"Spare me, spare me!" cried the General, restraining himself with difficulty. "So a man can't be a Christian and a gentleman! And you think your father would have been a Radical! I can tell you, young gentleman——"

At this moment Nelly came into the room, charming in her short-waisted frock of white satin, with a little cap of pearls on her hair. Both men turned and stared at her, pleasure and affection in their eyes.

"So you've been heckling poor Robin as usual," she said, stroking her father's cheek. "Heckling poor Robin and getting your hair on end like a fretful porcupine. I'll never be able to make you into a nice, sweet, quiet old gentleman."

"Turn your attention to him," said the General, indicating his nephew by an unfriendly nod. "What do you think, Nell? He's a Radical. He's going to contest a seat for the Radicals. What do you say now?"

"Pooh!" said Nelly, with her pretty chin in the air. "Pooh! Why shouldn't he? Lots of nice people are Radicals. If he feels that way, of course he ought to do it."

Robin's unpractical eyes thanked her mutely. He was as plain-looking a man as he had been a boy, more hatchet-faced than ever. He was long and lean and angular, and his positions were ungraceful. But his eyes were the eyes of Don Quixote. The eyes had appealed to Nelly as long as she could remember.

"Oh, if you're against me, Nell!" said Sir Denis, lamely. "Ah! there's the bell! And a good thing, too. I couldn't eat my lunch to-day for old Grogan of the Artillery. He's a man with a grievance. It soured my wine and spoilt my food. Well, well, Robin, if you're under Nelly's protection you may do what you like—join the Peace Society, if you like."

"I mean to, sir," Sir Robin said, placidly. "In fact, I'm speaking on 'The Ideal of a Universal Peace' on Monday evening at the Finsbury Democratic Debating Club."

When Sir Robin came to town there had been an apprehension in his uncle's breast, too well-founded, that the Dowager would follow him. She was devoted to her son, and not at all disposed to take the General's views about his recreancy in politics.

"A good many good people are on the Radical side, after all," she said, "and there is, perhaps, more room, too, for a young man of Robin's ambitions in the Radical party."

"So far as I can see," said the General, acidly, "his ambitions are rather to succeed at the bottom than at the top. The applause of the multitude appeals to him more than the praise of his equals or superiors."

Lady Drummond glanced coldly at his heated face.

"I fancy you've an attack of gout coming on, Denis," she said. "I should send for Sir Harley Dix, if I were you."

She had stopped the General just as he was on his own doorstep, setting his face cheerfully eastwards on his way to Pall Mall. He had come back with her. He knew his duty to his brother's widow better than to do anything else. It was Wednesday, and on Wednesday there was always a particular curry at lunch which he much affected. He was a connoisseur in curries, and the chef always made this with an eye to Sir Denis's approval. He would have to shorten his walk and 'bus part of the way, or the curry would be cold. He hated to be put out in his daily routine.

"I never was freer from gout in my life, Matilda," he said, with indignation. "I don't trouble the doctors much. When I want their advice I shall ask for it. I always ask for advice when I want it."

She looked at him with unconcern.

"Do you think Nelly will soon be back?" she asked.

"I don't know. When she takes the dogs for a walk she is often out for a couple of hours. Perhaps it would be too long a time to wait."

In his mind he could see the curry disappearing before the other men who liked it as much as he did. Grogan would always eat curry—that special curry—to the General's indignation. Why, curry was the last thing Grogan ought to eat! Wasn't he as yellow as the curry itself with chronic liver? Grogan was greedy over that curry—a greedy fellow, the General said to himself, remembering the many occasions when it had been impossible for him to break away from Grogan and his grievances. If her Ladyship was going to sit on endlessly! The General's manners were too good to leave her to sit by herself. And she was untying her bonnet strings! He might as well lunch at home. No, he wouldn't do that, not if her Ladyship was going to stay to lunch. He supposed he could have lunch somewhere, if not at his club.

"Pray, don't put yourself out for me, Denis," her Ladyship was saying, with what passed for graciousness in her. "I know your usual habits. At your age a man doesn't like to be put out of his habits. Don't mind me, pray. I can amuse myself very well till Nelly comes in. Plenty of books and papers, I see. You subscribe to Mudie's. I thought no one subscribed to Mudie's now that we have so many Free Libraries. I have never been able to afford myself a library subscription, even although we lived in the country. Now that I am going to settle in town——"

"Settle in town!" The General's eyes were almost starting from his head. "I'd no idea, Matilda, you were going to settle in town. What's going to become of the Court?"

"I have an idea of letting it for a few years. Mr. Higbid, the very rich hide merchant, has taken a fancy to the place. I have yet to hear what Robin will say. Mr. Higbid is prepared to pay a fancy price——"

"He'd have to before I'd let him into my drawing-room," said the General, with disgust. "Imagine letting the Court! And to a man who sells hides!"

"His money is as good as anybody else's. And he is received everywhere. You are really too old-fashioned, Denis. Your ways need altering."

"I am too old to change, ma'am," said the General, getting up and giving himself a shake like a dog. "If you don't really mind being left——" He wanted to get away to think over the fact that the Dowager was going to settle in town. He could hardly keep himself from groaning. His peace was all at an end. If he had not been too old to change, he would have fled from London and left it to the Dowager. But big as it was, it was too little to contain himself and the Dowager with any prospect of peace.

"I'll stay and have lunch with Nelly," the Dowager went on, quite ignorant of his perturbation. "Afterwards, I'm going to take her to see houses with me. Of course, I shall settle in your immediate neighbourhood, if I can find anything suitable. I'm going to take Nelly off your hands a bit, take her about and advise her as to her frocks. She was wearing white chiffon the last time we dined here—a most perishable material. I don't think your purse is long enough for white chiffon, Denis. Then the young people ought to see more of each other. We ought to be talking about trousseaux——"

But at this point the General fled. If he had stayed another second he would have said things that his kind and chivalrous heart would have grieved over later. He fled, and left her Ladyship staring after him in amazement.

He clean forgot about the curry in the fretting and fuming of his mind, or it occurred to him only to be consigned to Grogan, as though Grogan were a synonym for something much stronger. His fiery indignation between Sherwood Square and Pall Mall was quite amazing. The Dowager in the next street! Why, he might as well order his coffin. And talking about taking Nelly from him. That muff, Robin, too! When had the fellow shown any impatience? He didn't want the girl to marry an oyster. He remembered the glory and glamour of his own love affair, of that golden year of marriage. His Nelly ought to be loved as her mother had been before her, as her mother's daughter deserved to be. He wasn't going to yield her to a fellow who would only give her half his tepid heart, who would leave her to spend her evenings alone while he spouted in Radical clubs or in that big talking shop, the House of Commons. He wouldn't have it. And still——Robin was poor Gerald's son, and there was nothing against him but his politics. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, the General recognised the fact that he could have forgiven the politics if it had not been for the Dowager.

He had almost reached the doors of his club—Grogan might eat the curry for him, and be hanged to him!—when he saw advancing towards him the spare, elegant figure that sat its horse in front of the regiment below the General's window every morning. The oddest gleam came into his eyes. The young man had recognised him, and was blushing like a girl as he came towards him. He had velvety brown eyes and regular features, was a handsome lad, the General said to himself as young Langrishe lifted his hat from his sleek, well-shaped head. He had the barest acquaintance with Sir Denis, and he would have passed by if the old soldier had not stopped him.

"How do you do, Captain Langrishe?" he said. "I am very much obliged to you for the pleasure you give me every morning. I take it as uncommonly kind of you to bring 'the boys' past my house. I assure you I quite look forward to it—I quite look forward to it."

Langrishe stammered something about the regiment delighting to do honour to its old General, growing redder and redder as he did so. His confusion became him in the General's eyes. He was certainly a pleasant-looking, well-mannered boy, the General decided, and the confusion of the young soldier in the presence of the old soldier an entirely natural and creditable thing.

"I'll tell you what, my lad," said Sir Denis, putting his arm within the other's: "if you've nothing better to do, supposing you come and lunch with me. I'm just going in to the club. And you—on your way to it? I thought so. You'll give me the pleasure of your company?"

The General was half an hour late, yet he found a small table in a window recess unappropriated. It was set for two, and a screen was drawn about it so that the two could be as retired as they wished. More—the General had not been forgotten in the distribution of the curry. Their portions came up piping hot. From where they sat the General could see Sir Rodney Vivash and Grogan button-holing each other. They were the bores of the club, and for once they had foregathered, willingly or unwillingly.

After all, there were compensations—there were compensations; and the General was hungry. His manner towards young Langrishe had an air of fatherly kindness. There was a gratified flush on the young fellow's lean, dark cheek. What was it the General had heard about Langrishe? Oh, yes, that he had had rough luck—that his old uncle. Sir Peter—the General remembered him for a curmudgeon—had married and had a son, after rearing the young fellow as his heir. No wonder the lad looked careworn. The regiment was an expensive one; not too expensive for Sir Peter Langrishe's heir, but much too expensive for a poor man.

However, it was no business of the General's—not just yet.

"You have met my daughter, I think?" he said. They were at the cheese by this time, and the General was apparently divided between the merits of Gruyere and Stilton. He did not glance at Captain Langrishe, but he knew quite as well as if he had that the colour came again to his cheek, that the brown eyes looked unhappily conscious.

"I have met Miss Drummond several times," he answered.

"Ah, you must dine with us one evening."

