his prayer; for when he tried to bow his heart in supplication, ever in the midst, between him and the throne before which he bent, came the form and the face and the voice he loved, and the temptation and the longing and the doubt. And he was tost and driven about through the livelong night till, in utter weariness, he fell on the floor and slept.



CHAPTER VII.

An Early Train and a Morning's Amusement.

It was still early when he awoke, weary, stiff, and unrefreshed, but with a conviction in his mind that had grown plain and strong in the mysterious way notions sometimes seem to gather force in hours of unconsciousness, and surprise us with their mature vigor when we awake. "I must go!" he kept muttering to himself; "I must go—go and think. I dare do nothing now." He hastily packed a hand bag, wrote a note for Eugene, asking that the rest of his luggage might be forwarded to an address he would send, went quietly downstairs, and, finding the door just opened, passed out unseen. He had three miles to walk to the station, but his restless feet brought him there quickly, and he had more than an hour to wait for the first train, at half-past eight. He sat down on the platform and waited. His capacity for thought and emotion seemed for the time exhausted. His thoughts wandered from one trivial matter to another, always eluding his effort to fix them. He found himself acutely studying the gang of laborers who were going by train to their day's work, and wondering how many pipes each of their carefully guarded matches would light, and what each carried in his battered tin drinking-bottle, remembering with a dreary sort of amusement that he had heard this same incurable littleness of thought settled on men condemned to death. Still, it passed the time, and he was surprised out of a sort of reverie by the clanging of the porter's inharmonious bell.

At the same moment a phaeton was rapidly driven up to the door of the station, and all the porters rushed to meet it.

"Label it all for London," he heard Eugene's voice say. "Four boxes, a portmanteau, and a hat-box. No, I'm not going—this lady and gentleman."

Kate, Haddington, and Eugene came through the ticket-office on to the platform. Stafford involuntarily shrank back.

"Just in time!" Eugene was saying; "though why the dickens you people will start at such an hour, I don't know. Haddington, I suppose, always must be in a hurry—never does for a rising man to admit he's got spare time. But you, Kate! Its positively uncomplimentary!"

He spoke lightly, but there was a troubled look on his face; and as Haddington went off to take the tickets he drew near to Kate, and said suddenly:

"You are determined on this, Kate?"

"On what?" she asked coldly.

"Why, to go like this—to bolt—it almost comes to that—leaving things as they are between us?"

"Why not?"

"And with Haddington?"

"Do you mean to insult me?"

"Of course not. But how do you think it must look to me? What do you imagine my course must be?"

"Really, Eugene, I see no need for this scene. I suppose your course will be to wait till I ask you to fulfill your promise, and then to fulfill it. You have no sort of cause for complaint."

Eugene could not resist a smile.

"You are sublime!" he said. Perhaps he would have said more, but at this moment, to his intense surprise, his eyes met Stafford's. The latter gave him a quick look, in obedience to which he checked his exclamation, and, making some excuse about a parcel due and not arrived, unceremoniously handed Kate to a carriage, bundled Haddington in after her, and walked rapidly to the front of the train, where he had just seen Stafford getting into a third-class compartment.

"What in the world's the meaning of this, my dear old boy?"

"I have left a note for you."

"That will explain?"

"No," said Stafford, with his unsparing truthfulness, "it will not explain."

"How fagged you look!"

"Yes, I am tired."

"You must go now, and like this?"

"I think that is less bad than anything else."

"You can't tell me?"

"Not now, old fellow. Perhaps I will some day."

"You'll let me know what you're doing? Hallo, she's off! And, Stafford, nothing ever between us?"

"Why should there be?" he answered, with some surprise. "But you know there couldn't be."

The train moved on as they shook hands, and Eugene retraced his steps to his phaeton.

"He's given her up," he said to himself, with an irrepressible feeling of relief. "Poor old fellow! Now—"

But Eugene's reflections were not of a character that need or would repay recording. He ought to have been ashamed of himself. I venture to think he was. Nevertheless, he arrived home in better spirits than a man has any right to enjoy when he has seen his mistress depart in a temper and his best friend in sorrow. Our spirits are not always obedient to the dictates of propriety. It is often equally in vain that we call them from the vasty deep, or try to dismiss them to it. They are rebellious creatures, whose only merit is their sincerity.

Sir Roderick Ayre allowed few things to surprise him, but the fact of any one deliberately starting by the early train was one of the few. In regard to such conduct, he retained all his youthful capacity for wonder. Surprise, however, gave way to unrestrained and indecent exultation when he learned that the early party had consisted of Kate and Haddington, and that Eugene himself had escorted them to the station. Eugene was in too good a temper to be seriously annoyed.

"I know it makes me look an ass," he said, as they smoked the after-breakfast pipe, "but I suppose that's all in the day's work."

"No doubt. It is the day's work," said Ayre; "but, oh, diplomatic young man, why didn't you tell us at breakfast that the pope had also gone?"

"Oh, you know that?"

"Of course. My man Timmins brings me what I may call a way-bill every morning, and against Stafford's name was placed '8.30 train.'"

"Useful man, Timmins," said Eugene. "Did he happen to add why he had gone?"

"There are limitations even to Timmins. He did not."

"You can guess?"

"Well, I suppose I can," answered Ayre, with some resentment.

"He's given it up, apparently."

"I don't know."

"He must have. Awfully cut up he looked, poor old chap! I was glad Kate and Haddington didn't see him."

"Poor chap! He takes it hard. Hallo! here's the fons et origo mali."

Morewood joined them.

"I have been," he said gravely, "rescuing my picture. That insipid lunatic had wrapped it up in brown paper, and put it among his socks in his portmanteau. I couldn't see it anywhere till I routed out the portmanteau. If it had come to grief I should have entered the Academy."

"Don't give way so," said Ayre; "it's unmanly. Control your emotions."

Eugene rose.

"Where are you going?"

Eugene smiled.

"This," said Ayre to Morewood, with a wave of his hand, "is an abandoned young man."

"It is," said Morewood. "Bob Territon is going rat-hunting, and proposes we shall also go. What say you?"

"I say yes," said Sir Roderick, with alacrity. "It's a beastly cruel sport."

"You have lost," said Morewood, as they walked away together.

"Wait a bit!" said his companion. "But, young Eugene! It's a pity that young man has no morals."

"Is that so?"

"Oh! not simpliciter, you know. Secundum quid."

"Secundum feminam, in fact?"

"Yes; and I brought him up, too."

"'By their fruits ye shall know them.' But here's Bob and the terriers."

"Don't you fellows ever have a sister," said Bob, as he came up; "Claudia's just savage because the pope's gone. Can't get her morning absolution, you know."

"Are absolution and ablution the same word, Morewood?" asked Ayre.

"Don't know. Ask the Rector. He's sure to turn up when he hears of the rats."

"I think they must be—a sort of spiritual tub. But Morewood will never admit he's been educated. It detracts from his claim to genius."

Eugene, freed from this frivolous company, was not long in discovering Claudia's whereabouts. He felt like a boy released from school and, turning his eyes away from future difficulties, was determined to enjoy himself while he could. Claudia was seated on the lawn in complete idleness and, apparently, considerable discontent.

"Do your guests always scurry away without saying good-by to anybody, Mr. Lane?" she asked.

"I hope that you, at least, will not. But didn't Kate say good-by, or Haddington?"

"I meant Father Stafford, of course."

"Oh, he had to go. He sent an apology to you and all the party."

"Did he tell you why he had to go?"

"No," said Eugene, regarding her with covert attention.

"It's a pity if he's unaccountable. I like him so much otherwise."

"You don't like unaccountable people?"

Claudia seemed quite willing to let Stafford drop out of the conversation.

"No," she said; "I tolerate you, Mr. Lane, because I always know exactly what you'll do."

"Do you?" he asked, only moderately pleased. A man likes to be thought a little mysterious. No doubt Claudia knew that.

"I don't think you know what I am going to do now."

"What?"

"I'm going to ask you if you know why Father Stafford—"

"Oh, please excuse me, Mr. Lane. I can't speculate on your friend's motives. I don't profess to understand him."

This might be indifference; it sounded to Eugene very like pique.

"I thought you might know."

"Mr. Lane," said Claudia, "either you mean something or you don't. If the one, you're taking a liberty, and one entirely without excuse; if the other, you are simply tedious."

"I beg your pardon," said Eugene stiffly.

Claudia gave a little laugh.

"Why do you make me be so aggressive? I don't want to be. Was I awfully severe?"

"Yes, rather."

"I meant it, you know. But did you come quite resolved to quarrel? I want to be pleasant." And Claudia raised her eyes with a reproachful glance.

"In anger or otherwise, you are always delightful," said Eugene politely.

"I accept that as a diplomatic advance—not in its literal sense. After all, I must be nice to you. You're all alone this morning."

"Lady Claudia," said he gravely, "either you mean something or you do not. If the one—"

"Be quiet this moment!" she said, laughing.

He obeyed and lay back in his low chair with a sigh of content.

"Yes; never mind Stafford and never mind Kate. Why should we? They're not here."

"My silence is not to be taken for consent," said Claudia, "only it's too fine a day to spend in trying to improve you or, indeed, anybody else. But I shall not forget any of my friends."

Now up to this point Eugene had behaved tolerably well. It is, however, a dangerous thing to set yourself deliberately to study a lady's attractions. Like all other one-sided views of a subject, it is apt to carry you too far. The sun and the wind were playing about in Claudia's hair, her eyes were full of light, and her whole air, in spite of a genuine effort after demureness, conveyed to any self-respecting man an irresistible challenge to make himself agreeable if he could. Eugene's notions of making himself agreeable were, as may have been gathered, liberal; they certainly included more than can be considered strictly incumbent on young men in society. And, besides being polite, Eugene was also curious. It is one thing to silently suffer under a passion which a sense of duty forbids; such a position has its pleasures. The situation is altered when the idea dawns upon you that there is no reciprocity of graceful suffering; that, in fact, the lady may prefer somebody else. Eugene wanted to know where he stood.

