There was irony in the fact that Christabel, hinting at suspicions for which, in Rose's mind, there was at first no cause, had at last actually brought about what she feared, and if Rose had looked for justification, she might have found it there. But she did not look for it any more than Reginald would have done; she was like him there, but where she differed was in loyalty to an idea. She saw love as something noble and inspiring, worthy of sacrifice and, more concretely, she was determined not to increase the disaster which had befallen Christabel. Sooner or later, in normal conditions, her marriage must have been recognized as a failure, but in these abnormal ones it had to be sustained as a success, and it seemed to Rose that civilized beings could love, and live in the knowledge of their love, without injuring some one already cruelly unfortunate.

But, as the months went by, she found she had to reckon with two difficult people, or rather with two people, ordinary in themselves, cast by fate into a difficult situation. There was Christabel, with her countless idle hours in which to formulate theories, to lay traps, to realize that the devotion of Francis became less obvious; and there was Francis, breaking the spirit of their contract with his looks, and sometimes the letter, with his complaints and pleadings.

He could not go on like this for ever, he said. He saw her once a week for a few minutes, if he was lucky: how could she expect him to be satisfied with that? It was little enough, she owned, but more than it might have been. She could never make him admit, perhaps because he did not feel, how greatly they were blessed; but she saw herself as the guardian of a temple: she stood in the doorway forbidding him to enter less the place should be defiled, yet forbidding him in such a way that he should not love her less. Yet constantly saying 'No,' constantly shaking the head and smiling propitiatingly the while is not to appease; and those short hours of companionship in which they had once managed to be happy became times of strain, of disappointment, of barely kept control.

'I wish I could stop loving you,' he broke out one day, 'but I can't. You're the kind one doesn't forget. I thought I'd done it once, for a few months, but you came back—you, came back.'

She smiled, seeming aloof and full of some wisdom unknown to him. She knew he could not do without her, still more she knew he must not do without her, and these certainties became the main fabric of her love. She had to keep him, less for her own sake than for that of her idea, but gradually the severe rules she had made became relaxed.

They were not to meet except on that one day a week demanded by Christabel, who also had to keep Francis happy and who would have welcomed the powers of darkness to relieve the monotony of her own life; but Rose could hardly take a ride without meeting Francis, also riding; or he would appear, on foot, out of a wood, out of a side road, and waylay her. He seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of her presence, and they would have a few minutes of conversation, or of a silence which was no longer beautiful, but terrible with effort, with possibilities and with dread.

She ought, she knew, to have kept to her own side of the bridge, to have ridden on the high Downs inviting to a rider, but she loved the farther country where the air was blue and soft, where little orchards broke oddly into great fields, where brooks ran across the lanes and pink-washed cottages were fronted by little gardens full of homely flowers and clothes drying on the bushes. There was a smell of fruit and wood fires and damp earth; there was a veil of magic over the whole landscape and, far off, the shining line of the channel seemed to be washing the feet of the blue hills. The country had the charm of home with the allurement of the unknown and, within sound of the steamers hooting in the river, almost within sight of the city lying, red-roofed and smoky with factories, round the docks and mounting in terraces to the heights of Upper Radstowe, there was an expectation of mystery, of secrets kept for countless centuries by the earth which was rich and fecund and alive. She could not deny herself the sight of this country. It had become dearer to her since her awakened feelings had brought with them the complexities of new thoughts. It soothed her though it solved nothing. It did not wish to solve anything. It lay before her with its fields, its woods, its patches of heathy land, its bones of grey limestone showing where the flesh of the red earth had fallen away, its dips and hollows, its steep lanes, like the wide eye of a being too full of understanding to attempt elucidations; it would not explain; it knew but it would not impart the knowledge which must be gained through the experience of years, of storms, of sunshine, of calamity and joy.

And sometimes the presence of Francis with his personal claims and his complaints was an intrusion, almost an anachronism. He was of his own time, and the end of that was almost within sight, while the earth, immensely old, had a youth of its own, something which Francis would never have again. But perhaps, because he was essentially simple, he would have fitted in well enough if he had been less ready to voice his grievances and ruffle the calm which she so carefully preserved, which he called coldness and for which he reproached her often.

'I have no peace,' he grumbled.

'You would get it if you would accept things as they are. You have to, in the end, so why not now?'

She longed to give peace to him, but her tenderness was sane and she found a strange pleasure in the pain of knowing him to be irritable and childish. It made of her love a better thing, without the hope of any reward but the continuance of service.

'It's easier for you,' he said, and she answered, 'Is it?' in the way that angered him and yet held him, and she thought, without bitterness, that he had never suffered anything without physical or mental tears. 'Yes, you have peace at home, but I go back to misery.'

'It's her misery.'

'That doesn't make it any better,' he retorted justly.

'I know.' She touched his sleeve and, feeling his arm stiffen, removed her hand.

'And I feel a brute because I can't care enough. If it were you now—'

Almost imperceptibly Rose shook her head. She had no illusions, but she said, 'Then why not pretend it's me. Tell her all you do. Ask her advice—you needn't take it.'

'And it's all a lie,' he growled.

She said serenely, 'It has to be, but there are good lies.'

She wished, with an intensity she rarely allowed herself, that he would be quiet and controlled. Though half her occupation would be gone, she would feel for him a respect which would rebound on her and make her admirable to herself, but she knew that life cannot be too lavish of its gifts or death would always have the victory. This was not what she had looked for, but it was good enough; she was necessary to him and always would be; she was sure of that, yet she constantly repeated it; moreover, she loved his bigness and his physical strength and the way the lines round his eyes wrinkled when he smiled; she knew how to make him smile and now and then they had happy interludes when they talked about crops and horses, profit and loss, the buying and selling of stock, and felt their friendship for each other like a mantle shared.

At the worst, she consoled herself, after a time of strain, it was like riding a restive horse. There was danger which she loved: there was need of skill and a light hand, of sympathy and tact, and she never regretted the superman who was to have ruled her with a fatiguing rod of iron. Here there was give and take; she had to let him have his head and pull him up at the right moment and reward docility with kindness; she even found a kind of pleasure, streaked with disgust, in dealing with Christabel's suspicions, half expressed, but present like shadowy people in her room.

Of these she never spoke to Francis, but she had a malicious affection for them; they had, as it were, done her a good turn, and though they hid like secret enemies in the corners, she recognized them as allies. And they looked so much worse than they were. She imagined them showing very ugly faces to Christabel, who could only judge them by their looks, and though it was cruel that she should be frightened by them, it was impossible to drive them away. Rose could only sit calmly in their presence and try to create an atmosphere of safety. She knew she ought to feel hypocritical in this attendance on her lover's wife, but it was not of her choosing. She did not like Christabel, she would have been glad never to see her again and, terrible as her situation was, it appealed to Rose less then it would have done if she had not herself come of people whose tradition was one of stoicism in trouble, of pride which refused to reveal its distress. Physically, Christabel had those qualities, but mentally she lacked them; it was chiefly to Rose that she betrayed herself, and at each farewell she exacted the promise of another visit soon. Was she fascinated by the sight of the woman Francis loved? And when had that love been discovered? And was she sure of it even now? She certainly had her sole excitement in her search for evidence.

In that bedroom, gaily decorated for a bride, she lay heroically bearing pain, lacking the devotion she should have had, finding her reward in the memory of her husband's appreciation of her courage, and her occupation, perhaps her pleasure, in a refinement of self-torture.

As soon as Rose entered the room she was aware of the scrutiny of those wary eyes, very wide open, as blue as flowers, and she knew that her own face was like a mask. The little dog wagged his tail, the cat made no sign, the nurse, after a cheerful greeting, went out of the room and Rose took her accustomed place beside the window. It had a view of the garden, the avenue of elms in which the rooks cawed continuously, the hedge separating the fields from the high-road where two-wheeled carts, laden with farm produce, jogged into Radstowe, driven by an old man or a stout woman, and returned some hours later with the day's shopping—kitchen utensils inadequately wrapped up and glistening in the sunshine, a flimsy parcel of drapery, a box of groceries. The old man smoked his pipe, the stout woman shook the reins on the pony's back; the pony, regardless, went at his own pace. Heavy farm carts creaked past, motor-cars whizzed by, the Sales Hall dairy cows were driven in for milking, and then for a whole half hour there might be nothing on the road. The country slept in the sunshine or patiently endured the rain.

For a member of a large and lively family this prospect, seen from a permanent couch, was not exhilarating, but Christabel did not complain: she took advantage of every incident and made the most of it, but she never expressed a desire for more. She had, for so frail and shattered a body, an amazing capacity for endurance, as though she were upheld by some spiritual force. It might have been religion or love, or the desire to perpetuate Francis's admiration, but Rose believed, and hated herself for believing, that it was partly antagonism and a feverish curiosity. She had been cheated of her youth and strength, and here, with a beautiful, impassive face, was the woman who might have saved her, a woman with a body strongly slim in her dark habit, and firm white hands skilled in managing a horse. She had read the grey mare's mind, and now Christabel, delicately blue and pink and white, in a wrapper of silk and lace, her hands fidgeting each other as they had fidgeted the mare's mouth, thought she was reading the mind of Rose. She stared at her, fascinated but not afraid. There were things she must find out.

