"I wonder you can endure the man in the same house with you," he said.

She made no answer except to smile, and he spoke no more of Quisante. To him it seemed that his enemy passed then and there from thought, as his name disappeared from the conversation. But his own words had raised difficulties and turned the smooth path rough. They had renewed something of the rebellious fit and given fresh life to the disorderly fancies. They had roused her ready apprehensive pride, her swift resentment at the idea of having her friends or her associates chosen for her. She would have said most sincerely then that Marchmont was far more to her in her heart than Quisante was or could be, but neither from Marchmont nor from any man would she take orders to drop Quisante. While he opened his tale of love, her fingers played with the invitation to Ashwood and her eyes rested on Lady Richard's despairing declaration of the inevitable—"He's coming!"

He almost won her; his soft "Can you love me?" went very near her heart. She wanted to answer "Yes" and felt sure that it would be in reality a true response, and that happiness would wait on and reward the decisive word. But she was held back by an unconquerable indecision, a refusal (as it seemed) of her whole being to be committed to the pledge. She had not resented the confidence of his wooing—she had given him some cause to be confident; she pitied and even hated the distress into which her doubt threw him. Yet she could do no more than say "I don't know yet." He moved away from her.

"You'd better go away and leave me altogether," she said.

"I won't do that. I can't."

"I can say nothing else—I don't know yet. You must give me time."

"Ah, you mean 'yes'!" His voice grew assured again and joyful.

She weighed the words in which she answered him.

"No. If I meant yes, I'd say it. I wouldn't shilly-shally. I simply don't know yet."

He left her and paced the length of the room, frowning. Her hesitation puzzled him; he failed to trace its origin and fretted against a barrier that he felt but could not see. She sat silent, looking at him in a distressed fashion and restlessly fingering Lady Richard's invitation. She was no less troubled than he and almost as puzzled; for the feeling that held her back even while she wanted to go forward was vague, formless, empty of anything definite enough to lay hold of and bring forward as the plea that justified her wavering.

"I ought to say no, since I can't say yes. This isn't fair to you," she murmured.

He protested that anything was better than no, and his protest was manifestly eager and sincere; but a touch of resentment could not be kept out of his voice. She should have a reason to give him, something he could combat, disprove, or ridicule; she gave him no opening, he could not answer an objection that she would not formulate. He pressed this on her and she made no attempt to defend herself, merely repeating that she could not say yes now.

"I've lost you, I suppose, and no doubt I shall be very sorry," she said.

At that he came up to her again.

"You haven't lost me and you never will," he said. "I'll come to you again before long. I think you're strange to-day, not quite yourself, not quite the old May. It's as if something had got between us. Well, I'll wait till it gets out of the way again."

Not so much his words as his voice and his eyes told her of a love deeper in him and stronger than she had given him credit for; he lived so much in repression and exercised so careful a guard over any display of feeling. She liked the repression no less than the feeling and was again drawn towards him.

"I wish I could," she murmured. "Honestly, I wish I could."

He pressed her no more; if he had, she might possibly at last have given a reluctant assent. That he would not have, even had it been in his power to gain it.

"I'll come back—after the holidays," he said.

She looked up and met his glance.

"Yes, after the holidays," she repeated absently.

"You go to Ashwood?"

There was a pause before she answered. It came into her mind suddenly that it would have been strange to go to Ashwood as Weston Marchmont's promised wife. Why she could not quite tell; perhaps because such a position would set her very much outside of all that was being thought and talked of there, indeed in a quasi-antagonism to it. Anyhow the position would make her feel quite differently towards it all.

"Yes," she answered at last, and mustered a laugh as she added, "I'm not so particular as you, you know. And Amy wants me."

"I wish you always did what people want you to," said he, smiling.

Their parting was in this lighter vein, although on his side still tender and on hers penitent. In both was a consciousness of not understanding, of being somehow apart, of an inexplicable difficulty in taking one another's point of view. The solution of sympathy, the break that May had talked of, made itself apparent again. In spite of self-reproaches, her strongest feeling, when she was left alone, was of joy that her freedom still was hers.



CHAPTER V.

WHIMSY-WHAMSIES.

At Ashwood the sun was sinking after a bright April afternoon. Mrs. Baxter sat in a chair on the lawn and discoursed wisdom to May Gaston and Morewood. The rest of the party had gone for a walk to the top of what Lady Richard called "Duty Hill"; it was the excursion obligatory on all guests.

"The real reason," remarked Mrs. Baxter, who was making a garment—she was under spiritual contract to make two a month—"why the Dean hasn't risen higher is because he always has some whimsy-whamsy in his head."

"What are they? I never have 'em," said Morewood, relighting his pipe.

"You never have anything else," said Mrs. Baxter in a brief but sufficient aside. "And, my dear," she continued to May, "what you want in a bishop is reliability."

"The only thing I want in a bishop is absence," grunted Morewood.

"Reliability?" murmured May, half assenting, half questioning.

"Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Baxter, biting her thread. "Reliability. I shall finish this petticoat to-morrow unless I have to drive with Lady Richard. You don't want him to be original, or to do much, except his confirmations and so on, of course; but you do want to be sure that he won't fly out at something or somebody. Dan got a reputation for not being quite reliable. I don't know how, because I haven't time to go into his notions. But there it was. Somebody told the Prime Minister and he crossed out Dan's name and put in John Wentworth's."

Morewood yawned obtrusively. "What a shame!" May murmured at random.

"It's just the same with a husband," Mrs. Baxter observed.

"Only it's rather more difficult to scratch out his name and put in John Wentworth's," Morewood suggested.

May laughed. "But anyhow the Dean's a good husband, isn't he, Mrs. Baxter?"

"Oh, yes, my dear. The same men very seldom fly out over notions and over women."

Morewood raised himself to a sitting posture and observed solemnly,

"The whole history of science, art, and literature contradicts that last observation."

Mrs. Baxter looked at him for a brief moment and went on with the petticoat. May interpreted her look.

"So much the worse for the whole history!" she laughed. But a moment later she went on, "I think I rather like whimsy-whamsies, though."

"I should think you did," said Morewood.

"A man ought to have a few," May suggested.

"A sort of trimming to the leg of mutton? Only take care the mutton's there!"

"Oh, not the mustard without the beef!" cried May.

"Now there's Canon Grinling," said Mrs. Baxter. "That's the man I admire."

"Pray tell us about him," urged Morewood.

"He's content to preach in his turn and work his parish."

"How much better than working his head!"

"And he'll be a bishop—at least."

"Is there anything worse?" growled Morewood disconsolately.

Mrs. Baxter never became angry with him; she turned a fresh side of the petticoat, smiled sedately, and went on with her work.

"We had whimsy-whamsies last night, hadn't we?" asked May.

"I went to bed," said Morewood.

"But Jenkins in the next parish, who has eight children, must take up with the Salvation Army. So there's an end of him," continued Mrs. Baxter. "Not that I pity him—only her."

"They talked till two. I sat up, looking plainer and plainer every minute."

"Who was talking?"

"Oh, the Dean and Dick." She paused and added, "And later on Mr. Quisante."

"Quisante grows more and more anomalous every day. It's monstrous of a man to defy one's power of judgment as he does."

"Does he defy yours?"

"Absolutely. And I hate it."

"I rather like it. You know so well what most people are like in half-an-hour."

"I'm splendidly forward," remarked Mrs. Baxter, "This isn't an April one. I've done them, and this is my first May."

It was impossible not to applaud and sympathise, for it was no later than the 27th of April. The friendly task performed, Morewood went on,

"You're friends again, aren't you?"

"Well, partly. He spoke to me last night for almost the first time."

"What was the quarrel?"

"I told him his manners were bad; and he proved how right I was by getting into a temper." She was silent a moment. Morewood saw her smile and then frown in apparent vexation. Then she looked down at him suddenly and said, "But then—if you'd heard him last night!"

"There it is again!" said Morewood. "That's what annoys me so. In common with most of mankind, I like to be able to label a man and put him in his compartment."

"That's just what you can't do with Mr. Quisante."

A loud merry boyish laugh sounded from the shrubbery behind him. Then Lady Richard came out, attended by young Fred Wentworth, son of that John whose name had been put in when the Dean's was scratched out owing to a suspicion of whimsy-whamsies. Fred was a lively fellow, whose trinity of occupations consisted of shooting, polo, and flirting; they are set down in his own order of merit; by profession he was a soldier, and just now he adored Lady Richard hopelessly; he was tall, handsome, and no more steady than the sons of ordinary men.

"We gave them the slip beautifully, didn't we?" he was asking in exultation. "Think they're still on the top of the hill, jawing, Lady Richard?"

"I don't mind how long they stay there," she answered, as she came across to the group on the lawn, a dainty youthful little figure, in her white frock and straw hat. "And how have you three been amusing yourselves?" she inquired. "I declare my head aches, Fred," she complained. "Now is the Church to swallow the State, or the other way round, or are they to swallow one another, or what?"