"Shall you be sorry to leave here?" he asked.

"My feelings will be mixed. You see, Rickmansworth has actually consented to take me with him to his moor, and that will be great fun."

"Why, you don't go killing birds?"

"No, I don't kill birds."

"There'll be only a pack of men there."

"That's all. But I don't mind that—if the scenery is good."

"I believe you're trying to make me angry."

"Oh, no! I know Sir Roderick doesn't let you be angry. It's not good form."

"Have you no heart, Claudia?"

"I don't know. But I have a prefix."

"Have you, after ten years' friendship?"

Claudia laughed.

"You make me rather old. Were we friends when I was ten?"

"Oh, bother dates! I don't count by time?"

"Really, Mr. Lane, if you were anybody else I should call this absurd. It would be flattering you and myself to call it wrong."

"Why?"

"Because that would imply you were serious."

"Would it be wrong if I were?"

"Well, it would be generally considered so, under the circumstances."

"I don't care about that. I have endured it long enough. Oh, Claudia! don't you see?"

"I suppose so," thought Claudia, "I ought to crush him at this point. I think I'll wait a little bit, though."

"See what?" she said.

"Why, that—that—"

"Well?"

"Hang it! why is it always so abominably absurd? Why, that I love the ground you tread on, Claudia? Is this wretched thing to keep us apart!"

"Mr. Lane, you're magnificent; but isn't there a trifling assumption in your last remark?"

"How?"

"Well, you seemed—perhaps you didn't mean it—to imply that only that 'wretched thing' kept us apart. That's rather taking me for granted, isn't it?"

"Ah! you know I didn't mean it. But if things were different, could you—"

"A conditional proposal is a new fashion. Is that one of Sir Roderick's ideas?"

Eugene was at last angry. He was silent for a moment. Then he said:

"I see. I must congratulate you."

"On what?"

"On having bagged a brace—without accident to yourself. But I have had enough of it."

And without waiting for a reply to this very rude speech, he rose and flung himself across the lawn into the house.

Claudia seemed less angry than she ought to have been. She sat with a little smile for a moment, then she threw her hat in the air and caught it, then lay back, sighed gently, and murmured:

"Heigho! a brace means two, doesn't it? Who's the other? Oh! Mr. Haddington, I suppose. I didn't think he knew. Poor Eugene! He's very angry, or he'd never have been so rude. 'Bagged a brace!'"

And she actually laughed again, and then said "Heigho!" again.

Just at this moment Ayre came up the drive, looking very hot and very disgusted. Seeing Claudia, he came and sat down.

"Bob's rat-hunting's a mere fraud," he said. "I was there half an hour, and we only bagged a brace."

"What a curious coincidence!" exclaimed Claudia.

"How a coincidence!"

"Oh, nothing. Bagging a brace means killing two, doesn't it?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh, I wanted to know."

Ayre looked at her.

"Where's Eugene?"

"He was here just now, but he's gone into the house."

Ayre stroked his mustache meditatively.

"Did you want him?"

"No, not particularly. I thought I should find him here."

"You would if you'd come a little sooner."

"Ah! I'll go and find him."

"Yes, I should."

And off he went.

"It is really very pleasant," said Claudia, "to prevent Sir Roderick finding out things that he wants to find out. I think it does me credit—and it annoys him so very much. I will go and have a nice drive with Mrs. Lane, and see some old women. I feel as if I ought to do something proper."

And perhaps it was about time.



CHAPTER VIII

Stafford in Retreat, and Sir Roderick in Action.

When Stafford got into the train on his headlong flight from Millstead Manor, he had no settled idea of his destination, and he arrived in London without having made much progress toward a resolution. Not knowing what he wanted, he could not decide where he was most likely to find it. Did he want to forget or to think; to repent or to resolve? This is the alternative that presents itself to a mind puzzled to know whether its doubt is a concession to sin or a homage to reason. Stafford had been bred in a school widely different from that which treats all questions as open, and all to be referred to the verdict of the balance of expediency. Among other lessons, he had been taught a deep distrust of the instrument by which he was forced to guide his actions. But no training had succeeded in eradicating a strong mind's instinct of self-confidence, and if up till now he had committed no rebellion, it was because his reason had been rather a voluntary and eager helper than a captive or slave to the tribunal he distinguished from it by the name of conscience. With some surprise at himself—a surprise that now took the place of shame—he recognized that he was not ready to take everything for granted, that he must know that what he was flying from was in fact sin, not only that it might be. That it was sin he fully believed, but he would be sure. So much triumph his passion extorted from him as he paced irresolutely up and down the square in front of Euston, after seeing Kate and Haddington safely away, while the porter and cabman wondered why the traveler seemed not sure where he wanted to go. Of their wonder and their irreverent suggestions he was supremely careless.

No, he would not go back at once to his active work. Not only did his health still forbid that—and, indeed, last night's struggle seemed to him to have undone most of the good he had gained from the quiet of Millstead—but, what was more, he believed, above all, in the importance of the state of the pastor's own soul, and was convinced that his work would be weak and futile done under such conditions; that in theological language, there would be no blessing on it. When he had once reached that conclusion, his path was plain before him. He would go to the Retreat. This word Retreat has become familiar to those who study ecclesiastical items in the paper. But the Retreat Stafford had in his mind was not quite of the common kind. It had been founded by one of the leaders of his party, and was intended to serve the function of a spiritual casual ward, whither those who were for the moment at a loss might resort and find refuge until they had time to turn round. It was not a permanent home for any one. After his stay, the visitor returned to the world if he would; if he were finally disabled he was passed on to a permanent residence of another kind. The Retreat was a temporary refuge only. Sometimes it was full, sometimes it was empty; save for the Superintendent, as he was called; for religious terms were avoided, and a severe neutrality of description forbade the possibility of the Retreat itself seeming to take any side in the various mental battles for which it afforded a clear field, remote from interruption and from the bias alike of the world and of previous religious prepossessions. A man was entirely left to himself at the Retreat. Save at the dinner hour, no one spoke to him except the Superintendent. The rule of his office was that he should always be ready to listen on all subjects, and to talk on all indifferent subjects. Advice and exhortation were forbidden to him. If a man wanted the ordinary consolations of religion, his case was not the special case the Retreat was founded to meet. When nobody could help a man, and nothing was left for him but to go through with the struggle in his own soul, then he came to the Retreat. There he stayed till he reached some conclusion: that is, if he could reach one within a reasonable time; for the pretense of unconquerable hesitation was not received. When he arrived at his resolve, he went away: what the resolve was, and where he was going, whether to High or Low, to Rome or Islington, to Church or Dissent, or even to Mohammed or Theosophy, or what not, or nothing, nobody asked. Such a foundation had struck many devoted followers of the Founder as little better than a negation or an abdication. The Founder thought otherwise. "If forms and words are of any use to him, a man will never come," he said; "if he comes, let him alone." And it may be that this difference between the Founder and his disciples was due to the fact that the Founder believed that, given a fair field in any honest mind, his views must prevail, whereas the disciples were not so strong in faith.

It is very possible the disciples were right, in a way; but still the Founder's scheme now and then caught a great prize that the disciples would have lost through their overgreat meddling. The Founder would have repudiated the idea of differences in value between souls. But men sometimes act on ideas they repudiate, and with very good results.

Whatever the merits or demerits of the Retreat might be, it was just the place Stafford wanted. He shrank, almost with loathing, from the thought of exposing himself to well meant ministrations from men who were his inferiors: the theory of the equalizing effect of the sacred office, which appears to be held in great tranquillity by many who see the absurdity of parallel ideas applied in other spheres, was one of the fictions that proved entirely powerless over his mind at this juncture. He did not say to himself that fools were fools and blind men blind, whatever their office, degree, or profession, but he was driven to the Retreat by a thought that a brutal speaker might have rendered for him in those words without essential misrepresentation. Above all, he wanted quiet—time to understand the new forces and to estimate the good or evil of the new ideas.

Arriving there late in the evening of the same day on which he left Millstead, for the Retreat was situated on the borders of Exmoor and the journey from Paddington was long and slow, he was received by the Superintendent with the grave welcome and studious absence of questioning that was the rule of the house. The Superintendent was an elderly man, inclining to stoutness and of unyielding placidity. It was suspected that the Founder had taken pains to choose a man who would observe his injunction of not meddling with thorny questions the more strictly from his own inability to understand them.

"We are very empty just now," he said, with a sigh. Poor man! perhaps it was dull. "Only two, besides yourself."

"The fewer the better," said Stafford, with a smile, half in earnest, half humoring the genius of the place.

The Superintendent looked as if he might have said something on the other side but refrained, and, without more ado, made Stafford at home in the bare little room that was to serve him for sleeping and living. Stafford was full of weariness, and sank down on the bed with a sense of momentary respite. He would not begin to think till to-morrow.

Here we must leave him to wage his uncertain battle. When the visible and the invisible meet in the shock of strife about the soul of a man, who may describe the changes and chances of the fight? In the peace of his chosen solitude would he re-conquer the vision that the clouds had hidden from him? Or would the allurements of his earthly love be less strong because its dazzling incitements were no longer actually before his eyes? He had refused all aid and all alliance. He had chosen to try the issue alone and unbefriended. Was he strong enough?—strong enough to think on his love, and yet not to bow to it?—strong enough to picture to himself all its charms, only to refuse to gather them? Should he not have seized every aid that counsel and authority could offer him? Would he not find too late that his true strategy had been to fly, and not to challenge, the encounter? He had fancied he could be himself the impartial judge in his own cause, however vast the bribe that lay ready to his hand. The issue of his sojourn alone could tell whether he had misjudged his strength.

While Stafford mused and strove the world moved on, and with it that small fraction of it whose movements most nearly bore on the fortunes of the recluse.