She asked one day, and it was nearly two years since the accident, 'Did they kill the mare?' And Rose, aware that Christabel had known all the time, answered, 'Yes, at once. Her leg was broken.'

'What a pity!'

Waiting for what would come next, Rose smiled and looked out of the window at the swaying elm tops.

'Such a useful animal!' Christabel said.

'Very dangerous,' Rose remarked, slipping deliberately into the trap.

'That's what I mean. But not quite dangerous enough. Poor Francis! He didn't know. He doesn't know now, does he? But of course not.'

Rose had a great horror of a debt and she owed something to Christabel, but now she felt she had paid it off, with interest. She breathed deeply, without a sound. Her tone was light.

'He knows all that is good for him.'

'You mean that is good for you.'

Rose stood up, pulled on her washleather gloves, sat down again. The hands on the silk coverlet were shaking.

'You are making yourself ill,' Rose said. She was tempted to take those poor fluttering hands into her own and steady them, but her flesh shrank from the contact. She was tempted, too, to tell Christabel the truth, but pride forbade her, and in a moment the impulse was gone, and with its departure came the belief that the truth would be annihilating. It would rob her of her glorious uncertainty, she would be destroyed by the knowledge that Rose had seen her fear, seen and tried to strengthen the slender hold she had on her husband's love. It was better to play the part of the wicked woman, the murderess, the stealer of hearts: and perhaps she was wicked; she had not thought of that before; the Malletts did not criticize their actions or analyse their minds and she had no intention of breaking their habits. She stood up again and said:

'Shall I call the nurse?'

'You're not going yet? You've only been here a few minutes.'

'Long enough,' Rose said cheerfully.

Tears came into Christabel's eyes. 'And Francis is out. If he doesn't see you he'll be angry, he'll ask me why.'

'You can tell him.'

'But,' the tone changed, 'perhaps you'll see him on your way home.'

'Yes, and then I can tell him instead.'

The tears overflowed, she was helplessly angry, she sobbed.

'Be quiet,' Rose said sternly. 'I shall tell him nothing. You know that. You are quite safe, whatever you choose to say to me. Perfectly safe.'

'I know. I can't help it. I lie here and think. What would you do in my place?'

'The same thing, I suppose,' Rose said.

'And you won't go?'

'Yes, I'm going. You can tell Francis I was obliged to get home early.'

'But you'll come again?'

'Oh, yes, I'll come again.'

'You don't want to.'

'No, I don't want to.'

'But you're always riding over here, aren't you?'

'Nearly every day.'

'Oh, then—' The words lingered meaningly until Rose reached the door and then Christabel said, 'I wish you'd ask your sisters to come and see me. They would tell me all the news.'

Rose went downstairs laughing at Christabel's capacity for mingling tragedy with the commonplace and sordid accusations with social desires, but though she laughed she was strangely tired and, stretching before her, she saw more weariness, more struggling, more effort without result.

She stood in the masculine, matted hall, with the usual worn pair of slippers in the corner, a stick lying across a chair, a collection of coats and hats on the pegs, and she felt she would be glad if she were never to see all this again, and for the first time she thought seriously of desertion. She wished she could go to some unfamiliar country where the people would all have new faces, where the language would be strange, the sights different, the smells unlike those which were wafted through the open door. She wanted a fresh body and a new world, but she knew that she would not get them, for leaving Francis would be like leaving a child. So she told herself, but at the back of her mind was the certainty that if she went he would soon attach himself to another's strength—or weakness: yes, to another's weakness, and she found she could not contemplate that event, less because she clung to him than because her pride could not tolerate a substitution which would be an admission of her likeness to other women. Yet in that very lack of toleration her pride was lowered, and if she was not clinging to him for her own sake, she was holding on to her place, her uniqueness, refusing the possibility that another woman could serve him, as she had served him with pain, with suffering. She was like a queen who does not love her throne supremely but will not abdicate, who would rather fail in her appointed place than see another succeed in it.

For a minute Rose Mallett sat down on the edge of the chair already occupied by the stick and she pressed both hands against her forehead, driving back her thoughts. Thinking was dangerous and a folly: it was a concession to circumstances, and she would concede nothing. She stood up, looked round for a mirror, remembered there was not one in the hall, and with little, meticulous touches to her hat, her hair and the white stock round her neck, she left the house.

She returned to a drawing-room occupied by Caroline and Sophia, yet strangely silent. There was not a sound but what came from the birds in the garden. Caroline's spectacles were on her nose and, though she was not reading the letter on her knee, she had forgotten to take them off, an ominous sign. Sophia's face was flushed with agitation, her head drooped more than usual, but she lifted it with a sigh of relief at Rose's entrance.

'We're in such trouble, dear,' she said.

'Trouble! Nonsense! No trouble at all! Look here, Rose, that woman has died now.' She shook the letter threateningly. 'Read this! Reginald's wife! I suppose she was his wife. I dare say he had dozens.'

'Caroline!' Sophia remonstrated.

Rose took the letter and read what Mrs. Reginald Mallett, believing herself about to die, had written in her big, sprawling hand. The letter was only to be posted after her death and she made no apology for asking the Malletts to see that her daughter had the chance of earning her living suitably. 'She is a good girl,' she wrote, 'but when I am gone her only friend will be the landlady of this house and there are young men about the place who are not the right kind. I am telling my dear girl that I wish her to accept any offer of help she gets from you, and she will do what I ask.'

'So, you see,' Caroline said as Rose looked up, 'we're not done with Reginald yet, and what I propose is that we send Susan for the girl to-morrow.'

'Yes, to-morrow,' Sophia echoed.

'Shall I go?' Rose asked. Sophia murmured gratitude, Caroline snorted doubt, and Rose added, 'No, I think not. She wouldn't like it. Susan would be better—but not to-morrow. You must write to the child— what's her name? Henrietta—'

'Yes, Henrietta, after our grandmother—the idea! I don't know how Reginald dared.'

'Is she a sacred character?' Rose asked dryly. 'Write to her, Caroline, and say Susan will come on the day that suits her best. You can't drag her away without warning. Let's treat her courteously, please.'

'Oh, Rose, dear, I think we are always courteous,' Sophia protested.

Caroline merely said, 'Bah!' and added, 'And what are we going to do with her when we get her? She'll giggle, she'll have a dreadful accent, Sophia will blush for her. I shan't. I never blush for anybody, even myself, but I shall be bored. That's worse, and if you think I'm going to edit my stories for her benefit, Sophia, you're mistaken. I never managed to do that, even for the General, and I'm too old to begin.' She removed her spectacles hastily. 'Too old for that, anyhow.'

Rose smiled. She thought that probably the child of Reginald Mallett, living from hand to mouth in boarding houses, the sharer of his sinking fortunes, the witness of his passions and despairs and infidelities, would find Caroline's stories innocent enough. Her hope was that Henrietta would not try to cap them, but the chances were that she would be a terrible young person, that she would find herself adrift in the respectability of Radstowe where she was unlikely to meet those young men, not of the right kind, to whom she was accustomed.

'She must have her father's room,' Sophia said. She was trying to conceal her excitement. 'We must put some flowers there. I think I'll just go upstairs and see if there's any little improvement we could make.'

They all went upstairs and stood in that room devoted to the memory of the scapegrace, but they made no alterations, Sophia expressing the belief that Henrietta would prefer it as it was; and Caroline, as she wiped away two slow tears, saying that Reginald was a wretch and she could not see why they should put themselves to any trouble for his daughter.



Book II: Henrietta

1

After luncheon Henrietta went to her room to unpack the brown tin trunk which contained all her possessions, and as she ascended the stairs with her hand on the polished mahogany rail, she heard Sophia saying, 'She's a true Mallett. She has the Mallett ankle. Did you notice it, Caroline?' And Caroline answered harshly, 'Yes, the Mallett ankle, but not the foot. Her foot is square, like a block of wood. What could you expect?' Then the drawing-room door was closed softly on this indiscretion.

Henrietta continued steadily up the stairs and across the landing to her father's room, and before the long mirror on the wall she halted to survey her reflected feet. Aunt Caroline had but exaggerated the truth; they were square, but they were small, and she controlled her trembling lips.

She pushed back from her forehead the black, curling hair. She was tired; the luncheon had been a strain, and the carelessly loud words of Caroline reminded her that she was undergoing an examination which, veiled by courtesy, would be severe. Already they were blaming her mother for her feet; and all three of them, the blunt Caroline, the tender Sophia, the mysteriously silent Rose, were on the watch for the maternal traits.

Well, she was not ashamed of them. Her mother had been good, brave, honest, loving, patient, and her father had been none of these things; but no doubt these aunts of hers put manners before morals, as he had done; and she remembered how, when she was quite a little girl, and the witness of one of the unpleasant domestic scenes which happened often in those days, before Reginald Mallett's wife had learnt forbearance, she had noticed her father's face twitch as though in pain. Glad of a diversion, she had asked him with eager sympathy, 'Is it toothache?' and he had answered acidly, 'No, child, only the mutilation of our language.' She remembered the words, and later she understood their meaning and the flushing of her mother's face, the compression of her lips, and she was indignant for her sake.