"Such a fine day too!" observed Mrs. Baxter. Morewood burst into a laugh.

"To waste it on whimsy-whamsies!" cried May, joining in his mirth.

She looked so handsome in her merriment that Fred's eyes dwelt on her for a moment, a new notion showing in their pleasant expanse of blue simplicity. But loyalty's the thing—and a pleasant thing too when Lady Richard stood for it. Besides May Gaston was rather serious as a rule and given to asking questions; she might be able to flirt though; she just might—if there had happened to be anybody for her to flirt with; he pitied her a little because there was not.

"Mrs. Baxter," said Morewood suddenly, "have you ever thought what would happen if you stopped making petticoats?" She did not answer. "It illustrates," he went on, "the absurd importance we attach to ourselves. The race would get itself clothed somehow, even as Church and State will go on, although they fail to settle that question of the swallowing on the top of the hill."

May alone was listening. "Don't you think it all makes any difference?" she asked in a low voice.

"Not enough to stop enjoying one's self about, or to take any risks for."

"I disbelieve you with my whole heart and soul; and, what's more, you don't believe yourself," she said. "To take risks is what we were given life for, I believe."

"Whimsy-whamsies!" he jeered, jerking his thumb warningly towards Mrs. Baxter.

To May it seemed curious how an utter absence of speculation and an honest engrossment in everyday cares, hopes, and duties appeared to produce an attitude of mind similar in many ways to that caused by an extensive survey of thought and a careful detachment of spirit from the pursuits of the vulgar. The expression was different; the man who was now so much in her thoughts, Weston Marchmont, would not have denounced whimsy-whamsies. He would have claimed an open mind and protested that he was ready to entertain every notion on its merits. But temper and taste led to the same end as ignorance and simplicity; the philosopher and the housewife met on a common ground of disapproval and disdain. Mrs. Baxter kept her house and made petticoats. Marchmont read his books, mixed with his world, and did his share in his obvious duty of governing the country. Misty dreams, great cloudy visions, vague ideals, were forsworn of both; they were all whimsy-whamsies, the hardly excusable occupation of an idle day in the country. Was such a coincidence of opinion conclusive? Perhaps. But then, as she had hinted to Morewood, what of life? Was it not conclusive as to the merits of that also? Suddenly Fred Wentworth's voice broke across her meditation.

"If you asked me what I wanted," he said in a tone of great seriousness, "upon my honour I don't know what I should say, except another pony." He paused and added, "A real good 'un, you know, Lady Richard."

You might trust in God in an almost Quietist fashion (nothing less was at the bottom of Mrs. Baxter's homely serenity), you might exhaust philosophy and the researches of the wise, or you might merely be in excellent health and spirits. Any of these three seemed enough to exclude that painful reaching out to dim unlikely possibilities which must in her mind henceforward be nicknamed whimsy-whamsies. But to May's temper the question about life came up again. She swayed between the opposing sides, as she had swayed between yes and no when Marchmont challenged her with his love.

Lady Richard's verdict about Quisante—she gave it with an air of laboured reasonableness—was that he proved worse on the whole than even she had anticipated. This pessimistic view was due in part to the constant and wearing difficulty of getting Fred Wentworth to be civil to him; yet May Gaston was half-inclined to fall in with it. The attitude of offence which he had at first maintained towards her was marked by peevishness, not by dignity, and when it was relaxed his old excessive politeness revived in full force. He had few 'moments' either; and the one reported to her with enthusiasm by Dick Benyon took place on Duty Hill while she was gossiping on the lawn. Disappointed in the half-conscious anticipation which had brought her to Ashwood, she began to veer towards the obvious, towards safety, and towards Weston Marchmont. He had allowed himself one letter, not urging her, but very gracefully and feelingly expressed. As she walked through the village, the telegraph-office tempted her; her life could be settled for sixpence, and there would be no need of further thought or trouble. She was again held back by a rather impalpable influence, by a vague unwillingness to cut herself off (as she would by such a step) from the mental stir which, beneath the apparent quiet of country-house life, permeated Ashwood. The stir was there, though it defied definition; it was not due to Dick or the Dean, though they shared in it; it was the mark of Quisante's presence, the atmosphere he carried with him. She recognised this with a mixture of feelings; she was ashamed to dwell on his small faults in face of such a thing; she was afraid to find how strong his attraction grew in spite of the intolerable drawbacks. Wavering again, she could not decide whether his faults were fatal defects or trifling foibles.

She saw that the Dean shared her doubts and her puzzle. He had a little trick, an involuntary and unconscious shake of the head which indicated, as her study of it told her, not a mere difference of opinion, but a sort of moral distaste for what was said; it reminded her of a dog shaking his coat to get rid of a splash of dirty water. She came to watch for it when Alexander Quisante was talking, and to find that it agreed wonderfully well with the invisible movements of her own mind; it came when the man was petty, or facetious on untimely occasions, or when he betrayed blindness to the finer shades of right and wrong. But for all this the Dean did not give up Quisante; for all this he and Dick Benyon clung to their scheme and to the man who was to carry it out. In her urgent desire for guidance she took the Dean for a walk and tried to draw out his innermost opinions. He showed some surprise at her interest.

"He's the last man I should have thought you'd care to know about, Lady May," he said.

"That can be only because you think me stupid," she retorted, smiling.

"No! But I thought you'd be stopped in limine—on the threshold, you know."

"I see the threshold; and, yes, I don't like it. But tell me about the house too."

"I've not seen it all," smiled the Dean. "Well, to drop our metaphor, I think Mr. Quisante has a wonderfully acute intellect."

"Oh, yes, yes."

"And hardly a wonderfully, but a rather noticeably, blunt conscience. Many men have, you'll say, I know. But most of the men we meet have substitutes."

"Substitutes for conscience?" May laughed reprovingly at her companion.

"Taste, tradition, the rules of society, what young men call 'good form.'"

"Ah, yes. And he hasn't?"

"His bringing up hasn't given them to him. He might learn them."

"Who from?"

"One would have hoped from our host, but I see no signs of it." The Dean paused, shaking his head "A woman might teach him." He paused again before adding with emphasis, "But I should be very sorry for her."

"Why?" The brief question was asked with averted eyes.

"Because the only woman who could do it must be the sort of woman who—whose teeth would be set on edge by him every day till the process—the quite uncertain process—was complete."

"Yes, she'd have to be that," murmured May Gaston.

"On the whole I think she'd have an unhappy life, and very likely fail. But I also think that it would be the only way." His round face broke again into its cheerful smile. "We shall have to make the best of him as he is, Lady May," he ended. "Heaven forbid that I should encourage any woman to the task!"

"I certainly don't think you seem likely to," she said with a laugh. "It seems to come to this: his manners are bad and his morals are worse."

"Yes, I think so."

"But, as Dick Benyon would say, so were Napoleon's."

"Exactly, and, as we know, Napoleon's wife was not to be envied."

May Gaston was silent for a moment; then she said meditatively, "Oh, don't you think so?", and fell again into a long silence. The Dean did not break it; his thoughts had wandered from the hypothetical lady who was to redeem Quisante to the realities of the great Crusade.

There seemed to May something a little inhuman in the Dean's attitude, and indeed in the way in which everybody at Ashwood regarded Quisante. Not even Dick Benyon was altogether free from this reproach, in spite of his enthusiasm and his resulting blindness to Quisante's lesser, but not less galling, faults. Not even to Dick was he a real friend; none of them took him or offered to take him into their inner lives, or allowed him to share their deepest sympathies. Perhaps this was only to treat him as he deserved to be treated; if he asked nothing but a mutual usefulness and accommodation, that they should use him and he should rise by serving them, neither party was deceived and neither had any cause to complain. But if after all the man was like most men, if his chilly childhood and his lonely youth had left him with any desire for unreserved companionship, for true friendship, or for love, then to acquiesce in his bad manners and his worse morals, to be content (as the Dean said) to make the best of him—out of him would have been a more sincere form of expression—as he was, seemed in some sort cruelty; it was like growing rich out of the skill of your craftsmen and yet taking no interest in their happiness or welfare. It was to use him only as a means, and to be content in turn to be to him only a means; such a relative position excluded true human intercourse, and, it appeared to May, must intensify the faults from which it arose. Even here, in this house, Quisante was almost a stranger; the rest were easy with one another, their presence was natural and came of itself; he alone was there for a purpose, came from outside, and required to be accounted for. If the talk with the Dean confirmed apprehensions already existing, on the other hand it raised a new force of sympathy and a fresh impulse to kindness. But the sympathy and the apprehensions could make no treaty; fierce war waged between them.

