She had turned her face from the crowd towards the open window, in whose recess they were standing. As she spoke they both fell back a little into comparative solitude, and he drew her on to talk—trying in a young eager way to make her rest in his kindness, to soothe her weariness and disappointment. And as she spoke, he clutched at the minutes; he threw more and more sympathy at her feet to keep her talking, to enchain her there beside him, in her lovely whiteness and grace. And, mingled with it all, was the happy guess that she liked to linger with him—that amid all this hard clamour of public talk and judgment she felt him a friend in a peculiar sense—a friend whose loyalty grew with misfortune. As for this wild-beast world, that was thwarting and libelling her, he began to think of it with a blind, up-swelling rage—a desire to fight and win for her—to put down—

"Tressady, your wife sent me to find you. She wishes to go home."

The voice was Harding Watton's. That observant young man advanced bowing, and holding out his hand to Lady Maxwell.

When Marcella had drifted once more into the fast-melting crowd, George found himself face to face with Letty. She was very white, and stared at him with wide, passionate eyes.

And on the way home George, with all his efforts, could not keep the peace. Letty flung at him a number of bitter and insulting things that he found very hard to bear.

"What do you want me to do?" he said to her at last, impatiently. "I have hardly spoken six sentences to Lady Maxwell, since the meeting, till tonight—I suppose because you wished it. But neither you nor anyone else shall make me rude to her. Don't be such a fool, Letty! Make friends with her, and you will be ashamed of saying or even thinking such things."

Whereat Letty burst into hysterical tears, and he soon found himself involved in all the remorseful, inconsequent speeches to which a man in such a plight feels himself driven. She allowed herself to be calmed, and they had a dreary making-up. When it was over, however, George was left with the uneasy conviction that he knew very little of his wife. She was not of a nature to let any slight to her go unpunished. What was she planning? What would she do?



CHAPTER XVII

"Hullo! Are you come back?"

The speaker was George Tressady. He was descending the steps of his club in Fall Mall, and found his arm caught by Naseby, who had just dismissed his hansom outside.

"I came back last night. Are you going homewards? I'll walk across the Square with you."

The two men turned into St. James's Square, and Naseby resumed:

"Yes, we had a most lively campaign. Maxwell spoke better than I ever heard him."

"The speeches have been excellent reading, too. And you had good meetings?"

"Splendid! The country is rallying, I can tell you. The North is now strong for Maxwell and the Bill—or seems to be."

"Just as we are going to kick it out in the House! It's very queer—for no one could tell, a month ago, how the big towns were going. And it looked as though London even were deserting them."

"A mere wave, I think. At least, I'll bet you anything they'll win this Stepney election. Shall we get the division on the hours clause to-morrow?"

"They say so."

"If you know your own interests, you'll hurry up," said Naseby, smiling. "The country is going against you."

"I imagine Fontenoy has got his eye on the country! He's been letting the Socialists talk nonsense till now to frighten the steady-going old fellows on the other side or putting up our men to mark time. But I saw yesterday there was a change."

"Between ourselves, hasn't he been talking a good deal of nonsense on his own account?"

Naseby threw a glance of laughing inquiry at his companion. George shrugged his shoulders in silence. It had become matter of public remark during the last few days that Fontenoy was beginning at last to show the strain of the combat—that his speeches were growing hysterical and his rule a tyranny. His most trusted followers were now to be heard grumbling in private over certain aspects of his bearing in the House. He had come into damaging collision with the Speaker on one or two occasions, and had made here and there a blunder in tactics which seemed to show a weakening of self-command. Tressady, indeed, knew enough to wonder that the man's nerve and coolness had maintained themselves in their fulness so long.

"So Maxwell took a party to the North?" said George, dropping the subject of Fontenoy.

"Lady Maxwell, of course—myself, Bennett, and Madeleine Penley. It was a pleasure to see Lady Maxwell. She has been dreadfully depressed in town lately. But those trade-union meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire were magnificent enough to cheer anyone up."

George shook his head.

"I expect they come too late to save the Bill."

"I daresay. Well, one can't help being tremendously sorry for her. I thought her looking quite thin and ill over it. It makes one doubt about women in politics! Maxwell will take it a deal more calmly, unless one misunderstands his cool ways. But I shouldn't wonder if she had a breakdown."

George made no reply. Naseby talked a little more about Maxwell and the tour, the critical side of him gaining upon the sympathetic with every sentence. At the corner of King Street he stopped.

"I must go back to the club. By the way, have you heard anything of Ancoats lately?"

George made a face.

"I saw him in a hansom last night, late, crossing Regent Circus with a young woman—the young woman, to the best of my belief."

In the few moments' chat that followed Tressady found that Naseby, like Fontenoy, regarded him as the new friend who might be able to do something for a wild fellow, now that mother and old friends were alike put aside and ignored. But, as he rather impatiently declared—and was glad to declare—such a view was mere nonsense. He had tried, for the mother's sake, and could do nothing. As for him, he believed the thing was very much a piece of blague—

"Which won't prevent it from taking him to the devil," said Naseby, coolly; "and his mother, by all accounts, will die of it. I'm sorry for her. He seems to think tremendous things of you. I thought you might, perhaps, have knocked it out of him." George shook his head again, and they parted.

In truth, Tressady was not particularly flattered by Ancoats's fancy for him. He did not care enough about the lad in return. Yet, in response to one or two outbreaks of talk on Ancoats's part—talks full of a stagey railing at convention—he had tried, for the mother's sake, to lecture the boy a little—to get in a word or two that might strike home. But Ancoats had merely stared a moment out of his greenish eyes, had shaken his queer mane of hair, as an animal shakes off the hand that curbs it, had changed the subject at once, and departed. Tressady had seen very little of him since.

And had not, in truth, taken it to heart. He had neither time nor mind to think about Ancoats. Now, as he walked home to dinner, he put the subject from him impatiently. His own moral predicament absorbed him—this weird, silent way in which the whole political scene was changing in aspect and composition under his eyes, was grouping itself for him round one figure—one face.

Had he any beliefs left about the Bill itself? He hardly knew. In truth it was not his reason that was leading him. It now was little more than a passionate boyish longing to wrench himself free from this odious task of hurting and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him originally to Fontenoy's side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, but for another influence—another voice.

Yet his old loyalty to Fontenoy tugged sorely at his will. And with this loyalty of course was bound up the whole question of his own personal honour and fidelity—his pledges to his constituents and his party.

Was there no rational and legitimate way out? He pondered the political situation as he walked along with great coolness and precision. When the division on the hours clause was over the main struggle on the Bill, as he had all along maintained, would be also at an end. If the Government carried the clause—and the probability still was that they would carry it by a handful of votes—the two great novelties of the Bill would have been affirmed by the House. The homework in the scheduled trades would have been driven by law into inspected workshops, and the male workers in these same trades would have been brought under the time-restrictions of the Factory Acts.

Compared to these two great reforms, or revolutions, the remaining clause—the landlords clause—touched, as he had already said to Fontenoy, questions of secondary rank, of mere machinery. Might not a man thereupon—might not he, George Tressady—review and reconsider his whole position?

He had told Fontenoy that his vote was safe; but must that pledge extend to more than the vital stuff, the main proposals of the Bill? The hours clause?—yes. But after it?

Fontenoy, no doubt, would carry on the fight to the bitter end, counting on a final and hard-wrung victory. The sanguine confidence which had possessed him about the time of the second reading was gone. He did not, Tressady knew, reckon with any certainty on turning out the Government in this coming division. The miserable majority with which they had carried the workshops clause would fall again—it would hardly be altogether effaced. That final wiping-out would come—if indeed it were attained—in the last contest of all, to which Fontenoy was already heartening and urging on his followers.

Fontenoy's position, of course, in the matter was clear. It was that of the leader and the irreconcilable.

But for the private member, who had seen cause to modify some of his opinions during the course of debate, who had voted loyally with his party up till now—might not the division on the hours clause be said to mark a new stage in the Bill—a stage which restored him his freedom?

The House would have pronounced on the main points of the Bill; the country was rallying in a remarkable and unexpected way to the Government—might it not be fairly argued that the war had been carried far enough?

He already, indeed, saw signs of that backing down of opposition which he had prophesied to Fontenoy. The key to the whole matter lay, he believed, in the hands of the Old Liberals, that remnant of a once great host, who were now charging the Conservative Government with new and damaging concessions to the Socialist tyranny. These men kept a watchful eye on the country; they had maintained all along that the country had not spoken. George had already perceived a certain weakening among them. And now, this campaign of Maxwell's, this new enthusiasm in the industrial North—no doubt they would have their effect.

He hurried on, closely weighing the whole matter, the prey to a strange and mingled excitement.

Meanwhile the streets through which he walked had the empty, listless air which marks a stage from which the actors have departed. It was nearing the middle of August, and society had fled.

All the same, as he reflected with a relief which was not without its sting, he and Letty would not be alone at dinner. Some political friends were coming, stranded, like themselves, in this West End, which had by now covered up its furniture and shut its shutters.

What a number of smart invitations had been showering upon them during the last weeks of the season, and were now still pursuing them, for the country-house autumn! The expansion of their social circle had of late often filled George with astonishment. No doubt, he said to himself,—though with a curious doubtfulness,—Letty was very successful; still, the recent rush of attentions from big people, who had taken no notice of them on their marriage, was rather puzzling. It had affected her so far more than himself. For he had been hard pressed by Parliament and the strike, and she had gone about a good deal alone—appearing, indeed, to prefer it.