Yet she could feel for her father, in spite of the fact that whatever her accent or grammatical mistakes, her mother's conduct was always right and her father, with his charming air, a little blurred by what he called misfortune, his clear speech to which Henrietta loved to listen, was fundamentally unsound. He could not be trusted. That was understood between the mother and daughter: it was one of the facts on which their existence rested, it entered into all their calculations, it was the text of all her mother's little homilies. Henrietta must always pay her debts, she must tell the truth, she must do nothing of which she was ashamed, and so far Henrietta had succeeded in obeying these commands.

When Reginald Mallett died in the shabby boarding-house kept by Mrs. Banks, he left his family without a penny but with a feeling of extraordinary peace. They were destitute, but they were no longer overshadowed by the fear of disgrace, the misery of subterfuge, the bewildering oscillations between pity for the man who could not have what he wanted and shame for his ceaseless striving after pleasure, his shifts to get it, his reproaches and complaints.

In the gloomy back bedroom on the third story of the boarding-house he lay on a bed hung with dingy curtains, but in the dignity which was one of his inheritances. Under the dark, close-cut moustache, his lips seemed to smile faintly, perhaps in amusement at the folly of his life, perhaps in surprise at finding himself so still; the narrow beard of a foreign cut was slightly tilted towards the dirty ceiling, his beautiful hands were folded as though in a mockery of prayer. He was, as Mrs. Banks remarked when she was allowed to see him, a lovely corpse. But to Henrietta and her mother, standing on either side of the bed, guarding him now, as they had always tried to do, he had subtly become the husband and father he should have been.

'We must remember him like this,' Mrs. Mallett said, raising her soft blue eyes, and Henrietta saw that the small sharp lines which Reginald Mallett had helped to carve in her face seemed to have disappeared. It was extraordinary how placid her face became after his death, but as the days passed it was also noticeable that much of her vitality had gone too. She left herself in Henrietta's young hands and she, casting about for a way of earning her living, found good fortune in the terrible basement kitchen where Mrs. Banks moved mournfully and had her disconsolate being. The gas was always lighted in that cavernous kitchen, but it remained dark, mercifully leaving the dirt half unseen. A joint of mutton, cold and mangled, was discernible, however, when Henrietta descended to put her impecunious case before the landlady and, gazing at it, the girl saw also her opportunity. Mrs. Banks had no culinary imagination, but Henrietta found it rising in herself to an inspired degree and there and then she offered herself as cook in return for board and lodging for her mother and herself.

'I'm sure I'll be glad to keep you,' Mrs. Banks said: 'you give the place a tone, you do really, you and your dear Ma sitting in the drawing-room sewing of an evening; but it isn't only the cooking, though I do get to hate the sight of food. I get a regular grudge against it. But it's that butcher! Ready money or no meat's his motto, and how to make this mutton last—' She picked it up by the bone and cast it down again.

'Oh, I can manage butchers,' Henrietta said. 'Besides, we'll pay our way. You'll see. Leave the cooking to me.'

'I will, gladly,' Mrs. Banks said, wiping away a tear. 'Ever since Banks took it into his head to jump into the river, it seems like as if I hadn't any spirit, and that Jenkins turns up his ugly nose every time I put the mutton on the table—when he doesn't begin talking to it like an old friend. I can't bear Jenkins, but he does pay regular, and that's something. Well, I'll get on with the upstairs and leave you to it.'

And so Henrietta began the work which kept her amazingly happy, fed and sheltered her mother, who sat all day slowly making beautiful baby linen for one of the big shops, and cemented Henrietta's friendship with the lachrymose Mrs. Banks. To be faced with a mutton bone and a few vegetables, to have to wrest from these poor materials an appetizing meal, was like an exciting game, and she played it with zest and with success. She had the dubious pleasure of hearing Mr. Jenkins smack his lips and seeing him distend his nostrils with anticipation; the unalloyed one of watching the pale face of little Miss Stubb, the typist, grow delicately pink and less dangerously thin, under the stimulus of good food; the amusement of congratulating Mrs. Banks, in public, on her new cook, and seeing Mrs. Banks, at the head of the supper table, nod her head with important secrecy.

'I've made out,' she told Henrietta, 'that I've a daily girl, without a character, that's how I can afford her, in the basement, but I must say it's made that Jenkins mighty keen on fetching his own boots of a morning, but no lodgers below-stairs is my rule. You look out for Jenkins, my dear. He's no good. I know his sort.'

'Oh, I can manage Mr. Jenkins, too,' Henrietta said, and indeed she made a point of bringing him to the hardly manageable state for the amusement of proving her capacity. She despised him, but not for nothing was she Reginald Mallett's daughter; and Mr. Jenkins and the butcher and a gloomy old gentleman who emerged from his bedroom to eat, and locked himself up between meals, were the only men she knew. No doubt Mrs. Mallett, placidly sewing, was alive to the attentions and frustrations of Mr. Jenkins and had planned her letter to her sisters-in-law some time before she wrote it, but the idea of parting from her mother never occurred to Henrietta until Miss Stubb alarmed her.

'Your mother,' she said poetically, 'makes me think of snow melting before the sun. In fact, I can't look at her without thinking of snow and snowdrops and—and graves. Last spring I said to Mrs. Banks, "She won't see the leaves fall," I said, and Mrs. Banks agreed. She has been spared, but take care of her in these cold winds, Miss Henrietta, dear.'

'She has a cold, only a cold,' Henrietta said in a dead voice, and she went upstairs. Her mother was in bed, and Henrietta looked down at the thin, pretty face. 'How ill are you?' she asked in a threatening manner. 'Tell me how ill you are.'

'I've only got a cold, Henry dear. I shall be up to-morrow.'

'Promise you won't be really ill.'

'Why should I be?'

'It's Miss Stubb—saying things.'

'Women chatter,' Mrs. Mallett said. 'If it's not scandal, it's an illness. You ought to know that.'

'They might leave you alone, anyway.'

'Yes, I wish they would,' Mrs. Mallett said faintly, and dropped back on her pillow.

Now, sitting in her father's room, with her mother only a few weeks dead, she reproached herself for her readiness to be deceived, for her preoccupation with her own affairs and the odious Mr. Jenkins, for the exuberance of life which hid from her the dwindling of her mother's, and the fact, now so plain, that when Reginald Mallett died his wife's capacity for struggling was at an end. She had suffered bitterly from the sight of his deterioration and from her failure to prevent it. In his sulky, torturing presence she had desired his absence, but this permanent absence was more than she could bear. And all Henrietta could do was to obey her mother's injunction to accept help from her aunts, but she had refused the offer of an escort to Radstowe and Nelson Lodge; she would have no highly respectable servant sniffing at the boarding-house—and she would have been bound to sniff in that permanently scented atmosphere—which was, after all, her home. She left with genuine regret, with tears.

'You mustn't cry, dearie,' Mrs. Banks said, holding Henrietta to the bosom of her greasy dress. 'It's a lucky thing for you.'

'Perhaps,' Henrietta said, 'but I'd rather be with you, and I can't bear to think of the cooking going to pieces. I'll send you some recipes for nice dishes.'

'Too many eggs,' Mrs. Banks said prophetically.

'I dare say, but you can manage if you think about it. And remember, if Miss Stubb has too much cold mutton, she'll lose her job, and then you'll lose her money. It will pay you to feed her. You haven't had a debt since I began to help you.'

'I know, I know; but I'll have them now, for certain. I've told you before that Banks took all my ideas with him when he dropped into the river,' Mrs. Banks said hopelessly, and on Henrietta's journey to Radstowe it was of Mrs. Banks that she chiefly thought. It seemed as though she were deserting a friend.

She was surprised by the smallness of Nelson Lodge as she walked up the garden path; she had pictured something more imposing than this low white building, walled off from the wide street; but within she discovered an inconsistent spaciousness. The hall was panelled in white wood, the drawing-room, sparsely but beautifully furnished, was white too, and she immediately felt, as indeed she looked, thoroughly out of harmony with her surroundings. She waited there, in her cheap black clothes, like some little servant seeking a situation; but her welcome, when it came, after a rustling of silken skirts on the stairs, assured her that she was acknowledged as a member of the family. Sophia took her tenderly to her heart and murmured, 'Oh, my dear, how like your father!' Caroline patted her cheek and said, 'Yes, yes, Reginald's daughter, so she is!' And a moment later, Rose entered, faintly smiling, extending a cool hand.

Henrietta's acutely feminine eye saw immediately that her Aunt Rose was supremely well-dressed, and all her past ideas of grandeur, of plumed hats and feather boas and ornamental walking shoes, left her for ever. She knew, too, that clothes like these were very costly, beyond her dreams, but she decided, in a moment, to rearrange and subdue the black trimming of her hat.

On the other hand, the appearance of the elder aunts almost shocked her. At the first glance they seemed bedizened and indecent in their mixture of rouge and more than middle age; but at the second and the third they became attractive, oddly distinguished. She felt sure of them, of their sympathy, of her ability to please them. It was Aunt Rose who made her feel ill at ease, and it was Aunt Rose of whom she thought as she sat by her bedroom window and looked down at the back garden, bright with the flowers of spring.