That night the turn of events served Quisante. He seemed ill and tired, yet he had flashes of brilliancy. Again it was made plain that, all said and done, his was the master mind there; even Lady Richard had to listen and Fred Wentworth to wonder unwillingly where the fellow got his notions. After dinner he talked to them, and they gave him all their ears until he chose to cease and sank back wearied in his chair. But then came the contrast. The Dean went to the library, Lady Richard strolled out of doors with Fred, Mrs. Baxter withdrew into seclusion with a novel and a petticoat, Dick Benyon asked May to walk in the garden with him, and when she refused went off to play billiards with Morewood. May had pleaded letters to write and sat down to the task. The man who a little while ago had been the centre of attention was left alone. He wandered about idly for a few moments, then dropped into a chair, seeming too tired to read, looking fretful, listless, solitary and sad. She watched him furtively for some time from behind the tall sides of the old-fashioned escritoire; he sat very still, stretched out, frowning, pale. Suddenly she rose and crossed the room.

"It's too much trouble to write letters," she said. "Are you inclined for a stroll, Mr. Quisante?"

He sprang up, a sudden gleam darting into his eyes. She was afraid he would make some ornate speech, but perhaps he was startled into simplicity, perhaps only at a loss; he stammered out no more than "Thanks, very much," and followed her through the doorway on to the gravel-walk. For a little while she did not speak, then she said,

"It's good of you to be friends with me again. I was very impertinent that night after your speech. I don't know what made me do it."

He did not answer, and she turned to find his eyes fixed intently on her face.

"We are friends again, aren't we?" she asked rather nervously; she knew that she risked a renewal of the flirtation, and if it were again what it had been her friendship could scarcely survive the trial. "I shouldn't have said it," she went on, "if I hadn't—I mean, if your speech hadn't seemed so great to me. But you forgive me, don't you?"

"Oh yes, Lady May. I know pretty well what you think of me." His lips shut obstinately for a moment. "But I shall go my way and do my work all the same—good manners or bad, you know."

"Those are very bad ones," she said, with a little laugh. Then she grew grave and went on imploringly, "Don't take it like that. You talk as if we—I don't mean myself, I mean all of us—were enemies, people you had to fight and beat. Don't think of us like that. We want to be your friends, indeed we do."

"For whom are you speaking?" he asked in a low hard voice.

She glanced at him. Had he divined the thought which the Dean's talk had put into her head? Did he feel himself a mere tool, always an outsider, in the end friendless? If he discerned this truth, no words of hers could throw his keen-scented mind off the track. She fell back on simple honesty, on the strength of a personal assurance and a personal appeal.

"At any rate I speak for myself," she said. "I can answer for myself. I want to be friends."

"In spite of my manners?" He was bitter and defiant still.

"They grow worse every minute; and your morals are no better, I'm told."

"I daresay not," said Quisante with a short laugh.

"Oh, say you won't be friends, if you don't want to! Be simple. There, I say it again. Be simple."

Lady Richard's merry laugh rang through the garden, and a brusque "Damn it!" of Morewood's floated out from the open window of the billiard-room. There was an odd contrast to this cheerful levity in the man's pale drawn face as he looked into May Gaston's eyes.

"Do you really mean what you say?" he asked. "Or are you only trying to be kind, to put me at my ease?"

"It's nobody's fault but your own that you're not always at your ease," she replied. The rest she let pass; when she asked him to walk with her she had only been trying to be kind, and she had been fearful of what her kindness might entail on her. But things went well; he was not flirting and he was not acting; his manners, if still bad, were just now at least not borrowed, they were home-grown.

"I am at my ease," he told her. "At least, I was till——" He hesitated, and then went on slowly, "Don't you suppose I've been thinking about what you said?"

"I hope not; it wasn't worth it."

"It was. But how can I change?" His voice had a touch of despair as well as of defiance. "I don't see what you mean; I don't feel what you mean. Yes, and you talk of morals too. Well, don't I know that every now and then I—I don't see those either?" He paused. "A man must get on as well as he can with what he's got," he resumed. "If he's only got one eye, he must learn to be sharper than other men in looking round."

They walked on in silence for some way. His pride and his recognition of his defects, his defiance and his pleading for himself, combined to touch her heart, and she could not at the moment speak to him more about them. And to find all that so near the surface, so eager for utterance, ready to break out at the least encouragement, at the first sign of sympathy! For it had not come home to her yet that another might have spoken to him as she had, but found no response and opened the gates to no confidence; she had not guessed what Aunt Maria had about the Empress among women.

"You're ill too," she said.

"No, not for me," he answered. "I'm pretty well for me."

"Are you never really well?"

"My body's not much better than the other things. But I must use that too, as long as it'll last." There was no appeal for pity in his voice; defiance was still uppermost. May felt that she must not let him see that she pitied him, either for his bad body, or his bad manners, or his bad morals, or his want of friends. He thought he had as much to give as to receive. She smiled for a moment. But swift came the question—Was he wrong? But whether he were in fact right or wrong, it was harder to deal with him on the basis of this equality than to stoop to him in the mere friendliness of compassion. The compassion touched him only, to accept the equality was to make admissions about herself.

He was very silent and quiet; this might be due to illness or fatigue. But he was also curiously free from tricks, simple, not exhibiting himself. These were the signs of one of his moments; but what brought about a moment now? A moment needed a great subject, a spur to his imagination, an appeal to his deep emotions, a theme, an ideal. The moments had not seemed to May things that would enter into or have any concern with private life and intimate talks; they belonged to Dick Benyon's dark horse, not to the mere man Alexander Quisante. Or had she a little misunderstood the mere man? The thought crossed her mind that, even if she adopted this conclusion and contrived to come to a better understanding of him, it would be impossible to make the rest of the world, of the world in which she lived and to which she clung, see anything of what she saw. They would laugh if her new position were a passing whim; they would be scornful and angry if it were anything more.

Suddenly Quisante spoke. What he said was not free from consciousness of self, from that perpetual presence of self to self which is common enough in men of great ability and ambition, and yet never ceases to be a flaw; but he said it soberly enough; there were no flourishes.

"You can't be half-friends with me," he said. "I must be taken as I am, good and bad. You must let me alone, or take me for better for worse."

May smiled at the phrase he had happened on and its familiar associations—surely so out of place here. But she followed his meaning and appreciated his seriousness. She could answer him neither by an only half-sincere assurance that she was ready to be entire friends, nor yet by a joking evasion of his point.

"Yes, I see: I expect that is so," she said in a troubled voice; it was so very hard to take him for worse, and it was rather hard to resolve to make no effort at taking him for better. She forced a laugh, as she said, "I'll think about it, Mr. Quisante."

As she spoke, she raised her eyes to his; a low, hardly audible exclamation escaped her lips before she was conscious of it. If ever a man spoke plainly without words what was in his soul, Quisante spoke it then. She could not miss the meaning of his eyes; all unprepared as she was, it came home to her in a minute with a shock of wonder that forbade either pain or pleasure and seemed to leave her numb. Now she saw how truly she, no less than the others, had treated him as an outsider, as a tool, as something to be used, not as one of their own world. For she had never thought of his falling in love with her, and had never considered him in that point of view at all. Yet he had, and here lay the reason why he flirted no more, and why he would have her sympathy only on even terms. Here also, it seemed, was the reason why his tricks were forgotten, why he was simple and direct; here was the incitement to imagination, the ideal, the passion that had power to fire and purge his soul.

"We must go in," she whispered in a shaking voice. "We must go in, Mr. Quisante."



CHAPTER VI.

ON DUTY HILL.

Another week had gone by, and, although nothing very palpable had happened, there was a sort of vague scare in the house-party. It touched everybody, affecting them in different ways according to their characters, but raising in all an indignant protest against a fact hardly credible and a danger scarcely to be named. Not even Mrs. Baxter, entrenched in placidity and petticoats, quite escaped its influence; even Morewood's cynical humour hesitated to play on a situation so unexpected, possibly so serious. Lady Richard's alarm was the most outspoken, and her dismay the most clamorous; yet perhaps in Dick Benyon himself was the strongest fear. For if that did happen which seemed to be happening beneath the incredulous gaze of their eyes, who but he was responsible, to whose account save his could the result be laid? He had brought the man into the circle, into the house, into the knowledge of his friends; but for him Quisante might have been carving a career far away, or have given up any idea of one at all.

More than this, Dick, seeking approval and sympathy, had looked round for open and intelligent souls who would share his interest, his hopes, and his enthusiasm, and on no soul had he spent more pains or built higher anticipations than May Gaston's. She was to sympathise, to share the hopes and to understand the enthusiasm. Had he not asked her to dinner, had he not brought her to the Imperial League banquet, had he not incited Lady Richard to have her at Ashwood? And now she spread this scare through the house; she outran the limits—all the reasonable limits—of interest, she did far more than ever he had asked of her, she cast reflections on his judgment by pushing it to extremes whither it had never been meant to stretch. She had been bidden to watch Alexander Quisante, to admire his great moments, to see a future for him, and to applaud the discerning eye which had seen that future first. But who had bidden her make a friend of the man, take him into the inner circle, treat him as one who belonged to the group of her intimates, to the company of her equals and of those with whom she had grown up? Almost passionately Dick disclaimed the responsibility for this; with no less heat his wife forced it on him; relentlessly the course of events seemed to charge him with it.