The party at Millstead Manor was finally broken up by the departure of the Territons and of Morewood about a week after Stafford left. The cricket-match came off with great eclat; in spite of a steady thirteen from the Rector, who spent two hours in "compiling" it—to use the technical term—and of several catches missed by Sir Roderick, who was tried in vain in all positions in the field, the Manor team won by five wickets, and Bob Territon felt that his summer had been well spent. Ayre lingered on with Eugene, shooting the coverts till mid September, when the latter abruptly and perhaps rudely announced that he could not stand it any longer, and straightway took himself off to the Continent, sending a line to Stafford to apprise him of the fact, and another to Kate, to say he would have no address for the next month.

For a moment Sir Roderick was at a loss. He was tired of shooting; he hated yachting; the ordinary country-house visit was nothing but shooting in the daytime and unmitigated boredom in the evening. Really he didn't know what to do with himself. This alarming state of mind might have issued in some incongruous activity of a useful sort, had not he been rescued from it by the sudden discovery that he had a mission. This revelation dawned upon him in consequence of a note he received from Lord Rickmansworth. It appeared that that nobleman had very soon got tired of his moor, had resigned it into the eager hands of Bob Territon, and was now at Baden-Baden. This was certainly odd, and the writer evidently knew it would appear so; he therefore appended an explanation which was entirely satisfactory to Sir Roderick, but which is, happily, irrelevant to the purposes of this story. What is more to the purpose, it further appeared that Mrs. Welman, Kate Bernard's aunt, had discarded Buxton in favor of the same resort, and that Mr. Haddington, M. P., had also "proceeded" thither.

"They are at the Victoria," wrote Rickmansworth; "I am at the Badischerhof, and—[irrelevant matter]. I go about a good deal with them, but it's beastly slow. Haddington is all day in Kate's pocket, and Kate at best isn't amusing. But what's Lane up to? Do come out here, old fellow. I'll find you some amusement. Who do you think is here with—[more irrelevant matter]."

Sir Roderick was influenced in part, no doubt, by the irrelevant matter. But he also felt that what concerns us concerned him. He had come to a very definite conclusion that Kate Bernard ought not to marry Eugene Lane. He was also sure that unless something was done the marriage would take place. Kate did not care for Eugene, but the match was too good to be given up. Eugene would never face the turmoil necessary to break it off.

"I am the man," said Sir Roderick to himself. "I couldn't catch the parson, but if I can't catch Miss Kate, call me an ass!"

And he took train to Baden, sending off a wire to Morewood to join him if he could, for a considerable friendship existed between them. Morewood, however, wouldn't come, and Ayre was forced to make the journey in solitude.

"I thought I should bring him!" exclaimed Lord Rickmansworth triumphantly, as he received his friend on the platform, and conducted him to a very perfect drag which stood at the door. "Oh, you old thief!"

Rickmansworth was a tall, broad, reddish-faced young man, with a jovial laugh, infinite capacity for being amused at things not intrinsically humorous, and manners that he had tried, fortunately with imperfect success, to model on those of a prize-fighter. Ayre liked him for what he was, while shuddering at what he tried to be.

"I didn't come on that account at all," he said, "I came to look after some business."

"Get out!" said the Earl pleasantly; "do you think I don't know you?"

Ayre allowed himself to yield in silence. His motives were a little mixed; and, anyhow, it was not at the moment desirable to explain them. His vindication would wait.

In the afternoon he paid his call on Mrs. Welman. She was delighted to see him, not only as a man of social repute, but also because the good lady was in no little distress of mind. The arrangement between Kate and Eugene was, as a family arrangement, above perfection. Mrs. Welman was not rich, and like people who are not rich, she highly esteemed riches; like most women, she looked with favor on Eugene; the fact of Kate having some money seemed to her, as it does to most people, a reason for her marrying somebody who had more, instead of aiding in the beneficent work of a more equal distribution of wealth. But Kate was undeniably willful. She treated her engagement, indeed, as an absolutely binding and unbreakable tie—a fact so conclusively accomplished that it could almost be ignored. But she received any suggestion of a possible excess in her graciousness toward Haddington and her acceptance of his society, as at once a folly and an insult; and as she was of age and paid half the bills, all means of suasion were conspicuously lacking. Mrs. Welman was in a position exactly the reverse of the pleasant one; she had responsibility without power. It is true her responsibility was mainly a figment of her own brain, but its burden upon her was none the less heavy for that.

It must be admitted that Ayre's dealings with her were wanting in candor. Under the guise of family friendship, he led her on to open her mind to him. He extracted from her detailed accounts of long excursions into the outskirts of the forest, of numberless walks in the shady paths, of an expedition to the races (where perfect solitude can always be obtained), and of many other diversions which Kate and Haddington had enjoyed together, while she was left to knit "clouds" and chew reflections in the Kurhaus garden. All this, Ayre recognized, with lively but suppressed satisfaction, was not as it should be.

"I have spoken to Kate," she concluded, "but she takes no notice; will you do me a service?"

"Of course," said Ayre; "anything I can."

"Will you speak to Mr. Haddington?"

This by no means suited Ayre's book. Moreover, it would very likely expose him to a snub, and he had no fancy for being snubbed by a man like Haddington.

"I can hardly do that. I have no position. I'm not her father, or uncle, or anything of that sort."

"You might influence him."

"No, he'd tell me to mind my own business. To speak plainly, my dear lady, it isn't as if Kate couldn't take care of herself. She could stop his attentions to-morrow if she liked. Isn't it so?"

Mrs. Welman sadly admitted it was.

"The only thing I can do is to keep an eye on them, and act as I think best; that I will gladly do."

And with this very ambiguous promise poor Mrs. Welman was forced to be content. Whatever his inward view of his own meaning was, Ayre certainly fulfilled to the letter his promise of keeping an eye on them. Kate was at first much annoyed at his appearance; she thought she saw in him an emissary of Eugene. Sir Roderick tactfully disabused her mind of this notion, and, without intruding himself, he managed to be with them a good deal, and with Haddington alone a good deal more. Moreover, even when absent, he could generally have given a shrewd guess where they were and what they were doing. Without altogether neglecting the other claims at which Rickmansworth had hinted, and which resolved themselves into a long-standing and entirely platonic attachment, he yet devoted himself with zest and assiduity to his self-imposed task.

In its prosecution he contrived to make use of Rickmansworth to some extent. The young man was a hospitable soul, delighting in parties and picnics. Only consent to sit with him on his four-in-hand and let him drive you, and he cheerfully feasted you and all your friends. His acquaintance was large, and not, perhaps, very select. But Ayre insisted on the proper distinctions being observed, and was indebted to Rickmansworth's parties for many opportunities of observation. He was sure Haddington meant to marry Kate if he could; the scruples which had in some degree restrained his actions, though not his designs, at Millstead, had vanished, and he was pushing his suit, firmly and daringly ignoring the fact of the engagement. Kate did nothing to remind him of it that Ayre could see, but her behavior, on the other hand, convinced him that Haddington was to her only a second string, and that, unless compelled, she would not let Eugene go. She took occasion more than once to show him that she regarded her relation to Eugene as fully existent. No doubt she thought there was a chance that such words might find their way to Eugene's ears. It is hardly necessary to say they did not.

Watch as he might Ayre's chance was slow in coming. He knew very well that the fact of a young lady, deserted by him who ought to have been in attendance, consoling herself with a flirtation with somebody else, was not enough for him to go upon. He must have something more tangible than that. He did not, indeed, look for anything that would compel Eugene to act; he had no expectation and, to do him justice, no hope of that, for he knew Eugene would act on nothing but an extreme necessity. His hope lay in Kate herself. On her he was prepared to have small mercy; against her he felt justified in playing the very rigor of the game. But for a long while he had no opportunity of beginning the rubber. A fortnight wore away, and nothing was done. Ayre determined to wait on events no longer; he would try his hand at shaping them.

"I wonder if Rick is too great a fool?" he said to himself meditatively one morning, as he crossed one of the little bridges, and took his way to the Kurhaus in search of his friend. "I must try him."

He found Lord Rickmansworth alone, but quite content. It was one of his happy characteristics that he existed with delight under almost any circumstances. One of his team was lame, and a great friend of his was sulky and had sent him away, and yet he sat radiantly cheerful, with a large cigar in his mouth and a small terrier by his side, subjecting every lady who passed to a respectful and covert but none the less searching and severe examination.

"I say, Rick, have you seen Haddington lately?"

"Yes; he's gone down the road with Kate Bernard to play tennis, or some such foolery."

"With Kate?"

"Rather! Didn't expect anything else, did you?"

"Does he mean to marry that girl?" asked Ayre, with a face of great innocence, much as if it had just occurred to him.

"Well, he can't, unless she chucks old Eugene over."

"Will she, do you think?"

"Well, I'm afraid not. I've got some money on that they're never married, but I don't see my way to handling it."

"Much?"

"Well, no; about twopence-halfpenny—a fancy bet."

"I'm glad it's nothing, because I want you to help me, and you couldn't have if you had anything on; besides, you shouldn't bet on such things."

"Oh, I'm not going to meddle with the thing. It's enough work to prevent one's self getting married, without troubling about other people. But I rather like you telling me not to bet on it!"

"She wouldn't suit Eugene."

"No; lead him the devil of a life."

"She don't care for him."

"Not a straw."

"Then, why don't she break it off?"

"Ah, you innocent?" said Rickmansworth, with a broad grin. "Never heard of such a thing as money in the case, did you? Where have you been these last five-and-forty years?"

"Your raillery's a little fatiguing, Rick, if you don't mind my saying so."

"Say anything you like, old chap, as long as it isn't swearing. That's verbot here—penalty one mark—see regulations. You must go outside, if you want to curse, barring of course you're a millionaire and like to make a splash."

"Rick, Rick, you do not amuse me. I do not belong to the Albatross Club."

"No; over age," replied his companion blandly, and chuckled violently.

"I like to score off old Ayre, you know," he said, in reporting the episode afterward. "He thinks himself smart."

"But look here. I want you to do this: you go to Haddington and stir him up; tell him to bustle along; tell him Kate is fooling him, and make him put it to her—yes or no."

"Why? it's not my funeral!"

"Is that your latest American? I wish you'd find native slang; we used in my day; but I'll tell you why. It's because she's keeping him on till she sees what Eugene'll do. She's treating Eugene shamefully."