* * * * *

"Come out with me on the Terrace," said Marcella to Betty Leven; "I had rather not wait here. Aldous, will you take us through?"

She and Betty were standing in the inner lobby of the House of Commons. The division had just been called and the galleries cleared. Members were still crowding into the House from the Library, the Terrace, and the smoking-rooms; and all the approaches to the Chamber itself were filled with a throng about equally divided between the eagerness of victory and the anxieties of defeat.

Maxwell took the ladies to the Terrace, and left them there, while he himself went back to the House. Marcella took a seat by the parapet, leant both hands upon it, and looked absently at the river and the clouds. It was a cloudy August night, with a broken, fleecy sky, and gusts of hot wind from the river. A few figures and groups were moving about the Terrace in the flickering light and shade—waiting like themselves.

"Will you be very sad if it goes wrongly?" said Betty, in a low voice, as she took her friend's hand in hers.

"Yes—" said Marcella, simply. Then, after a pause, she added, "It will be all the harder after this time in the North. Everything will have come too late."

There was a silence; then Betty said, not without sheepishness, "Frank's all right."

Marcella smiled. She knew that little Betty had been much troubled by Frank's tempers of late, and had been haunted by some quite serious qualms about his loyalty to Maxwell and the Bill. Marcella had never shared them. Frank Leven had not grit enough to make a scandal and desert a chief. But Betty's ambition had forced the boy into a life that was not his; had divided him from the streams and fields, from the country gentleman's duties and pleasures, that were his natural sphere. In this hot town game of politics, this contest of brains and ambitions, he was out of place—was, in fact, wasting both time and capacity. Betty would have to give way, or the comedy of a lovers' quarrel might grow to something ill-matched with the young grace and mirth of such a pair of handsome children.

Marcella meant to tell her friend all this in due time. Now she could only wait in silence, listening for every sound, Betty's soft fingers clasping her own, the wind as it blew from the bridge cooling her hot brow.

"Here they are!" said Betty.

They turned to the open doorway of the House. A rush of feet and voices approached, and the various groups on the Terrace hurried to meet it.

"Just saved! By George, what a squeak!" said a man's voice in the distance; and at the same moment Maxwell touched his wife on the shoulder.

"A majority of ten! Nobody knew how it had gone till the last moment."

She put up her face to him, leaning against him.

"I suppose it means we can't pull through?" He bent to her.

"I should think so. Darling, don't take it to heart so much!"

In the darkness he felt the touch of her lips on his hand. Then she turned, with a white cheek and smiling mouth, to meet the greetings and rueful congratulations of the friends that were crowding about them.

The Terrace was soon a moving mass of people, eagerly discussing the details of the division. The lamps, blown a little by the wind, threw uncertain lights on faces and figures, as they passed and re-passed between the mass of building on the one hand and the wavering darkness of the river on the other. To Marcella, as she stood talking to person after person—talking she hardly knew what—the whole scene was a dim bewilderment, whence emerged from time to time faces or movements of special significance.

Now it was Dowson, the Home Secretary, advancing to greet her, with his grey shaven face, eyelids somewhat drooped, and the cool, ambiguous look of one not quite certain of his reception. He had been for long a close ally of Maxwell's. Marcella had thought him a true friend. But certainly, in his conduct of the Bill of late there had been a good deal to suggest the attitude of a man determined to secure himself a retreat, and uncertain how far to risk his personal fortunes on a doubtful issue. So that she found herself talking to him with a new formality, in the tone of those who have been friends, yet begin to foresee the time when they may be antagonists.

Or, again, it was Fontenoy—Fontenoy's great head and overhanging brows, thrown suddenly into light against the windy dusk. He was walking with a young viscount whose curls, clothes, and shoulders were alike unapproachable by the ordinary man. This youth could not forbear an exultant twitching of the lip as he passed the Maxwells. Fontenoy ceremoniously took off his hat. Marcella had a momentary impression of the passionate, bull-like force of the man, before he disappeared into the crowd. His eye had wavered as it met hers. Out of courtesy to the woman he had tried not to look his triumph.

And now it was quite another face—thin, delicately marked, a noticeable chin, an outstretched hand.

She was astonished by her own feeling of pleasure.

"Tell me," she said quickly, as she moved eagerly forward—"tell me! is it about what you expected?"

They turned towards the river. George Tressady hung over the wall beside her.

"Yes. I thought it might be anything from eight to twenty."

"I suppose Lord Fontenoy now thinks the end quite certain."

"He may. But the end is not certain!"

"But what can prevent it! The despairing thing for us is, that if the country had been roused earlier, everything might have been different. But now the House—"

"Has got out of hand? It may be; but I find a great many people affected by Lord Maxwell's speeches in the North, and his reception there. To-day's result was inevitable, but, if I'm not mistaken, we shall now see a number of new combinations."

The sensitive face became in a moment all intelligence. She played the politician, and cross-examined him. He hesitated. What he was doing was already a treachery. But he only hesitated to give way. They lingered by the wall together, discussing possibilities and persons; and when Maxwell at last turned from his own conversations to suggest to his wife that it was time to go home, she came forward with a mien of animation that surprised him. He greeted Tressady with friendliness, and then, as though a thought had struck him, suddenly drew the young man aside.

"Ancoats, of course," said George to himself; and Ancoats it was.

Maxwell, without preliminaries, and taking his companion's knowledge of the story for granted—no doubt on Fontenoy's information—said a few words about the renewal of the difficulty. Did he not think it had all begun again? Yes, George had some reason to think so. "If you can do anything for us—"

"Of course! but what can I do? As we all know, Ancoats does not sit still to be scolded."

Their colloquy lasted only a minute or two; yet when it was over, and the Maxwells had gone, George was left with a vivid impression of the great man's quiet strength and magnanimity. No one could have guessed from his anxious and well-considered talk on this private matter that he was in the very heat of a political struggle that must affect all his own fortunes. Tressady had been accustomed to spend his wit on the heavier sides of Maxwell's character. To-night, he said to himself, half in a passion, grudging the confession, that it was not wonderful she loved him!

She! The remembrance of how her whole nature had brightened from its cloud as he drew out for her his own forecast of what might still happen; the sweet confidence and charm that she had shown him; the intimacy of the tone she had allowed between them; the mingling all through of a delicate abstinence from anything touching on his own personal position, with an unspoken recognition of it—the impulse of a generosity that could not help rewarding what seemed to it the yielding of an adversary; these things filled him with a delicious pleasure as he walked home. In a hundred directions—political, social, spiritual—the old horizons of the mind seemed to be lightening and expanding. The cynical, indifferent temper of his youth was breaking down; the whole man was more intelligent, capable, tender. Yet what sadness and restlessness of soul as soon as the brief moment of joy had come and gone!

A few afternoons of Supply encroached upon the eight days that still remained before the last clause of the Bill came to a division. But the whole eight days, nevertheless, were filled with the new permutations and combinations which Tressady had foreseen. The Government carried the Stepney election, and in other quarters the effects of the speechmaking in the North began to be visible. Rumours of the syndicate already formed to take over large numbers of workshops in both the Jewish and Gentile quarters of the East End, and of the hours and wages that were likely to obtain in the new factories, were driving a considerable mass of working-class opinion, which had hitherto held aloof, straight for the Government, and splitting up much of that which had been purely hostile.

Nevertheless, the situation in the House itself was hardly changing with the change in the country. The Socialist members very soon developed the proposal to make the landlords responsible for the carrying-out of the new Act into a furious general attack on the landlords of London. Their diatribes kept up the terrors which had already cost the Government so many men. It was not possible, not seemly, to yield, as Maxwell was yielding, all along the line to these fellows!

But the Old Liberals, or the New Whigs, as George had expected, were restless. They felt the country, and they had no affection for landlords as such. Did a man arise who could give them a lead, there was no saying how soon they might not break away from the Fontenoy combination. Fontenoy felt it, and prowled among them like a Satan, urging them to complete their deed, to give the coup de grace.

On the Wednesday afternoon before the Friday on which he thought the final vote would be taken, George let himself into his own house about six o'clock, thankful to feel that he had a quiet evening before him. He had been wandering about the House of Commons and its appurtenances all day, holding colloquies with this person and that, unable to see his way—to come to any decision. And, as was now usual, he and Fontenoy had been engaged in steering out of each other's way as much as possible.

As he went upstairs he noticed a letter lying on the step. He took it up, and found an open note, which he read, at first without thinking of it:

"My dear Lady,—Chatsworth can't be done. I have thrown my flies with great skill, but—no go! I don't seem to have influence enough in that quarter. But I have various other plans on hand. You shall have a jolly autumn, if I can manage it. There are some Scotch invitations I can certainly get you—and I should like to show you the ways of those parts. By the way, I hope your husband shoots decently. People are very particular. And you really must consult me about your gowns—I'm deuced clever at that sort of thing! I shall come to-morrow, when I have packed off my family to the country. Don't know why God made families!

"Yours always,

"CATHEDINE."

"George! is that you?" cried Letty from above him, in a voice half angry, half hesitating; "and—and—that's my note. Please give it me at once."