Young Langrishe looked at him in a startled way.

"Thank you very much, sir," he said, "but, as a matter of fact, I am negotiating a change into an Indian regiment. I don't know how long I shall be here. And I shall be very busy, I'm afraid."

"Ah! Just as you like—just as you like." The General, by the easiest of transitions, passed on to the subject of soldiering in India. He had an unwontedly exhilarated feeling which later had its reaction in a consciousness of guilt.

"What would poor Gerald have said?" he thought, as he walked homewards that evening. "And I've nothing against Robin—I've nothing really against Robin, except his Peace Societies and all the rest of it. And the Dowager—yes, there's always the Dowager. I should like to know what on earth ever induced poor Gerald to marry the Dowager."



CHAPTER VIII

GROVES OF ACADEME

After that keen disappointment about the baby's forgetting her, although she excused it to herself, arguing that at twenty months one cannot be expected to have a long memory, Mary was more reconciled to the changed conditions of her life.

"I hope we are going to be together for a good many years," Lady Anne said, "and presently you must be able to play and sing to me, to read to me and take an interest in the things in which I am interested. You are to go to school, Mary."

So Mary went to school, first to the Queen's Preparatory School, then to the Queen's College. Her years there were very happy ones, especially those years at the College, after she had found her feet and made friends, and gained confidence in herself and the world.

"She sucks up knowledge as a sponge sucks up water," was the report of the Principal, Miss Merton, to the delighted Lady Anne. "I hope Lady Anne, that you will permit her to go in for her B.A. I should not be surprised, indeed, if she captured a fellowship."

"No fellowships," Lady Anne said, firmly. "What would she do with a fellowship? I propose, as soon as she has done with you, to take her abroad. I have a mind to see the world again through young eyes. And it will put the coping-stone on her education. I shouldn't dare leave her too long with you. Learning so often destroys a woman's imagination. They work too hard, I suppose. It doesn't seem to come natural to them yet as it does to men."

"There's no question of Mary's working too hard," the Lady Principal said, bearing these hard sayings of Lady Anne's with composure. "She has fine brains. Whatever she wants in an intellectual way she can come at easily."

Mary, indeed, took her B.A. without over-much burning of the midnight oil. Afterwards she always spoke with the tenderest affection of her old school-days. She recalled with delight the spacious class-rooms, the old garden with its great woodland trees, and the tiny rooms of the girls who were in residence at the College, with their quaint and pretty adornments—the place of so much young camaraderie and soaring ambition and happy emulation. "I can hardly remember that anyone was ever unkind," she used to say long afterwards.

As a matter of fact, the band of elder students with whom Mary was connected in her latter days at the College had a generous enthusiasm for her beauty, taking it as in a sense a credit to themselves.

"You will be a living answer to them," said Jessie Baynes, who was small and plain-looking, "when they say that learned women are always ugly."

And the whole of the class applauded her speech.

"I shall love to see you in your cap and gown," Jessie went on, firing at the picture in her own imagination. "Very few of the men will be taller than you, Mary. How they will shout!"

Jessie had no thought at all of her own lack of height and grace, as she had no idea of how pleasant her little brown face was despite its plainness. She was going to earn her living by teaching, and, what was more, going to make living easier and pleasanter for her mother and her young sister. To get her mother out of stuffy town lodgings to a seaside cottage, which was an unattainable heaven to the mother's thoughts, to educate Edie and give her a chance in life—these were the things that filled Jessie's mind to the exclusion of fear whenever she thought of her ordeal at the conferring of the University degrees. To be sure, she trembled a little when she thought of the long, brilliantly lighted Hall, and all the fine ladies, and the scarlet robes of the Senators, and the young barbarians in the gallery, and all the thousands of eyes fixed on the one little dumpling of a woman going up to receive her degree. If she might only win the fellowship! She would not care what ordeal she passed through for that. So she put away the fear from her mind. If she could only win the fellowship! But she was too humble about her own attainments to have more than a little, little hope of that.

How generous they all were, Mary thought, with an impulse of gratitude towards those dear class-fellows that brought the tears to her eyes.

"When we are photographed in our caps and gowns," said another, "you must stand up in the middle of us, Mary, so that they will see how tall you are."

Mary reported their generosity to Lady Anne, with whom, by this time, she was on the loving terms that cast out fear.

"Very creditable to them," the old lady said, twinkling. "Don't let it make you vain, Mary. You're well enough, but you aren't half as pretty as a rose, or half as tall as a tree, and there are thousands of trees and roses in the world."

"I don't think myself pretty," Mary said, in a hurt voice. "There are several of the girls far prettier. As for being tall, it is no pleasure. I would much rather be little."

"Your skirts will always cost you more than other girls'."

"It is only because they are so kind and generous that they think well of me," Mary went on. "And, oh! I do hope that Jessie will win the fellowship. Everyone does, even——"

"Even her opponents," the old lady said, drily. It was always Lady Anne's way to seem cynical over things, even with those she loved best.

"She has worked so hard for it," said Mary, "and Alice Egerton, who is in the running, too, has shaken hands with Jessie, and told her that if she wins it will only prove she is the better man."

"Dear me, we are cultivating the manly virtues, too," said Lady Anne. "Let me see: there are twenty young ladies in your class, and not a spiteful one among them. I have never heard of so low a percentage."

"If women were given something to think of besides petty interests," Mary began hotly. "If they were educated, if they were given ideals——"

"You are only on your trial yet, child," Lady Anne suggested. "We produced very good women before Women's Colleges were heard of. I'm glad they've not spoilt you, anyhow. No stooped shoulders, no narrow chest, no dimmed eyes. I couldn't have forgiven them if they had made you pay a price for your learning."

When Mary received her B.A. degree she was applauded more rapturously from the gallery than even the new Fellow, Miss Jessica Baynes, B.A., who knew little enough about her own reception, since, as she left the dais, she had glanced up and made out her mother's little nutcracker face, so like her own, in one of the circles of faces overhead.

There was a little group in the balcony watching Mary with fond pride. Lady Anne Hamilton's face shone again as the tall, slender young figure went up amid the furious applause of the undergraduates, through which the general clapping of hands could hardly be heard. Behind Lady Anne were Mary's father and stepmother. Lady Anne had taken care that they should not be forgotten in the distribution of tickets. Walter Gray looked on quietly. He was very proud of his girl; but he had, perhaps, too great a wisdom to set much store by the plaudits of the many. Mrs. Gray, in a bonnet Mary had made for her and a mantle which had been Mary's gift, was in a timid rapture. She was older by some years than she had been when Mary went to Lady Anne first, but she was far more comely. Her family seemed to have reached its limits, for one thing, and she was no more the helpless drudge she had been. Several of the children were at school, and that wonderfully elastic salary of Mary's had done miraculous things in the way of bringing comfort and even refinement to Walter Gray's home.

"Well," said Lady Anne, turning round, and touching Walter Gray's arm, "I have not made too bad a fairy godmother, have I, now?"

"She would never have grown so tall," Walter Gray said, with absent eyes. He had yielded up Mary for her good, but he had never ceased to miss her.

One person who sat among the most distinguished group in the Hall looked at Mary with a lively interest.

"What a charming girl!" she said to her host, a very great person.

"I believe she has been adopted as a sort of companion by old Lady Anne Hamilton, who is a cousin of my wife's," he responded. "The girl has been educated at her expense. Yes, it's a pretty thing. I only hope it won't become a blue-stocking."

"I must positively know her," said the lady. "She interests me."

"You make me jealous," returned the great person, with playful gallantry.

Lady Agatha had been a peeress in her own right since she had attained the tender age of two years. Her father and mother had died too early for her to miss them, and she had shown from her childhood a capacity to think for herself, which nurses and governesses and all such persons looked on as absolutely shocking. She had had a guardian, a soft, woolly, comfortable gentleman whose will she had brushed aside and replaced by her own from the time she was eight years old. Legally, she was not of age till twenty-one; in reality, she was of age at fifteen or thereabouts. She consulted Colonel St. John, her guardian, about her affairs, as an act of grace, because she was so fond of him and wouldn't hurt his feelings for anything; but she made no secret of the fact that at twenty-one she was going to be absolutely her own mistress.

"You are your own mistress now," Colonel St. John said once, a little ruefully. "You never do what I wish—you make me do what you wish. Don't go too fast, Agatha, my dear. At twenty-one one is not wiser than old people, though one may feel so."

But he knew that he was talking to empty air. She was so eager to lay hold on life. And she was equipped for it—there was no doubt of that. Mr. Grainger, of Grainger, Ellison and Wells, who had had charge of the business of the estate from time immemorial, whose trade it was to be cautious, was cheerful over the Colonel's misgivings.

"You wouldn't feel anxious if she was a lad," he said. "I'd set her against nine hundred and ninety lads out of a thousand for sound common-sense. She won't do anything foolish. Take my word for it, she won't do anything foolish."

She did not do anything foolish. She took her own way about some things against Colonel St. John, and even against Mr. Grainger, but she turned out to be right in the end. She had a good many people dependent in one way or another upon her for their well-being, and she insisted on coming face to face with these—on dealing with them without an intermediary. And she made no mistakes. She could see through shifty dishonesty as well as if she had had three times her years and a wide knowledge of the seamy side of human nature. She had always been an outdoor girl, and now she displayed a knowledgeable interest in her own Home Farm and in the affairs of her tenants.