"Oh, stow all that! Eugene is not so remarkably strict, you know." And Lord Rickmansworth winked.

"Well, we'll leave that out," said Ayre smiling. "Tell him it's treating him shamefully."

"That's more the ticket. But what if she says 'No'?"

"If she says 'No' right out, I'm done," said Ayre. "But will she?"

"The devil only knows!" said Lord Rickmansworth.

"Do you think you won't bungle it?"

"Do you take me for an ass? I'll make him move, Ayre; he shall give her a chaste salute before the day's out. Old Eugene's no better than he should be, but I'll see him through."

Ayre thought privately that his companion had perhaps other motives than love for Eugene: perhaps family feelings, generally dormant, had asserted themselves; but he had the wisdom not to hint at this.

"If you can frighten him, he'll press it on."

"Do you think I might lie a bit?"

"No, I shouldn't lie. It's awkward. Besides, you know you wouldn't do it, and you couldn't if you tried."

"I'll stir him up," reiterated Rickmansworth. "Give me my prayer-book and parasol, and I'll go and find him."

Ayre ignored what he supposed to be the joke buried in this saying, and saw his friend off on his errand, repeating his instructions as he went.

What Lord Rickmansworth said to Mr. Haddington has never, as the newspapers put it, transpired. But ever since that date Sir Roderick has always declared that Rick is not such a fool as he looks. Certainly the envoy was well pleased with himself when he rejoined his companion at dinner, and after imbibing a full glass of champagne, said:

"To-night, my worthy old friend, you will see."

"Did he bite?"

"He bit. That fellow's no fool. He saw Kate's game when I pointed it out."

"Will he stand up to her?"

"Rather! going to hold a pistol to her head."

"I wonder what she'll say?"

"That's your lookout. I've done my stage."

Ayre was nearer excitement than he had been for a long while. After dinner he could not rest. Refusing to accompany Rickmansworth to the entertainment the latter was bound for, he strolled out into the quiet walks outside the Kurhaus, which were deserted by visitors and peopled only by a few frugal natives, who saved their money and took the music of the band from a cheap distance. But surely some power was fighting for him, for before he had gone a hundred yards he saw on one of the seats in front of him two persons whom the light of the moon clearly displayed as Kate and Haddington. At Baden there is a little hillside—one path runs at the bottom, another runs along the side of the hill, halfway up. Ayre hastily diverted his steps into the upper path. A minute's walk brought him directly behind the pair. Trees hid him from them; a seat invited him. For a moment he struggled. Then, rubesco referens, he sat down and deliberately listened. With the sophisms by which he sought to justify this action, we have no concern; perhaps he was not in reality much concerned about them. But what he heard had its importance.

"I have been more patient than most men," Haddington was saying.

"You have no right to speak in that way," Kate protested; "it's—it's not respectful."

"Kate, have we not got beyond respect?"

"I hope not," said Sir Roderick to himself.

"I mean," Haddington went on, "there is a point at which you must face realities. Kate, do you love me?"

Ayre leant forward and peered through the bushes.

"I will not break my engagement."

"That is no answer."

"I can't help it. I have been taught—"

"Oh, taught! Kate, you know Lane; you know what he is. You saw him with Lady—"

"You're very unkind."

"And for his sake you throw away what I offer?"

"Won't you be patient?"

"Ah, you admit—"

"No, I don't!"

"But you can't deny it. Now you make me happy."

The conversation here became so low in tone that Ayre, to his vast disgust, was unable to overhear it. The next words that reached his ear came again from Haddington.

"Well, I will wait—I will wait three months. If nothing happens then, you will break it off?"

A gentle "Yes" floated up to the eavesdropper.

"Though why you want him to break it off rather than yourself, I don't know."

"He doesn't appreciate her morality," reflected Ayre, with a chuckle.

"Kate, we are promised to one another? secretly, if you like, but promised?"

"I'm afraid it's very wrong."

"Why, he deliberately insulted you!"

The tones again became inaudible; but after a pause there came a sound that made Ayre almost jump.

"By Jove!" he whispered in his excitement. "Confound these trees! Was it only her hand, or—"

"Then I have your promise, dear?"

"Yes; in three months. But I must go in. Aunt will be angry."

"You won't let him win you over?"

"He has treated me badly; but I don't want it said I jilted him."

They had risen by now.

"You ask such a lot of me," said Haddington.

"Ah! I thought you said you loved me. Can't you wait three months?"

"I suppose I must. But, Kate, you are sincere with me? Tell me you love me."

Again Ayre leant forward. They had began to walk away, but now Haddington stopped, and laying his hand on Kate's arm, detained her. "Say you love me," he said again.

"Yes, I love you!" said Kate, with commendable confusion, and they resumed their walk.

"What is her game?" Ayre asked himself. "If she means to throw Eugene over, why doesn't she do it right out? I don't believe she does. She's afraid he'll throw her over. And, by Jove! she fobbed that fool off again! We're no further forward than we were. If he makes trouble about this she'll deny the whole thing. Miss Bernard is a lady of talent. But—no, can I? Yes, I will. Rather than let her win, I'll step in. I'll go and see her to-morrow. We shall neither of us be in a position to reproach the other. But I'll see what I can do. But Haddington! To think she should get round him again!"



CHAPTER IX.

The Battle of Baden.

Lord Rickmansworth was enjoying himself. Over and above the particular pleasures for whose sake he had come to Baden, he relished intensely the new attitude in which he found himself standing toward Ayre. Throughout their previous acquaintance it had been Rickmansworth who was eager and excited, Ayre who applied the cold water. Now the parts were reversed, and the younger man found great solace in jocosely rallying his senior on his unwonted zeal and activity. Ayre accepted his friend's jocosity and his own excitement with equal placidity. Reproaches had never stirred him to exertion; ridicule would not stop him now. He took leave to add himself to the materials for slightly contemptuous amusement that the world had hitherto afforded him, and he found his own absurd actions a very sensible addition to his resources. He realized why people who never act on impulse and never do uncalled-for things are not only dull to others, but suffer boredom themselves. However the Millstead love-affairs affected the principal actors, there can be no question that they relieved Sir Roderick Ayre from ennui for a considerable number of months and exercised a very wholesome effect on a man who had come to take pride in his own miserable incapacity for honest emotion.

He rose the next morning as nearly with the lark as could reasonably be expected; more nearly with the lark than the domestic staff of the Badischerhof at all approved of. Was not Kate Bernard in the habit of taking the waters at half-past seven? And in solitude? For Haddington's devotion was not allowed by him to interfere with that early ride which is so often a mark of legislators, and an assertion, I suppose, of the strain on their minds that might be ignored or doubted if not backed up by some such evidence. The strain, of course, followed Haddington to Baden; it was among his most precious appurtenances; and Ayre, relying upon it, had little doubt that he could succeed in finding Kate alone and unprotected.

He was not deceived. He found Kate just disposing of her draught, and an offer of his company for a stroll was accepted with tolerable graciousness. Kate distrusted him, but she thought there was use in keeping on outwardly good terms; and she had no suspicion of his shameless conduct the night before. Ayre directed their walk to the very same seat on which she and Haddington had sat. As they passed, either romance or laziness suggested to Kate that they should sit down. Ayre accepted her proposal without demur, asked and obtained leave for a cigarette, and sat for a few moments in apparent ease and vacancy of mind. He was thinking how to begin.

"Ought one ever to do evil that good may come?" he did begin, a long way off.

"Dear me, Sir Roderick, what a curious question! I suppose not."

"I'm sorry; because I did evil last night, and I want to confess."

"I really don't want to hear," said Kate, in some alarm. There's no telling what men will say when they become confidential, and Kate's propriety was a tender plant.

"It concerns you."

"Me? Nonsense! How can it?"

"In order to serve a friend, I did a—well—a doubtful thing."

Kate was puzzled.

"You are in a curious mood, Sir Roderick. Do you often ask moral counsel?"

"I am not going to ask it. I am, with your kind permission, going to offer it."

"You are going to offer me moral counsel?"

"I thought of taking that liberty. You see, we are old friends."

"We have known one another some time."

Ayre smiled at the implied correction.

"Do you object to plain speaking?"

"That depends on the speaker. If he has a right, no; if not, yes."

"You mean I should have no right?"

"I certainly don't see on what ground."

"If not an old friend of yours, as I had hoped to be allowed to rank myself, I am, anyhow, a very old friend of Eugene's."

"What has Mr. Lane to do with it?"

"As an old friend of his—"

"Excuse me, Sir Roderick; you seem to forget that Mr. Lane is even more than an old friend to me."

"He should be, no doubt," said Ayre blandly.

"I shall not listen to this. No old friendship excuses impertinence, Sir Roderick."

"Pray don't be angry. I have really something to say, and—pardon me—you must hear it."

"And what if I refuse?"

"True; I did wrong to say 'must.' You are at perfect liberty. Only, if you refuse, Eugene must hear it."

Kate paused. Then, with a laugh, she said:

"Perhaps I am taking it too gravely. What is this great thing I must hear?"

"Ah! I hoped we could settle it amicably. It's merely this: you must release Eugene from his engagement."

Kate did not trouble to affect surprise. She knew it would be useless.

"Did he send you to tell me this?"

"You know he didn't."

"Then whose envoy are you? Ah! perhaps you are Claudia Territon's chosen knight?"

"Not at all," said Ayre, still unruffled. "I have had no communication with Lady Claudia—a fact of which you have no right to affect doubt."

"Then what do you mean?"

"I mean you must release Eugene."

"Pray tell me why," asked she calmly, but with a calm only obtained after effort.

"Because it is not usual—and in this matter it seems to me usage is right—it is not usual for a young lady to be engaged to two men at once."

"You are merely insolent. I will wish you good-morning."

"I am glad you understand my insinuation. Explanations are so tedious. Where are you going, Miss Bernard?"

"Home."

"Then I must tell Eugene?"

"Tell him what you like." But she sat down again.

"You are engaged to Eugene?"

"Of course."