He finished it under her eyes, then handed it to her with formal courtesy. They walked into the drawing-room, and George shut the door. He was very pale, and Letty quailed a little.

"So Cathedine has been introducing us into society," he said, "and advising you as to your gowns. Was that—quite necessary—do you think?"

"It's very simple what he has been doing," was her angry reply. "You never take any pains to make life amusing to me, so I must look elsewhere, if I want society—that's all."

"And it never occurs to you that you are thereby incurring an unseemly obligation to a man whom I dislike, whom I have warned you against, who bears everywhere an evil name? You think I am likely to enjoy—to put up with, even—the position of being asked on sufferance—as your appendage—provided I 'shoot decently'?"

His tone of scorn, his slight figure, imperiously drawn up, sent her a challenge, which she answered with sullen haste.

"That's all nonsense, of course! And he wouldn't be rude to you if you weren't always rude to him."

"Rude to him!" He smiled. "But now, let us get to the bottom of this thing. Did Cathedine get us the cards for Clarence House—and that Goodwood invitation?"

Letty made no answer. She stared at him defiantly, twisting and untwisting the ribbons of her blue dress.

George reddened hotly. His personal pride in matters of social manners was one of his strongest characteristics.

"Let me beg you, at any rate, to write and tell Lord Cathedine that we will not trouble him for any more of these kind offices. And, moreover, I shall not go to any of these houses in the autumn unless I am quite certain he has had nothing to do with it."

"I have accepted," said Letty, breathing hard.

"I cannot help that. You should have been frank with me. I am not going to do what would destroy my own self-respect."

"No—you prefer making love to Lady Maxwell!"

He looked steadily a moment at her pallor and her furious eyes. Then he said, in another tone:

"Letty, does it ever occur to you that we have not been married yet five months? Are our relations to each other to go on for ever like this? I think we might make something better of them."

"That's your lookout. But as to these invitations, I have accepted them, and I shall go."

"I don't think you will. You would find it wouldn't do. Anyway, Cathedine must be written to."

"I shall do nothing of the kind!" she cried.

"Then I shall write myself."

She rose, quivering with passion, supporting herself on the arm of her chair.

"If you do, I will find some way of punishing you for it. Oh, if I had never made myself miserable by marrying you!"

Their eyes met. Then he said:

"I think I had better go and dine at the club. We are hardly fit to be together."

"Go, for heaven's sake!" she said, with a disdainful gesture.

Outside the door he paused a moment, head bent, hands clenched. Then a wild, passionate look overspread his young face. "It is her evening," he said to himself. "Letty turns me out. I will go."

Meanwhile Letty stood where he had left her till she had heard the street-door close. The typical, significant sound knelled to her heart. She began to walk tempestuously up and down, crying with excitement.

Time passed on. The August evening closed in; and in this deserted London nobody came to see her. She dined alone, and afterwards spent what seemed to her interminable hours pacing the drawing-room and meditating. At last there was a pause in the rush of selfish or jealous feeling which had been pulsing through her for weeks past, dictating all her actions, fevering all her thoughts. And there is nothing so desolate as such a pause, to such a nature. For it means reflection; it means putting one's life away from one, and looking at it as a whole. And to the Lettys of this world there is no process more abhorrent—none they will spend more energy in escaping.

It was inexplicable, intolerable that she should be so unhappy. What was it that tortured her so—hatred of Marcella Maxwell, or pain that she had lost her husband? But she had never imagined herself in love with him when she married him. He had never obtained from her before a tenth part of the thought she had bestowed upon him during the past six weeks. During all the time that she had been flirting with Cathedine, and recklessly placing herself in his power by the favours she asked of him, she saw now, with a kind of amazement, that she had been thinking constantly of George, determined to impress him with her social success, to force him to admire her and think much of her.

Cathedine? Had he any real attraction for her? Why, she was afraid of him, she knew him to be coarse and brutal, even while she played with him and sent him on her errands. When she compared him with George—even George as she had just seen him in this last odious scene—she felt the tears of anger and despair rising.

But to be forced to dismiss him at George's word, to submit in this matter of the invitations, to let herself be trampled on, while George gave all his homage, all his best mind, to Lady Maxwell—something scorching flew through her veins as she thought of it. Never! never! She would find, she had already thought of, a startling way of avenging herself.

Late at night George came home. She had locked her door, and he turned into his dressing-room. When the house was quiet again, she pressed her face into the pillows, and wept till she was amazed at her own pain, and must needs turn her rage upon herself.

* * * * *

When Tressady arrived at the house in Mile End Road he found the pretty, bare room where Marcella held her gatherings full of guests. The East End had not "gone out of town." The two little workhouse girls, in the whitest of caps and aprons, were carrying round trays of coffee and cakes; and beyond the open window was a tiny garden, backed by a huge Board School and some tall warehouses, yet as pleasant within its own small space as a fountain and flowers, constantly replenished from Maxwell Court, could make it.

Amid the medley of workmen, union officials, and members of Parliament that the room contained, George was set first of all to talk to a young schoolmaster or two, but he had never felt so little able to adjust his mind to strangers. The thought of his home miseries burnt within him. When could he get his turn with her? He was thirsty for the sound of her voice, the kindness of her eyes.

She had received him with unusual warmth, and an eagerness of look that seemed to show she had at least as much to say to him as he to her. And at last his turn came. She took some of her guests into the garden. George followed, and they found themselves side by side. He noticed that she was very pale. Yet how was it that fatigue and anxiety instead of marring her physical charm, only increased it? This thin black dress in which the tall figure moved so finely, the black lace folded in a fashion all her own about her neck and breast, the waving lines of hair above the delicate stateliness of the brow—those slight tragic hollows in cheek and temple with their tale of spirit and passionate feeling, and all the ebb and flow of noble life—he had never felt her so rare, so adorable.

"Well! what do you think of it all to-day? Are you still inclined to prophesy?" she asked him, smiling.

"I might be—if I saw any chance of the man you want. But he doesn't seem to be forthcoming, and—"

"And to-morrow is the end!"

"The Government has quite made up its mind not to take defeat—not to accept modifications?"

She shook her head.

They were standing at the end of the garden, looking into the brightly lit windows of the Board School, where evening-classes were going on. She gave a long sigh.

"As for us personally, we can only be thankful to have it over. Neither of us could have borne it much longer. I suppose, when the crisis is all over, we shall go away for a long time."

By "the crisis" she meant, of course, the resignation of Ministers and a change of Government. So that a few days hence she would be no longer within his reach at all. Maxwell, once out of office, would, no doubt, for a long while to come prefer to spend the greater part of his time in Brookshire, away from politics. A sudden sharp perception woke in Tressady of what it would mean to him to find himself in a world where, on going out of a morning, it would be no longer possible to come across her.

At last she broke the silence.

"How little I really thought, in spite of all one's anxiety, that Lord Fontenoy was going to win! He has played his cards amazingly well."

George took no notice. Thoughts were whirling in his brain.

"What would you say to me, I wonder," he said at last, "if I were to try the part?"

He spoke in a bantering tone, poking at the black London earth with his stick.

"What part?"

"Well, it seems to me I might put the case. One wants to argue the thing in a common-sense way. I don't feel towards this clause as I did towards the others. I know a good many men don't."

He turned to her with a light composure.

She stared in bewilderment.

"I don't understand."

"Well; why shouldn't one put the case? We have always counted on the hostility of the country. But the country seems to be coming round. Some of us now feel the Bill should have its chance—we are inclined to let Ministers take the responsibility. But, gracious heavens!—to suppose the House would pay any attention to me!"

He took up a stone and jerked it over the wall. She did not speak for a moment. At last she said:

"It would be a grave thing for you to do."

He turned, and their eyes met, hers full of emotion, and his hesitating and reflective. Then he laughed, his pride stung a little by her expression.

"You think I should do myself more harm, than good to anybody else?"

"No.—Only it would be serious," she repeated after a pause.

Instantly he dropped the subject as far as his own action was concerned. He led her back into discussion of other people, and of the situation in general.

Then suddenly, as they talked, a host of thoughts fled cloud-like, rising and melting, through Marcella's memory. She remembered with what prestige—considering his youth and inexperience—he had entered Parliament, the impression made by the short and brilliant campaign of his election. Now, since the real struggle of the session had begun, his energies seemed to have been unaccountably in abeyance, and eclipse. People she noticed had ceased to talk of him. But supposing, after all, there had been a crisis of mind and conviction underlying it?—supposing that now, at the last moment, in a situation that cried out for a leader, something should suddenly release his powers and gifts to do their proper work—

It vexed her to realise her own excitement, together with an odd shrinking and reluctance that seemed to be fighting with it. All in a moment, to Tressady's astonishment, she recalled the conversation to the point where it had turned aside.

"And you think—you really think"—her voice had a nervous appealing note—"that even at this eleventh hour—No, I don't understand!—I can't understand!—why, or how you should still think it possible to change things enough!"

He felt a sting of pleasure, and the passing sense of hurt pride was soothed. At least he had conquered her attention, her curiosity!

"I am sure that anything might still happen," he said stubbornly.

"Well, only let it be settled!" she said, trying to speak lightly, "else there will be nothing left of some of us."

She raised her hand, and pushed back her hair with a childish gesture of weariness, that was quite unconscious, and therefore touching.