Yet it was Aunt Caroline who had been unkind about her feet. They were like that, these grand people; they had beautiful manners but nothing superficial escaped them; they made no allowances, they went in for no deceptions, and though it was Caroline who had actually condemned the small, strong feet which now rested, slipperless, on the soft carpet, Henrietta was sure that Rose had seen them too. She had seen everything, though apparently she saw nothing, and Henrietta had to acknowledge her fear of Rose's criticism. It was formidable, for it would be unflinching in its standards.

'Well,' Henrietta thought, 'I can only be myself, and if I'm common— but I'm not really common—it's better than pretending; and of course I am rather upset by the house and the servants and all the forks and spoons. I hope there won't be anything funny to eat for dinner. I wish—' To her own amazement, she burst into a brief storm of tears. 'I wish I had stayed with Mrs. Banks.'

She had her place in the boarding-house, she was a power there, and she missed already her subtle, unrecognized belief in her superiority over Mrs. Banks and Miss Stubb and Mr. Jenkins and the rest. She was also honestly troubled about the welfare of the landlady, who was her only friend. It was strange to sit in her father's room and look at a portrait of him as a youth hanging on the wall, and remember that Mrs. Banks, who made him shudder, was her only friend.

She left her seat by the window to look more closely at that portrait, and after a brief examination she turned to the dressing-table to see in the mirror a feminine replica of the face on the wall. She had never noticed the likeness before. She had only to push back her hair and she saw her father. Where his nose was straight, hers was slightly tilted, but there was the same darkness of hair and eyes, the same modelling of the forehead, the same incipient petulance of the lips.

She was astonished, she was unreasonably pleased, and with the energy of her inspiration she swept back the curls of which her mother had been so proud, and pinned them into obscurity. The resemblance was extraordinary: even the low white collar of her blouse, fastened with a black bow, repeated the somewhat Byronic appearance of the young man; and as there came a knock at the door, she turned, a little shame-faced, but excited in the certainty of her success.

But it was only Susan, who gave no sign of astonishment at the change. She had come to see if she could help Miss Henrietta to unpack, but Henrietta had already laid away her meagre outfit in the walnut tallboy with the curved legs. Susan, however, would remove the trunk, and if Miss Henrietta would tell her what dress she wished to wear this evening, Susan would be able to lay out her things. The tin trunk clanked noisily though Susan lifted it with tactful care, and Henrietta blushed for it, but the aged portmanteau, bearing the initials R. M., became in the discreet presence of Susan a priceless possession.

'It's full of books,' Henrietta said; 'I won't unpack them. I thought my aunts would let me keep them somewhere. They are my father's books.'

'There's an old bookcase belonging to Mr. Reginald in the box-room,' Susan said; 'I'll speak to Miss Caroline about it.'

'Did you know my father?' Henrietta asked at once.

'Yes, Miss Henrietta,' Susan said.

'Do you think I'm like him?'

'It's a striking likeness, Miss Henrietta,' and warming a little, Susan added, 'I was just saying so to Cook.'

'Did Cook know him, too?'

'Oh, yes, Miss Henrietta. Cook and I have been with the family for years. If you'll tell me which dress you wish to wear—'

'There's only one in the wardrobe,' Henrietta said serenely, for suddenly her shabbiness and poverty mattered no longer. She was stamped with the impress of Reginald Mallett, whom she had despised yet of whom she was proud, and that impress was like a guarantee, a sort of passport. She had a great lightness of heart; she was glad she had left Mrs. Banks, glad she was in her father's home, and learning from Susan that the ladies rested in their own rooms after luncheon, she decided to go out and look on the scenes of her father's youth.



2

This was not, she told herself, disloyalty to her mother, for had not that mother, whom she loved and painfully missed, sent her to this place? Her mother was generous and sweet; she would grudge no late-found allegiance to Reginald Mallett. Had she not said they must remember him at his best, and would she not be glad if Henrietta could find bits of that best in this old house, in the streets where he had walked, in the sights which had fed his eyes?

Henrietta started out, gently closing the front door behind her. The wide street was almost empty; a milkcart bearing the legend, 'Sales Hall Dairy,' was being drawn at an easy pace by a demure pony, his harness adorned with jingling bells. The milkman whistled and, as the cart stopped here and there, she missed the London milkman's harsh cry, and missed it pleasurably. This man was in no hurry, there was no impatience in his knock; the whole place seemed to be half asleep, except where children played on The Green under the old trees. This comparatively small space, mounting in the distance to a little hill backed by the sky, was more wonderful to Henrietta than Hyde Park when the flowers were at their best. There were no flowers here; she saw grass, two old stone monuments, tall trees, a miniature cliff of grey rock, and sky. On three sides of The Green there were old houses and there were seats on the grass, but houses and seats had the air of being mere accidents to which the rest had grown accustomed, and it seemed to Henrietta that here, in spite of bricks, she was in the country. The trees, the grass, the rocks and sky were in possession.

She followed one of the small paths round the hill and found herself in a place so wonderful, so unexpected, that she caught back her breath and let it out again in low exclamations of delight. She was now on the other side of the hill and, though she did not know it, she was on the site of an ancient camp. The hill was flat-topped; there were still signs of the ramparts, but it was not on these she gazed. Far below her was the river, flowing sluggishly in a deep ravine, formed on her right hand and as far as she could see by high grey cliffs. These for the most part were bare and sheer, but they gave way now and then to a gentler slope with a rich burden of trees, while, on the other side of the river, it was the rocks that seemed to encroach on the trees, for the wall of the gorge, almost to the water's edge, was thick with woods. Here and there, on either cliff, a sudden red splash of rock showed like an unhealed wound, amid the healthier grey. And all around her there seemed to be limitless sky, huge fluffy clouds and gulls as white.

At the edge of the cliff where she stood, gorse bushes bloomed and, looking to the left, she saw the slender line of a bridge swung high across the abyss. Beyond it the cliffs lessened into banks, then into meadows studded with big elms and, on the city side, there were houses red and grey, as though the rocks had simply changed their shapes. The houses were clustered close to the water, they rose in terraces and trees mingled with their chimneys. Below there were intricate waterways, little bridges, warehouses and ships and, high up, the fairy bridge, delicate and poised, was like a barrier between that place of business and activity and this, where Henrietta stood with the trees, the cliffs, the swooping gulls. It was low tide and the river was bordered by banks of mud, grey too, yet opalescent. It almost reflected the startling white of the gulls' wings and, as she looked at it, she saw that its colour was made up of many; there was pink in it and blue and, as a big cloud passed over the sun, it became subtly purple; it was a palette of subdued and tender shades.

Henrietta heaved a sigh. This was too much. She could look at it but she could not see it all. Yet this marvellous place belonged to her, and she knew now whence had come the glamour in the stories her father had told her when she was a child. It had come from here, where an aged city had tried to conquer the country and had failed, for the spirit of woods and open spaces, of water and trees and wind, survived among the very roofs. The conventions of the centuries, the convention of puritanism, of worldliness, of impiety, of materialism and of charity had all assailed and all fallen back before the strength of the apparently peaceful country in which the city stood. The air was soft with a peculiar, undermining softness; it carried with it a smell of flowers and fruit and earth, and if all the many miles on the farther side of the bridge should be ravished by men's hands, covered with buildings and strewn with the ugly luxuries they thought they needed, the spirit would remain in the tainted air and the imprisoned earth. It would whisper at night at the windows, it would smile invisibly under the sun, it would steal into men's minds and work its will upon them. And already Henrietta felt its power. She was in a new world, dull but magical, torpid yet alert.

She turned away and, walking down another little path threaded through the rocks, she stood at the entrance to the bridge and watched people on foot, people on bicycles, people in carts coming and going over it. She could not cross herself for she had not a penny in her pocket, but she stood there gazing and sometimes looking down at the road two hundred feet below. This made her slightly giddy and the people down there had too much the appearance of pigmies with legs growing from their necks, going about perfectly unimportant business with a great deal of fuss. It was pleasanter to see these country people in their carts, school-girls with plaits down their backs, rosy children in perambulators and an exceedingly handsome man on a fine black horse, a fair man, bronzed like a soldier, riding as though he had done it all his life.

She looked at him with admiration for his looks and envy for his possessions, for that horse, that somewhat sulky ease. And it was quite possible that he was an acquaintance of her aunts! She laughed away her awed astonishment. Why, her own father had been such as he, though she had never seen him on a horse. She had, after all, to adjust her views a little, to remember that she was a Mallett, a member of an honoured Radstowe family, the granddaughter of a General, the daughter of a gentleman, though a scamp. She was ashamed of the something approaching reverence with which she had looked at the man on the horse, but she was also ashamed of her shame; in fact, to be ashamed at all was, she felt, a degradation, and she cast the feeling from her.

Here was not only a new world but a new life, a new starting point; she must be equal to the place, the opportunity and the occasion; she was, she told herself, equal to them all.

In this self-confident mood she returned to Nelson Lodge and found Caroline, in a different frock, seated behind the tea-table and in the act of putting the tea into the pot.