She used to say that the days were not long enough for all she had to do. Certainly, she contrived to cram into them three times as much pleasure, business, and philanthropy as her neighbours.

She had an idea of the obligations of her position as lady of the soil which made poor Colonel St. John gasp when she talked about it. There was so much to be done for the people—churches to be built, or chapels, if they preferred them, and school-houses, industries to be fostered—so much encouragement to be given to honest endeavour. Her idea was that the land should afford all the people wished for. She was going to stop the terrible drifting of the people into the towns. Their lives were to be made gayer. There should be entertainments. The farmers' wives and daughters were to make butter and cheese like their forbears, to grow fruit and vegetables, to rear poultry and sell eggs; but they were not, therefore, to lead a life of narrow toil. They were to be rewarded for their skill and industry. The fruit of their labours was to make life sweeter and pleasanter for them. There were to be libraries and reading-rooms, debating clubs, social gatherings.

"Stuff and nonsense!" Colonel St. John said, with his cotton-wool eyebrows puffed out. "She'll dip the estate, and then she'll be coming to ask us to pull her out. Worse, she'll only make them discontented."

"She'll come out all right," Mr. Grainger said, rubbing his hands softly together. "If she blunders, she'll learn wisdom from the experiment. You'll see she'll come out all right, Colonel. The only thing that troubles me is that she may have no time to get married. We don't want her to be a spinster, hey? I confess I should like to see the succession assured."

It was this notable young lady who came in not so long after to Queen's College, where a distinguished woman of letters was giving a series of lectures on "The Poetry of the Sixteenth Century." Her entrance created somewhat of a flutter. She was as tall as Mary Gray, but much more opulently built. She had short, curling, dark hair, irregular features, and violet eyes—not a bit handsome, but big and bonny and lovesome. Her dress fluttered even these students. It was of purple velvet, with a great stole of sables, and her sable muff had a big bunch of real violets, which brought an odour of the quickening and burgeoning earth.

She sat by the Lady Principal, and afterwards had tea with the students. She asked especially for an introduction to Mary Gray, and then she insisted on driving her as far as the Mall in her motor-car, which she drove herself, while the chauffeur sat with folded arms behind. On the way she talked poetry and politics with the same fervour she brought to all her pursuits.

"It has been borne in on me," she said vehemently, "that in working among my own people as I have been doing I have been only tinkering at things, just tinkering. One has to go to the root of the matter, to abolish unjust laws, to replace them by good ones. Supposing I made my estate, as I hope to make it, a Utopia, still there would be hundreds of estates where the people would be in misery. It ought not to be left to our good will to do things. We should be compelled to do them."

Mary watched the flashing eyes with the greatest admiration. She felt that Lady Agatha was a glorious creature, for whom she could do anything. The hero-worship which is latent in the heart of all young people worth their salt sprang into sudden life. Lady Agatha glanced at her, noticed her expression, and smiled a rich, sweet, gratified smile. She had made a disciple. To make a disciple was very pleasant to one of her temperament. Like most women, she was a thorough propagandist.

As she swept up to the gate of Lady Anne's house, the old lady herself was standing just within it. She had come in from driving her little pony phaeton, which she liked to drive herself. She had a little wild, bright-eyed mountain pony, which would eat sugar and apples from her hands, and was as much of a pet as a dog.

"Well, Mary," she said, "introduce me. How do you do, Lady Agatha? I know you by sight already. Won't you come inside and have some tea? I'm very glad my Chloe didn't meet that uncanny monster of yours. I have something to do to get her past the trams, I can tell you, much less the motorcars."

"You shouldn't go out alone," Mary said, with tender concern. "Her little pony is very wild, Lady Agatha, and she won't take the carriage, unless she goes visiting."

"You want to make me out an old woman," Lady Anne said, "and I shall never be that. Come along in, Lady Agatha. I've been hearing about you. What do you mean by making my tenants discontented? They're very well as they are. We shall have to form a league against you, we indolent ones."

Her Ladyship had a way of winning her welcome wherever she went. Lady Anne had begun, like a good many other people, with a certain distrust of the brilliant young woman who desired to conquer so many kingdoms. In the end she yielded unreservedly.

"A fine, big-hearted, generous creature," she said. "It makes me young to look at her and hear her talk. And so she has taken a huge fancy to my Mary. Very well, then, she can come and go; but she's not to have my Mary for all that, for I want her for myself."

"No one really wants me," said Mary, with suddenly dimmed eyes, "except you and papa. But if they did they couldn't have me. I belong to you and papa."



CHAPTER IX

THE RACE WITH DEATH

It might have been considered great promotion for the daughter of Walter Gray, who attended all day to the ailments of watches with a magnifying glass stuck in his eye, to be the friend of Lady Agatha Chenevix as well as the adopted child almost of Lady Anne Hamilton. Indeed, in the early days, when Lady Agatha's friendship for Mary brought her into the finest society the country provided, Lady Anne sometimes watched Mary narrowly, to see how she was taking it. The result of these observations must have been quite satisfactory to the old lady, judging by the energetic shaking of her head after one or two of these occasions when she was alone and thought over things. Once she spoke her thoughts to Lady Agatha, to whom, indeed, she found herself often talking in a way that surprised herself. There was something about the minx that forced even a suspicious and reticent old lady into trust and confidence, and as her trust and confidence increased so did her affection for the brilliant young peeress.

"People said I was mad," she remarked, "when I took Mary Gray into my house, and into my heart. Matilda Drummond even said—and I have never forgotten it to her—that if she was my nephew, Jarvis, she'd have my condition of mind inquired into. Yet see how it has turned out! Is she spoilt? Is she an upstart? Is she set above her family? She's over there this minute with that poor little drab stepmother of hers. She worships her father. The joys and sorrows of the poor little household are as much to her to-day as the day she left them."

"I know," said Lady Agatha. "She's pure gold. I saw it in her face the first day I laid eyes on her. The only quarrel I have with her is that so many people push me out with her. I don't mean you, of course, Lady Anne. But yesterday I could not have her because she must go to your doctor's wife, and to-day she was going for a long walk with that little Miss Baynes. To-morrow it will be her father. It is his free afternoon."

"I heard an amusing thing about the father the other day," said Lady Anne. "Of course, Mary knows nothing about it. I called at Gordon's—that is where Mr. Gray is employed—about a new catch for my amethyst bracelet. I have known Mr. Gordon for years. He is a thoroughly respectable man. It seems there is a very ill-conditioned person who works in the same room as Mr. Gray—a good workman, but most ill-conditioned. When he is especially bad-tempered he vents his anger on his quiet room-fellow, who never seems to hear him but works away as though he were a thousand miles distant from the grumbling and scolding. Well, it seems that the other day, despairing, perhaps, of rousing Mr. Gray by any other methods, he made a reference to Mary as having got into fine society and looking down on her father. It's a little place, after all, my dear, and you and your motor-car are known as well as the Town Hall. Mr. Gray got up very quietly and threw the man downstairs; then went back to his work without a word. Gordon saw it in quite the right way. He said that the person thoroughly well deserved it, but that the next time he mightn't get off with a few bruises, and that would be awkward for Mr. Gray. So he has given him another room."

"Ah, bravo!" Lady Agatha clapped her hands together. "That's where Mary gets it. I've seen the light of battle in her eye—haven't you?"

"Sometimes—when she has heard of cruelty and injustice."

Now that Mary's schooling was over, she was to see the world under Lady Anne's auspices. They were to go abroad soon after Christmas, to be in Rome for Easter, to dawdle about the Continent where they would and for as long as they would. Everything was planned and mapped out. Mary had her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, lying ready to put on. Her old friend, Simmons, had packed her travelling trunk. It had come to almost the last day.

And, to be sure, Mary must be much with her father and the others during those last hours. She had gone with her father for a long country walk.

"I wish you were coming, too," said Mary, clinging closely to his arm.

"You will be bringing me back fine stories," her father said, patting her hand. "I shall be seeing the world through your eyes, child."

"I shall write to you every day."

"I shan't expect that, Mary. You will be moving from place to place. I know you will write when you can, and I am always sure of your love."

While they talked Lady Anne was receiving Dr. Carruthers professionally. She had had symptoms, weaknesses, pangs, of which she had told nobody.

"I was inclined to go without telling you anything about it, doctor," she said. "I was as keen upon it as the child. I am more disappointed than she will be. I have been wilful all my life, but I am glad I did not take my own way this time. It would have been a nice thing for poor Mary if I had been taken ill in some of those foreign places."

"You will be much better in your own comfortable home."

Dr. Carruthers spoke cheerfully, but he could not keep the anxiety out of his face.

"You must have suffered a deal lately," he said pityingly. He had not forgotten what Lady Anne had done for him and his Mildred. She had been their faithful and kind friend from that propitious day when he had picked Mary Gray from under the feet of the tram-horses. His position was now an assured one, and he and his wife had a tender affection for their benefactress.

"I'm an obstinate old woman," said Lady Anne, with very bright eyes. The doctor's visit had been an ordeal to her. "I have had the pain off and on for the last few months, but I assured myself that it was merely indigestion, which mimics so many things. I am glad my common-sense came to the rescue at last. Do you think I shall go off suddenly, or shall I have to lie, panting, like those poor creatures I've seen at the hospital, labouring for breath? I shouldn't like that."