As she spoke, indeed, the thought of a strong man harassed with overwork, and patiently preparing to lay down his baffled task, and all his cherished hopes, captured her mind, brought a quick rush of tears even to her eyes. Tressady looked at her; he saw the moisture in the eyes, the reddening of the cheek, the effort for self-control.

"Why do you let yourself feel it so much?" he said resentfully; "it is not natural, nor right."

"That's our old quarrel, isn't it?" she answered, smiling.

He was staring at the ground again, poking with his stick.

"There are so many things one must feel," he said in a bitter low voice; "one may as well try to take politics calmly."

She looked down upon him, understanding, but not knowing how to meet him, how to express herself. His words and manner were a confession of personal grief,—almost an appeal to her,—the first he had ever made. Yet how to touch the subject of his marriage! She shrank from it painfully. What ominous, disagreeable things she had heard lately of the young Lady Tressady from people she trusted! Why, oh! why had he ruined his own life in such a way!

And with the yearning towards all suffering which was natural to her, there mingled so much else—inevitable softness and gratitude for that homage towards herself, which had begun to touch and challenge all the loving, responsive impulse which was at the root of her character—an eager wish to put out a hand and guide him—all tending to shape in her this new longing to rouse him to some critical and courageous action, action which should give him at least the joy that men get from the strenuous use of natural powers, from the realisation of themselves. And through it all the most divinely selfish blindness to the real truth of the situation! Yet she tried not to think of Maxwell—she wished to think only of and for her friend.

After his last words they stood side by side in silence for a few moments. But the expression of her eyes, of her attitude, was all sympathy. He must needs feel that she cared, she understood, that his life, his pain, his story mattered to her. At last she said, turning her face away from him, and from the few people who had not yet left the garden to go and listen to some music that was going on in the drawing-room:

"Sometimes, the best way to forget one's own troubles—don't you think?—is to put something else first for a time—perhaps in your case, the public life and service. Mightn't it be? Suppose you thought it all really out, what you have been saying to me—gave yourself up to it—and then determined. Perhaps afterwards—"

She paused—overcome with doubt, even shyness—and very pale too, as she turned to him again. But so beautiful! The very perplexity which spoke in the gently quivering face as it met his, made her lovelier in his eyes. It seemed to strike down some of the barrier between them, to present her to him as weaker, more approachable.

But after waiting a moment, he gave a little harsh laugh.

"Afterwards, when one has somehow settled other people's affairs, one might see straighter in one's own? Is that what you mean?"

"I meant," she said, speaking with difficulty, "what I have often found—myself—that it helps one sometimes, to throw oneself altogether into something outside one's own life, in a large disinterested way. Afterwards, one comes back to one's own puzzles—with a fresh strength and hope."

"Hope!" he said despondently, with a quick lifting of the shoulders. Then, in another tone—

"So that's your advice to me—to take this thing seriously—to take myself seriously—to think it out?"

"Yes, yes," she said eagerly; "don't trifle with it—with what you might think and do—till it is too late to think and do anything."

Suddenly it flashed across them both how far they had travelled since their first meeting in the spring. Her mind filled with a kind of dread, an uneasy sense of responsibility—then with a tremulous consciousness of power. It was as though she felt something fluttering like a bird in her hands. And all the time there echoed through her memory a voice speaking in a moonlit garden—"You know—you don't mind my saying it?—nobody is ever converted—politically—nowadays."

No, but there may be honest advance and change—why not? And if she had influenced him—was it not Maxwell's work and thought that had spoken through her?

"Well, anyway," said Tressady's voice beside her, "whatever happens—you'll believe—"

"That you won't help to give us the coup de grace unless you must?" she said, half laughing, yet with manifest emotion. "Anyway, I should have believed that."

"And you really care so much?" he asked her again, looking at her wondering.

She suddenly dropped her head upon her hands. They were alone now in the moonlit garden, and she was leaning over the low wall that divided them from the school enclosure. But before he could say anything—before he could even move closer to her—she had raised her face again, and drawn her hand rapidly across her eyes.

"I suppose one is tired and foolish after all these weeks," she said, with a breaking voice—"I apologise. You see when one comes to see everything through another's eyes—to live in another's life—" He felt a sudden stab, then a leap of joy—hungry, desolate joy—that she should thus admit him to the very sanctuary of her heart—let him touch the "very pulse of the machine." At the same moment that it revealed the eternal gulf between them, it gave him a delicious passionate sense of intimity—of privilege.

"You have—a marvellous idea of marriage"—he said, under his breath, as he moved slowly beside her towards the house.

She made no answer. In another minute she was talking to him of indifferent things, and immediately afterwards he found himself parted from her in the crowd of the drawing-room.

When the party dispersed and he was walking alone towards Aldgate through the night, he could do nothing but repeat to himself fragments of what she had said to him—lost all the time in a miserable yearning memory of her eyes and voice.

His mind was made up. And as he lay sleepless and solitary through the night, he scarcely thought any more of the strait to which his married life had come. Forty-eight hours hence he should have time for that. For the present he had only to "think out" how it might be possible for him to turn doubt and turmoil into victory, and lay the crown of it at Marcella Maxwell's feet.

Meanwhile Marcella, on her return to St. James's Square, put her hands on Maxwell's shoulders, and said to him, in a voice unlike herself: "Sir George Tressady was at the party to-night. I think he may be going to throw Lord Fontenoy over. Don't be surprised if he speaks in that sense to-morrow."

Maxwell looked extraordinarily perturbed.

"I hope he will do nothing of the kind," he said, with decision. "It will do him enormous harm. All the conviction he has ever shown has been the other way. It will be thought to be a mere piece of caprice and indiscipline."

Marcella said nothing. She walked away from him, her hands clasped behind her, her soft skirt trailing—a pale muse of meditation—meditation in which for once she did not invite him to share.

"Tressady, by all that's wonderful!" said a member of Fontenoy's party to his neighbour. "What's he got to say?"

The man addressed bent forward, with his hands on his knees, to look eagerly at the speaker.

"I knew there was something up," he said. "Every time I have come across Tressady to-day he has been deep with one or other of those fellows"—he jerked his head towards the Liberal benches. "I saw him buttonholing Green in the Library, then with Speedwell on the Terrace. And just look at their benches! They're as thick as bees! Yes, by George! there is something up."

His young sportsman's face flushed with excitement, and he tried hard through the intervening heads to get a glimpse of Fontenoy. But nothing was to be seen of the leader but a hat jammed down over the eyes, a square chin, and a pair of folded arms.

The House, indeed, throughout the day had worn an aspect which, to the experienced observer—to the smooth-faced Home Secretary, for instance, watching the progress of this last critical division—meant that everything was possible, the unexpected above all. Rumours gathered and died away. Men might be seen talking with unaccustomed comrades; and those who were generally most frank had become discreet. It was known that Fontenoy's anxiety had been growing rapidly; and it was noticed that he and the young viscount who acted as the Whip of the party had kept an extraordinarily sharp watch on all their own men through the dinner-hour.

Fontenoy himself had spoken before dinner, throwing scorn upon the clause, as the ill-conceived finish of an impossible Bill. So the landlords were to be made the executants, the police, of this precious Act? Every man who let out a tenement-house in workmen's dwellings was to be haled before the law and punished if a tailor on his premises did his work at home, if a widow took in shirtmaking to keep her children. Pass, for the justice or the expediency of such a law in itself. But who but a madman ever supposed you could get it carried out! What if the landlords refused or neglected their part? Quis custodiet? And was Parliament going to make itself ridiculous by setting up a law, which, were it a thousand times desirable, you simply could not enforce?

The speech was delivered with amazing energy. It abounded in savage epigram and personality; and a month before it would have had great effect. Every Englishman has an instinctive hatred of paper reforms.

During the dinner-hour Tressady met Fontenoy in the Lobby, and suddenly stopped to speak. The young man was deeply flushed and holding himself stiffly erect. "If you want me," he said—"you will find me in the Library. I don't want to spring anything upon you. You shall know all I know."

"Thank you," said the other with slow bitterness—"but we can look after ourselves. I think you and I understood each other this morning."

The two men parted abruptly. Tressady walked on, stung and excited afresh by the memory of the hateful half hour he had spent that morning in Fontenoy's library. For after all, when once he had come to his decision, he had tried to behave with frankness, with consideration.

Fontenoy hurried on to look for the young viscount with the curls and shoulders, and the two men stood about the inner lobby together, Fontenoy sombrely watching everybody who came out or in.

It was about ten o'clock when Tressady caught the Speaker's eye. He rose in a crowded House, a House conscious not only that the division shortly to be taken would decide the fate of a Government, but vaguely aware, besides, that something else was involved—one of those personal incidents that may at any moment make the dullest piece of routine dramatic, or rise into history by the juxtaposition of some great occasion.

The House had not yet made up its opinion about him as a speaker. He had done well; then, not so well. And, moreover, it was so long since he had taken any part in debate that the House had had time to forget whatever qualities he might once have shown.

His bearing and voice won him a first point. For youth, well-bred and well-equipped, the English House of Commons has always shown a peculiar indulgence. Then members began to bend eagerly forward, to crane necks, to put hands to ears. The Treasury Bench was seen to be listening as one man.