'Just in time,' she remarked, and added with intense interest, 'You have brushed back your hair. Excellent! Look, Sophia, what an improvement! And more like Reginald than ever. Take off your hat, child, and let us see. My dear, I was going to tell you, when I knew you better, that those curls made you look like an organ-grinder. Don't hush me, Sophia; I always say what I think.'

Henrietta was hurt; this, though Caroline did not know it, was a rebuff to the mother who loved the curls; but the daughter would not betray her sensibility, and as Rose was not present she dared to say, 'An organ-grinder with square feet.'

'Oh, you heard that, did you? Sophia said you would. Well, you must be careful about your shoes. Men always look at a woman's feet.' She displayed her own, elegantly arched, in lustrous stockings and very high-heeled slippers. 'Sophia and I—Sophia's are nearly, but not quite as good as mine—are they Sophia?—Sophia and I have always been particular about our feet. I remember a ball, when I was a girl, where one of my partners—he ended by marrying a ridiculously fat woman with feet like cannon balls—insisted on calling me Cinderella because he said nobody else could have worn my shoes. Delightful creature! Do you remember, Sophia?'

Sophia remembered very well. He had called her Cinderella, too, for the same reason, but as Caroline had been the first to report the remark, Sophia had never cared to spoil her pleasure in it. And now Caroline did not wait for a reply, Rose entering at that moment, and her attention having to be called to the change in Henrietta's method of doing her hair. Henrietta stiffened at once, but Rose threw, as it were, a smile in her direction, and said, 'Yes, charming,' and helped herself to cake.

'And now,' said Caroline, settling herself for the most interesting subject in the world, 'your clothes, Henrietta.'

'I haven't any,' Henrietta said at once; 'but I think they'll do until I go away. I thought I should like to be a nurse, Aunt Caroline.'

'Nurse! Nonsense! What kind? Babies? Rubbish! You're going to stay here if you like us well enough, and we've made a little plan'—she nodded vigorously—'a little plan for you.'

'We ought to say at once,' Sophia interrupted with painful honesty, 'that it was Rose's idea.'

'Rose? Was it? I don't know. Anyhow, we're all agreed. You are to have a sum of money, child; yes, for your father's sake, and perhaps for your own too, a sum of money to bring you in a little income for your clothes and pleasures, so that you shall be independent like the rest of us. Yes, it's settled. I've written to our lawyer, James Batty. Did your father ever mention James Batty? But, of course, he wouldn't. He married a fat woman, too, but a good soul, with a high colour, poor thing. Don't say a word, child. You must be independent. Nursing! Bah! And if we don't take care we shall have you marrying for a home.'

'This is your home,' Sophia said gently.

'No sentiment, Sophia, please. You're making the child cry. The Malletts don't marry, Henrietta. Look at us, as happy as the day is long, with all the fun and none of the trouble. We've been terrible flirts, Sophia and I. Rose is different, but at least she hasn't married. The three Miss Malletts of Nelson Lodge! Now there are four of us, and you must keep up our reputation.'

Overwhelmed by this generosity, by this kindness, Henrietta did not know what to say. She murmured something about her mother's wish that she should earn her living, but Caroline scouted the idea, and Sophia, putting her white hand on one of Henrietta's, assured her that her dear mother would be glad for her child to have the comforts of a home.

'I'm not used to them,' Henrietta said. 'I've always taken care of people. I shan't know what to do.'

They would find plenty for her to do; there were many gaieties in Radstowe and she would be welcomed everywhere. 'And now about your clothes,' Caroline repeated. 'You are wearing black, of course. Well, black can be very pretty, very French. Look at Rose. She rarely wears anything else, but when Sophia and I were about your age, she used to wear blue and I wore pink, or the other way round.'

'You do so still,' Rose remarked.

'A pink muslin,' Caroline went on in a sort of ecstasy, 'a Leghorn hat wreathed with pink roses—when was I wearing that, Sophia?'

'Last summer,' Rose said dryly.

'So I was,' Caroline agreed in a matter-of-fact voice. 'Now, Henrietta. Get a piece of paper and a pencil, Sophia, and we'll make a list.'

The discussion went on endlessly, long after Henrietta herself had tired of it. It was lengthened by the insertion of anecdotes of Caroline's and Sophia's youth, and hardly a colour or a material was mentioned which did not recall an incident which Henrietta found more interesting than her own sartorial affairs.

Rose had disappeared, and the dressing-bell was rung before the subject languished. It would never be exhausted, for Caroline, and even Sophia, less vivid than her sister in all but her affections, grew pink and bright-eyed in considering Henrietta's points. And all the time Henrietta had her own opinions, her own plans. She intended as far as possible to preserve her likeness to her father, which was, as it were, her stock-in-trade. She pictured herself, youthfully slim, gravely petulant, her round neck rising from a Byronic collar fastened with a broad, loose bow, and she fancied the society of Radstowe exclaiming with one voice, 'That must be Reginald Mallett's daughter!'

She was to learn, however, that in Radstowe the memories of Reginald Mallett were somewhat dim, and where they were clear they were neglected. It was generally assumed that his daughter would not care to have him mentioned, while praises of her aunts were constant and enthusiastic and people were kind to Henrietta, she discovered, for their sakes.

The stout and highly-coloured Mrs. Batty was an early caller. She arrived, rather wheezy, compressed by her tailor into an expensive gown, a basket of spring flowers on her head. She and Henrietta took to each other, as Mrs. Batty said, at once. Here was a motherly person, and Henrietta knew that if she could have Mrs. Batty to herself she would be able to talk more freely than she had done since her arrival in Radstowe. There would be no criticism from her, but unlimited good nature, a readiness to listen and to confide and a love for the details of operations and illnesses in which she had a kinship with Mrs. Banks. Indeed, though Mrs. Batty was fat where Mrs. Banks was thin, cheerful where she was gloomy, and in possession of a flourishing husband where Mrs. Banks irritably mourned the loss of a suicide, they had characteristics in common and the chief of these was the way in which they took to Henrietta.

'You must come to tea on Sunday,' Mrs. Batty said. 'We are always at home on Sunday afternoons after four o'clock. I have two big boys,' she sighed, 'and all their friends are welcome then.' She lowered her voice. 'We don't allow tennis—the neighbours, you know, and James has clients looking out of every window—but there's no harm, as the boys say, in knocking the billiard balls about. I must say the click carries a good way, so I tell the parlourmaid to shut the windows. And music—my boy Charles,' she sighed again, 'is mad on music. I like a tune myself, but he never plays any. You'll hear for yourself if you come on Sunday. Now you will come, won't you, Miss Henrietta?'

'Yes, she'll come,' Caroline said. 'Do her good to meet young people. We're getting old in this house, Mrs. Batty,' and she guffawed in anticipation of the usual denial, but for once Mrs. Batty failed. Her thoughts were at home, at Prospect House, that commodious family mansion situate in its own grounds, and in one of the most favourable positions in Upper Radstowe. So the advertisement had read before Mr. Batty bought the property, and it was all true.

'John,' Mrs. Batty went on, 'is more for sport, though he's in the sugar business, with an uncle. Not my brother—Mr. Batty's.' She was anxious to give her husband all the credit. 'They are both good boys,' she added, 'but Charles—well, you'll see on Sunday. You promise to come.'

Henrietta promised, and with Mrs. Batty's departure Caroline spoke her mind. She was convinced that the lawyer and his wife were determined to secure Henrietta as a daughter-in-law.

'He knows all our affairs, my dear, and James Batty never misses a chance of improving his position. Good as it is, it would be all the better for an alliance with our family, but I shall disown you at once if you marry one of those hobbledehoys. The Batty's, indeed! Why, Mrs. Batty herself—'

'Caroline, don't!' Sophia pleaded. 'And I'm sure the young men are very nice young men, and if Henrietta should fall in love—'

'She won't get any of my money!' Caroline said.

'But Henrietta won't be in a hurry,' Sophia announced; and so, over her head, the two discussed her possible marriage as they had discussed her clothes, but with less interest and at less length and, as before, Henrietta had her own ideas. A rich man, a handsome one, a gay life; no more basement kitchens, no more mutton bones! Already the influence of Nelson Lodge was making itself felt.



3

It was at dinner that the charm of the house was most apparent To Henrietta. Even on these spring evenings the curtains were Drawn and the candles lighted, for Caroline said she could not Dine comfortably in daylight. The pale flames were repeated in The mahogany of the table; the tall candlesticks, the silver appointments, were reflected also in a blur, like a grey mist; the furniture against the walls became merged into the shadows and Susan, hovering there, was no more than an attentive spirit.

There was little talking at this meal, for Caroline and Sophia loved good food and it was very good. Occasionally Caroline murmured, 'Too much pepper,' or 'One more pinch of salt and this would have been perfect,' and bending over her plate, the diamonds in her ears sparkled to her movements, the rings on her fingers glittered; and opposite to her Sophia drooped, her pale hair looking almost white, the big sapphire cross on her breast gleaming richly, her resigned attitude oddly at variance with the busy handling of her knife and fork.

The gold frame round General Mallett's portrait dimly shone, the flowers on the table seemed to give out their beauty and their scent with conscious desire to please, to add their offerings, and for Henrietta the grotesqueness of the elder aunts, their gay attire, their rouge and wrinkles, gave a touch of fantasy to what would otherwise have been too orderly and too respectable a scene.