The doctor shook his head. How was he to know when the worn-out heart would cease to perform its functions, and after what manner?

"We must hope that you will not suffer," he said gently. "I will do my best to save you that."

"And I've plenty of spirit for whatever the good God sends," Lady Anne said, her face lighting up. "I've always had great spirit. They said I pulled through my childish illnesses twice as well because of my spirit. I remember my dear mother telling me that when I had croup at two years old I mimicked the cows and sheep and cats and dogs between the paroxysms. I was just the same later on. I ought to have married a soldier. My poor husband was a man of peace. He couldn't bear a loud voice. Have a glass of wine before you go, doctor. I've just had a bottle of Comet port opened. Try it. There's very little like it left in the world."

After Dr. Carruthers had taken his departure she went to her desk and set about writing a letter. But she paused after she had written a few lines, looked at the clock, and sat for a minute thinking.

"No," she said aloud. "I won't wait till to-morrow. Mary shan't take the chances. Who knows if I shall be here to-morrow? If I drive out to Marleigh I shall just catch Buckton. He will be pottering round that orchid-house of his. He will just be home from the office. He can make me a new will there as well as here. Indeed, I ought not to have postponed it for so long."

She ordered her little pony phaeton. It was nearly five o'clock. There would be plenty of time to drive to Marleigh Abbey, where her lawyer lived, to interview him, and get back again before it was dark. She would make Mary's interests safe. She had come to care for the child more than she had ever expected to care. She was going to make a provision for her, so that she should be secure against the chances and changes of this life. Nothing very startling, nothing that need make Jarvis grumble to any great extent; just a modest provision which would not keep Mary from making use of the talents with which God had endowed her and the education her fairy godmother had given her.

It was not long before she had left the town behind, and was driving along the winding road that ran by the foot of the mountains. The road was very lonely.

Chloe was rather nervous, not to say hysterical, on this particular afternoon. Her mistress had not considered her as was her wont. She had taken the shortest road, forcing her to meet a black monster of a steam-tram which she had sometimes seen at a distance, a thing which was her special abomination. Chloe had made a bolt for it, and had passed the tram safely and got away on to the back road. She had been accustomed, when she had made her small runaways before, to be petted and soothed afterwards. Indeed, as soon as her terror had calmed a little, and she was on the road she knew to be harmless, she slackened down, expecting to hear her mistress's voice of tender scolding, to have her mistress alight and stroke her with soft words. Instead of that she was touched up pretty sharply.

"Get me there, my girl," said Lady Anne. "Get me there quickly. You can take your time going home, and we'll go the lower road. I feel as though Death and I were running a race. I could never forgive myself if I died before I'd provided for Mary."

The pony gave her head a shake as though in answer to her mistress's words, pricked up her ears and set off at a sharp canter.

Suddenly something happened. Lady Anne had at first no realisation of what it was. Jennings, the coachman, said afterwards that it must have been the work of one of the mischievous lads whom he had driven with his whip from staring in at his stable door. What happened was that the pony's bridle, which had been snipped with a knife, had come apart, fallen about her neck and then under her feet. She was off like the wind.

As for poor Lady Anne, suddenly rendered helpless, she caught at the side of the little carriage, which was being dragged violently at the pony's heels. She had need of all her spirit. Fortunately, the road was a straight one, but there was not a soul in sight to help her, not a sower in the fields, not a ploughman, not even a boy herding cattle along the road. Her right hand still grasped the useless rein. She stared before her, while the rocking of the little carriage grew more and more violent, and the hedges and trees flew past them. How long would it be before the terrified pony shook herself free of the carriage altogether, or upset it on one of those mud-banks?

The old spirit kept wonderfully calm and collected. There was just one chance—that Chloe might keep the middle of the road, and presently pull up of herself, being exhausted. If only the phaeton would not rock so much. It was swaying from side to side at a terrific rate. The few seconds of the runaway seemed aeons of time to Lady Anne. She was holding on now to both sides of the carriage, but her arm was through the reins. Thank Heaven, the road seemed absolutely open and Chloe must exhaust herself soon.

Then—her eyes were distended in her face. They had swung round a little incline, with a miraculous escape of running on a heap of shingle intended for mending the roads. Just ahead of them were the lodge gates and lodge of a big house. The gates were open. Out through them there toddled a small child about three years old. The child set out to cross the road. His attention was arrested by the noise of the runaway. He stood in the middle of the road staring.

Lady Anne uttered a loud, sharp cry. The child moved a few steps, fell, and lay directly in the path of Chloe's feet. A woman ran out of the lodge, screaming "Patsy, Patsy; where are you, Patsy?" Then she began to wring her hands and call on all the saints.

The pony, however, had of herself come to a standstill. The child was under her feet, between her four little hoofs. She was shaking and sweating and looking down. As for the child, after a second or so he broke into a lusty roar. He was only frightened, not hurt, but it took a little time for the mother to find that out by reason of the mud on his face and the noise he was making. When she had reassured herself, she carried him inside and closed the door of the lodge upon him. Then she returned to the pony-carriage.

Chloe was still standing there, in a piteous state of terror. Someone was coming along the road—a policeman. Someone else was running from the opposite direction.

As for Lady Anne, the little figure had fallen forward. Her forehead was down on the reins. Her eyes were wide open, and had a mortal terror in their gaze. She would never set things right for Mary in this world. She and Death had run a race together, and she had been beaten.



CHAPTER X

DISPOSSESSED

Lady Anne's nephew and heir, Lord Iniscrone, showed no friendly face to Mary. He came as soon as possible, and took possession of the premises. Lady Iniscrone was with him. She was a lady with a wide, flat, doughy face. Her eyes were little and pale and cold. Mary thought afterwards that if it had not been for Lady Iniscrone, Lord Iniscrone might have been kinder. She remembered that Lady Anne had detested Lady Iniscrone to the extent that she would never have her inside the house. She had an idea, which she could not put away, while she hated it, that Lady Iniscrone remembered that fact. She took possession of everything thoroughly, as though she revenged herself on the dead woman. In her cold speech she disparaged the things Lady Anne had held dear.

Their attitude towards Mary was as though she were a servant no longer necessary. She was not to eat at their table; she was to eat in her own room or in the servants' hall.

"Is it Miss Gray, my lady?" Saunders, the elderly parlourmaid, asked, aghast. "Her Ladyship thought the world of Miss Gray. She might have been her own child. And I will say, though we didn't hold with it at first, yet——"

Lady Iniscrone closed the discussion haughtily.

"Miss Gray will have her meals in the servants' hall, or in her own room if she prefers it, till after the funeral. We shall make other arrangements then, of course."

Saunders flounced out of the room. Although she was elderly and had lived in Lady Anne Hamilton's house since she was fourteen, when she had come as a between-maid, she had not forgotten how to flounce.

"Mark my words," she said in the kitchen, "she'll make a clean sweep of us, same as Miss Mary, as soon as ever the funeral is over. Supposing as how we gives the notice!"

And they did, to Lady Iniscrone's discomfiture, for she had intended to stay on at the Mall and to keep the staff as it stood till she had supplied its place. However, she showed her dismay only by her bad temper.

"I suppose you've all pretty well feathered your nests," she said acridly, "and can afford to retire."

Nor was her bitterness lessened by the fact that Lady Anne had left handsome legacies to each of the servants, annuities to the elder ones, sums of money to the younger. But the will, dated some years back, made no mention at all of Mary Gray.

"It seems clear to me," said Mr. Buckton, talking the matter over with Lord Iniscrone, her Ladyship being present, "that Lady Anne intended to make some provision for her protegee. In fact, the letter which she had begun writing to me, which was found in her blotter after her death, plainly indicates that. She was, apparently, on her way to my house when the lamentable accident happened. Dr. Carruthers had seen her that afternoon, and had told her that her heart was in a bad way. I believe she grew alarmed about the unprovided state in which she would leave Miss Gray if she had a sudden seizure, and hurried off to me. In the circumstances——"

"Of course, we could not think of doing anything more for Miss Gray," Lady Iniscrone put in, anticipating her lord. "She has already been dealt with very handsomely out of the estate. She has had a most unsuitable education for a person in her rank of life. She has lived like a lady; been clothed like one. When I saw her she was wearing ornaments—a brooch of amethysts, with pearls around it, I remember, which, I am sure, ought to belong to the estate. I can't see that Lord Iniscrone is called upon to do anything more for the young person. What with those absurd legacies to the servants and the way Lady Anne lived—a big house and a staff of servants and carriages and horses for one old lady!—the estate has been impoverished."

"Lady Anne had a great sense of her own dignity," the lawyer put in. "And this house had been her home for more than fifty years."

"Everything needs replacing," Lady Iniscrone grumbled, with a disparaging look around. "Those curtains and carpets——"

"Your Lordship will, I am sure, feel that, in making some little provision for Miss Gray, you will be doing what Lady Anne wished and intended to do," Mr. Buckton said earnestly, turning from the lady to her husband.

Lord Iniscrone's eyes fluttered nervously. He was not a bad little man at heart, but he was entirely ruled by his wife.

"I don't think the estate will bear it, Mr. Buckton," he said in a peevish voice. "It is heavily burdened as it is. If a five-pound note would be of any use——"

"I can't see that we are called upon to do anything, Jarvis," his wife put in again. "In fact, Mr. Buckton, you may take it that we do not intend to do anything more for Miss Gray."

"Very well, Lady Iniscrone."