Before the speech was over many of those present had already recognised in it a political event of the first order. The speaker had traced with great frankness his own relation to the Bill—from an opinion which was but a prejudice, to a submission which was still half repugnance. He drew attention to the remarkable and growing movement in support of the Maxwell policy which was now spreading throughout the country, after a period of coolness and suspended judgment; he pointed to the probable ease with which, as it was now seen, the "harassed trades" would adapt themselves to the new law; he showed that the House, in at least three critical divisions, and under circumstances of enormous difficulty, had still affirmed the Bill; that the country, during the progress of the measure, had rallied unmistakably to the Government, and that all that remained was a question of machinery. That being so, he—and, he believed, some others—had reconsidered their positions. Their electoral pledges, in their opinion, no longer held, though they would be ready at any moment to submit themselves to consequences, if consequences there were to be.

Then, taking up the special subject-matter of the clause, he threw himself upon his leader's speech with a nervous energy, an information, and a resource which held the House amazed. He tore to pieces Fontenoy's elaborate attack, showed what practical men thought of the clause, and with what careful reliance upon their opinion and their experience it had been framed; and, finally—with a reference not lacking in a veiled passion that told upon the House, to those "dim toiling thousands" whose lot, "as it comes to work upon the mind, is daily perplexing if not transforming the thoughts and ideals of such men as I"—he, in the plainest terms, announced his intention of voting with the Government, and sat down, amid the usual mingled storm, in a shouting and excited House.

The next hour passed in a tumult. One speaker after another got up from the Liberal benches—burly manufacturers and men of business, who had so far held a strong post in the army of resistance—to tender their submission, to admit that the fight had gone far enough, that the country was against them, and that the Bill must be borne. What use, too, in turning out a Government which would either be sent back with redoubled strength or replaced by combinations that had no attractions whatever from men of moderate minds? Sadness reigned in the speeches of this Liberal remnant; nor could the House from time to time forbear to jeer them. But they made their purpose plain, and the Government Whip, standing near the door, gleefully struck off name after name from his Opposition list.

Then followed the usual struggle between the division that all men wanted and the speakers that no man could endure. But at last the bell was rung, the House cleared. As Tressady turned against the stream of his party, Fontenoy, with a sarcastic smile, stood elaborately aside to let him pass.

"We shall soon know what you have cost us," he said hoarsely in Tressady's ear; then, advancing a little towards the centre of the floor, he looked up markedly and deliberately at the Ladies' Gallery. Tressady made no reply. He held his fair head higher than usual as he passed on his unaccustomed way to the Aye Lobby. Many an eager eye strained back to see how many recruits would join him as he reached the Front Opposition Bench; many a Parliamentary Nestor watched the young man's progress with a keenness born of memory—memory that burnt anew with the battles of the past.

"Do you remember Chandos," said one old man to another—"young Chandos, that went for Peel in '46 against his party? It was my first year in Parliament. I can see him now. He was something like this young fellow."

"But his ratting changed nothing," said his companion, with an uneasy laugh; and they both struggled forward among the Noes.

Twenty minutes later the tellers were at the table, and the moment that was to make or mar a great Ministry had come.

"Ayes, 306; Noes, 280. The Ayes have it!"

"By Jove, he's done it!—the Judas!" cried a young fellow, crimson with excitement, who was standing beside Fontenoy!

"Yes—he's done it!" said Fontenoy, with grim composure, though the hand that held his hat shook. "The curtain may now fall."

"Where is he?" shouted the hot bloods around him, hooting and groaning, as their eyes searched the House for the man who had thus, in an afternoon, pulled down and defeated all their hopes.

But Tressady was nowhere to be seen. He had left the House just as the great news, surging like a wave through Lobby and corridor, reached a group of people waiting in a Minister's private room—and Marcella Maxwell knew that all was won.



CHAPTER XVIII

"I Shall go straight to Brook Street, and see if I can be a comfort to Letty," said Mrs. Watton, with a tone and air, however, that seemed to class her rather with the Sons of Thunder than the Sons of Consolation.

She was standing on the steps of the Ladies' Gallery entrance to the House of Commons, and Harding, who had just called a cab for her, was beside her.

"Could you see from the Gallery whether George had left?"

"He was still there when I came down," said Mrs. Watton, ungraciously, as though she grudged to talk of such a monster. "I saw him near the door while they hooted him. But, anyway, I should go to Letty—I don't forget that I am her only relative in town."

As a matter of fact, her eyes had played her false. But the wrath with which her large face and bonnet were shaking was cause enough for hallucinations.

"Then I'll go, too," said Harding, who had been hesitating. "No doubt Tressady'll stay for his thanks! But I daresay we sha'n't find Letty at home yet. I know she was to go to the Lucys' to-night."

"Poor lamb!" said Mrs. Watton, throwing up her hands.

Harding laughed.

"Oh! Letty won't take it like a lamb—you'll see!"

"What can a woman do?" said his mother, scornfully. "A decent woman, I mean, whom one can still have in one's house. All she can do is to cry, and take a district."

When they reached Upper Brook Street, the butler reported that his mistress had just come in. He made, of course, no difficulty about admitting Lady Tressady's aunt, and Mrs. Watton sailed up to the drawing-room, followed by Harding, who carried his head poked forward, as was usual to him, an opera-hat under his arm, and an eyeglass swinging from a limp wrist.

As they entered the drawing-room door, Letty, in full evening-dress, was standing with her back to them. She had the last edition of an evening paper open before her, so that her small head and shoulders seemed buried in the sheet. And so eager was her attention to what she was reading that she had not heard their approach.

"Letty!" said Mrs. Watton.

Her niece turned with a violent start.

"My dear Letty!" The aunt approached, quivering with majestic sympathy, both hands outstretched.

Letty looked at her a moment, frowning; then recoiled impatiently, without taking any notice of the hands.

"So I see George has spoken against his party. There has been a scene. What has happened? What's the end?"

"Only that the Government has won its clause," said Harding, interposing his smooth falsetto—"won by a substantial majority, too. No chance of the Lords playing the fool!"

"The Government has won?—the Maxwells have won, that is,—she has won!" said Letty, still frowning, her voice sharp and tingling.

"If you like to put it so," said Harding, raising his shoulders. "Yes, I should think that set's pretty jubilant to-night."

"And you mean to say that George did and said nothing to prepare you, my poor child?" cried Mrs. Watton, in her heaviest manner. She had picked up the newspaper, and was looking with disgust at the large head-lines with which the hastily printed sheet strove to eke out the brevity of the few words in which it announced the speech of the evening: "Scene in the House of Commons—Break-down of the Resistance to the Bill—Sir George Tressady's Speech—Unexampled Excitement."

Letty breathed fast.

"He said something a day or two ago about a change, but of course I never believed—He has disgraced himself!"

She began to pace stormily up and down the room, her white skirts floating behind her, her small hands pulling at her gloves. Harding Watton stood looking on in an attitude of concern, one pensive finger laid upon his lip.

"Well, my dear Letty," said Mrs. Watton, impressively, as she laid down the newspaper, "the only thing to be done is to take him away. Let people forget it—if they can. And let me tell you, for your comfort, that he is not the first man, by a long way, that woman has led astray—nor will he be the last."

Letty's pale cheeks flamed into red. She stopped. She turned upon her comforter with eyes of hot resentment and dislike.

"And they dare to say that he did it for her! What right has anybody to say it?"

Mrs. Watton stared. Harding slowly and compassionately shook his head.

"I am afraid the world dares to say a great many unpleasant things—don't you know? One has to put up with it. Lady Maxwell has a characteristic way of doing things. It's like a painter: one can't miss the touch."

"No more than one can mistake a saying of Harding Watton's," said a vibrating voice behind them.

And there in the open doorway stood Tressady, pale, spent, and hollow-eyed, yet none the less the roused master of the house, determined to assert himself against a couple of intruders.

Letty looked at him in silence, one foot beating the ground. Harding started, and turned aside to search for his opera-hat, which he had deposited upon the sofa. Mrs. Watton was quite unabashed.

"We did not expect you so soon," she said, holding out a chilly hand. "And I daresay you will misunderstand our being here. I cannot help that. It seemed to me my duty, as Letty's nearest relative in London, to come here and condole with her to-night on this deplorable event."

"I don't know what you mean," said Tressady, coolly, his hand on his side. "Are you speaking of the division?"

Mrs. Watton threw up her hands and her eyebrows. Then, gathering up her dress, she marched across the room to Letty.

"Good-night, Letty. I should have been glad to have had a quiet talk with you, but as your husband's come in I shall go. Oh! I'm not the person to interfere between husband and wife. Get him to tell you, if you can, why he has disappointed the friends and supporters who got him into Parliament; why he has broken all his promises, and given everybody the right to pity his unfortunate young wife! Oh! don't alarm yourself, Sir George! I say my mind, but I'm going. I know very well that I am intruding. Good-night. Letty understands that she will always find sympathy in my house."

And the fierce old lady swept to the door, holding the culprit with her eyes. Harding, too, stepped up to Letty, who was standing now by the mantelpiece, with her back to the room. He took the hand hanging by her side, and folded it ostentatiously in both of his.

"Good-night, dear little cousin," he said, in his most affected voice. "If you have any need of us, command us."

"Are you going?" said Tressady. His brow was curiously wrinkled.