What would happen he did not know; none of them at Ashwood professed to know; they refused to forecast the worst. But what had actually happened was that Quisante was undoubtedly in love with May Gaston, and that May Gaston was no less certainly wrapped up in Quisante. The difference of terms was fondly clung to; and indeed she showed no signs of love as love is generally understood; she displayed only an open preference for his society and an engrossed interest in him. It was bad enough; who could tell when it might become worse? "I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you." Allowing for difference of times and customs, that had been the attitude of all towards Quisante; a caste-feeling, almost a race-feeling, dictated it and kept it alive and strong under all superficial alliance and outward friendliness. But May had seen the barrier only to throw it down in a passion of scorn for its narrowness and an impulse of indignation at its cruelty. If she had gone so far, he was bold who dared to say that she would not go farther, or would set a limit to her advance on the path that the rest of them had never trodden.

"At any rate it shan't happen here," said Lady Richard. "I should never be able to look her mother in the face again."

"It won't happen anywhere," Dick protested. "But you can't turn him out, you know."

"I can't unless I absolutely literally do. He won't see that he isn't wanted."

"No; and he may be excused if he thinks he is—by May Gaston at all events."

The subject was one to be discussed between husbands and wives, Dick and Lady Richard, Mrs. Baxter and the Dean, rather than in any more public fashion, but the unexpressed thought pervaded every conversation, and was strongest when the presence of the persons concerned forbade even indirect reference. Once or twice Morewood broke into open comment to Lady Richard; he puzzled her rather, and did not console her at all.

"I know why you object and how silly your grounds are," he said. "It's snobbery in you, you know. Now in me it's good sound sense. Because in the first place, if I were ten years younger, and ten times richer, and rather more of a man, I should like to marry her myself; and in the second place I'm not sure Quisante hasn't forged, or isn't about to forge, a cheque for a million."

"Don't talk about it," shuddered little Lady Richard. "She can't care for him, she can't, you know."

"Certainly not, in the sentimental sense that you women attach to that very weak form of expression."

"And I'm sure there's nothing else to tempt her."

"You'll be laying down what does and doesn't tempt me next."

"I've known her since she was a child."

"There's nothing that produces so many false judgments of people."

Lady Richard was far too prostrate to accept any challenge.

"You do hate it as much as I do, don't you?" she implored.

"Quite," said he with restrained intensity. "But if you ask me, I think she'll do it."

A pause followed. "Fred Wentworth must have been waiting ever so long for me," Lady Richard murmured apologetically, though an apology to Morewood could not soothe Fred. Her thoughts were busy, and a resolve was forming in her mind. "I shall ask Mrs. Baxter to speak to her," she announced at last.

"That'll be amusing if it's nothing else. I should like to be there."

Mrs. Baxter was by no means unwilling to help. She was mother to a large family and had seen all her children creditably married; such matters lay well within the sphere of legitimate feminine activity as she conceived it. Of course the Dean told her she had better leave the thing alone, but it was evident that this was no more than a disclaimer of responsibility in case her efforts did more harm than good.

Mrs. Baxter advanced on approved and traditional lines. She slid into the special topic from a general survey of matrimonial desirability; May did not shy, but seemed ready to listen. Mrs. Baxter ignored the possibility of any serious purpose on May's side and pointed out with motherly gentleness that her impulsive interest in Quisante might possibly be misunderstood by him and give rise to an idea absolutely remote from any which it was May's intention to arouse. Then she would give pain; wouldn't it be better gradually, not roughly or rudely but by slow degrees, to diminish the time she spent with Quisante and the attention she bestowed on him? Mrs. Baxter's remonstrance, if somewhat conventional, yet was artistic in its way.

But May Gaston laughed; it was all very familiar, sounded very old, and was ludicrously wide of the mark. She had not been careless, she had not suffered from the dangerous stupidity of ultra-maidenly blindness, she knew quite well how Quisante felt. Accordingly she would not acquiesce in Mrs. Baxter's diplomatic ignoring of the only material point—how she felt herself. Of course if all Mrs. Baxter meant to convey was her own disapproval of the idea,—well, she conveyed so much. But then nobody needed to be told of that; it was quite obvious and it was not important; it was an insignificant atom in the great inevitable mass of disapproval which any marked liking for Quisante (May shrank from even thinking of stronger terms) must arouse. She had far too much understanding of the disapproval and far too much sympathy with it to underrate the probable extent and depth of it; to a half of herself she was with it, heart and soul; to a half of herself the impulse that drove her towards Quisante was something hardly rational and wholly repulsive. What purpose, then, did Mrs. Baxter's traditional motherliness serve?

There was one person with whom she wished to talk, who might, she thought, help her to understand herself and thus to guide her steps. For every day it became more and more obvious that the matter would have to be faced and ended one way or the other. Quisante was not patient, and he would not be dealt with by way of favour. And she herself was in a turmoil and a contradiction of feeling which she summed up antithetically by declaring that she disliked him more every hour he was there and missed him more every hour he was not; or, to adopt the Dean's metaphor, his presence set her teeth on edge and his absence made her feel as if she had nothing to eat. Morewood might help her; he would at least understand something of how she felt, if she could summon up courage to talk to him; they were old friends.

One afternoon Quisante had been sitting with them on the lawn and, going off to walk with Dick, left them alone together. Quisante had not been in a happy vein; he had been trying to be light and flippant, and gossiping about people; here, where good taste makes the whole difference between what is acceptable and what is odious, was not the field for him. Morewood had growled and May had flinched several times. She sat looking after Quisante with troubled puzzled eyes.

"How funnily people are mixed!" she murmured, more to herself than her companion. Then she turned to him and said with a laugh, "How you hate him, don't you?"

"By all the nature of things you ought to hate him much more."

"Yes," she agreed. "But do you think that's the only way to look at people, any more than it is at books? You like or dislike a novel, perhaps; but you don't like or dislike—oh, what shall I say? Gibbon's Roman Empire. There you admire or don't admire; or rather you study or neglect; because, if you study, you must admire. Don't think me learned; it's only an illustration."

"Gibbon's a duty," said Morewood, "but I'm not clear that Alexander Quisante is."

"Oh, no; exactly the opposite; for me at least."

"Is he then a curriculum?"

"He's partly a curriculum, and partly—I don't know—a taste for strong drink perhaps." She laughed reluctantly, adding, "I'm being absurd, I know."

"In talk or in conduct?"

"Both, Mr. Morewood. I can only see him in metaphors. I once thought of him as a mountain range; that's fine-sounding and dignified, isn't it? But now I'm humbler in my fancies; I think of him as a forest—as the bush, you know, full of wretched underwood that you keep tumbling over, but with splendid trees (I don't know whether there are in the bush, really) and every now and then a beautiful open space or a stately vista."

"From all this riot of your fancy," said Morewood grimly, "one only thing emerges quite plainly."

"Does even one thing?"

"Yes. That you think about Quisante a mighty lot."

"Oh, yes. Of course I do, a mighty lot," she admitted, laughing. "But you aren't very much more useful than Mrs. Baxter, who told me that my innocent heedlessness might give Mr. Quisante pain. I oughtn't to have told you that, but it was rather funny. I'm sure she's said it to all the Baxter girls in turn, and about all the girls that all the Baxter boys were ever in love with."

"Possibly Mrs. Baxter only perceives the wretched underwood."

"Inevitably," said May.

"For heaven's sake don't drift into thinking that you're the only person who can understand him. Once think that about anybody and you're his slave."

"Perhaps I'm the only person who takes the trouble. I don't claim genius, only diligence."

"Well, you're very diligent," Morewood grunted.

She sat looking straight in front of her for a few moments in silence, while Morewood admired the curve of her chin and the moulding of her throat.

"I feel," she said in a low voice and slowly, "as if I must see what becomes of him and as if it ought to be seen at close quarters."

Then Morewood spoke with deliberate plainness.

"You know better than I do that he's not of your class; I mean in himself, not merely where he happens to come from. And for my part I'm not sure that he's an honest man, and I don't think he's a high-minded one."

"Do you believe people are bound to be always just what they are now?" she asked.

"Thinking you can improve them is the one thing more dangerous to yourself than thinking you've a special gift for understanding them. To be quite plain, both generally end in love-affairs and, what's more, unhappy love-affairs."

"Oh, I'm not in love with Mr. Quisante. You're going back to your narrow loving-hating theory."

"Hum. I'm inclined to think that nature shares my narrowness."