Mr. Buckton turned away and busied himself with his papers. He could not trust himself at the moment to speak lest he should forget his professional discretion.

But Mary had not waited for the result of his intercession on her behalf, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. Mary, who was sensitive to every breath of praise and blame, had fled out of the dear house, the atmosphere of which had become suddenly unfriendly. A good many friends would have been glad to have had her. Lady Agatha Chenevix was away, else she would have been by her friend's side to take her part with passionate generosity and indignation. She was away, but Jessie Baynes's little house on the edge of the sea, a bare little homely place, full of sunlight and the sea-wind, had its doors open to her. One could not imagine a better place for a sad and sorrowful heart than Jessie's little spare room, with its balcony opening like the deck of a ship on to the blue floor of the sea. Mildred Carruthers had come at once, in the first hour of the girl's grief, to carry her off to the big house, which was now amply justified by the size of the doctor's practice.

Only, where would Mary go to but home? In all those years in the great house on the Mall she had never come to find Wistaria Terrace too little and lowly for her. Indeed, there was a wonderful wholesomeness and sweetness to her mind about the little house. The transfiguring mists of her love lay rosily over even the drudgery of her childish days. To be sure, there had been hard work and short commons. She had been insufficiently clad in winter, too heavily clad in summer. Her people had gone without fires and many other things which some would have considered essential. But there had always been love. Looking back on those days, Mary saw with the eyes of the spirit which miss out immaterial material things.

She fled back home. She took nothing with her but what she stood up in. Only her friend, Simmons, while Lady Iniscrone was absent from the house, packed up all Mary's belongings, and conveyed them, with the assistance of the coachman, across the lane to Wistaria Terrace. The servants had made up their minds that Mary was not coming back.

Lady Iniscrone had hoped, in conversation with Lord Iniscrone, that Mary would not give them any trouble. Never was anyone less inclined to give trouble than Mary. Not for worlds would she have gone back to the house where the new cold rule was, to meet Lady Iniscrone's unfriendly eyes. Only while the body of her benefactress was yet above ground she had stolen across at quiet hours, in the absence of the enemy, to look for the last time on the quiet face. She had carried away little Fifine. Fifine was seventeen years old now, and shook incessantly and moaned in a lost way in her darkness. But she knew Mary's voice. Mary was the one that could comfort her. At Wistaria Terrace they went to the unheard-of extravagance of having a fire in Mary's room, day after day, so that Fifine might lie before it in a basket, and feel the warmth in her little bones, and hear Mary's voice.

The day of the funeral came. Mary stood by the graveside quietly, with a veil down over her face. Walter Gray was by her side. She had come in the doctor's carriage, and she had no leisure or thought for the insolence with which Lady Iniscrone stared at her, as though her presence there required explanation.

She was going to work, to begin at once. Her dear, kind old friend, who had meant to do so well by her, had at least equipped her for earning her own bread. The Lady Principal of Queen's College had found her work—temporary work, to be sure, but something to go on with till she could look about her. The Lady Principal and Dr. Carruthers were against her making any definite plans till Lady Agatha Chenevix should return—she was in America, arranging for a display of her industries at a forthcoming exhibition. They had an idea that Lady Agatha would expect to be consulted in any plan that affected her friend's future.

Returning home after the funeral Mary found that all her attention would be required for a short time for Fifine. The little dog had had a fit or something of the kind, and had rallied wonderfully, considering her great age. She had missed her one friend during that hour of absence. Dr. Carruthers came in and looked at the dog, stooping to examine it with as much tender care as though it had been human and a paying patient. "Keep her warm," he said. "There isn't much else possible. There is nothing the matter, only old age. She seems to know you, Mary. She is positively wagging her tail."

"She is miserable without me," Mary said, wondering what she was to do about Fifine when she took up that temporary work which the Lady Principal of Queen's College had found for her. Meanwhile she devoted herself to the little creature. But about three days after Lady Anne's funeral Fifine solved all difficulties concerning her by dying quietly in the night.

Mary slipped in stealthily to the garden of the old house when the new owners were not likely to be about, and placed the little rigid body in the grave Jennings had dug for it, lined with a few flowers that had come up in the beds, snowdrops and wallflowers and little pale mauve double primroses. She wept a few bitter tears above the grave. The death of the little dog was like her last link with her dear old friend. The day had the bright, clear, strong sunshine of March. There were yet drifts of snow in the valleys among the hills, but spring was coming, and the bare boughs would soon be thick with the buds of leafage. She took one look at the sunny, green place and the old house which had harboured her so kindly. Then she went away with a drooping head.

That very afternoon Lady Agatha came. She rushed in on Mary like the March wind, big and beautiful, in her long cloak of orange-tawny velvet, breathing fire and fury over the unkindness to Mary. She had interviewed Lady Iniscrone, and had gathered from her what had been happening.

"In one way I am selfishly glad, Mary, because you will belong so much more to me. I am going to take possession of you. For the first time for many years Chenevix House is to be opened this season. I am going to be among the political hostesses. I shall do all sorts of things. I have found a dear old lady to live with us, my father's twenty-second cousin, Mrs. Morres. She will make it possible for me to do the things I want without running tilt against all the windmills of prejudice. I shall respect your mourning. You will have your own room to which you can retire. Chenevix House looks over a quiet, green square. You shall see the spring come even there. Afterwards, when the season is at an end, we shall bury ourselves in the green country."

She paused for breath, and Mary smiled at her. She was so big and bonny and generous it was impossible not to smile at her.

"Where do I come in?" she asked. "I want to earn my bread."

"And so you shall. You shall earn it hard. You are to be my secretary, Mary. I am going to be a leading Radical lady. They want hostesses. There are things a woman can do for a cause much better than a man. I consider my wealth, at least, my comparative wealth, my rank and youth and energy and brains, and my splendid health, as so many weapons given to me by God so that I may help the right."

"You forget your charm," Mary reminded her. "It is the most potent of all."

Lady Agatha suddenly blushed. It was the first time Mary had seen her blush.

"Charm—oh, come, Mary! Why not beauty if you are inclined to flatter?"

"Yes, indeed; why not beauty?" Mary repeated, looking at her with loving eyes of admiration.

"A big, black, bounding beggar!" Lady Agatha quoted against herself merrily.

But Mary was not inclined to make any further excursions from home. The soul in her was chilled by her recent experiences. In her hurt and unhappy state the little house at Wistaria Terrace seemed most desirable. It gave her satisfaction to note the discomforting things about her—the bare floor, the windows that shook and rattled, the ill-fitting doors, the ugliness of the painted dressing-table from which the paint had long departed, the chipped jug and basin that did not match each other. She liked it all, even the carelessness about meals, for there was love with it. Her younger sisters growing up had a kind of worship for Mary. They served her out of pure love. She was not allowed to do anything for herself. Yes, for the present, at least, home was best. She could go out and earn money and bring it home to them. She would stay henceforth in the world into which she had been born. She would make no more excursions.

However, these thoughts of hers were rendered vain by the fact that Walter Gray positively took Lady Agatha's part against her. There was no room for Mary in the cramped life of Wistaria Terrace. She had brains and beauty and sympathy. The opportunity to make use of these gifts was given her. She must not reject it.

The thing was put on a business basis. Mary was to be Lady Agatha's secretary, with a handsome salary. "I shall work you till you cry out," her Ladyship promised, and it seemed like enough to be true. She was talking already of writing a novel when they should retire to the country. Her energy overflowed. She was perpetually seeking new outlets for it. Her secretary was not likely to enjoy a sinecure.

"No one but you could have sent me from you again," Mary said to her father, in tender reproach.

"It is for your good, Moll. You have outgrown Wistaria Terrace. We could not long have contented you."

But Mary shook her head. She thought she would have been very well content at home. She could have got plenty of teaching to do. She thought of the little house as of a resting place from which she was to be debarred. But she would not dispute her father's will for her. He rallied her, saying that if they kept her her head and shoulders would presently be pushing themselves above the slates.

"It was big enough for you," she said indignantly, "and your mind rises to greater heights than mine ever will. You cramped yourself into it, if it were a question of cramping. Why should not I?"

"Sometimes it was not big enough, Moll," he answered. "Sometimes it was sore cramping, and at other times it was big enough to contain the heaven and all the stars. Perhaps the ambition I flung away for myself I keep for you. I would not have you at microscopic work all your days."

So it was settled. For a little while longer Mary stayed on at home. Then, when the leaves were just opening out in pale green silk, and all the world was fragrant and full of the joy of birds, she went, unwillingly, and turning back many times to make her sorrowful farewells.

"I don't want you to stay till you begin to feel cramped," Walter Gray had said. "I had rather you went away with your illusions."

She did carry away her illusions. It was a happy and blessed thing for her that she could make illusions about common things all the days she was to live. Yet somewhere, in her hidden heart, she knew her father was right.



CHAPTER XI

THE LION

Mary was established, high up in Chenevix House. She was amazed at the spaciousness of the rooms, the feeling in them as though the streets were far away. The square was a wonder of waving and tossing green, across which Mary looked from her window and saw other stately old houses like the one she was in. At first she was never tired of admiring the miracle of spring in London. She realised that no country greenness is equal to the glory of the new leaf against the dingy house-fronts, the green freshness about the black stems and boughs and branches.