Harding made him a bow, and walked with rather sidling steps to the door. Tressady followed him to the landing, called to the butler, who was still up, and ceremoniously told him to get Mrs. Watton a cab. Then he walked back to the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him.

"Letty!"

His tone startled her. She looked round hastily.

"Letty! you were defending me as I came in."

He was extraordinarily pale—his blue eyes flashed. Every trace of the hauteur with which he had treated the Wattons had disappeared.

Letty recovered herself in an instant. The moment he showed softness she became the tyrant.

"Don't come!—don't touch me!" she said passionately, putting out her hand as he approached her. "If I defended you, it was just for decency's sake. You have disgraced us both. It is perfectly true what Aunt Watton says. I don't suppose we shall ever get over it. Oh! don't try to bully me"—for Tressady had turned away with an impatient groan. "It's no use. I know you think me a little fool! I'm not one of your great political ladies, who pretend to know everything that they may keep men dangling after them. I don't pose and play the hypocrite, as some—some people do. But, all the same, I know that you have done for yourself, and that people will say the most disgraceful things. Of course they will! And you can't deny them—you know you can't. Why did you never tell me a thing? Who made you change over? Ah! you can't answer—or you won't!"

Tressady was walking up and down with folded arms. He paused at her challenge.

"Why didn't I tell you? Do you remember that I wanted to talk to you yesterday morning—that I suggested you should come and hear my speech—and you wouldn't have it? You didn't care about politics, you said, and weren't going to pretend.—What made me go over? Well—I changed my mind—to some extent," he said slowly.

"To some extent?" She laughed scornfully, mimicking his voice. "To some extent! Are you going to try and make me believe there was nothing else?"

"No. As I walked home to-night I determined not to conceal the truth from you. Opinions counted for something. I voted—yes, taking all things together, I think it may be said that I voted honestly. But I should never have taken the part I did but—" he hesitated, then went on deliberately—"but that I had come to have a strong—wish—to give Lady Maxwell her heart's desire. She has been my friend. I repaid her what I could."

Letty, half beside herself, flung at him a shower of taunts hysterical and hardly intelligible. He showed no emotion. "Of course," he said disdainfully, "if you choose to repeat this to others you will do us both great damage. I suppose I can't help it. For anybody else in the world—for Mrs. Watton and her son, for instance—I have a perfectly good political defence, and I shall defend myself stoutly. I have no intention whatever of playing the penitent in public."

And what, she asked him, striving with all her might to regain the self-command which could alone enable her to wound him, to get the mastery—what was to be her part in this little comedy? Did he expect her to put up with this charming situation—to take what Marcella Maxwell left?

"No," he said abruptly. "You have no right to reproach me or her in any vulgar way. But I recognise that the situation is impossible. I shall probably leave Parliament and London."

She stared at him in speechless passion, then suddenly gathered up her fan and gloves and fled past him.

He caught at her, and stopped her, holding her satin skirt.

"My poor child!" he cried in remorse; "bear with me, Letty—and forgive me!"

"I hate you!" she said fiercely, "and I will never forgive you!"

She wrenched her dress away; he heard her quick steps across the floor and up the stairs.

Tressady fell into a chair, broken with exhaustion. His day in the House of Commons alone would have tried any man's nervous strength; this final scene had left him in a state to shrink from another word, another sound.

He must have dozed as he sat there from pure fatigue, for he found himself waking suddenly, with a sense of chill, as the August dawn was penetrating the closed windows and curtains.

He sprang up, and pulled the curtains back with a stealthy hand, so as to make no noise. Then he opened the window and stepped out upon the balcony, into a misty haze of sun.

The morning air blew upon him, and he drew it in with delight. How blessed was the sun, and the silence of the streets, and the dappled sky there to the east, beyond the Square!

After those long hours of mental tension in the crowd and heat of the House of Commons, what joy! what physical relief! He caught eagerly at the sensation of bodily pleasure, driving away his cares, letting the morning freshness recall to him a hundred memories—the memories of a traveller who has seen much, and loved Nature more than man. Blue surfaces of rippling sea, cool steeps among the mountains, streams brawling over their stones, a thousand combinations of grass and trees and sun—these things thronged through his brain, evoked by the wandering airs of this pale London sunrise and the few dusty plains which he could see to his right, behind the Park railings. And, like heralds before the presence, these various images flitted, passed, drew to one side, while memory in trembling revealed at last the best she had—an English river flowing through June meadows under a heaven of flame, a woman with a child, the scents of grass and hawthorn, the plashing of water.

He hung over the balcony, dreaming.

But before long he roused himself, and went back into the house. The gaudy drawing-room looked singularly comfortless and untidy in the delicate purity of the morning light. The flowers Letty had worn in her dress the night before were scattered on the floor, and the evening paper lay on the chair, where she had flung it down.

He stood in the centre of the room, his head raised, listening. No sound. Surely she was asleep. In spite of all the violence she had shown in their after-talk, the memory of her speech to Mrs. Watton lingered in the young fellow's mind. It astonished him to realise, as he stood there, in this morning silence, straining to hear if his wife were moving overhead, how, pari passu with the headlong progress of his act of homage to the one woman, certain sharp perceptions with regard to the other had been rising in his mind.

His life had been singularly lacking till now in any conscious moral strain. That a man's desires should outrun his conscience had always seemed to him, on the whole, the normal human state. But all sorts of new standards and ideals had begun to torment him since the beginning of his friendship with Marcella Maxwell, and a hundred questions that had never yet troubled him were even now pressing through his mind as to his relations to his wife, and the inexorableness of his debt towards her.

Moreover, he had hardly left the House of Commons and its uproar—his veins were still throbbing with the excitement of the division—when a voice said to him, "This is the end! You have had your 'moment'—now leave the stage before any mean anti-climax comes to spoil it all. Go. Break your life across. Don't wait to be dismissed and shaken off—take her gratitude with you, and go!"

Ah! but not yet—not yet! He sat down before his wife's little writing-table, and buried his face in his hands, while his heart burnt with longing. One day—then he would accept his fate, and try and mend both his own life and Letty's.

Would it be generous to drop out of her ken at once, leave the gift in her lap, and say nothing? Ah! but he was not capable of it. His act must have its price. Just one half hour with her—face to face. Then, shut the door—and, good-bye! What was there to fear? He could control himself. But after all these weeks, after their conversation of the night before, to go away without a word would be discourteous—unkind even—almost a confession to her of the whys and wherefores of what he had done.

He had a book of hers which he had promised to return. It was a precious little manuscript book, containing records written out by herself of lives she had known among the poor. She prized it much, and had begged him to keep it safe and return it.

He took it out of his pocket, looked at it, and put it carefully back. In a few hours the little book should pass him into her presence. The impulse that possessed him barred for the moment all remorse, all regret.

Then he looked for paper and pen and began to write.

He sat for some time, absorbed in his task, doing his very best with it. It was a letter to his constituents, and it seemed to him he must have been thinking of it in his sleep, so easily did the sentences run.

No doubt, ill-natured gossip of the Watton type would be humming and hissing round her name for the next few days. Well, let him write his letter as well as he could, and publish it as soon as possible! It took him about an hour and a half, and when he read it over it appeared to him the best piece of political statement he had yet achieved. Very likely it would make Fontenoy more savage still. But Fontenoy's tone and attitude in the House of Commons had been already decisive. The breech between them was complete.

He put the sheets down at last, groaning within himself. Fustian and emptiness! What would ever give him back his old self-confidence, the gay whole-heartedness with which he had entered Parliament? But the thing had to be done, and he had done it efficiently. Moreover, the brain-exercise had acted as a tonic; his tension of nerve had returned. He stood beside the window once more, looking out into a fast-awakening London with an absent and frowning eye. He was thinking out the next few hours.

* * * * *

A little after eight Letty was roused from a restless sleep by the sound of a closing door. She rang hastily, and Grier appeared.

"Who was that went out?"

"Sir George, my lady. He's just dressed and left word that he had gone to take a packet to the 'Pall Mall' office. He said it must be there early, and he would breakfast at his club."

Letty sat up in bed, and bade Grier draw the curtains, and be quick in bringing her what she wanted. The maid glanced inquisitively, first at her mistress's haggard looks, then at the writing-table, as she passed it on her way to draw the blinds. The table was littered with writing-materials; some torn sheets had been transferred to the waste-paper basket, and a sealed letter was lying, address downwards, on the blotting-book. Letty, however, did not encourage her to talk. Indeed, she found herself sent away, and her mistress dressed without her.

Half an hour later Letty in her hat and cape slipped out of her room. She looked over the banisters into the hall. No one was to be seen, and she ran downstairs to the hall-door, which closed softly behind her. Five minutes later a latch-key turned quietly in the lock, and Letty reappeared. She went rapidly up to her room, a pale, angry ghost, glancing from side to side.

"Is Lady Maxwell at home?"

The butler glanced doubtfully at the inquirer.

"Sir George Tressady, I believe, sir? I will go and ask, if you will kindly wait a moment. Her ladyship does not generally see visitors in the morning."

"Tell her, please, that I have brought a parcel to return to her."

The butler retired, and shortly appeared at the corner of the stairs beckoning to the visitor. George mounted.

They passed through the outer drawing-room, and the servant drew aside the curtain of the inner room. Was it February again? The scent of hyacinth and narcissus seemed to be floating round him.