In this room of beautiful inherited things, where tradition had built strong walls about the Malletts, the sight of Caroline was like a gate leading into the wide, uncertain world and the sight of Rose, all cream and black, was like a secret portal leading to a winding stair. At this hour, romance was in the house, beckoning Henrietta to follow through that gate or down that stair, but chiefly hovering about the figure of Rose who sat so straight and kept so silent, her white hands moving slowly, the pearls glistening on her neck, her face a pale oval against the darkness. She was never more mysterious or more remote; with her even the common acts of eating and drinking seemed, to Henrietta, to be made poetical; she was different from everybody else, but the girl felt vaguely that the wildness of which Caroline made a boast and which never developed into more than that, the wildness which had ruined her father's life, lay numbed and checked somewhere behind the amazing stillness and control of Rose. And she was like a woman who had suffered a great sorrow or who kept a profound secret.

It was at this hour, when Henrietta was half awed, half soothed, yet very much alive, feeling that tremendous excitements lay in wait for her just outside, when she was wrapped in beauty, fed by delicate food, sensitive to the slim old silver under her hands, that she sometimes felt herself actually carried back to the boarding-house, and she saw the grimy tablecloth, the flaring gas jets, the tired worn faces, the dusty hair of Mrs. Banks and the rubber collar of Mr. Jenkins, and she heard little Miss Stubb uttering platitudes in her attempt to raise the mental atmosphere. There was a great clatter of knives and forks, a confusion of voices and, in a pause, the sound of the exclusive old gentleman masticating his food.

Then Henrietta would close her eyes and, after an instant, she would open them on this candle-lighted room, the lovely figure of Aunt Rose, the silks and laces and ornaments of Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia; and between the courses one of these two would repeat the gossip of a caller or criticize the cut of her dress.

No, the conversation was not much better than that of the boarding- house, but the accents were different. Caroline would throw out a French phrase, and Henrietta, loving the present, wondering how she had borne the past, could yet feel fiercely that life was not fair. She herself was not fair: she was giving her allegiance to the outside of things and finding in them more pleasure than in heroism, endurance and compassion, and she said to herself, 'Yes, I'm just like my father. I see too much with my eyes.' A little fear, which had its own delight, took hold of her. How far would that likeness carry her? What dangerous qualities had he passed on to her with his looks?

She sat there, vividly conscious of herself, and sometimes she saw the whole room as a picture and she was part of it; sometimes she saw only those three whose lives, she felt, were practically over, for even Aunt Rose was comparatively old. She pitied them because their romance was past, while hers waited for her outside; she wondered at their happiness, their interest in their appearance, their pleasure in parties; but she felt most sorry for Aunt Rose, midway between what should have been the resignation of her stepsisters and the glowing anticipation of her niece. Yet Aunt Rose hardly invited sympathy of any kind and the smile always lurking near her lips gave Henrietta a feeling of discomfort, a suspicion that Aunt Rose was not only ironically aware of what Henrietta wished to conceal, but endowed with a fund of wisdom and a supply of worldly knowledge.

She continued to feel uncertain about Aunt Rose. She was always charming to Henrietta, but it was impossible to be quite at ease with a being who seemed to make an art of being delicately reserved; and because Henrietta liked to establish relationships in which she was sure of herself and her power to please, she was conscious of a faint feeling of antagonism towards this person who made her doubt herself.

Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia were evidently delighted with their niece's presence in the house. They liked the sound of her laughter and her gay voice and though Sophia once gently reproached her for her habit of whistling, which was not that of a young lady, Caroline scoffed at her old-fashioned sister.

'Let the girl whistle, if she wants to,' she said. 'It's better than having a canary in a cage.'

'But don't do it too much, Henrietta, dear,' Sophia compromised. 'You mustn't get wrinkles round your mouth.'

'No.' This was a consideration which appealed to Caroline. 'No, child, you mustn't do that.'

They admitted her to a familiarity which they would not have allowed her, and which she never attempted, to exceed, but she was Reginald's daughter, she was a member of the family, and her offence in being also the daughter of her mother was forgotten. Caroline and Sophia were deeply interested in Henrietta. Henrietta was grateful and affectionate. The three were naturally congenial, and the happiness and sympathy of the trio accentuated the pleasant aloofness of Rose. Aunt Rose did not care for her, Henrietta told herself; there was something odd about Aunt Rose, yet she remembered that it was Aunt Rose who had thought of giving her the money.

Three thousand pounds! It was a fortune, and on that Sunday when Henrietta was to pay her first visit to Mrs. Batty, Aunt Caroline, turning the girl about to see that nothing was amiss, said warningly, 'You are walking into the lion's den, Henrietta. Don't let one of those young cubs gobble you up. I know James Batty, an attractive man, but he loves money, and he knows our affairs. He married his own wife because she was a butcher's daughter.'

'A wholesale butcher,' Sophia murmured in extenuation, 'and I am sure he loved her.'

'And butchers,' Caroline went on, 'always amass money. It positively inclines one to vegetarianism, though I'm sure nuts are bad for the complexion.'

'I don't intend to be eaten yet,' Henrietta said gaily. She was very much excited and she hardly heeded Sophia's whisper at the door:

'It's not true, dear—the kindest people in the world, but Caroline has such a sense of humour.'

Henrietta found that the Batty lions were luxuriously housed. The bright yellow gravel crunched under her feet as she walked up the drive; the porch was bright with flowering plants arranged in tiers; a parlourmaid opened the door as though she conferred a privilege and, as Henrietta passed through the hall, she had glimpses of a statue holding a large fern and another bearing a lamp aloft.

She was impressed by this magnificence; she wished she could pause to examine this decently draped and useful statuary but she was ushered into a large drawing-room, somewhat over-heated, scented with hot-house flowers, softly carpeted, much-becushioned, and she immediately found herself in the embrace of Mrs. Batty, who smelt of eau-de-cologne. Mrs. Batty felt soft, too, and if she were a lioness there were no signs of claws or fangs; and her husband, a tall, spare man with grey hair and a clean-shaven face, bowed over Henrietta's hand in a courtly manner, hardly to be expected of the best-trained of wild beasts.

But for these two the room seemed to be empty, until Mrs. Batty said 'Charles!' in a tone of timid authority and Henrietta discovered that a fair young man, already showing a tendency to baldness, was sitting at the piano, apparently studying a sheet of music. This, then, was one of the cubs, and Henrietta, feeling herself marvellously at ease in this house, awaited his approach with some amusement and a little irritation at his obvious lack of interest. Aunt Caroline need have no fear. He was a plain young man with pale, vague eyes, and he did not know whether to offer one of his nervous hands at the end of over-long arms, or to make shift with an awkward bow. She settled the matter for him, feeling very much a woman of the world.

'Now, where's John?' Mrs. Batty asked, and Charles answered, 'Ratting, in the stable.'

Mrs. Batty clucked with vexation. 'It's the first Sunday for weeks that I haven't had the room full of people. Now you won't want to come again. Very dull for a young girl, I'm sure.'

'Well, well, you can have a chat with Miss Henrietta,' Mr. Batty said, 'and afterwards perhaps she would like to see my flowers.' He disappeared with extraordinary skill, with the strange effect of not having left the room, yet Mrs. Batty sighed. Charles had wandered back to the piano, and his mother, after compressing her lips and whispering, 'It's a mania,' drew Henrietta into the depths of a settee.

'Will he play to us?' she asked.

'No, no,' Mrs. Batty answered hastily. 'He's so particular. Why, if I asked you to have another cup of tea, he'd shut the piano, and that makes things very uncomfortable indeed. You can imagine. And John has this new dog—really I don't think it's right on a Sunday. It's all dogs and cricket with him. Well, cricket's better than football, for really, on a Saturday in the winter I never know whether I shall see him dead or alive. I do wish I'd had a girl.' She took Henrietta's hand. 'And you, poor dear child, without a mother—what was it she died of, my dear? Ah you'll miss her, you'll miss her! My own dear mother died the day after I was married, and I said to Mr. Batty, "This can bode no good." We had to come straight back from Bournemouth, where we'd gone For our honeymoon, and by the time I was out of black my trousseau was out of fashion. I must say Mr. Batty was very good about it. It was her heart, what with excitement and all that. She was a stout woman. All my side runs to stoutness, but Mr. Batty's family are like hop-poles. Well, I believe it's healthier, and I must say the boys take after him. Now I fancy you're rather like Miss Rose.'

'They say I am just like my father.'

Mrs. Batty said 'Ah!' with meaning, and Henrietta tried to sit straighter on the seductive settee. She could not allow Mrs. Batty to utter insinuating ejaculations and, raising her voice, she said:

'Mr. Batty, do play something.'

Charles Batty gazed at her over the shining surface of the grand piano and looked remarkably like an owl, an owl that had lost its feathers.

'Something? What?'

'Charles!' exclaimed Mrs. Batty.

'Oh, I don't know,' Henrietta murmured. She could think of nothing but a pictorial piece of music her mother had sometimes played on the lodging-house piano, with the growling of thunder-storms, the twittering of birds after rain and a suggestion of church bells, but she was determined not to betray herself.