If May got small comfort from this conversation, Morewood got less, and the rest of the party, judging from what he let drop about his impressions of May's state of mind, none at all. Lady Richard was of opinion that a crisis approached and re-echoed her cry, "Not here anyhow!" But Quisante's demeanour at once confirmed her fears and ignored her protest. He had many faults and weaknesses, but he was not the man to shrink from a big stake and a great throw. His confidence in his powers was the higher owing to his blindness to his defects. May Gaston had indeed opened his eyes to some degree, but here again, as she showed him continued favour, he found good excuse for dwelling on the interest which inspired rather than on the frankness which characterised her utterance. She had bidden him be himself; then to her that was a thing worth being. As he believed himself able to conquer all external obstacles in his path, so he vaguely supposed that he could overcome and obliterate anything there might be wrong in himself, or at any rate that he could so outweigh it by a more prodigal display of his gifts as to reduce it to utter insignificance; try as he might to see him self as she saw him, he could not fully understand the gravity of her objections. And anyhow, grave as she thought them, she was his friend; at the cost of defying, perhaps of losing, her friends, she elected to be his friend.

To the appeal of this generosity his emotions responded passionately; now he worshipped his Empress among women for more than her grace, her stateliness, or her beauty; he loved her for her courage and her loyalty. There seemed nothing that he would not do for her; it did not, however, occur to him that perhaps the one thing he could do for her was to leave her. But short of this self-sacrifice—and to that even he might have risen had anyone pointed him the way—he was in just that state of exalted feeling which made him at his best, cured him of his tricks for the time being, and gave him the simplicity whose absence marred his ordinary hours. He always rose to the occasion, Dick Benyon maintained; and to this great occasion he came marvellously near to rising. This is not to say that he was altogether in the temper of a hero of romance. He loved the lady, but he loved the victory too, the report of it, the eclat, the talk it would make.

The tendency of events might seem to justify his growing hopes and almost to excuse confidence, but May's mood, had he seen it fully, would have rebuked him. She hung doubtful. She had succeeded, by the help of her far-fetched metaphors, in describing to Morewood the nature of the attraction which Quisante exercised over her and of the force which drew her on; but to Morewood she had said nothing of the opposing influences. She had sent no letter to Marchmont, she had not yet refused to become his wife. Although she recognised the unfairness of this treatment of him she could not compel her hand to the writing of the letter; for Marchmont came to personify to her all that she lost, that at least she risked, if she yielded to her new impulse. Thus the hold which her liking for him, their old acquaintance, and all the obvious advantages gave him was further strengthened. Leaving on one side his position and the excellence of the match, things which now seemed to her less important, and coming to the more intimate and personal aspect of the matter, she realised with a pang how much Marchmont pleased her; he never offended her taste or jarred on her feelings; she would be absolutely safe with him, he would gratify almost every mood and satisfy almost every aspiration.

Dealing very plainly with herself, formulating the question that she could not put to Morewood, she asked whether she would not rather go as a wife to Marchmont than to any other man she had met, whether Quisante or another. She had been, perhaps still was, more nearly in love with Weston Marchmont than with anybody else. But the "almosts" were obstinate; the nearly had never become the quite; she did not tell herself that it never could; on the contrary she recognised (though here she was inclined to shirk the probe) that if she married another, she might well awake to find herself loving Marchmont; she knew that she would not like Marchmont to love another woman. So far she carried her inquiry: then she grew in a way sick and disgusted with this exposure of her inmost feelings. She would not proceed to ask why precisely she could not say yes to Marchmont without being sensible of a loss greater than the gain. All she knew was that she would not think of becoming Quisante's wife if that were not the only way of getting all she wanted from Quisante. The wifehood she looked on as a means to something else, to what she could hardly say; in itself she did not desire it.

Lady Richard's prayer was answered—no thanks to herself or her hints, no thanks either to Mrs. Baxter's motherly remonstrance or to Morewood's blunt speech. It was May herself who sent Quisante away. A thrill of relief ran round the table when he announced at dinner that if Lady Richard would excuse him he would leave by the early train. Excuse him! She would have hired a balloon to take him if he had declared a preference for that form of locomotion. But she expressed the proper regret and the proper interest in the reason (the pretext she called it in her own mind) for his departure. It appeared that a very large and important Meeting was to be held at Manchester; two Cabinet ministers were to be there; Quisante was invited to be the third speaker. He explained that he felt it would be a mistake to refuse the invitation, and the acceptance of it entailed a quiet day or two in London with his Blue-books and his papers. As he put it, the whole thing sounded like an excuse; Lady Richard hoped that it covered a retreat and that the retreat was after a decisive repulse from May Gaston. Even Dick was half inclined to share this opinion; for although he knew how a chance of shining with, and perhaps of outshining, such luminaries as were to adorn the Manchester platform would appeal to his friend, he did not think that for its sake Quisante would abandon any prospect of success in his suit. In fact the impression was general, and the relief proportionate. The Dean beamed and Mrs. Baxter purred; Morewood was good-natured, and Fred Wentworth was lightened of a burden of bewilderment which had pressed heavily on his youthful mind. Quisante was treated with a marked access of cordiality, and May was petted like a child who has displayed a strong inclination to be naughty, but has at last made up its mind to be good, and thereby saved those responsible for its moral welfare from the disagreeable necessity of showing displeasure and exercising discipline. She smiled to herself at the effusive affection with which Lady Richard bade her good-night.

For these people did not know the history, and had not been present at the interview between May and Quisante on Duty Hill when the sun was sinking and the air was still. They did not know that it was by her command that he went and that his going rather strengthened than relaxed the bond there was between them. Always there stood out in her memory the scene on the hill, how he faced her there and told her that, great as the chance was and imperative as the call, yet he would not go; he could not leave her, he said, and then and there poured out his love for her. When he made love, he was not as when he flirted. Passion purged him; he was strong, direct, and simple; he was consumed then by what he felt and had no time to spoil the effect by asking what impression he made on others. Here was the thing that Marchmont could not give her, the great moment, the thrill, the sense of a power in the man which she had not measured, might spend her life in seeking to measure, and yet never to the end know in its fulness. But she answered not a word to his love-making, she neither accepted nor refused it; as often as he paused an instant and again when he came to the end, she had nothing to say or would say nothing except, "You must go."

"You're the only person in the world for whose sake I would hesitate about going."

She smiled. "That's not at all to your credit," she said; but she was not ill pleased.

He came a step nearer to her and said, still soberly, still quietly, "I'll go away from here to-morrow."

"Yes, to the meeting," she said, looking up at him brightly from her seat on the wooden bench on the hill-top.

"Away from here," he repeated. "But not to the meeting unless you send me." Then he stood quite still opposite to her for a minute. "Because unless you care for me to do it, I don't care to do it," he went on.

A long silence followed as she sat there, looking past him down into the rich valley that spread from the foot of the hill. The fascination was strong on her, the fear was strong on her too; but for the moment the repulsion was forgotten. For he had risen to the occasion, as Dick Benyon maintained that he always did; not a word too much, not an entreaty too extravagant, not an epithet too florid had found passage from his lips. His instinct of the way to treat a great and important situation had saved him and brought him triumphantly through all the perils. He did not ignore what he was, he did not disguise his knowledge of his powers; knowing what they were and the value of his offering, he laid them all at her feet and asked in return no more than her leave and her command to use them.

She raised her eyes to his pale eager face.

"I send you then," she said. "And now walk with me down the hill and tell me what you'll say at Manchester."

That night, before she went to bed, she wrote to Weston Marchmont;

"Dear Friend,—I will not wait to see you again. I can't do what you wish. Everything else I could do for you, and everything else that you wish I wish for you. But I can't do that."

Alas for the renewed peace of Lady Richard's mind, alas for the returning quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisante made his preparations for going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me; she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and again fall, could hardly quite undo.



CHAPTER VII.

ADVICE FROM AUNT MARIA.

The two Cabinet Ministers brought back from Manchester different accounts of Quisante's speech and its effects. One said it was frothy rhetoric heard in puzzled lethargy, the other that it was genuine eloquence received with the hush of profound attention, but hailed at the end with rapturous enthusiasm. This was a typical case of the division of opinion which began to prevail about Quisante, and was not disposed of by observing that the unfavourable Minister belonged to that "old gang" which it was Quisante's mission to shake up or shake out. Rich in merits, his speeches were nevertheless faulty to a critical ear; the ornate was apt to turn to the gaudy, the dignified to the pompous. To the critical, defects outweigh merits; but the mass of people, not being critical, fix on the fine things, contentedly and perhaps not unwisely ignoring the blemishes. So the speech was a great popular success, and Alexander Quisante conceived that he had more than justified his reputation and had ornamented his Lady's colours with the laurel of victory. He wrote to her to say that he was staying a few days in Lancashire and had arranged to speak at one or two other places. "If I do at all well," he wrote, "it is because I forget my audience and think that I speak only to you and to earn the praise of your eyes."