"You are also engaged to Spencer Haddington."

"It's untrue; you know it's untrue. Are you an old woman, to think a girl can't speak to a man without being engaged to him?"

"I must congratulate you on your liberality of view, Miss Bernard. I had hardly given you credit for it. But you know it isn't untrue. You are under a promise to give Haddington your hand in three months: not, mark you, a conditional promise—an absolute promise."

"That is not a happy guess."

"It's not a guess at all. No doubt you mean it to be conditional. He understood, and you meant him to understand, it as an absolute promise."

"How dare you accuse me of such things?"

"Nothing short of absolute knowledge would so far embolden me."

"Absolute knowledge?"

"Yes, last night."

Kate's rage carried her away. She turned on him in fury.

"You listened!"

"Yes, I listened."

"Is that what a gentleman does?"

"As a rule, it is not."

"I despise you for a mean dastard! I have no more to say to you."

"Come, Miss Bernard, let us be reasonable. We are neither of us blameless."

"Do you think Eugene would listen to such a tale? And such a person?"

"He might and he might not. But Haddington would."

"What could you tell him?"

"I could tell him that you're making a fool of him—keeping him dangling on till you have arranged the other affair one way or the other. What would he say then?"

Kate knew that Haddington was already tried to the uttermost. She knew what he would say.

"You see I could—if you'll allow me the metaphor—blow you out of the water."

"You daren't confess how you got the knowledge."

"Oh, dear me, yes," said Ayre, smiling. "When you're opening a blind man's eyes he doesn't ask after your moral character. You must consider the situation on the hypothesis that I am shameless."

Kate was not strong enough to carry on the battle. She had fury, but not doggedness. She burst into tears.

"If I were doing all you say, whose fault was it?" she sobbed. "Didn't Eugene treat me shamefully?"

"If he flirted a little, it was in part your fault. If you had flirted a little with Haddington, I should have said nothing. But this—well, this is a little strong."

"I am a very unhappy girl," said Kate.

"It isn't as if you cared twopence for Eugene, you know."

"No, I hate him!" said Kate, unwisely yielding to anger again.

"I thought so. And you will do what I ask?"

"If I don't, what will you do?"

"I shall write to Eugene. I shall see Haddington; and I shall see your aunt. I shall tell them all that I know, and how I know it. Come, Miss Bernard, don't be foolish. You had better take Haddington."

"I know it's all a plot. You're all fighting in that little creature's interest."

"Meaning—?"

"Claudia Territon. But if I can help it, Eugene shall never marry her."

"That's another point."

"His friend Father Stafford will have to be considered there."

"Do not let us drift into that. Will you write?"

"To whom?"

"To Eugene."

Kate looked at him with a healthy hatred.

"And you will tell Haddington he needn't wait those three months?"

"I suppose you're proud of yourself now!" she broke out. "First eavesdropping, and then bullying a girl!"

"I'm not at all proud of myself, and I am, if you'd believe it, rather sorry for you."

"I shall take care to let your friends know my opinion of you."

"Certainly—with any details you think advisable. Have I your promise? Is it any use struggling any longer? This scene is so very unpleasant."

"Won't you give me a week?"

"Not a day!"

Kate drew herself up with a sort of dignity.

"I despise you and your schemes, and Eugene Lane, and Claudia Territon, and all your crew!" she allowed herself to say.

"But you promise?"

"Yes, I promise. There! Now, may I go?"

Ayre courteously took off his hat, and stood on one side, holding it in his hand and bowing slightly as she swept indignantly by him.

"I'll give her a day to tell Haddington, and three days to tell Eugene. Unless she does, I must go through it all again, and it's damnably fatiguing. She's not a bad sort—fought well when she was cornered. But I couldn't let Eugene do it—I really couldn't. Ugh! I'll go back to breakfast."

Kate was cowed. She told Haddington. Let us pass over that scene. She also wrote to Eugene, addressing the letter to Millstead Manor. Eugene was not at Millstead Manor; and if Ayre had hastily assumed that his fiancee would be in possession of his address, was it her business to undeceive him? She was by no means inclined to do one jot more than fulfill the letter of her bond—whereby it came to pass that Eugene did not receive the letter for nearly two months and did not know of his recovered liberty all that time. For Haddington, in his joy, easily promised silence for a little while; it seemed only decent; and even Ayre could not refuse to agree with him that, though Eugene must be told, nobody else ought to be until Eugene had formally signified his assent to the lady's transfer. Ayre could not take upon himself, on his friend's behalf, the responsibility of dispensing with this ceremony, though he was sure it would be a mere ceremony.

As for Ayre himself, when his task was done he straightway fled from Baden. He was a hardened sinner, but he could not face Mrs. Welman.

It was, however, plainly impossible to confine the secret so strictly as to prevent it coming to the knowledge of Lord Rickmansworth. Indeed he had a right to know the issue, for he had been a sharer in the design; and accordingly, when he also left Baden and betook himself to his own house to spend what was left of the autumn, he carried locked in his heart the news of the fresh development. On the whole he observed the injunction of silence urgently laid upon him by Ayre with tolerable faithfulness. But there are limits to these things, and it never entered Rickmansworth's head that his sister was included among the persons who were to remain in ignorance till the matter was finally settled. He met Claudia at the family reunion at Territon Park in the beginning of October, and when she and he and Bob were comfortably seated at dinner together, among the first remarks he made—indeed, he was brimming over with it—was:

"I suppose you've heard the news, Clau?"

What with one thing—packing and unpacking, traveling, perhaps less obvious troubles—Lady Claudia was in a state which, if it manifested itself in a less attractive person, might be called snappish.

"I never hear any news," she answered shortly.

"Well, here's some for you," replied the Earl, grinning. "Kate has chucked Eugene over."

"Nonsense!" But she started and colored, all the same.

"I suppose you were at Baden and saw it all, and I wasn't!" said Rickmansworth, with ponderous satire. "So we won't say any more about it."

"Well, what do you mean?"

"No; never mind! It doesn't matter—all a mistake. I'm always making some beastly blunder—eh, Bob?" and he winked gently at his appreciative brother.

"Yes, you're an ass, of course!" said Bob, entering into the family humor.

"Good thing I've got a sister to keep me straight!" pursued the Earl, who was greatly amused with himself. "Might have gone about believing it, you know."

Claudia was annoyed. Brothers are annoying at times.

"I don't see any fun in that," she said.

Lord Rickmansworth drank some beer (beer was the Territon drink), and maintained silence.

The butler came in with his satellite, swept away the beer and the other impedimenta, and put on dessert. The servants disappeared, but silence still reigned unbroken.

Claudia arose, and went round to her brother's chair. He was ostentatiously busy with a large plum.

"Rick, dear, won't you tell me?"

"Tell you! Why, it's all nonsense, you know."

"Rick, dear!" said Claudia again, with her arm around his neck.

He was going to carry on his jest a little further, when he happened to look at her.

"Why, Clau, you look as if you were almost—"

"Never mind that," she said quickly. "Oh! do tell me."

"It is quite true. She's written breaking it off, and has accepted Haddington. But it's a secret, you know, till they've heard from Eugene, at all events. Must hear in a day or two."

"Is it really true?

"Of course it is."

Claudia kissed him, and suddenly ran out of the room.

The brothers looked at one another.

"I hope that's all right?" said the elder questioningly.

"I expect so," answered the younger. "But, you see, you don't quite know where to have Eugene."

"I shall know where to have him, if necessary."

"You'd better keep your hoof out of it, old man," said Bob candidly.

Pursuing his train of thought, Rickmansworth went on:

"Must have been rather a queer game at Millstead?"

"Yes. There was Eugene and Kate, and Claudia and the parson, and old Ayre sticking his long nose into it."

"Trust old Ayre for that; and is it a case?"

"Well, now Kate's out of it, I expect it is, only you don't know where to have Eugene. And there's the parson."

"Yes; Ayre told us a bit about him. But she doesn't care for him?"

"She didn't tell him so—not by any means," said Bob; "and I bet he's far gone on her."

"She can't take him."

"Good Lord! no."

Though how they proposed to prevent it did not appear.

"Think Lane'll write to her?"

"He ought to, right off."

"Queer girl, ain't she?"

"Deuced!"

"Old Ayre! I say, Bob, you should have seen the old sinner at Baden."

"What? with Kate?"

"No; the other business."

And they plunged into matters with which we need not concern ourselves, and proceeded to rend and destroy the character of that most respectable, middle-aged gentleman, Sir Roderick Ayre. The historian hastens to add that their remarks were, as a rule, entirely devoid of truth, with which general comment we may leave them.



CHAPTER X.

Mr. Morewood is Moved to Indignation.

When Morewood was at work he painted portraits, and painted them uncommonly well. Of course he made his moan at being compelled to spend all his time on this work. He was not, equally of course, in any way compelled, except in the sense that if you want to make a large income you must earn it. This is the sense in which many people are compelled to do work, which they give you to understand is not the most suited to their genius, and it must be admitted that, although their words are foolish, not to say insincere, yet their deeds are sensible. There can be no mistake about the income, and there often is about the genius. Morewood, whose eccentricity stopped short of his banking account, painted his portraits like other people, and only deviated into landscape for a month in the summer, with the unfailing result of furnishing a crop of Morewoodesque parodies on Mother Nature that conclusively proved the fates were wiser than the painter.

This year it so chanced that he chose the wilds of Exmoor for the scene of his outrages. He settled down in a small inn and plied his brush busily. Of course he did not paint anything that the ordinary person cared to see, or in the way in which it would appear to such person. But he was greatly pleased with his work; and one day, as he threw himself down on a bank at noon and got out his bread and cheese, he was so carried away, being by nature a conceited man, as to exclaim:

"My head of Stafford was the best head done these hundred years; and that's the best bit of background done these hundred and fifty!"

The frame of the phrase seemed familiar to him as he uttered it, and he had just succeeded in tracing it back to the putative parentage of Lord Verulam, when, to his great astonishment, he heard Stafford's voice from the top of the bank, saying:

"As I am in your mind already, Mr. Morewood, I feel my bodily appearance less of an intrusion on your solitude."