'Whatever you like.'

He broke into a popular waltz, playing it derisively, yet with passion, so that Mrs. Batty's ponderous head began to sway and Henrietta's feet to tap. He played as though his heart were in the dance, and to Henrietta there came delightful visions, thrilling sensations, unaccountable yearnings. It was like the music she had heard at the theatre, but more beautiful. Her eyes widened, but she kept them lowered, her mouth softened and she caught her lip.

'Now I call that lovely,' Mrs. Batty said, with the last chord. His look questioned Henrietta and she, cautious, simply smiled at him, with a tilt of the lips, a little raising of the eyebrows, meant to assure him that she felt as he did.

'If you'd play a pretty tune like that now and then, people would be glad to listen,' Mrs. Batty went on. 'I'm sure I quite enjoyed it.'

Henrietta's suspicions were confirmed by these eulogies: she knew already that what Mrs. Batty appreciated, her son would despise, and she kept her little smile, saying tactfully, 'It certainly made one want to dance.'

'Can you sing?' he asked.

'Oh, a little.' She became timid. 'I'm going to learn.' With those vague eyes staring at her, she felt the need of justification. 'Aunt Caroline says every girl ought to sing. She and Aunt Sophia used to sing duets.'

'Good heavens!' The exclamation came from the depths of Charles Batty's being. 'They don't do it now, do they?'

Henrietta's pretty laughter rang out. 'No, not now.' But though she laughed there came to her a rather charming picture of her aunts in full skirts and bustles, their white shoulders bare, with sashes round their waists and a sheet of music shared, their mouths open, their eyes cast upwards.

'Every girl ought to sing,' Charles quoted, and suddenly darted at Henrietta the word, 'Why?'

'Oh, well—' It was ridiculous to be discomposed by this young man, to whom, she was sure, she was naturally superior; but sitting behind that piano as though it were a pulpit, he had an air of authority and she was anxious to propitiate him. 'Well—' Henrietta repeated, hanging on the word.

'For your own glorification, that's all,' Charles told her. 'That's all.' He caught his head in his hands. 'It drives me mad.'

'Charles!' Mrs. Batty said again. That word seemed to be the whole extent of her intercourse with him.

'Mad! Music—divine! And people get up and squeak. How they dare! A violation of the temple!'

'Oh, dear me!' Mrs. Batty groaned.

'You play the piano yourself,' Henrietta said.

'Because I can. I'd show you if you cared about it.'

'I think I would rather go and see Mr. Batty's flowers.'

'Yes, dear, do. Charles, take her to your father.' Mrs. Batty was very hot; it would be a relief to her to heave and sigh alone.

Charles rose and advanced, stooping a little, carrying his arms as though they did not belong to him and, in the hall, beside one of the gleaming statues, he paused.

'I've offended you,' he said miserably. 'I make mistakes—somehow. Nobody explains. I shall do it again.'

'You were rather rude,' Henrietta said. 'Why should you assume that I squeak?'

'Sure to,' Charles said hopelessly, 'or gurgle. Look here, I'll teach you myself, if you like.'

'I won't be bullied.'

'Then you'll never learn anything. Women are funny,' he said; 'but then everybody is. Do you know, I haven't a single friend in the world?'

'Why not?'

He shook his head. 'I don't know. I don't get on.'

'If it comes to that, I haven't a friend of my own age, either. And you have a brother.'

'Ratting!' Charles said eloquently. 'You'll hear the noise.' He handed her over to his father's care.

She was more than satisfied with her afternoon. She did not see John Batty but she heard the noise; she was aware that Mr. Batty considered her a delightful young person; she had sufficiently admired his flowers and he presented her with a bunch of orchids. For Mrs. Batty she felt an amused affection; she was interested in the unfortunate Charles. She felt her life widening pleasantly and, as she crunched again down the gravel drive, the orchids in her hand, she felt a disinclination to go home. She wanted to walk under the great trees which, spread with brilliant green, made a long avenue on the other side of the road; to wander beyond them, where a belt of grass led to a wild shrubbery overlooking the gorge at its lowest point.

Here there were unexpected little paths running out to promontories of the cliff and, at a sudden turn, she would find herself in what looked almost like danger. Below her the rock was at an angle to harbour hawthorn trees all in bud, blazing gorse bushes, bracken stiffly uncurling itself and many kinds of grasses, but there were nearly two hundred feet between her and the river, now at flood, and she felt that this was something of an adventure. She followed each little path in turn, half fearfully, for she was used to a policeman at every corner; but she met no tramp, saw no suspicious-looking character and, finding a seat under a hawthorn tree at a little distance from the cliff's edge, she sat down and put the orchids beside her.

It was part of the strange change in her fortune that she should actually be handling such rare flowers. She had seen them in florists' windows insolently putting out their tongues at people like herself who rudely stared, and now she was touching them and they looked quite polite, and she thought, with the bitterness which, bred of her experiences, constantly rose up in the midst of pleasures, 'It's because they know I have three thousand pounds and six pairs of silk stockings.'

Then she noticed that one of the flowers was missing, a little one of a fairy pink and shape, and almost immediately she heard footsteps on the grass and saw a man approaching with the orchid in his hand. She recognized the man she had seen riding the black horse on the day she arrived in Radstowe and her heart fluttered. This was romance, this, she had time to think excitedly, must be preordained. But when he handed her the flower with a polite, 'I think you dropped this,' she wished he had chosen to keep the trophy. If she had had the happiness of seeing him conceal it!

She said nervously, 'Oh, yes, thank you very much. I'd just missed it,' and as he turned away she had at least the minor joy of seeing a look of arrested interest in his eyes.

She sat there holding the frail and almost sacred branch. She supposed she was in love; there was no other explanation of her feelings; and what a marvellous sequence of events! If Mr. Batty had not given her the orchids this romantic episode could not have happened. And she was glad that the eyes of the stranger had not rested on her that first day when she was wearing her shabby, her atrociously cut clothes. Fate had been kind in allowing him to see her thus, in a black dress with a broad white collar, a carefully careless bow, silk stockings covering her matchless ankles and—she glanced down—shoes that did their best to conceal the squareness of her feet.

She recognized her own absurdity, but she liked it: she Had leisure in which to be absurd, she had nothing else to do, And romance, which had seemed to be waiting for her outside Nelson Lodge, had now met her in the open! She was not going to pass it by. This was, she knew, no more than a precious secret, a little game she could play all by herself, but it had suddenly coloured vividly a life which was already opening wider; and she would have been astonished and perhaps disgusted, to learn that Aunt Rose had once occupied herself with similar dreamings. But She was spared that knowledge and she was tempted to wait in her place on the chance that the stranger would return, but, deciding that it was hardly what a Mallett would do, she rose reluctantly, carrying the pink orchid in one hand, the less favoured ones in the other.

The evening was exquisite: she saw a pale-blue sky fretted with green leaves, striped with tree trunks astonishingly black; she heard steamers threshing through the water and giving out warning whistles, sounds to stir the heart with the thoughts of voyage, of danger, and of unknown lands; and as she walked up the long avenue of elms she found that all the people strolling out after tea for an evening walk had happy, pleasant faces.

She met fathers and mothers in loitering advance of children, shy lovers with no words for each other, an old lady in a bath chair propelled by a man as old, young men in check caps, with flowers in their coats, earnest people carrying prayer-books and umbrellas, girls with linked arms and shrill laughter; and she envied none of them: not the children, finding interest in everything they saw; not the parents, proud in possession; not the old lady whose work was done, not the young men and women eyeing each other and letting out their enticing laughter; she envied no one in the world. She had found an occupation, and that night, sitting at the dinner-table, she was conscious of the difference in herself and of a new kinship with these women, the two who could look back on adventures, rosy and poetic, the one who seemed shrouded in some delicate mystery. It was as though she, too, had been initiated; she was surer of herself, even in the presence of Aunt Rose, with her beauty like that of a white flower, the faint irony of her smile.



4

A few days later Rose said, 'I want to take you to see a friend of mine, a Mrs. Sales.'

'Do the milkcarts belong to them?' Henrietta asked at once.

'Yes.' Rose was amused. 'Mrs. Sales is an invalid and she would like to see you. Shall we go on Saturday?' She added as she left the room, 'Mrs. Sales was hurt in a hunting accident, but you need not avoid the subject. She likes to talk about it.'

'What a good thing,' Henrietta said, practically.

Aunt Rose was dressed for walking and Henrietta was afraid of being asked to go with her, but Aunt Rose made no such suggestion. Since Sunday Henrietta had been exploring Radstowe and its suburbs with an enthusiasm surprising to the elder aunts, who did not care for exercise; but Henrietta was as much inspired by the hope of seeing that man again as by interest in the old streets, the unexpected alleys, the flights of worn steps leading from Upper to Lower Radstowe, the slums, cheek by jowl with the garden of some old house, the big houses deteriorated into tenements. All these had their own charm and the added one of having been familiar to her father, but she never forgot to watch for the hero on the horse, the restorer of her orchid. If she met him, should she bow to him, or pretend not to see him? She had practised various expressions before the glass, and had almost decided to look up as he passed and flash a glance of puzzled recognition from her eyes. She thought she could do it satisfactorily and to-day she meant to cross the bridge for the first time. He had been riding over the bridge that afternoon and what had happened once might happen again. Moreover, she had a feeling that across the water there was something waiting for her. Certainly behind the trees clothing the gorge there was the real country, with cows and sheep and horses in the meadows, with the possibility of rabbits in the lanes, and she had never yet seen a rabbit running wild. There were innumerable possibilities on that farther side.