Lady Agatha was in a perpetual whirl of affairs and gaiety. All her days, and her nights into the small hours, seemed to be filled. At this time Mary had a great deal of her time to herself. In the morning she wrote her Ladyship's letters, and selected from the newspapers such things as her Ladyship ought to read. By-and-by she would be much busier. She was taking lessons in short-hand and type-writing in the afternoons. Her Ladyship would come in only in time to dress for dinner. She had been driving in the park, she had been calling, she had been at a concert, or a matinee, or an "At Home." She had been attending this or that meeting. She was never in bed before the summer dawn, yet she would be at the breakfast-table as fresh as a milkmaid, smiling at Mary and telling her this and that bit of news or event of the time since they had met.

Mrs. Morres, who had to accompany her to many places, slept every hour of the day she could. She confessed to Mary in her dry way, that did not ask for pity, that she found her Ladyship's energy superhuman. Sometimes there was an interesting debate in the House of Commons, and Lady Agatha must drop in after dinner to sit for an hour behind the gilded grille. Afterwards she would go on to a political reception. Later to a ball, where she would dance as though there had been nothing in all the long day to tire her.

Once or twice she had a quiet dinner-party, to which Mary came down in her frock of filmy black, which made a delightful setting for her fair paleness. At these dinners she encountered famous men and women, and looked at them from afar off with wistful interest. In the drawing-room afterwards she saw Lady Agatha the centre of a brilliant group. Someone said of her that she was likely to be the spoilt child of politics, since she could be audacious with even the greatest, and move them to speak when no one else could. The great men shook their heads at her and smiled. They warned her that she went too fast for them, that impulsiveness, charming as it was in a woman, was not to be permitted in politics. "If you would but learn diplomacy, my dear lady!" Sir Michael Auberon sighed. But diplomacy seemed likely to be the last thing Lady Agatha Chenevix would learn.

Mary used to sit under Mrs. Morres's wing, and listen, through her witty and wise talk, to the utterances of the great. She felt very shy of these companies of distinguished men and women. Lady Agatha made one or two attempts to draw her closer. Then, perceiving that she was happier in her corner, she let her be.

In her corner Mary listened. She listened with all her ears. Her cheeks would flush and her eyes shine as she listened. There was a younger school of politicians which was well represented at Lady Agatha's parties. Their theories had the generosity of youth. Sir Michael Auberon would listen to them, nodding his head, his fine, beautiful old face lit up with as great a generosity as warmed theirs. He was very fond of his "boys." If he must show them what was impracticable in their views he did it gently. He rallied them with tenderness. He had none of the mockery which is so searing and blighting a thing to hot youth.

One night Mary, looking down the dinner-table, saw a face she remembered. The owner of the face—a tall, loosely-built, plain-looking young man—glanced her way at the moment, and stared—stared and looked away again with a baffled air. Mary knew him at once for the boy she had met seven or eight years before at the Court. He had aged considerably. Men like him have a way of falling into their manhood all at once. His hair was even a little thin on top—with that and his lean, hatchet face he might have been thirty-five.

Afterwards in the drawing-room he was one of those who stood nearest to Sir Michael. Some of the others laughed at him, calling him Don Quixote, and she heard Sir Michael say that the young man's theories were those of the Gironde. "The Revolution devours her own children," he said, with his fine old ironic smile. "And a good many of us have to eat our own professions before we're forty. The great thing would be if we could keep our youthful generosity with the wisdom of our prime."

Looking towards Mary, he caught the flame of enthusiasm in her eyes, and again he smiled. But this time it was a smile without irony, rather an understanding and, one might have said, a grateful smile. All the world knew that Sir Michael's private sorrows were heavy ones, and that he leant the more on the alleviations and consolations his public life brought him.

Afterwards he asked to be introduced to Mary and talked with her for a little while, making her the envy of the room.

"She has a clear mind as well as a sound heart," he said. "She is on fire with the passion for humanity. Take her about with you"—this to Lady Agatha. "Let her see how the people live—what serfs we have under our free banner. There is fine material in her. She should do good work."

Meanwhile Mrs. Morres sat by Mary, doing crochet, with a quiet smile. Her tongue dripped cold water on all the enthusiasms.

"Believe me, my dear, they will do nothing," she said placidly in Mary's ear. That placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a Fate. "Parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let Sir Michael get into office and he'll do nothing. Those fine young gentlemen over there will be the office-holders of twenty years to come, the fat sinecurists and pluralists. The people were better off when, like the lower animals, they had no souls. They were protected by their betters. Now they are at war with them and they are more soulless than before. Dear me, how much fine talk I have heard that never came to anything!"

She would go on till the company had departed, and Lady Agatha would come to her side, laughing, and ask her what horrible feudal theories she had been propounding. The two differed on every point but one, and that was in the mere matter of loving each other. Lady Agatha delighted in her cousin's conservatism; and always said she would not have it otherwise if she could. It was a sauce piquante to the dish of their daily lives.

"You shan't lead Mary astray," she would say with pretended indignation. "If she knew the things Sir Michael has been saying about her!"

"My dear Agatha, don't you go leading her astray. Politics are no metier for a woman, or they should be subservient to something else. Go marry, Agatha, and bring children into the world, and when you have reared them you can set up a political salon and theorise about the regeneration of humanity. Let Miss Gray do likewise. You play with these things when you are young—later on you will find them dry bones."

"Dear me!" Lady Agatha said, with admiration. "What a pity she isn't with us, Mary! What a pity she is only a destructive critic! Don't listen to her, child!"

That first evening of their meeting Sir Robin Drummond had come to Mary's side and turned the page of her music while she sang. She had a fresh and sweet voice, although of no great range or compass, and she could sing, without music, song after song of the old English masters, of Arne and Purcell and Bishop, and their delightful school.

"She brings strawberries and cream to town," said someone who was not particularly imaginative.

Mary was conscious of the young man's scrutiny as he turned her pages, and it embarrassed her, but she made no sign.

Afterwards she met Sir Robin many times. He was at this time the adopted candidate for an East-End constituency, and was becoming well known as an advanced politician. He went further than his party, indeed, and somewhat offended even his particular clientele by the breadth of his views. He and Lady Agatha were at this time engaged in the work of organising labour, especially amongst the girls and women of the worst-paid and most dangerous trades. It brought them often together amid forlorn habitations and hopeless humanity. One of the difficulties was the question of whether the alien women should be brought in. "They will join the Union and they will go on underselling all the same," said someone. But Sir Robin was of those who held that the alien should have equal rights with her English sister, and that it was possible to teach her to stand on her feet like one of the free-born. He was not chary of his denunciations of certain methods among the Trade Unions and the Trade Unionists, and therefore a crowd sometimes howled him down. But there was always a minority at least to stand by him, and the minority included the industrious and sober, the honest and thinking, among those he desired to help.

By-and-by he fell into a quiet friendliness with Mary Gray. He used to take charge of the ladies when they went into the East End. Lady Agatha used to say that he was a drag on the wheel, because he would not let her do imprudent things, because he would veto it when a question of their going into dangerous streets or houses or rooms, because he insisted on their leaving by a side door a meeting which was becoming turbulent, because he was always forbidding some extravagance or other of her Ladyship's.

"There is one thing about that young man," said Mrs. Morres, who was chary of praise of her Ladyship's party: "he has excellent common-sense, and I thank Heaven for it."

"Ah, yes; he has excellent common-sense," Lady Agatha echoed, with a ruefulness which made Mary laugh suddenly.

"You ought to marry him, my dear," Mrs. Morres went on, looping another stitch of the endless crochet.

"Marry Bob Drummond!" Lady Agatha repeated. "Marry Bob Drummond! Why, it is the last thing in the world I should dream of doing."

One evening, just at the end of the season, someone brought the latest lion to a small reception at Lady Agatha Chenevix's. He was a very modest and retiring lion, a quiet, very bronzed young man, who wore his arm in a sling. He had had his shoulder torn in an encounter with an African leopard. He had fought almost hand to hand with the beast over the body of a Kaffir servant, and had rescued the man at the cost of his own life, it seemed at first, later on of his right arm. It was doubtful whether the strength and vitality of it would ever be restored.

He was not merely a brave man, however, this Mr. Jardine. He had gone to the Gold Coast, and from there into Central Africa, inspired, in the first place, by the desire of knowledge and love of adventure. But, amid the thrilling adventures and hairbreadth escapes, there had grown up in his heart the liveliest interest in and sympathy with the people he found himself amongst. He discovered that they had an ancient civilisation of their own. To be sure, what remained of it hung in shreds and patches on some of them; but there were others, civilised after a fashion, which was not the Western one. He discovered traditions, folk-lore, ancient poetry, laws, a wealth of customs. Understanding the people, he came to love them. They interested him profoundly. He was going back to them as soon as he could.

He stayed after the other guests, and was yet talking eagerly to his hostess when the dressing-bell rang.

"We dine alone," Lady Agatha said to the old friend who had brought Mr. Jardine. "And I go nowhere afterwards: I am fagged out. How glad I am that next week sees us at Hazels! If you and Mr. Jardine could dine, Colonel Brind?"

The old friend answered her wistful look.

"Our lodgings are not far off; we have only to jump into a hansom; we should be back before the dinner-bell rings. Only—this fellow has a host of engagements."

"Ah!"

Lady Agatha had hardly sighed when Jardine woke up as if from a dream.