"Why, how in the world did you come here?"

The spot was within ten miles of the Retreat, and part of Stafford's treatment for himself consisted of long walks; but he only replied:

"I am staying near here."

"For health, eh?"

"Yes—for health."

"Well, I'm glad to see you. How are you? You don't look very first-class."

Stafford came down the bank without replying, and sat down. He was, in spite of it being the country and very hot, dressed in his usual black, and looked paler and thinner than ever.

"Have some lunch?"

Stafford smiled.

"There's only enough for one," he said.

"Nonsense, man!"

"No, really; I never take it."

A pause ensued. Stafford seemed to be thinking, while Morewood was undoubtedly eating. Presently, however, the latter said:

"You left us rather suddenly at Millstead."

"Yes."

"Sent for?"

"You of all men know why I went, Mr. Morewood."

"If you don't mind my admitting it, I do. But most people are so thin-skinned."

"I am not thin-skinned—not in that way. Of course you know. You told me."

"That head?"

"Yes; you did me a service."

"Well, I think I did, and I'm glad to hear you say so."

"Why?"

"Shows you've come to your senses," said Morewood, rapidly recovering from his lapse into civility.

Stafford seemed willing, even anxious, to pursue the subject. The regimen at the Retreat was no doubt severe.

"What do you mean by coming to my senses?"

"Why, doing what any man does when he finds he's in love—barring a sound reason against it."

"And that is?"

"Try his luck. You needn't look at me. I've tried my luck before now, and it was damned bad luck. So here I am, a musty old curmudgeon; and there's Ayre, a snarling old cur!"

"I don't bore you about it?"

"No, I like jawing."

"Well then, I was going to say, of course you don't know how it struck me."

"Yes, I do, but I don't think any the better of it for that."

"You knew about my vow? I suppose you think that—"

"Bosh? Yes, I do. I think all vows bosh; but without asking you to agree to that, though I think I did ask the Bishop of Bellminster to, I do say this one is utter bosh. Why, your own people say so, don't they?"

"My own people? The people I suppose you mean don't say so. I took a vow never to marry—there were even more stringent terms—but that's enough."

"Well?"

"A vow," continued Stafford, "that you won't marry till you want to is not the same as a vow never to marry."

"No. I think I could manage the first sort."

"The first sort," said Stafford, with a smile, "is nowadays a popular compromise."

"I detest compromises. That's why I liked you."

"You're advising me to make one now."

"No, I advise you to throw up the whole thing."

"That's because you don't believe in anything?"

"Yes, probably."

"Suppose you believed all I believe and had done all I had?"

"How do you mean?"

"You believed what a priest believes—in heaven and hell—the gaining God and the losing him—in good and evil. Supposing you, believing this, had given your life to God, and made your vow to him—had so proclaimed before men, had so lived and worked and striven! Supposing you thought a broken vow was death to your own soul and a trap to the souls of others—a baseness, a treason, a desertion—more cowardly than a soldier's flight—as base as a thief's purloining—meaning to you and those who had trusted you the death of good and the triumph of evil?"

He sat still, but his voice was raised in rapid and intense utterance; he gazed before him with starting eyes.

"All that," he went on, "it meant to me—all that and more—the triumph of the beast in me—passion and desire rampant—man forsaken and God betrayed—my peace forever gone, my honor forever stained. Can't you see? Can't you see?"

Morewood rose and paced up and down.

"Now—now can you judge? You say you knew—did you know that?"

"Do you still believe all that?"

"Yes, all, and more than all. For a moment—a day—perhaps a week, I drove myself to doubt. I tried to doubt—I rejoiced in it. But I cannot. As God is above us, I believe all that."

"If you break this vow you think you will be—?"

"The creature I have said? Yes—and worse."

"I think the vow utter nonsense," said Morewood again.

"But if you thought as I think, then would your love—yes, and would a girl's heart, weigh with you?"

Morewood stood still.

"I can hardly realize it," he said, "in a man of your brain. But—"

"Yes?" said Stafford, looking at him almost as if he were amused, for his sudden outburst had left him quite calm.

"If I believed that, I'd cut off my hand rather than break the vow."

"I knew it!" cried Stafford, "I knew it!"

Morewood was touched with pity.

"If you're right," he said, "it won't be so hard to you. You'll get over it."

"Get over it?"

"Yes; what you believe will help you. You've no choice, you know."

Stafford still wore a look of half-amusement.

"You have never felt belief?" he asked.

"Not for many years. That's all gone."

"You think you have been in love?"

"Of course I have—half a dozen times."

"No more than the other," said Stafford decisively.

Morewood was about to speak, but Stafford went on quickly:

"I have told you what belief is—I could tell you what love is; you know no more the one than the other. But why should I? I doubt if you would understand. You think you couldn't be shocked. I should shock you. Let it be. I think I could charm you, too. Let that be."

A pause followed. Stafford still sat motionless, but his face gradually changed from its stern aspect to the look that Morewood had once caught on his canvas.

"You're in love with her still?" he exclaimed.

"Still?"

"Yes. Haven't you conquered it? I'm a poor hand at preaching, but, by Jove! If I thought like you, I'd never think of the girl again."

"I mean to marry her," said Stafford quietly. "I have chosen."

Morewood was in very truth shocked. But Stafford's morals, after all, were not his care.

"Perhaps she won't have you," he suggested at last, as though it were a happy solution.

Stafford laughed outright.

"Then I could go back to my priesthood, I suppose?"

"Well—after a time."

"As a burglar who is caught before his robbery goes back to his trade. As if it made the smallest difference—as if the result mattered!"

"I suppose you are right there."

"Of course. But she will have me."

"Do you think so?"

"I don't doubt it. If I doubted it, I should die."

"I doubt it."

"Pardon me; I dare say you do."

"You don't want to talk about that?"

"It isn't worth while. I no more doubt it than that the sun shines. Well, Mr. Morewood, I am obliged to you for hearing me out. I had a curiosity to see how my resolution struck you."

"If you have told me the truth, it strikes me as devilish. I'm no saint; but if a man believes in good, as you do, by God, he oughtn't to trample it under foot!"

Stafford took no notice of him, He rose and held out his hand. "I'm going back to London to-morrow," he said, "to wait till she comes."

"God help you!" said Morewood, with a sudden impulse.

"I have no more to do with God," said Stafford.

"Then the devil help you, if you rely on him!"

"Don't be angry," he said, with a swift return of his old sweet smile. "In old days I should have liked your indignation. I still like you for it. But I have made my choice."

"'Evil, be thou my good.' Is that it?"

"Yes, if you like. Why talk about it any more? It is done."

He turned and walked away, leaving Morewood alone to finish his forgotten lunch.

He could not get the thought of the man out of his mind all day. It was with him as he worked, and with him when he sat after dinner in the parlor of his little inn, with his pipe and whisky and water. He was so full of Stafford that he could not resist the impulse to tell somebody else, and at last he took a sheet of paper.

"I don't know if he's in town," he said, "but I'll chance it;" and he began:

"DEAR AYRE:

"By chance down here I met the parson. He is mad. He painted for me the passion of belief—which he said I hadn't and implied I couldn't feel. He threatened to paint the passion of love, with the same assertion and the same implication. He is convinced that if he breaks his vow (you remember it, of course) he'll be worse than Satan. Yet his face is set to break it. You probably can't help it, and wouldn't if you could, for you haven't heard him. He's going to London. Stop him if you can before he gets to Claudia Territon. I tell you his state of mind is hideous.

"Yours,

"A. MOREWOOD."

This somewhat incoherent letter reached Sir Roderick Ayre as he passed through London, and tarried a day or two in early October. He opened it, read it, and put it down on the breakfast-table. Then he read it again, and ejaculated.

"Talk about madness! Why, because Stafford's mad—if he is mad—must our friend the painter go mad too? Not that I see he is mad. He's only been stirring up old Morewood's dormant piety."

He lit his cigar, and sat pondering the letter.

"Shall I try to stop him? If Claudia and Eugene have fixed up things it would be charitable to prevent him making a fool of himself. Why the deuce haven't I heard anything from that young rascal? Hullo! who's that?"

He heard a voice outside, and the next moment Eugene himself rushed in.

"Here you are!" he said. "Thought I should find you. You can't keep away from this dirty old town."

"Where do you spring from?" asked Ayre.

"Liverpool. I found the Continent slow, so I went to America. Nothing moving there, so I came back here. Can you give me breakfast?"

Ayre rang the bell, and ordered a new breakfast; as he did so he took up Morewood's letter and put it in his pocket.

Eugene went on talking with gay affectation about his American experiences. Only when he was through his breakfast did he approach home topics.

"Well, how's everybody?"

Ayre waited for a more definite question.

"Seen the Territons lately?"

"Not very. Haven't you?"

"No. They weren't over there, you know. Are they alive?"

"My young friend, are you trying to deceive me? You have heard from at least one of them, if you haven't seen them?"

"I haven't—not a line. We don't correspond: not comme il faut."

"Oh, you haven't written to Claudia?"

"Of course not."

"Why not?"

"Why should I?"

"Let us go back to the previous question. Have you heard from Miss Bernard?"

"Why probe my wounds? Not a single line."

"Confound her impudence! she never wrote?"

"I don't know why she should. But in case she ought, I'm bound to say she couldn't."

"Why not? She said she would; she said so to me."

"She couldn't have said so. You must have misunderstood her. I left no address, you know; and I had no difficulty in eluding interviewers—not being a prize-fighter or a minor poet."

Sir Roderick smiled.

"Gad! I never thought of that. She held me, after all."

"What on earth are you driving at?"

"If there's one thing I hate more than another, it's a narrative; but I see I'm in for it. Sit still and hold your tongue till I'm through with it."

Eugene obeyed implicitly; and Ayre, not without honest pride, recounted his Baden triumph.

"And unless she's bolder than I think, you'll find a letter to that effect."

Eugene sat very quiet.

"Well, you don't seem overpleased, after all. Wasn't I right?"