"Oh, dear, why does he talk like that?" said May Gaston with a sigh and a smile. "Forget his audience! The praise of my eyes!" She read the compliment over again almost despairingly. "Yet he doesn't really think me an idiot," she ended. She had made up her mind to forgive him his habit of playing to the gallery, but he need not treat her as though she sat there. She felt able to understand the dumb and bewildered reproach which fronted her in her sister Fanny's face, but found spoken expression only in the news that Fanny had had a letter from Lady Richard.

The next day she went to see Miss Quisante; the paying of this visit had been in her mind from the first moment she left Ashwood. In the little flat's narrow passage she had to squeeze by a short, stout, dark man, dressed with much elaboration; Miss Quisante explained afterwards that he was a sort of cousin of her own and Sandro's.

"His name is Mandeville," she said. "His father's was Isaacs. You knew we had Jewish relations?"

"I thought it not improbable."

"I suppose we've got some of the blood, and some of it's a very good thing," pursued Aunt Maria. "This man's a stock-jobber; he came to talk to me about my money, but he let out a thing or two about Sandro."

"About Mr. Quisante?"

"Yes. Well, I'm not surprised; I never am surprised at Sandro. Only if he speculates with my money I shan't give it him."

May listened and heard how Quisante had embarked the five hundred pounds given him to support his new position in a hazardous, although not unpromising, speculation. Whether he would win or lose was still uncertain; Mandeville had hopes.

"And I don't know that it's exactly dishonest," said Aunt Maria meditatively. "But that's just like Sandro. He's always doing things that you can't be quite sure about—whether they're straight or not, you know. He was just the same as a boy."

May had a sense of treachery in listening, but how should she not listen? Morewood's opinion came into her memory. Miss Quisante was confirming it out of her full acquaintance with its subject.

"I gave him the money, it was his own, I've got nothing to show," said Miss Quisante with her vinegary little smile.

"Perhaps he—he misunderstood what you meant; I mean, that you intended the money for any special purpose."

"That's exactly what he'll say," remarked Aunt Maria with a triumphant nod.

"But if it's true——"

"I shan't know whether it's true or not. That's where Sandro's cleverness comes in."

It was hard to realise that the old lady talked of the man whom her hearer had seen on Duty Hill.

"I'm sure you don't do him justice." The plea sounded weak even to its utterer.

"To an ounce," said Aunt Maria emphatically. May laughed. "I lived with him for twelve years, and I'm not a fool any more than he is. If you ask him about me, you'll get the truth, and you get it when you ask me about him. After twelve years I ought to know."

"You've read his speech?" May asked. "Isn't it magnificent, parts of it anyhow?"

"Very few men have a brain like Sandro's."

"There I agree with you, Miss Quisante." But May's face was troubled as she added, a moment later, "He ought to give you back your money, though."

"He will, if he makes a lot out of it, and he'll give me a nice present too. Then he'll feel that he's acted quite properly all through. And if he loses it—well, as I say, he's got his case, and I can't prove anything."

"Men like him are often careless about money affairs. It's only that, I expect."

"Careless! Sandro careless! Oh, dear me, no." and for once Miss Quisante laughed heartily. The beads on her cap shook as her dumpy little form swayed gently with mirth; she looked impishly delighted at such a misconception of her nephew's character. May felt very foolish, but could not help laughing herself.

"Well, I won't plead his cause any more," she said. "Only I believe you're prejudiced." She paused, and then, looking the old woman in the face, added, "I ought to tell you that he and I have become great friends."

Miss Quisante had stopped laughing; now she made a gesture which seemed to indicate that she washed her hands of any responsibility. But she appeared fretful and disturbed.

"I'm immensely impressed by him; and I think these faults you talk so much about are only superficial. They can't really belong to his nature when so much that's fine does." Her voice shook a little as she implored a merciful judgment from the relentless old lady. Aunt Maria's shrewd eyes grew softer.

"I used to say that to myself for ever so long," she said. "I catch myself saying it now and then even now."

"You're disappointed at not—not getting on better with him, and it makes you bitter."

"And you? You get on very well with him?"

"I don't think I'm blind about him. I see what you mean and what a lot of people feel. If there is a pit, I've walked into it open-eyed."

"He's in love with you, of course?"

A denial was hardly worth while and quite useless. "You must ask him that, Miss Quisante," May replied. Aunt Maria nodded and gazed at her long and steadily.

"Yes, you're his Empress among women," she said at last with a little sneer. "Sandro has a phrase for everything and everybody. And are you in love with him?"

May had wanted to come to close quarters and was glad that Aunt Maria gave her a lead. But she did not return a direct answer to the question.

"You wouldn't be encouraging, if I were thinking of becoming his wife."

"It would be very extraordinary that you should."

"I've no particular desire to be ordinary," said May, smiling.

Miss Quisante leant forward suddenly and held up a short forefinger.

"My dear, you'd be very unhappy," she said. Then she leant back again and received in complete stillness May's meditative gaze.

"In a good many ways perhaps I should," said May at last with a sigh, and her brow puckered with wrinkles. "Yes, I suppose so," she sighed again.

"But I know what it is. You've let yourself get interested in Sandro; you've let him lay hold of you." May nodded. "And it would seem rather dull now to lose him?" Again May nodded, laughing a little. Aunt Maria understood her feelings very well, it seemed. "I should be dull too if I lost him." The old lady folded her hands in her lap. "There is that about Sandro," she said with a touch of pride in her voice. "I don't like him; well, you've gathered that perhaps; but if anything happened to him, I should feel I might as well lie down and die. Of course I've got nobody else belonging to me; you're not like that." Again the forefinger was raised in admonition, and Miss Quisante gave a piece of practical advice. "Marry a nice man of your own sort, my dear, and when you're safely married, be as much interested in Sandro as you like."

May was not quite sure of the morality of this counsel; it seemed possible that Aunt Maria shared the vagueness about right and wrong which she quarrelled with in her nephew. She laughed as she said,

"But then Mr. Quisante would marry some other woman, and she mightn't like it. And my nice husband mightn't like it."

It was possible to discuss the matter far more frankly with Miss Quisante than with anybody else, yet the talk with her was only the first of several in which May tried to glean what would be thought of such a step as marrying Alexander Quisante. Almost everywhere she found, not only the lack of encouragement which Aunt Maria had shown, but an amazement hardly distinguishable from horror and an utter failure to understand her point of view; her care to conceal any personal interest in the discussions she found means to bring about gained her very candid expressions of opinion about Quisante, and she became aware that her world would regard her as something like a lunatic if it awoke one morning to read of her engagement to the man.

Yet side by side with this feeling there was a great and a growing expectancy with regard to him in his public aspect. He began to be a figure, somebody of whom account would have to be taken; Dick Benyon's infatuation was less often mentioned, his sagacity more often praised. May was struck again with the sharp line drawn between the man himself, and what he was to do, with the way in which everybody proposed to invite him to his house, but nobody contemplated admitting him to his heart. The inhumanity made her angry again, but she was alone in perceiving it; and she was half-aware that her perception of it would be far keener than Quisante's own. In fact it was very doubtful if he asked any more of the world than what the world was prepared to give him. But that, said May, was not because he lacked the power and the desire of love, but because his affections were withered by neglect or rusty from disuse. She knew well that they were there and would expand under the influence of sympathy. If people grew human towards him, he would respond in kind; in hitting on this idea she commended herself for a sagacity in questions of emotion not less than that which Dick Benyon had shown in matters of the intellect. Dick had discovered Quisante, as he thought; May told herself that he had discovered only half of Quisante, and that the other half had been left for her to explore, and to reveal to the world. The effect of her various conversations was rather to confirm her in her inclination towards Quisante than to frighten her out of it.

There was one talk which she could not escape and had to face with what resolution she might. Weston Marchmont was not content with the brief dismissal which had reached him from Ashwood, and he was amazed beyond understanding at the hint of its cause which Dick Benyon had given him. He had no doubt some reason to think himself ill-used, but he was not inclined to press that side of the case. It was not his own failure so much as the threatened success of such a rival that staggered and horrified him. Few are wide-minded enough to feel a friendship quite untouched and unimpaired when their friend takes into equal intimacy a third person for whom they themselves entertain aversion or contempt; at the best they see in such conduct an unexpected failure of discernment; very often they detect in it evidence of a startling coarseness of feeling, an insensibility, and a grossness of taste difficult to tolerate in one to whom they have given their affection. Marchmont felt that, if May Gaston wronged him, she was wronging far more herself, and most of all his ideal of her. He could not believe such a thing of her without her own plain assurance, and would not suffer it until every effort to redeem and rescue her was exhausted.

"You don't mean," he said at last openly and bluntly to Dick Benyon, "that you think it's possible she'll marry him?"

"I do, quite," groaned poor Dick. "You can imagine how I feel about it; and if I didn't see it myself, Amy would soon let me know it."

Marchmont said no more, feeling that discussion was difficult for one in his position, but Dick did not spare him a description of what had happened at Ashwood, from which he realised the gravity of the danger.

"After all, he's a very remarkable man," Dick pleaded, in a forlorn effort at defending himself no less than the lady.