There was a hasty movement, and a tall figure came with a springing step to meet him.

"Sir George! How kind of you to come! I wish Maxwell were in. He would have enjoyed a chat with you so much. But Lord Ardagh sent him a note at breakfast-time, and he has just gone over to Downing Street. Hallin, move your puzzle a little, and make a way for Sir George to pass. Will you sit there?"

Hallin sprang up readily enough at the sight of his friend Sir George, put a fat hand into his, and then gave his puzzle-map of Europe a vigorous push to one side that drove Crete helplessly into the arms of the United Kingdom.

"Oh! what a muddle!" cried his mother, laughing, and standing to look at the disarray. "You must try, Hallin, and see if you can straighten it out—as Sir George straightened out father's Bill for him last night."

She turned to him; but the softness of her eyes was curiously veiled. It struck George at once that she was not at her ease—that there had been embarrassment in her very greeting of him.

They began to talk of the debate. She asked him minutely about the progress of the combination that had defeated Fontenoy. They discussed this or that man's attitude, or they compared the details of the division with those of the divisions which had gone before.

All through it seemed to Tressady that the person sitting in his chair and talking politics was a kind of automaton, with which the real George Tressady had very little to do. The automaton wore a grey summer suit, and seemed to be talking shrewdly enough, though with occasional lapses and languors. The real Tressady sat by, and noted what passed. "How pale she is! She is not really happy—or triumphant. How she avoids all personal talk—nothing to be said, or hardly, of my part in it—my effort. Ah! she praises my speech, but with no warmth—I see! she would rather not owe such a debt to me. Her mind is troubled—perhaps Maxwell?—or some vile talk?"

Meanwhile, all that Marcella perceived was that the man beside her became gradually more restless and more silent. She sat near him, with Hallin at her feet, her beautiful head held a little stiffly, her eyes at once kind and reserved. Nothing could have been simpler than her cool grey dress, her quiet attitude. Yet it seemed to him he had never felt her dignity so much—a moral dignity, infinitely subtle and exquisite, which breathed not only from her face and movements, but from the room about her—the room which held the pictures she loved, the books she read, the great pots of wild flowers or branching green it was her joy to set like jewels in its shady corners. He looked round it from time to time. It had for him the associations and the scents of a shrine, and he would never see it again! His heart swelled within him. The strange double sense died away.

Presently, Hallin, having put his puzzle safely into its box, ran off to his lessons. His mother looked after him, wistfully. And he had no sooner shut the door than Tressady bent forward. "You see—I thought it out!"

"Yes indeed!" she said, "and to some purpose."

But her voice was uncertain, and veiled like her eyes. Something in her reluctance to meet him, to talk it over, both alarmed and stung him. What was wrong? Had she any grievance against him? Had he so played his part as to offend her in any way? He searched his memory anxiously, his self-control, that he had been so sure of, failing him fast.

"It was a strange finish to the session—wasn't it?" he said, looking at her. "We didn't think it would end so, when we first began to argue. What a queer game it all is! Well, my turn of it will have been exciting enough—though short. I can't say, however, that I shall much regret putting down the cards. I ought never to have taken a hand."

She turned to him, in flushed dismay.

"You are thinking of leaving Parliament? But why—why should you?"

"Oh yes!—I am quite clear about that," he said deliberately. "It was not yesterday only. I am of no use in Parliament. And the only use it has been to me, is to show me—that—well!—that I have no party really, and no convictions. London has been a great mistake. I must get out of it—if only—lest my private life should drift on a rock and go to pieces. So far as I know it has brought me one joy only, one happiness only—to know you!"

He turned very pale. The hand that was lying on her lap suddenly shook. She raised it hastily, took some flowers out of a jar of poppies and grass that was standing near, and nervously put them back again. Then she said gently, almost timidly:

"I owe a great deal to your friendship. My mind—please believe it—is full of thanks. I lay awake last night, thinking of all the thousands of people that speech of yours would save—all the lives that hang upon it."

"I never thought of them at all," he said abruptly. His heart seemed to be beating in his throat.

She shrank a little. Evidently her presence of mind failed her, and he took advantage.

"I never thought of them," he repeated, "or, at least, they weighed with me as nothing compared with another motive. As for the thing itself, by the time yesterday arrived I had given up my judgment to yours—I had simply come to think that what you wished was good. A force I no longer questioned drove me on to help you to your end. That was the whole secret of last night. The rest was only means to a goal."

But he paused. He saw that she was trembling—that the tears were in her eyes.

"I have been afraid," she said, trying hard for composure—"it has been weighing upon me all through these hours—that—I had been putting a claim—a claim of my own forward." It seemed hardly possible for her to find the words. "And I have been realising the issues for you, feeling bitterly that I had done a great wrong—if it were not a matter of conviction—in—in wringing so much from a friend. This morning everything,—the victory, the joy of seeing hard work bear fruit,—it has all been blurred to me."

He gazed at her a moment—fixing every feature, every line upon his memory.

"Don't let it be," he said quietly, at last. "I have had my great moment. It does not fall to many to feel as I felt for about an hour last night. I had seen you in trouble and anxiety for many weeks. I was able to brush them away, to give you relief and joy,—at least, I thought I was"—he drew himself up with a half-impatient smile. "Sometimes I suspected that—that your kindness might be troubled about me; but I said to myself, 'that will pass away, and the solid thing—the fact—will remain. She longed for this particular thing. She shall have it. And if the truth is as she supposes it,—why not?—there are good men and keen brains with her—what has been done will go on gladdening and satisfying her year by year. As for me, I shall have acknowledged, shall have repaid—'"

He hesitated—paused—looked up.

A sudden terror seized her—her lips parted.

"Don't—don't say these things!" she said, imploring, lifting her hand. It was like a child flinching from a punishment.

He smiled unsteadily, trying to master himself, to find a way through the tumult of feeling.

"Won't you listen to me?" he said at last, "I sha'n't ever trouble you again."

She could make no reply. Intolerable gratitude and pain held her, and he went on speaking, gazing straight into her shrinking face.

"It seems to me," he said slowly, "the people who grow up in the dry and mean habit of mind that I grew up in, break through in all sorts of different ways. Art and religion—I suppose they change and broaden a man. I don't know. I am not an artist—and religion talks to me of something I don't understand. To me, to know you has broken down the walls, opened the windows. It always used to come natural to me—well! to think little of people, to look for the mean, ugly things in them, especially in women. The only people I admired were men of action—soldiers, administrators; and it often seemed to me that women hampered and belittled them. I said to myself, one mustn't let women count for too much in one's life. And the idea of women troubling their heads with politics, or social difficulties, half amused, half disgusted me. At the same time I was all with Fontenoy in hating the usual philanthropic talk about the poor. It seemed to be leading us to mischief—I thought the greater part of it insincere. Then I came to know you.—And, after all, it seemed a woman could talk of public things, and still be real—the humanity didn't rub off, the colour stood! It was easy, of course, to say that you had a personal motive—other people said it, and I should have liked to echo it. But from the beginning I knew that didn't explain it. All the women,"—he checked himself,—"most of the women I had ever known judged everything by some petty personal standard. They talked magnificently, perhaps, but there was always something selfish and greedy at bottom. Well, I was always looking for it in you! Then instead—suddenly—I found myself anxious lest what I said should displease or hurt you—lest you should refuse to be my friend. I longed, desperately, to make you understand me—and then, after our talks, I hated myself for posing, and going further than was sincere. It was so strange to me not to be scoffing and despising."

Marcella woke from her trance of pain—looked at him with amazement. But the sight of him—a man, with the perspiration on his brow, struggling now to tell the bare truth about himself and his plight—silenced her. She hung towards him again, as pale as he, bearing what fate had sent her.

"And ever since that day," he went on, putting his hand over his eyes, "when you walked home with me along the river, to be with you, to watch you, to puzzle over you, has built up a new self in me, that strains against and tears the old one. So these things—these heavenly, exquisite things that some men talk of—this sympathy, and purity, and sweetness—were true! They were true because you existed—because I had come to know something of your nature—had come to realise what it might be—for a man to have the right—"

He broke off, and buried his face in his hands, murmuring incoherent things. Marcella rose hurriedly, then stood motionless, her head turned from him, that she might not hear. She felt herself stifled with rising tears. Once or twice she began to speak, and the words died away again. At last she said, bending towards him:

"I have done very ill—very, very ill. I have been thinking all through of my personal want—of personal victory."

He shook his head, protesting. And she hardly knew how to go on. But suddenly the word of nature, of truth, came; though in the speaking it startled them both.

"Sir George!"—she put out her hand timidly and touched him—"may I tell you what I am thinking of? Not of you, nor of me—of another person altogether!"

He looked up.

"My wife?" he said, almost in his usual voice.

She said nothing; she was struggling with herself. He got up abruptly, walked to the open window, stood there a few seconds, and came back.

"It has to be all thought out again," he said, looking at her appealingly. "I must go away, perhaps—and realise—what can be done. I took marriage as carelessly as I took everything else. I must try and do better with it."

A sudden perception leapt in Marcella, revealing strange worlds. How she could have hated—with what fierceness, what flame!—the woman who taught ideal truths to Maxwell! She thought of the little self-complacent being in the white satin wedding-dress, that had sat beside her at Castle Luton—thought of her with overwhelming soreness and pain. Stepping quickly, her tears driven back, she went across the room to Tressady.