"Quite right, old fellow. But, I say, is she in love with Haddington?"

"Ah, there's your beastly vanity? I think she is rather, you know, or she'd never have given herself away so."

"Rum taste!" said Eugene, whose relief at his freedom was tempered by annoyance at Kate's insensibility. "But I'm awfully obliged. And, by Jove, Ayre, it's new life to me!"

"I thought so."

Eugene had got over his annoyance. A sudden thought seemed to strike him.

"I say, does Claudia know?"

"Rickmansworth's sure to have told her on the spot. She must have known it a month; and what's more, she must think you've known it a month."

"Inference that the sooner I show up the better."

"Exactly. What, are you off now? Do you know where she is?"

"I shall send a wire to Territon Park. Rick's sure to be there if she isn't, and I'll go down and find out about it."

"Wait a minute, will you? Have you heard from your friend Stafford lately?"

A shadow fell on Eugene's face.

"No. But that's over. Must be, or he'd never have bolted from Millstead."

Ayre was silent a moment. Morewood's letter told him that Stafford had set out to go to Claudia. What if he and Eugene met? Ayre had not much faith in the power of friendship under such circumstances.

"I think, on the whole, that I'd better show you a letter I've had," he said. "Mind you, I take no responsibility for what you do."

"Nobody wants you to," said Eugene, with a smile. "We all understand that's your position."

Ayre flung the letter over to him and he read it.

"Oh, by Jove, this is the devil!" he exclaimed, jumping off the writing-table, where he had seated himself.

"So Morewood seems to think."

"Poor old fellow! I say, what shall I do? Poor old Stafford! Fancy his cutting up like this."

"It's kind of you to pity him."

"What do you mean? I say, Ayre, you don't think there is anything in it?"

"Anything in it?"

"You don't think there's any chance that Claudia likes him?"

"Haven't an idea one way or the other," said Ayre rather disingenuously.

Eugene looked very perturbed.

"You see," continued Ayre, "it's pretty cool of you to assume the girl is in love with you when she knew you were engaged to somebody else up to a month ago."

"Oh, damn it, yes!" groaned Eugene; "but she knew old Stafford had sworn not to marry anybody."

"And she knew—of course she knew—you both wanted to marry her. I wonder what she thought of both of you!"

"She never had any idea of the sort about him. About me she may have had an inkling."

"Just an inkling, perhaps," assented Sir Roderick.

"The worst of it is, you know, if she does like me I shall feel a brute, cutting in now. Old Stafford knew I was engaged too, you know."

"It all serves you right," observed Ayre comfortingly. "If you must get engaged at all, why the deuce couldn't you pick the right girl?"

"Fact is, I don't show up over well."

"You don't; that is a fact."

"Ayre, I think I ought to let him have his shot first."

"Bosh! why, as like as not she'd take him! If it struck her that he was chucking away his immortal soul and all that for her sake, as like as not she'd take him. Depend upon it, Eugene, once she caught the idea of romantic sin, she'd be gone—no girl could stand up against it."

"It is rather the sort of thing to catch Claudia's fancy."

"You cut in, my boy," continued Ayre, "Frendship's all very well—"

"Yes, 'save in the office and affairs of love!'" quoted Eugene, with a smile of scorn at himself.

"Well, you'd better make up your mind, and don't mount stilts."

"I'll go down and look round. But I can't ask her without telling her or letting him tell her."

"Pooh! she knows."

"She doesn't, I tell you."

"Then she ought to. You're a nice fellow! I slave and eavesdrop for you, and now you won't do the rest yourself. What the deuce do you all see in that parson? If I were your age, and thought Claudia Territon would have me, it would take a lot of parsons to put me on one side."

"Poor old Charley!" said Eugene again. "Ayre, he shall have his shot."

"Meanwhile, the girl's wondering if you mean to throw her over. She's expected to hear from you this last month. I tell you what: I expect Rick'll kick you when you do turn up."

"Well, I shall go down and try to see her: when I get there I must be guided by circumstances."

"Very good. I expect the circumstances will turn out to be such that you'll make love to Claudia and forget all about Stafford. If you don't——"

"What?"

"You're an infernally cold-blooded conscientious young ruffian, and I never took you for that before!"

And Ayre, more perturbed about other people's affairs than a man of his creed had any business to be, returned to the Times as Eugene went to pursue his errand.



CHAPTER XI.

Waiting Lady Claudia's Pleasure

Stafford had probably painted his state of mind in colors somewhat more startling than the reality warranted. When a man is going to act against his conscience, there is a sort of comfort in making out that the crime has features of more striking depravity than an unbiased observer would detect; the inclination in this direction is increased when it is a question of impressing others. Sin seems commonplace if we give it no pomp and circumstance. No man was more free than Stafford from any conscious hypocrisy or posing, or from the inverted pride in immorality that is often an affectation, but also, more often than we are willing to allow, a real disease of the mind. But in his interview with Morewood he had yielded to the temptation of giving a more dramatic setting and stronger contrasts to his conviction and his action than the actual inmost movement of his mind justified. It was true that he was determined to set action and conviction in sharp antagonism, and to follow an overpowering passion rather than a belief that he depicted as no less dominant. Had his fierce words to Morewood reproduced exactly what he felt, it may be doubted whether the resultant of two forces so opposite and so equal could have been the ultimately unwavering intention that now possessed him. In truth, the aggressive strength of his belief had been sapped from within. His efforts after doubt, described by himself as entirely unsuccessful, had not in reality been without result. They had not issued in any radical or wholesale alteration of his views. He was right in supposing that he would still have given as full intellectual assent to all the dogmas of his creed as formerly; the balance of probability was still in his view overwhelmingly in their favor. But it had come to be a balance of probability—not, of course, in the way in which a man balances one account of an ordinary transaction against another, and decides out of his own experience of how things happen—Stafford had not lost his mental discrimination so completely—but in the sense that he had appealed to reason, and thus admitted the jurisdiction of reason in matters which he had formerly proclaimed as outside the province of that sort of reasoning that governs other intellectual questions. In the result, he was left under the influence of a persuasion, not under the dominion of a command; and the former failed to withstand an assault that the latter might well have enabled him to repulse. He found himself able to forget what he believed, though not to disbelieve it; his convictions could be postponed, though not expelled; and in representing his mind as the present battle-ground of equal and opposite forces, he had rather expressed what a preacher would reveal as the inner truth of his struggle than what he was himself conscious of as going on within him. It is likely enough that his previous experience had made him describe his own condition rather in the rhetoric of the pulpit than in the duller language of a psychological narrative. He had certainly given Morewood one false impression, or rather, perhaps Morewood had drawn one false though natural inference for himself. He thought of Stafford, and his letter passed on the same view to Eugene, as of a man suffering tortures that passed enduring. Perhaps at the moment of their interview such was the case: the dramatic picture Stafford had drawn had for the moment terrified afresh the man who drew it. His normal state of mind, however, at this time was not unhappy. He was wretched now and then by effort; he was tortured by the sense of sin when he remembered to be. But for the most part he was too completely conquered by his passion to do other than rejoice in it. Possessed wholly by it, and full of an undoubting confidence that Claudia returned his love, or needed only to realize it fully to return it fully, he had silenced all opposition, and went forth to his wooing with an exultation and a triumph that no transitory self-judgments could greatly diminish. Life lay before him, long and full and rich and sweet. Let trouble be what it would, and right be what it might, life and love were in his own hands. The picture of a man giving up all he thought worth having, driven in misery by a force he could not resist to seek a remedy that he despaired of gaining—a remedy which, even if gained, would bring him nothing but fresh pain—this picture, over which Eugene was mourning in honest and perplexed friendship, never took form as a true presentment of himself to the man it was supposed to embody. If Eugene had known this, he would probably have felt less sympathy and more rivalry, and would have assented to Ayre's view of the situation rather than doubtingly maintained his own. A man may sometimes change himself more easily than he can persuade his friends to recognize the change.

Stafford left the Retreat the morning after his meeting with Morewood, feeling, he confessed to himself, as if he had taken a somewhat unfair advantage of its hospitality. The result of his sojourn there, if known to the Founder, might have been a trial of that enthusiast's consistency to his principles, and Stafford was glad to be allowed to depart, as he had come, unquestioned. He came straight to London, and turned at once to the task of finding Claudia as soon as he could. The most likely quarter for information was, he thought, Eugene Lane or his mother; and on the afternoon of his arrival in town—on the same day, that is, as Eugene had surprised Sir Roderick at breakfast—he knocked at the door of Eugene's house in Upper Berkeley Street, and inquired if Eugene were at home. The man told him that Mr. Lane had returned only that morning, from America, he believed, and had left the house an hour ago, on his way to Territon Park; he added that he believed Mr. Lane had received a telegram from Lord Rickmansworth inviting him to go down. Mrs. Lane was at Millstead Manor.

Stafford was annoyed at missing Eugene, but not surprised or disturbed to hear of his visit to Territon Park. Eugene did not strike him as a possible rival. It may be doubted whether in his present frame of mind he would have looked on any man's rivalry as dangerous, but of course he was entirely ignorant of the new development of affairs, and supposed Eugene to be still the affianced husband of Miss Bernard. The only way the news affected him was by dispelling the slight hope he had entertained of finding that Claudia had already returned to London.