Marchmont found May in a mood most favourable to the cause he had at heart, if he had known how to use his opportunity to the best advantage. From day to day now she wavered between the fear and the fascination, and on this day the fear was stronger and, working together with her affection for Marchmont, might well have gained him the victory. Ill-usage of Quisante would perhaps have been involved here, but May would not have stood at that, had it been made plain to her heart that in the end the man could not be accepted or endured. To win, Marchmont should have made love to her in his own way, refused to accept his dismissal, and pressed his own suit on his own merits, leaving his rival to stand the contrast as he best might, but not dragging him explicitly into the issue between himself and May. He did not take this course; to his pride it was difficult to plead passionately again when his former pleading had been rebuffed; and the intensity of his desire to show her the truth about Quisante, and at all costs to rescue her from Quisante, made him devote more energy to denouncing his rival than to recommending himself. Thus he set May to defend the absent friend rather than to pity and be drawn towards the suitor who was before her. Yet in spite of his mistaken tactics, he shook her sorely; all that was in his favour came home to her with renewed force; she looked on him with pleasure and heard his voice again with delight; it was very pleasant to her to be with him; she admitted to herself that very, very easily she might be in love with him. Old Miss Quisante's advice recurred to her mind; was this the nice husband who would give her a safety not incompatible with a continued interest in Alexander Quisante? She smiled regretfully; Marchmont did not fit at all into Aunt Maria's scheme.

"I don't want to question you," he said, "but if you will speak plainly to me I shall be glad. The change came at Ashwood?"

"There's been no change; there's been a failure to change. When I saw you last, I thought I might change so as to be able to do what you wanted. Now I know I can't."

"And why?" She was silent; he went on, speaking lower. "Is there any truth at all in what Dick Benyon thinks? It seemed to me incredible. Will you tell me that I may utterly disbelieve that at all events?"

"No, I can't tell you to disbelieve it utterly."

The love for her which was his strongest appeal left his face; he looked aghast, at a loss, almost disgusted. His hands moved in a gesture of protest.

"I don't tell you to believe it. I can tell you nothing about it just now. I admit you had a right to ask me, but I can say nothing more now."

Again the chance offered for him to make her forget Quisante or remember him only by a disadvantageous comparison. His honest desire to save her combined again with bitter prejudice to lead him wrong.

"I can't believe it of you," he declared. "I can't have been so wrong about you as that."

"I see nothing to prevent you from having been absolutely wrong about me," she said coldly, "as wrong about me as you are about—other people."

"If you mean——"

"Oh, yes, let's be open with one another," she cried. "I mean Mr. Quisante; you're utterly wrong and prejudiced about him."

"He's not even a gentleman."

"I suppose he goes to the wrong tailor!" said May scornfully.

He came a step nearer to her. "You know I don't mean that sort of thing, nor even other things that aren't vital to life though they're desirable in society. He hasn't the mind of a gentleman."

Now she wavered; she sat looking at him with troubled eyes, feeling he was right, desiring to be persuaded, struggling against the opposing force. But Marchmont went on fretfully, almost peevishly,

"The astonishing thing is that you're blind to that, that you don't see him as he really and truly is."

"That's just what I do," she cried eagerly and almost angrily. Marchmont's words had brought back what Quisante could be; surely a man's best must be what he really and truly is? Then his true self shows itself untrammelled; the measure of it is rather the heights to which it can rise than the level on which it moves at ordinary times. She remembered Quisante on Duty Hill. "That's what I do, and you—you and all of them—don't. You fix on his small faults, faults of manner—oh, yes, and of breeding too, I daresay, perhaps of feeling too. But to see a man's faults is not to see the man." She rose to her feet and faced him. "I see him more truly than you do," she said proudly and defiantly. Then her face grew suddenly soft, and she caught his hand. "My dear friend, my dear, dear friend," she murmured, "don't be unkind to me. I'm not happy about it; how can I be happy about it? Don't make it worse for me; I'm trying to see the truth, and you might help me; but you only tell me what leaves out more than half the truth."

He would not or could not respond to her gentleness; his evil spirit possessed him; he gave expression to his anger with her and his scorn of his rival, not to his own love and his own tenderness.

"It turns me almost sick," he declared, "to think of you with him."

She let go his hand, moved away, and sat down. "If you're like that, I can say no more," she said. Her eyes were full of tears as she looked at him, but his heart was hard to her; to him she seemed to be humiliating both him and herself; the victory of Quisante at once insulted him and degraded her. Here was a case where Alexander Quisante, with all his defects, would have gone right, while Marchmont went wrong. It was a crisis, and Quisante's insight would have taught him how to handle it, to assure her that whatever she did he would be the same to her, that though he might not understand he would be loyal, that his love only grew greater with his pain, that in everything that awaited her he would be ready with eager service and friendship unimpaired. None of this came from Marchmont's lips; he made no effort to amend or palliate his last bitter speech. He could not conquer his resentment, and it bred an answering resentment in her. "You must think what you like of me," she said, her voice growing cold again.

With the end of this interview, with the departure of Marchmont, still sore, angry, and blind to her point of view, May felt that the matter had settled itself. She knew in her heart that she would not have turned Marchmont away unless she had meant to bid Quisante come. For a little while she struggled against finality, telling herself that the question was still an open one, and that to refuse one man was not of necessity to marry another. Other friends came and talked to her, but none of them got within her guard or induced her to speak freely to them. In the end she had to settle this thing for herself; and now it was settled.

Even when undertaken in the conviction of a full harmony of feeling, a community of mind, and an identity of tastes, marriage may startle by the extent of its demands. She was to marry a man—she faced the matter and told herself this—a man from whom she was divided by the training of a lifetime, by antagonisms of feeling so acute as to bite deep into their every-day intercourse, by a jarring of tastes which made him sometimes odious to her. In spite of the resentment to which Marchmont's scorn had stung her, she understood very well how it was that her friends failed to appreciate the motives of her action. To herself she could not justify it; it was taken on impulse, not calculation, and had to rest in the end on the vague effects of what she had seen in Quisante, not continually, not in his normal state, but by fits and snatches, in scraps of time which, all added together, would scarcely fill the hours between luncheon and dinner. She took him on the strength of his moments; that was the case in plain English, reduced to its lowest terms and its baldest statement. Of confidence, of security, of trust she had none; their place was filled by a vague expectancy, an insistent curiosity, and a puzzled fearful fascination. Not promising materials these, out of which to make happiness. She surprised herself by finding how little happiness in its ordinary sense entered into her reckoning. Or if anything that we happen to want is to be called our happiness, then her happiness consisted in, and refused to be analysed into anything more definite than, a sort of necessity which she felt of being near to Alexander Quisante, of sharing his mind and partaking of his life. But if this were happiness, then happiness was not what she had been accustomed to think it; where were the rest, the contentment, the placidity and satisfaction which the word was usually considered to imply?

* * *

Quisante came to her, wreathed in triumph. It was a mood she liked him in; he offended her not when he celebrated success, but when he intrigued for it. His new-born confidence seemed to make any drawing-back on her part impossible; she had sent him, she was bound to reward the happy issue of her mission. Another thing touched her very deeply; while protesting his unworthiness of her, he based his humility on the special and wonderful knowledge of her that he possessed and referred it entirely to this inner secret excellence of hers and not in the least to her position or to any difference between his and hers. He did not suppose that society would be aghast or that the world at large would see cause for dismay in the marriage. He expected hearty congratulations for himself, but it was evident that he thought she would have her full share of them too; he had, in fact, no idea that May Gaston would not be thought to be doing very well for herself. This mixture of simplicity and self-appreciation, of ignorance of the mind of others combined with a knowledge of the claims of his own, took May's fancy; she laughed a little as she determined that the general opinion of the matter must be kept from his ears, and his robust confidence in the world's admiration of him preserved.

"You say you know me so well," she said. "I know very, very little of you; and of what I know there's a lot that's bad."

He was not in the temper that had inspired his confession of bad manners and bad morals on Duty Hill. He was inclined, as at such a moment he might be pardonably, to make light of his faults. He was not alarmed when she declared that if she found out anything very bad she would not after all become his wife.

"At any moment that you repent, you're free," he said gaily. But she answered gravely,

"There'll be a great many moments when I shall repent. You see I don't think I really love you." He looked puzzled. "You know what I mean? Real love is so beautifully undiscriminating, isn't it? I'm not a bit undiscriminating about you; and that'll make me miserable often; it'll make you angry too. You'll forget that I said all this, that I told you and warned you. I shall be (she smiled again for a moment) a critic on the hearth. And nobody hardly understands criticism as badly as you do."

"What a lot of reasons for refusing me!" he said, still gay, though with a hint of disturbance in his manner. "And yet you don't refuse."

The old answer which was all she could give to herself was all that she found herself able to give him.