"Have I engagements?" he asked. "I do not remember any. Anyhow, I am a convalescent, and the privileges of convalescence are mine. I vote for that hansom, Brind."

After dinner they sat around the fire and talked. Although it was June, it had been a sunless day of arid east wind, and Lady Agatha, who always snatched at the least excuse for a fire because it was so beautiful, had ordered one to be lit. The three long windows were open beyond the red leather screen that made a cosy corner of the fireplace, and the scent of flowers came in from the balcony.

Paul Jardine talked as much as they desired him to talk. He started on his hobby about those West African peoples, and rode it with spirit and energy. His friend laughed at him.

"Why, Jardine," he said, "I can never again call you the lion that will not roar."

"Am I horribly loquacious?" The hero smiled, but was not more silent. He had great things to tell, and he told them well and modestly. Lady Agatha sat with her cheek shaded by a peacock-feather fan. There was a deep glow in her eyes. Glancing across at her from the opposite corner, Mary thought it must be the reflection of the firelight.

She came to Mary's room after the guests had departed, when Mary was preparing for bed, and sat down in the chair by the open window.

"What do you think of him, Mary?" she asked.

"Of whom?" Mary said sleepily. They had met a good many people during the day, so the question was a pardonable one.

"Of whom! Why, of Mr. Jardine! Who else could it be?"

She lifted her arms about her head, and the loose white sleeves of her gown fell away from their roundness and softness.

"What a man!" she said, with a long sigh. "What a man! That is life, if you like. How tame the others seem beside him!"

"He roared very gently," said Mary, "but it was very exciting."

"Yes, wasn't it? That sail in the canoe down the river, with the jungle on each side of them alive with wild beasts and venomous reptiles, to say nothing of cannibals, and deadly sicknesses worse than any of those. He said so little about the danger. One got an impression of the extraordinary languorous beauty of the tropical vegetation; one smelt it, that African night, with its enormous moon beyond the mists. There was death on every side of him, in every breath he drew. He found what he went for, the antidote to the bite of the death's-head spider. Henceforth life in those latitudes will be robbed of one of its terrors. What a man!"

"It is a pity that we could not have heard him at the Royal Society," Mary said, with a little yawn—they had been keeping late hours. "If it had been a day or two earlier!"

"But I am going," said Lady Agatha. "Why, Mary, it is only to alter our arrangements by a day. Hazels—the dear place—will keep for a day longer."



CHAPTER XII

HER LADYSHIP

At Hazels Mary found her duties more onerous than they had been in town. It was delightful to see Lady Agatha among her own people. She had made life easier for them. Mary marvelled at the prettiness of the red-brick farmhouses, with roses and honeysuckle to their eaves. She could never get over the feeling that it was only a picture. They would walk or drive to them, and the farmer's wife would come out and beg her Ladyship to come in for a glass of cowslip wine; and she and Mary would go in to a rather dark parlour—to be sure, the windows were smothered in jessamine and roses and honeysuckle—and sit down in chairs covered in flowery chintz, and sip the fragrant wine and eat the home-made cake, while the topics of interest between landlord and tenant were discussed. Then the farmer would come in himself, hat in hand, and his eyes would light up at the sight of the visitor, and there would be more pleasant homely talk of cattle and crops, and the harvest and the plans for the autumn sowing, and the state of fairs and markets.

There was Nuthatch Village, which seemed to have stepped out of Morland's pictures. It was all so pretty and peaceful, with its red gabled cottages sending up their blue spirals of smoke into the overhanging boughs of great trees. Mary cried out in delight at the quaint dormers, with their diamond panes, at the wooden fronts, at the gardens chockfull of the gayest and most old-fashioned flowers.

"As for prettiness," said Lady Agatha, "it isn't a patch on Highercombe, a mile away, and, what is more, I've done more than anyone else to spoil its prettiness. I've filled in the pond and driven the swan and the water-hen to other haunts. I've given them a new water-supply and done away with the most picturesque pump, which was sunk in 1770 by Dame Elizabeth Chenevix. I've put new grates and new floors into the houses, and I've seen to it that all windows open and shut. The pity of it is that I can't compel them to make use of their privilege of opening. Also, I've introduced cowls on the chimneys. My friend, Lionel Armytage, the painter, lifted his hands in horror at my doings. I'd have liked to get at the chimneys, but I'd have had to pull down every cottage in the place to rectify them. Oh, I've spoilt Nuthatch, there's not a doubt of it. You must see Highercombe."

"The children seem healthy," Mary said thoughtfully, "and the old people walk straighter than one sees them often."

"Ah, yes, that is it." Lady Agatha's face flushed and lit up. "I've made it healthy for them. Highercombe is a painted lie—a pest-house, a charnel-house, full of unwholesome miasmas from its pretty green, its pond covered with water-lilies. Death lurks in that pond. There is bad drainage and bad water; the damp oozes through the old brick floors of the houses. The whole place is as deadly in its way as those West African jungles of which Mr. Jardine told us."

They were to see Mr. Jardine later. At present he was on a round of visiting at the houses of the great. The names of the people who had elected to do honour to Paul Jardine would have been a list of pretty well the most illustrious persons in the kingdom. When Lady Agatha had suggested to him that he might give a week to Hazels before the summer was done, he had been eager about it, had even suggested dropping some of his other engagements. But that she would not hear of. She seemed to take an odd pride and pleasure in the way he had conquered the world best worth conquering.

"What!" she had said. "Drop Sir Richard Greville and Lord Overbury! Not for worlds! You may find it dull. Sir Richard lives the life of a hermit, and you won't get anything fit to eat at Lord Overbury's. He never knows what he's eating, and his cook has long given up trying to do credit to herself. I believe that only for his dining-out he'd be starved. Even as it is, he's been known to take mustard with his soup and red-currant jelly with his cheese. Still—he's Lord Overbury!"

They led a very quiet life at Hazels, seeing hardly anyone. Lady Agatha had declared that she was going to make up for her rackety life in town, as well as to prepare for the winter. She had looked as fresh as a rose through all the racketing, and when she talked about the need for rest she had smiled.

As a matter of fact, her energy was too overflowing to permit of her resting as other folk rested. A change of occupation was about as much as one could hope for. And now she was restless as she had not been before, for, energetic as she had always been, she had never driven others. Indeed, many people had found absolute restfulness in her Ladyship's big, wholesome presence.

"The life in town has only stimulated me, Mary," she confessed; "just stimulated me and excited my brain. I must work it off somehow. Let us begin at the novel to-morrow."

They began at the novel. Lady Agatha dictated it, and Mary took it down in short-hand. They worked out of doors. Mary had her seat under the boughs of a splendid chestnut tree on a little green lawn. The lawn was at the side of the house, not over-looked, enclosed on three sides by a splendid yew hedge. The dogs would lie at Mary's feet. There were Roy the St. Bernard, and Brian the bull-dog, a toy Pomeranian, and a little Chow. The dogs always stayed at Hazels. "If I took them up to town," Lady Agatha said, "they would see more of me, to be sure, but then they would always be losing me, for, of course, I couldn't take them out in town. And they always know I'll come back—they're so wise. The parting is dreadful, but they know I'll come back."

Mary sometimes wondered how her Ladyship had found time to think out her novel. For it seemed all ready and prepared in her mind. She would sweep up and down the grass while she dictated. Mary used to say that it meant a ten-mile walk of a morning. The train of her white morning-dress lopped the daisies in their places; the incessant passage of her feet made a track in the grass. Sometimes she would pass out of her secretary's hearing and have to be recalled by Mary's laughing voice of remonstrance.

"Am I afflicting you, Mary?" she asked on one of these occasions. "Am I overwhelming you? It's a horrible flood, isn't it?"

"You are very fluent," Mary answered, looking down at the queer little dots and spirals on her paper. "I daresay we'll have to prune it before it's printed. But it is a good fluency, a rich fluency. To me it is irresistible—like a spring freshet, like the sap rushing madly through all the veins of spring."

"Ah, you feel it?—you feel it like that, Mary? I feel it so myself; I riot in it."

"It will have no sense of effort—it is vital. I hope we shall be able to keep it up."

"Why not, O Cassandra?"

She stood with one hand on the back of Mary's chair, and looked up into the tree.

"The book should have been written in spring," she went on. "I feel the spring in my blood. Why should I, Mary, now when it is full summer, and the trees are dark?"

"I don't know, unless that you were so busy in spring that you had not time to enjoy it. Come, let us get on; perhaps presently you will flag. We must get the book done before anyone comes to interrupt us."

"Never was there such a willing co-worker. You mustn't overdo it, Mary. How many words did I dictate to you yesterday?"

"Six thousand."

"And you gave them to me typewritten this morning."

"I wanted to see how they looked in type. It is all right, Agatha. Even you cannot go on for long, dictating six thousand words a day. We must take the tide at the flow."

"Afterwards I shall do a play—after I have given you a rest."

"More kingdoms to conquer," Mary laughed. "There is only one person like you—the Kaiser."

"I have an immense admiration for him."

Mrs. Morres meanwhile sat and smiled to herself. She had given up the crochet for point-lace, which, as it had more intricate stitches, necessitated the more care. Sometimes she knitted and read with a book in her lap. But when she was not reading, she smiled quietly to herself. It was a curious smile, half-satisfied as one whose prognostications have come true, half-dissatisfied as though there was no great cause for congratulation.