He went back to his hotel, wrote a single line to Eugene, asking him to tell him Claudia's address, if he knew it, and then went for a walk in the Park to pass the restless hours away. It was a dull evening, and the earliest of the fogs had settled on the devoted city. A small drizzle of rain and the thickening blackness had cleared the place of saunterers, and Stafford, who prolonged his walk, apparently unconscious of his surroundings, had the dreary path by the Serpentine nearly to himself. As the fog grew denser and night fell, the spot became a desert, and its chill gloom began to be burdensome even to his prepossessed mind. He stopped and gazed as far as the mist let him over the water, which lay smooth and motionless, like a sheet of opaque glass; the opposite bank was shrouded from his view, and imagination allowed him to think himself standing on the shore of some almost boundless lake. Seen under such conditions, the Serpentine put off the cheerful vulgarity of its everyday aspect, and exercised over the spirit of the watcher the same fascination as a mountain tarn or some deep, quick-flowing stream. "Come hither and be at rest," it seemed to whisper, and Stafford, responsive to the subtle invitation, for a moment felt as if to die in the thought of his mistress would be as sweet as to live in her presence, and, it might be, less perilous. At least he could be quiet there. His mind traveled back to a by-gone incident of his parochial life, when he had found a wretched shop-boy crouching by the water's edge, and trying to screw his courage up for the final plunge. It was a sordid little tragedy—an honest lad was caught in the toils of some slatternly Jezebel; she had made him steal for her, had spent his spoil, and then deserted him for his "pal"—his own familiar friend. Adrift on the world, beggared in character and fortune, and sore to the heart, he had wandered to the edge of the water, and listened to its low-voiced promises of peace. Stafford had stretched forth his hand to pluck him from his doom and set him on his feet; he prevailed on the lad to go home in his company, and the course of a few days proved once again that despair may be no more enduring than delight. The incident had almost faded from his memory, but it revived now as he stood and looked on the water, and he recognized with a start the depths to which he was in danger of falling. The invitation of the water could not draw him to it till he knew Claudia's will. But if she failed him, was not that the only thing left? His desire had swallowed up his life, and seemed to point to death as the only alternative to its own satisfaction. He contemplated this conclusion, not with the personal interest of a man who thought he might be called to act upon it,—Claudia would rescue him from that,—but with a theoretical certainty that if by any chance the staff on which he leant should break, he would be in no other mind than that from which he had rescued his miserable shop-boy. Death for love's sake was held up in poetry and romance as a thing in some sort noble and honorable; as a man might die because he could not save his country, so might he because he could not please his lady-love. In old days, Stafford, rigidly repressing his aesthetic delight in such literature, had condemned its teaching with half-angry contempt, and enough of his former estimate of things remained to him to prevent him regarding such a state of mind as it pictured as a romantic elevation rather than a hopeless degradation of a man's being. But although he still condemned, now he understood, if not the defense of such an attitude, at least the existence of it. He might still think it a folly; it no longer appeared a figment. A sin it was, no doubt, and a degradation, but not an enormity or an absurdity; and when he tried again to fancy his life without Claudia, he struggled in vain against the growing conviction that the pictures he had condemned as caricatures of humanity had truth in them, and that it might be his part to prove it.

With a shiver he turned away. Such imaginings were not good for a man, nor the place that bred them. He took the shortest cut that led out of the Park and back to the streets, where he found lights and people, and his thoughts, sensitive to the atmosphere round him, took a brighter hue. Why should he trouble himself with what he would do if he were deceived in Claudia? He knew her too well to doubt her. He had pushed aside all obstacles to seek her, and she would fly to meet him; and he smiled at himself for conjuring up fantasies of impossible misfortune, only to enjoy the solace of laying them again with the sweet confidence of love. He passed the evening in the contemplation of his happiness, awaiting Eugene's reply to his note with impatience, but without disquiet.

This same letter was, however, the cause of very serious disquiet to the recipient, more especially as it came upon the top of another troublesome occurrence. Rickmansworth had welcomed Eugene to Territon Park with his usual good nature and his usual absence of effusion. In fact, he telegraphed that Eugene could come if he liked, but he, Rickmansworth, thought he'd find it beastly slow. Eugene went, but found, to his dismay, that Claudia was not there. Some mystery hung over her non-appearance; but he learned from Bob that her departure had been quite impromptu,—decided upon, in fact, after his telegram was received,—and that she was staying some five miles off, at the Dower House, with her aunt, Lady Julia, who occupied that residence.

Eugene was much annoyed and rather uneasy.

"It looks as if she didn't want to see me," he said to Bob.

"It does, almost," replied Bob cheerfully. "Perhaps she don't."

"Well, I'll go over and call to-morrow."

"You can if you like. I should let her alone."

Very likely Bob's words were the words of wisdom, but when did a lover—even a tolerably cool-headed lover like Eugene—ever listen to the words of wisdom? He went to bed in a bad temper. Then in the morning came Stafford's letter, and of course Eugene had no kind of doubt as to the meaning of it. Now, it had been all very well to be magnanimous and propose to give his friend a chance when he thought the pear was only waiting to drop into his hand; magnanimity appeared at once safe and desirable, and there was no strong motive to counteract Eugene's love for Stafford. Matters were rather different when it appeared that the pear was not waiting to drop—when, on the contrary, the pear had pointedly removed itself from the hand of the plucker, and seemed, if one may vary the metaphor, to have turned into a prickly pear. Eugene still believed that Claudia loved him; but he saw that she was stung by his apparent neglect, and perhaps still more by the idea that in his view he had only to ask at any time in order to have. When ladies gather that impression, they think it due to their self-respect to make themselves very unpleasant, and Eugene did not feel sure how far this feeling might not carry Claudia's quick, fiery nature, more especially if she were offered a chance of punishing Eugene by accepting a suitor who was in many ways an object of her admiration and regard, and came to her with an indubitable halo of romance about him. Eugene felt that his consideration for Stafford might, perhaps, turn out to be more than a graceful tribute to friendship; it might mean a real sacrifice, a sacrifice of immense gravity; and he did what most people would do—he reconsidered the situation.

The matter was not, to his thinking, complicated by anything approaching to an implied pledge on his part. Of course Stafford had not looked upon him as a possible rival; his engagement to Kate Bernard had seemed to put him hors de combat. But he had been equally entitled to regard Stafford as out of the running; for surely Stafford's vow was as binding as his promise. They stood on an equality: neither could reproach the other—that is to say, each had matter of reproach against the other, but his mouth was closed. There was then only friendship—only the old bond that nothing was to come between them. Did this bond carry with it the obligation of standing on one side in such a case as this? Moreover, time was precious. If he failed to seek out Claudia that very day, she, knowing he was at Territon Park, would be justly aggrieved by a new proof of indifference or disrespect. And yet, if he were to wait for Stafford, that day must go by without his visit. Eugene had hitherto lived pleasantly by means of never asking too much of himself, and in consequence being always tolerably equal to his own demands upon himself. Quixotism was not to be expected of him. A nice observance of honor was as much as he would be likely to attain to; and friendship would be satisfied if he gave the doubtful points against himself.

He sat down after breakfast, and wrote a long letter to Stafford.

After touching very lightly on Stafford's position, and disclaiming not only any right to judge, but also any inclination to blame, he went on to tell in some detail the change that had occurred in his own situation, avowed his intention of gaining Claudia's hand if he could, clearly implied his knowledge that Stafford's heart was set on the same object, and ended with a warm declaration that the rivalry between them did not and should not alter his love, and that, if unsuccessful, he could desire to be beaten by no other man than Stafford. He added more words of friendship, told Stafford that he should try his luck as soon as might be, and that he had Rickmansworth's authority to tell him that, if he saw proper to come down for the same purpose, his coming would not be regarded as an intrusion by the master of the house.

Then he went and obtained the authority he had pledged, and sent his servant up to London with the letter, with instructions to deliver it instantly into Stafford's own hand. His distrust in the integrity of the postmaster's daughter in such a matter prevented his sending any further message by the wires than one requesting Stafford to be at home to receive his letter between twelve and one, when his messenger might be expected to arrive.

With a conscience clear enough for all practical purposes, he then mounted his horse, rode over to the Dower House, and sent in his card to Lady Julia Territon. Lady Julia was probably well posted up; at any rate, she received him with kindness and without surprise, and, after the proper amount of conversation, told him she believed he would find Claudia in the morning-room. Would he stay to lunch? and would he excuse her if she returned to her occupations? Eugene prevaricated about the lunch, for the invitation was obviously, though tacitly, a contingent one, and conceded the lady's excuses with as respectable a show of sincerity as was to be expected. Then he turned his steps to the morning-room, declining announcement, and knocked at the door.

"Oh, come in," said Claudia, in a tone that clearly implied, "if you won't let me alone and stay outside."

"Perhaps she doesn't know who it is," thought Eugene, trying to comfort himself as he opened the door.



CHAPTER XII.

Lady Claudia is Vexed with Mankind.

Of course she knew who it was, and her uninviting tone was a result of her knowledge. We are yet awaiting a systematic treatise on the psychology of women; perhaps they will some day be trained highly enough to analyze themselves. Until this happens, we must wait; for no man unites the experience and the temperament necessary. This could be proved, if proof were required; but, happily, proof of assertions is not always required, and proof of this one would lead us into a long digression, bristling with disputable matter, and requiring perhaps hardly less rare qualities than the task of writing the treatise itself. The modest scribe is reduced to telling how Claudia behaved, without pretending to tell why she behaved so, far less attempting to group her under a general law. He is comforted in thus taking a lower place by the thought that after all nobody likes being grouped under general laws—it is more interesting to be peculiar—and that Claudia would have regarded such an attempt with keen indignation; and by the further thought that if you once start on general laws, there's no telling where you will stop. The moment you get yours nicely formulated, your neighbor comes along with a wider one, and reduces it to a subordinate proposition, or even to the humiliating status of a mere example. Now even philosophers lose their temper when this occurs, while ordinary mortals resort to abuse. These dangers and temptations may be conscientiously, and shall be scrupulously, avoided.

Eugene advanced into the room with all the assurance he could muster; he could muster a good deal, but he felt he needed it every bit, for Claudia's aspect was not conciliatory. She greeted him with civility, and in reply to his remark that being in the neighborhood he thought he might as well call, expressed her gratification and hinted her surprise at his remembering to do so. She then sat down, and for ten minutes by the clock talked fluently and resolutely about an extraordinary variety of totally uninteresting things. Eugene used this breathing-space to recover himself. He said nothing, or next to nothing, but waited patiently for Claudia to run down. She struggled desperately against exhaustion; but at last she could not avoid a pause. Eugene's generalship had foreseen that this opening was inevitable. Like Fabius he waited, and like Fabius he struck.