"Somehow I can't do without you, you see," she said. Then she suddenly leant forward and went on in a low imploring voice, "Don't be worse than I've ever thought. There are some things I couldn't stand. Please don't." Her eyes, fixed on to his, prayed a reassurance against a horde of vague dangers.

He laughed off the question, not understanding how or why she came to put it, and their talk passed to a lighter vein. But presently he said, with a half-embarrassed, half-vexed laugh, "Need we sit so far from one another?"

May had suffered from a dread of the beginning of sentiment. But she was laughing as she rose and, crossing the room, sat down by him on the sofa. "Here I am then," she said, "and you may kiss me. And if you will ask me I'll kiss you; only I don't particularly want to, you know. I don't think of you in the very least as a man to be kissed. I've thought of other men much more in that way—oh, only thought of them, Mr. Quisante!"

The playful, yet not meaningless, defiance of a softer mood, and of his power to induce it in her, acted as a spark to Quisante's ardour. It was just the opposition that he had wanted to rescue him from awkwardness. He recovered the splendid intensity which had marked his declaration on Duty Hill. If he did not succeed in changing her feelings, at least he set her wondering why they did not change and wrung from her the smiling admission, "You're very picturesque anyhow." She did not deny vehemently when he told her that he would make her love him as he loved her. "Well, I never use the word impossible about you," she said. "Only—it hasn't happened yet, you know." She paused and added, with a touch of reviving apprehension, "And I mayn't always like you to behave as if it had—though I don't mind much to-night."

His manner was good, almost defying criticism, as he reassured her on this point; and when he left her, her predominant impression was that, so far as their personal relations went, she had exaggerated the dangers and under-rated the attractions.

"I think he'll always be rather nice to me and not do anything very dreadful. But then, what will he do to other people?"

This was the fear which still possessed her and which no fine moment of his drove out. She seemed to have power to bring him to his best, to give him the cue for his fine scenes, to create in him the inspiration to great moments. But when he dealt with other people, her power would be useless. She would have to stand by and see him at his worst, looking on no longer as an irresponsible, as well as a helpless, spectator, but as one who had undertaken responsibility for him, who must feel for him what he did not for himself, who must be sensitive while he was callous, wounded while his skin went unpierced. She felt that she had taken up a very solitary position, between him and the world, not truly at home with either; a sense of loneliness came upon her.

"I shall have to fight the whole world," she said. "I wonder if my cause is a good one?"



CHAPTER VIII.

CONTRA MUNDUM.

It was impossible not to admire the wealth of experience which Mrs. Baxter had gathered from a singularly quiet life; many men have gone half a dozen times round the world for less. Whatever the situation, whatever the action, she could supply a parallel and thereby forecast an issue. Superficial differences did not hinder her; she pierced to the underlying likeness. When all the world was piteously crying out that never in its life had it heard of such an affair as this of May Gaston's, Mrs. Baxter dived into her treasure-chest and serenely produced the case of the Nonconformist Minister's daughter and the Circus Proprietor. Set this affair side by side with the Quisante business, and a complete sum in double proportion at once made its appearance. The audacity of the man, the headlong folly of the girl, the hopeless mixing of incompatibles were common to the two cases; the issue of the earlier clearly indicated the fate that must attend the later. Lady Richard could do nothing but gasp out, "And what happened, Mrs. Baxter?"

Mrs. Baxter told her, punctuating the story with stitches on a June petticoat.

"She ran away from him twice; but he brought her back, and, they said, beat her well. At any rate she ended by settling down to her new life. They had seven children, all brought up to the circus; only the other day one was sent to prison for ill-treating the dancing bear. He's dead, but she still keeps the circus under his name. Of course all her old friends have dropped her; indeed I hear she drinks. Her father still preaches once on Sundays."

It was easy to disentangle the relevant from the merely reminiscent; the running away, the beating, the settling down, the complete absorption in the new life (vividly indicated by the seven children and their habits), stood out saliently. Add the attitude of old friends, and Lady Richard could not deny the value of the parallel. She acknowledged it with a long-drawn sigh.

"May Gaston must be mad," she observed. "You can imagine how Dick feels about it!"

"And all the while her cousin in the Bank was quite ready to marry her and give her a nice little home. He was Church and sang in the choir at St. Dunstan's."

Without consciously appreciating the nicety of the parallel here, Lady Richard began to think of Weston Marchmont.

"I suppose Mr. Marchmont'll take Fanny now," she said. "I don't know, though; he won't like any sort of connection with Alexander Quisante. How selfish people are! They never think of what their marriages mean to their relations."

This observation expressed a large part of what was felt by society; add friends to relations, and it summed up one side of the indictment against May Gaston. Lady Attlebridge's helpless and bewildered woe was one instance of its truth, Fanny's rage another; to look farther afield, May's friends and acquaintances discovered great cause for vexation in that they saw themselves somehow "let in for" Quisante. At least the alternative was to drop May Gaston as entirely as the unfortunate circus proprietor's wife had been dropped; and this alternative was a difficult one. Had Quisante's raid resulted in the seizure of some insignificant colourless girl who had been merely tolerated for the sake of who she was without possessing any claims in respect of what she was, the dropping would have been easy; but May was not of that kind. She was not only one of them, but very conspicuous among them, one of their ornaments, one in whom they took pride; they would have acknowledged in her a natural leader so soon as a suitable marriage gave her the necessary status and experience. Her treachery was the more flagrant, Quisante's presumption the more enormous, their own course of action the more puzzling to decide.

Yet in their hearts they knew that they must swallow the man; events were too strong for them. Dick Benyon had forced him on them in one side of life, May Gaston now did the like in another; henceforward he must be and would be among them. This consciousness mingled an ingredient of asperity with their genuine pity for May. She would not merely have herself to thank for the troubles which would certainly come upon her; her misfortunes must be regarded as in part a proper punishment for the annoyance she was inflicting on her friends. As for Dick Benyon, it was impossible to speak to him without perceiving that if remorse be in truth the sharpest penalty of sin, he was already punished enough.

The poor man's state was indeed such as to move compassion. Besides his old friend Lady Attlebridge's dumbly accusing eyes, besides Fanny's and Lady Richard's by no means dumb reproaches, a very heavy blow had fallen on him. In the words of his own complaint, his brother Jimmy had gone back on him—and back on his allegiance to Alexander Quisante. The engagement was too much for Jimmy, and in the revulsion of feeling he became downright hostile to Quisante's claims and pretensions. How could he not when Fanny Gaston imperiously and almost tearfully commanded him to attach himself to her banner, and to behold with her eyes the indignity suffered by the noble family of Gaston? Logic was not Jimmy's strong point, and he confounded poor Dick by the twofold assertion that the thing was utterly incredible, and that Dick and he had been most inconceivably idiotic not to have foreseen it from the first hour that they took up Quisante. In this stress of feeling the brothers spoke to one another with candour.

"You know how I feel about Fanny," said Jimmy, "so you can imagine how much I like it."

"Oh, yes, I know; and I quite understand that you wanted Marchmont to marry May," Dick retorted in an alien savageness born of his wounded spirit.

Jimmy was taken aback by this direct onslaught, but his native honesty forbade him to deny the charge point-blank.

"Supposing she came to like me," he grumbled, "it wouldn't be over and above pleasant to have Quisante for a brother-in-law."

Dick was roused; he summoned up his old faith and his old admiration.

"I tell you what," he said, "the only chance you have of your name being known to posterity is if you succeed in becoming his brother-in-law."

"Damn posterity," said Jimmy, tugging at his moustache. He had never entertained the absurd idea of interesting future ages. He began to perceive more and more clearly how ridiculous his brother had made himself over the fellow; he had shared in the folly, but now at least he could repent and dissociate himself from it.

"What does the Dean say?" he asked maliciously.

"I dare say you won't understand," Dick answered in measured tones, "but the Dean's got sense enough to say nothing. Talking's no use, is it?"

Few indeed shared the Dean's wisdom, or the somewhat limited view that talking is only to be practised when it chances to be useful. Are we never to discuss the obvious or to deplore the inevitable? From so stern a code human nature revolts, and the storm of volubility went on in spite of the silence of the Dean of St. Neot's. Even this silence was imperfect in so far as the Dean said a word or two in private to Morewood when he visited him in his studio, and the pair were looking at Quisante's picture. Dick Benyon was less anxious now to have it finished and sent home in the shortest possible time.

"You've seen some good in him," said the Dean, pointing to the picture.

"Well—something anyhow," said Morewood.

"I think, you know," the Dean pursued meditatively, "that a great woman might succeed in what she's undertaken (Morewood did not need the mention of May Gaston's name), at the cost of sacrificing all her other interests and most of her feelings."

Morewood was lighting his pipe and made no answer.

"Is our dear young friend a great woman, though?" asked the Dean.

"She aspires to be," said Morewood; he was sneering as usual, but rather at aspirations in general than at any unusual absurdity in May Gaston's; thus at least the Dean understood him.