Once Mary was curious enough to ask her why she smiled. Lady Agatha at the piano was playing Wagner like a professional musician. Mrs. Morres's smile grew more inscrutable.

"It amuses me," she said, talking loudly, so that her words might reach Mary through the storm of the music, "to find that Agatha is just a woman, after all. It amuses me—and yet—it had been happier for you and me if she had contented herself with the unrealities of life a little longer."

Mary did not understand at the moment. She began to understand a little later when Mr. Jardine came. The novel, after all, had not been finished. For the last week or so before the visitor arrived her Ladyship had apparently lost interest in it.

"My brain has dried up, Mary," she said. "I should only spoil it if I went on. Put it away in a drawer, and when I feel like it we can go on again. You want a rest. I've over-tired you."

"I felt I couldn't rest till it was done," Mary said, with a little sigh. "I wanted to know what became of them all. And it is such an interesting point. Tell me, does Clotilde marry Mark, after all?"

"How should I know? I have nothing to do with what she does. Clotilde knows her own mind. I do not. Wait till we get back to it."

"Ah! you should finish it—you should finish it. You'll never get that young green world in it again. It was an inspiration. We should have held on to it like Jacob to the angel's robe."

But for the time Lady Agatha's literary energy was exhausted.

"I daresay there's a deal of fustian in it. There's sure to be," she said. "I don't think anything could be really good that was produced with so little pain. I daresay I'll be for tearing it up, so you'd better lock it away. Do you feel equal to walking ten miles? If not, get your bicycle and I'll walk beside you. I've been cramped up too long."

This time it was a mood of physical restlessness. She walked and rode and went out golfing, and played tennis, and rowed on the river, and did a thousand things, while Mrs. Morres made her delicate wheels and trefoils, and smiled a more Sibylline smile than ever.

At last he came. When the sound of his footstep and of his voice reached them where they stood in the drawing-room awaiting him, her Ladyship turned to Mary, and her face was full of an immense relief.

"I didn't really believe he'd come," she said. "I've been feeling quite sure that something would occur to prevent his coming."

"The weeks have been endless," Paul Jardine said, coming in and taking her Ladyship's two hands. "How could you put me off till September? I've had a heavy time. I don't like being made much of by other folk, so I am going out again after Christmas."

Then, to be sure, Mary knew. The pair leaped to each other as though they had been two halves of one whole separated long ago, and now drawn together in a magnetic rush. Mary had always known that when Lady Agatha attracted she attracted irresistibly; there was no half-way, no haltings, no looking back possible.

"We are out of it, Mary, we two," Mrs. Morres said, and the smile had become a trifle weak and wavering. "What do you suppose is going to become of us? Hazels is a pleasant place, and there has always been something of assurance and comfort about Agatha. I had a hard life, my dear, before I came here. Yet what would she do with us? She can't very well take us out to Africa. I, at least, should not know what to do in those places."

It was a wooing that was not long a-doing. Her Ladyship and Mr. Jardine came in one evening in time for afternoon tea. The days were closing in by this time, and a fire was welcome. There had been rain, and the fire sparkled on her Ladyship's black curls and her eyelashes as she stood by the fire, taking off the long cloak in which she wrapped herself when she went out walking in bad weather. Her eyes were at once bright and shy.

"Congratulate me," she said. "He has consented to take me with him. He held out for a long time, but I was determined to go. As though I should take the chances!"

"It is I who am to be congratulated," said Paul Jardine, and the happiness in his voice thrilled his listeners. "Of course, I wouldn't have listened to her if she wasn't so splendidly strong. It will be an odd place for a honeymoon. Do you think I ought not to have consented to take her, Mrs. Morres?"

"For how long?"

Mrs. Morres's voice shook. All the Sibylline quality was gone from it now.

"For a year. I must fulfil my engagements. Afterwards I must do my best for them over here. I never thought that I could do as I would as a married man. Do you think I ought not to have consented?"

"She would have gone without your consent."

Lady Agatha came over and put a hand on her shoulder, a kind, caressing hand.

"You are quite right," she said. "Oh, he has wriggled, but it had to be. It had to be, from the first minute we met."

"I knew it."

"You did, you wise woman. And you will keep house for me when I am gone? You will take care of the dogs for me? You will oscillate between Hazels and town? You will keep the places ready against our return? You are never to leave us."

Mrs. Morres's eyes overflowed.

"My dear," she said, "it would have broken my heart to have left you. And Mary—what is to become of Mary?"

"I have a plan for Mary, unless she will stay here with you."

"I must earn my bread," said Mary.

"For all the bread you eat, I eat four times as much as you. Still, you have talents to be used for the many, as Sir Michael Auberon said. I have no right to keep you from them. You will talk to Robin Drummond about that. He is starting a bureau for purposes of organisation amongst the women. He has had his eye on you. I told him he could not have you. Now, it will fill a gap, perhaps. I shall need you again."

"The funny thing," said Mrs. Morres, and the amusement had come back in her voice—"is that Colonel St. Leger won't like your marriage at all. He has always wanted you to be married. But now—this African marriage—he will talk about it as though you were marrying a man of colour, Agatha, my dear. How his eyebrows will go out!"

"To think," said Mary, with a little sigh, "that the novel is unfinished, after all."

"A novel is so much more interesting," said Lady Agatha, "when you live it, Mary. Besides, it has troubled me that if I published the novel I must come into competition with the legitimate workers. They should form a Trades' Union against us, women of leisure and money, to keep us from poaching on their preserves. They really should. My dears, I have a presentiment that the novel never will be finished."



CHAPTER XIII

THE HEART OF A FATHER

Oddly enough, seeing the General's feeling towards his sister-in-law, seeing, too, that he and Nelly had hardly ever had a thought or taste that was not in common, a certain affection grew up on Nelly's part for Lady Drummond. An acute observer would have said that the affection had something conscience-stricken about it. There were times when Nelly's eyes asked pardon of the Dowager for some offence committed against her, and this usually happened when the Dowager was making much of her, as of a daughter-in-law who would be dearly welcome when the time came. Something of the love Lady Drummond had borne for her husband had passed on to his niece. She was immensely proud, in her secret heart, of the deeds of the Drummonds. Despite her hectoring ways, she looked up to and admired the General, although he had been too simple to discern the fact and profit by it. Robin's divergence from his father's ways was, secretly, an acute disappointment to her. When she caressed Nelly with a warmth which none of her friends would have credited her with possessing, there was compunction with the tenderness. The child ought to have had the delight of marrying a soldier, a hero whom she could adore, as she herself had adored her Gerald. When she pressed the golden head to her angular bosom she was asking the girl's pardon for her son's shortcomings.

"I shall have heroic grandchildren," she said to herself. "Although Robin is a throwback to the Quaker, the grandsons of Gerald and Denis Drummond must be fighting men."

She pondered long over those grandchildren, and derived a grim pleasure from the thought of them. She even spoke of them to the General, when Nelly was out of hearing.

"It was a disappointment to both of us that Robin is a man of peace," she said, acknowledging the fact for the first time. "Not but that he is a good boy—a very good boy. The fighting strain will recur in the next generation. We shall have soldiers among our grandchildren."

"Grandchildren!" growled the General, turning very crimson in the face. "I call it indelicate to discuss such subjects. As for Nelly's marrying, why, she's only a child. I should feel very little obliged to the man who would want to take her from me at her age."

"Nelly is nineteen," the Dowager reminded him, "and the marriage can't be delayed much longer. It ought to be a source of satisfaction to us that the young people are so pleased with the arrangement. I know that Robin has never thought of anyone but his cousin, and I am sure it is just the same with the dear child."

The General grew red again—not this time with anger, but rather as though the Dowager's words had stirred some sense of guilt in his breast. He muttered something grumpily, and, discovering that his favourite pipe must have been left in his own den, he escaped from Lady Drummond for a while.

As a matter of fact, his mind had been plotting mischief. He did not care so much that it was against the Dowager, if it had not been that the memory of his dead brother came in to complicate things. And, after all, his plotting seemed to have come to naught. He had gone so far as to invite young Langrishe to dinner for a specific occasion, without result. The young man had written to say that he had effected his exchange into the —th Madras Light Infantry, and would be so very much occupied up to the time of his departure that he feared dining out was out of the question.

The General had known he was going away. He had known it before he received that letter, before he had seen it in the Gazette. He had known from the day the regiment had gone by without Captain Langrishe in his wonted place. He had felt with his arm about his girl's shoulders the sudden shock that had passed through her. So she had not known either. He had not prepared her. There was not an understanding between them. He saluted as light-heartedly as ever to all appearance, but he did not look at Nelly. Nor did he make any remark on the change in the regiment.

After that day the passing of his "boys" ceased to be the old joy to him. Something was gone out of the ceremonial. It took all his esprit de corps to pretend to himself as well as to others that he felt no difference. He felt the limpness and dejection in Nelly. He saw that her roses had faded, that she walked without the old joyous spring. He heard her no longer talking to the dogs, trilling to the canary. It was January now, and raw, cold weather. It seemed as though the sunshine had vanished from the house for good. The General had been wont to say that the cheerfulness of his house was within it, not without it. He had come home from London fog and rain with a happy sense of its bright fires and spaciousness, its carpets and furniture, not so new that a muddy foot or a stray shower of tobacco-ash was a thing to be feared—old friends every one of them. The love and loyalty within his doors were something that came out to welcome the General's home-coming like a sudden firelight streaming out into the black night.