"I don't know what to say," she began, stopping suddenly beside him, and leaning her hand for support on a table while her head drooped. "I have been very selfish—very blind. But—mayn't it be the beginning—of something quite—quite—different? I was thinking only of Maxwell—or myself. But I ought to have thought of you—of my friend. I ought to have seen—but oh! how could I!" She broke off, wrestling with this amazing difficulty of choosing, amid all the thoughts that thronged to her lips, something that might be said—and if said, might heal.

But before he could interrupt her, she went on: "The harm was, in acting all through—by myself—as if only you and I, and Maxwell's work—were concerned. If I had made you known to him—if I had remembered—had thought—"

But she stopped again, in a kind of bewilderment. In truth she did not yet understand what had happened to her—how it could have happened to her—to her, whose life, soul, and body, to the red ripe of its inmost heart, was all Maxwell's, his possession, his chattel.

Tressady looked at her with a little sad smile.

"It was your unconsciousness," he said, in a low trembling voice, "of what you are—and have—that was so beautiful."

Somehow the words recalled her natural dignity, her noble pride as Maxwell's wife. She stood erect, composure and self-command returning. She was not her own, to humble herself as she pleased.

"We must never talk to each other like this again," she said gently, after a little pause. "We must try and understand each other—the real things in each other's lives.—Don't lay a great remorse on me, Sir George!—don't spoil your future, and your wife's—don't give up Parliament! You have great, great gifts! All this will seem just a passing misunderstanding—both to you—and me—by and by. We shall learn to be—real friends—you and we—together?"

She looked at him appealing—her face one prayer.

But he, flushing, shook his head.

"I must not come into your world," he said huskily. "I must go."

The wave of grief rolled upon her again. She turned away, looking across the room with wide dim eyes, as though asking for some help that did not come.

Tressady walked quickly back to the chair where he had been sitting, and took up his hat and gloves. Suddenly, as he looked back to her, he struck one of the gloves across his hand.

"What a coward—what a mean whining wretch I was to come to you this morning! I said to myself—like a hypocrite—that I could come—and go—without a word. My God—if I had!"—the low hoarse voice became a cry of pain—"I might still have taken some joy—"

He wrestled with himself.

"It was mad selfishness," he said at last, recovering himself by a fierce effort. "Mad it must have been—or I could never have come here to give you pain. Some demon drove me. Oh, forgive me!—forgive me! Good-bye! I shall bless you while I live. But you—you must never think of me, never speak of me—again."

She felt his grasp upon her fingers. He stooped, passionately kissed her hand and a fold of her dress. She rose hurriedly; but the door had closed upon him before she had found her voice or choked down the sob in her throat.

She could only drop back into her chair, weeping silently, her face hidden in her hands.

A few minutes passed. There was a step outside. She sprang up and listened, ready to fly to the window and hide herself among the curtains. Then the colour flooded into her cheek. She waited. Maxwell came in. He, too, looked disturbed, and as he entered the room he thrust a letter into his pocket, almost with violence. But when his eyes fell on his wife a pang seized him. He hurried to her, and she leant against him, saying in a sobbing voice:

"George Tressady has been here. I seem to have done him a wrong—and his wife. I am not fit to help you, Aldous. I do such rushing, blind, foolish things—and all that one hoped and worked for turns to mere selfishness and misery. Whom shall I hurt next? You, perhaps—you!"

And she clung to him in despair.

* * * * *

A few minutes later the husband and wife were in conference together, Marcella sitting, Maxwell standing beside her. Marcella's tears had ceased; but never had Maxwell seen her so overwhelmed, so sad, and he felt half ashamed of his own burning irritation and annoyance with the whole matter.

Clearly, what he had dimly foreseen on the night of her return from the Mile End meeting had happened. This young man, ill-balanced, ill-mated, yet full of a sensitive ability and perception, had fallen in love with her; and Maxwell owed his political salvation to his wife's charm.

The more he loved her, the more odious the situation was to him. That any rational being should have even the shred of an excuse for regarding her as the political coquette, using her beauty for a personal end, struck him as a kind of sacrilege, and made him rage inwardly. Nevertheless, the idea struck him—struck and kindled him all at once that the very perfectness of this tie that bound them together weakened her somewhat as a woman in her dealing with the outside world. It withdrew from her some of a woman's ordinary intuitions with regard to the men around her. The heart had no wants, and therefore no fears. To any man she liked she was always ready, as she came to know him, to show her true self with a freedom and loveliness that were like the freedom and loveliness of a noble child. To have supposed that such a man could have any feelings towards her other than those she gave to her friends would have seemed to her a piece of ill-bred vanity. Such contingencies lay outside her ken; she would have brushed them away with a laughing contempt had they been presented to her. Her life was at once too happy and too busy for such things. How could anyone fall in love with Aldous's wife? Why should they?—if one was to ask the simplest question of all.

Yet Maxwell, as he stood looking down upon her, conscious of a certain letter in his inner pocket, felt with growing yet most unwilling determination that he must somehow try and make her turn her eyes upon this dingy world and see it as it is.

For it was not the case merely of a spiritual drama in which a few souls, all equally sincere and void of offence, were concerned. That, in Maxwell's eyes, would have been already disagreeable and tragic enough. But here was this keen, spiteful crowd of London society watching for what it might devour—those hateful newspapers!—not to speak of the ordinary fool of everyday life.

There had not been wanting a number of small signs and warnings. The whole course of the previous day's debate, the hour of Tressady's speech, while Maxwell sat listening in the Speaker's Gallery overhead, had been for him—for her, too—poisoned by a growing uneasiness, a growing distaste for the triumph laid at their feet. She had come down to him from the Ladies' Gallery pale and nervous, shrinking almost from the grasp of his hand.

"What will happen? Has he made his position in Parliament impossible?" she had said to him as they stood together for a moment in the Home Secretary's room; and he understood, of course, that she was speaking of Tressady. In the throng that presently overwhelmed them he had no time to answer her; but he believed that she, too, had been conscious of the peculiar note in some of the congratulations showered upon them on their way through the crowded corridors and lobbies. On the steps of St. Stephen's entrance an old white-haired gentleman, the friend and connection of Maxwell's father, had clapped the successful Minister on the back, with a laughing word in his ear: "Upon my word, Aldous, your beautiful lady is a wife to conjure with! I hear she has done the whole thing—educated the young man, brought him to his bearings, spoilt all Fontenoy's plans, broken up the group, in fact. Glorious!" and the old man looked with eyes half sarcastic, half admiring at the form of Lady Maxwell standing beside the carriage-door.

"I imagine the group has broken itself up," said Maxwell, shortly, shaking off his tormentor. But as he glanced back from, the carriage-window to the crowded doorway, and the faces looking after them, the thought of the talk that was probably passing amid the throng set every nerve on edge.

Meanwhile she sat beside him, unconsciously a little more stately than usual, but curiously silent—till at last, as they were nearing Trafalgar Square, she threw out her hand to him, almost timidly:

"You do rejoice?"

"I do," he said, with a long breath, pressing the hand. "I suppose nothing ever happens as one has foreseen it. How strange, when one looks back to that Sunday!"

She made no reply, and since then Tressady's name had been hardly mentioned between them. They had discussed every speech but his—even when the morning papers came, reflecting the astonishment and excitement of the public. The pang in Marcella's mind was—"Aldous thinks I asked a personal favour—Did I?" And memory would fall back into anxious recapitulation of the scene with Tressady. Had she indeed pressed her influence with him too much—taken advantage of his Parliamentary youth and inexperience? In the hours of the night that followed the division, merely to ask the question tormented a conscience as proud as it was delicate.

And now!—this visit—this incredible declaration—this eagerness for his reward! Maxwell's contempt and indignation were rising fast. Mere chivalry, mere decent manners even, he thought, might have deterred a man from such an act. Meanwhile, in rapid flashes of thought he began to debate with himself how he should use this letter in his pocket—this besmirching, degrading letter.

But Marcella had much more to say. Presently she roused herself from her trance and looked at her husband.

"Aldous!"—she touched him on the arm, and he turned to her gravely—"There was one moment at Mile End, when—when I did play upon his pity—his friendship. He came down to Mile End on Thursday night. I told you. I saw he was unhappy—unhappy at home. He wanted sympathy desperately. I gave it him. Then I urged him to throw himself into his public work—to think out this vote he was to give. Oh! I don't know!—I don't know—" she broke off, in a depressed voice, shaking her head slowly—"I believe I threw myself upon his feelings—I felt that he was very sympathetic, that I had a power over him—it was a kind of bribery."

Her brow drooped under his eye.

"I believe you are quite unjust to yourself," he said unwillingly. "Of course, if any man chooses to misinterpret a confidence—"

"No," she said steadily. "I knew. It was quite different from any other time. I remember how uncomfortable I felt afterwards. I did try to influence him—just through, being a woman. There!—it is quite true."

He could not withdraw his eyes from hers—from the mingling of pride, humility, passion, under the dark lashes.

"And if you did, do you suppose that I can blame you?" he said slowly.

He saw that she was holding an inquisition in her own heart, and looking to him as judge. How could he judge?—whatever there might be to judge. He adored her.