She crossed the bridge, stood to look up and down the river, to watch the gulls, white against the green, to consider the ant-like hurrying of the people on the road below and the clustered houses on the city side, a medley of shapes and colours, rising in terraces, the whole like some immense castle guarding the entrance to the town. And as before, carriages and carts went and came over, schoolgirls on bicycles, babies in perambulators, but this time there was no man on a horse. She knew that this mattered very little; her stimulated excitement was hardly more than salt and pepper to a dish already appetizing enough, and now and then as she went along the road on a level with the tree-tops in the gorge and had glimpses of water and of rock, she had to remind herself of her preoccupation.

She passed big houses with their flowery gardens and then, suddenly timorous, she decided not to go too far afield. She might get lost, she might meet nasty people or horned beasts. A little path on her right hand had an inviting look; it might lead her down through the trees to the water's edge. It was all strewn and richly brown with last autumn's leaves and on a tree a few yards ahead she saw a brilliant object—tiny, long-tailed, extraordinarily swift. It was out of sight before she had time to tell herself that this was a squirrel; and again she had a consciousness of development. She had seen a squirrel in its native haunts! This was wonderful, and she approached the tree. The squirrel had vanished, but these woods, within sound of a city, yet harbouring squirrels, seemed to have become one of her possessions. She was enriched, she was a different person, and she, whose familiar fauna had been stray cats and the black beetles in Mrs. Banks' kitchen, was actually in touch with nature. She now felt equal to meeting unattended cows, but the woods offered enough excitement for to-day.

She found that her path did not immediately descend. It led her levelly to an almost circular green space; then it became enclosed again and soft to the feet with grass; and just ahead of her, blocking her way, she saw two figures, those of a woman and a man. Their backs were towards her, but there was no mistaking Aunt Rose's back. It was straight without being stiff, her dress fell with a unique perfection and the little hat and grey floating veil were hers alone.

For an instant Henrietta stood still, and the man, turning to look at his companion, showed the profile of her stranger. At the same moment he touched Aunt Rose's hand and before Henrietta swerved and sped back whence she had come, she saw that hand removed gently, as though reluctantly, and the head, mistily veiled, shaken slowly.

Her first desire was for flight and, safely on the road again, she found her heart beating to suffocation; she was filled with an indignation that almost brought her to tears; it was as though Aunt Rose had deliberately robbed her of treasure—Aunt Rose, who was almost middle-aged! For a moment she despised that fair, handsome man whose image had filled her mind for what seemed a long, long time; then she felt pity for him who had no eyes for youth, yet she remembered his look of arrested interest.

But steadying her thoughts and enjoying her dramatic bitterness, she laughed. He had merely surprised her likeness to Aunt Rose and that was all. Her dream was over. She had known it was a dream, but the awakening was cruel; it was also intensely exciting. She did not regret it; she had at least discovered something about Aunt Rose. She had a lover. That look of his, that pleading movement of his hand, were unmistakable; he was a lover, and perhaps she, Henrietta Mallett, alone knew the truth. She had suspected a secret, now she knew it; and she had a sense of power, she had a weapon. She imagined herself standing over Aunt Rose, armed with knowledge, no longer afraid; she was involved in a romantic, perhaps a shameful, situation. Aunt Rose was meeting a lover clandestinely in the woods while Aunt Caroline and Aunt Sophia sat innocently at home, marvelling at Rose's indifference to men, yet rejoicing in her spinsterhood; and Henrietta felt that Rose had wronged her stepsisters almost as much as she had wronged her niece. She was deceitful; that, in plain terms, accounted for what had seemed a mysterious and conquered sorrow. It was Henrietta who was to suffer, through the shattering of a dream.

She went home, walking quickly, but feeling that she groped in a fog, broken here and there by lurid lights, the lights of knowledge and determination. She was younger than Aunt Rose, she was as pretty, and she was the daughter of Reginald Mallett who, though she did not know it, had always wanted the things desired by other people. She could continue to love her stranger and at the back of her mind was the unacknowledged conviction that Aunt Rose's choice must be well worth loving. And again how strangely events seemed to serve her: first the dropping of an orchid and now the leaping of a squirrel! She felt herself in the hands of higher powers.

She had a feverish longing to see Rose again, to see her plainly for the first time and dressing for dinner was like preparing for a great event. Yet when dinner-time came everything was surprisingly the same. The deceived Caroline and Sophia ate with the usual appetite, Susan hovered with the same quiet attention, and Rose showed no sign of a recent interview with a lover. Across the candlelight she looked at Henrietta kindly and Henrietta remembered the three thousand pounds. She did not want to remember them. They constituted an obligation towards this woman who did not sufficiently appreciate her, who met that man secretly, in a wood, who was beautiful with a far-off kind of beauty, like that of the stars. And while these angry thoughts passed through Henrietta's mind, Rose's tender expression had developed into a smile, and she asked, 'Did you have a nice walk?'

Henrietta gulped. She looked steadily at Rose, and on her lips certain words began to form themselves, but she did not utter them, and instead of saying as she intended, 'Yes, I went across the bridge and into those woods on the other side,' she merely said, 'Yes, yes, thank you,' and smiled back. It had been impossible not to smile and she was angry with Aunt Rose for making her a hypocrite. Perhaps she had smiled like that in the wood and she did not look so very old. Even the flames of the candles, throwing her face into strong relief as she leaned forward, did not reveal any lines.

'Don't walk too much, child,' Caroline said. 'It enlarges the feet. Girls nowadays can wear their brothers' shoes and men don't like that. Have I ever told you'—Caroline was given to repetition of her stories—'how one of my partners, ridiculous creature, insisted on calling me Cinderella for a whole evening? Do you remember, Sophia?'

'Yes, dear,' Sophia said, and she determined that some day, when she was alone with Henrietta, she would tell her that she, too, had been called Cinderella that night. It was hard, but, since she loved her sister, not so very hard, to ignore her own little triumphs, yet she would like Henrietta to know of them. 'Dear child,' she murmured vaguely.

'We have our shoes made for us,' Caroline went on. 'It's necessary.' She snorted scorn for a large-footed generation.

Rose laughed. She said, 'Walk as much as you like, Henrietta. Health is better than tiny feet.'

Henrietta had no response for this remark. For the first time she felt out of sympathy with her surroundings, and her resentment against Rose spread to her other aunts. They were foolish in their talk of men and little feet; they knew, for all their worldliness, nothing about life. They had never known what it was to be insufficiently fed or clothed; they had never battled with black beetles and mutton bones, their white hands had never been soiled by greasy water and potato skins and she felt a bitterness against them all. 'Nonsense, Rose, what do you know about it?' Caroline asked. 'You're a nun, that's what you are.'

'Ah, lovely!' Sophia sighed, but Henrietta, thinking of that man in the wood, raised her dark eyebrows sceptically.

'Lovely! Rubbish! A nun, and the first in the family. All our women,' Caroline turned to Henrietta, 'have broken hearts. They can't help it. It's in the blood. You'll do it yourself. All except Rose. And our men—' she guffawed; 'yes, even the General—but if I tell you about our men Sophia will be shocked.'

'The men!' Henrietta straightened herself and looked round the table. Her dark eyes shone, and the anger she was powerless to display against Aunt Rose, the remembrance of her own and her mother's struggles, found an outlet. 'You can't tell me anything I don't know. I don't think it is funny. Haven't I suffered through one of them? My father, he wasn't anything to boast about.'

'Henrietta,' Sophia said gently, and Caroline uttered a stern, 'What are you saying?'

'I don't care,' Henrietta said. 'Perhaps you're proud of all the harm he did, but my mother and I had to bear it. He was weak and selfish; we nearly starved, but he didn't. Oh, no, he didn't!' With her hands clasped tightly on her knee she bent over the table and her head was lowered with the effect of some small animal prepared for a spring. 'Do you know,' she said, 'he wore silk shirts? Silk shirts! and I had only one set of underclothing in the world! I had to wash them overnight. That was my father—a Mallett! Were they all like that?'

There was silence until Caroline, peeling an apple with trembling fingers, said severely, 'I don't think we need continue this conversation.' Her indignation was beyond mere words; she was outraged; her brother had been insulted by this child who owed his sisters gratitude; the family had been held up to scorn, and Henrietta, aware of what she had done and of her obligations, was overwhelmed with regret, with confusion, with the sense that, after all, it was she who really loved and understood her father.

'We will excuse you, Henrietta, if you have finished your dessert,' Caroline said. She had a great dignity.

This was a dismissal and Henrietta stood up. She could not take back her words, for they were true: she did not know how to apologize for their manner; she felt she would have to leave the house to-morrow and she had a sudden pride in Aunt Caroline and in her own name. But there was nothing she could do.

Most unexpectedly, Rose intervened. 'You must forgive Henrietta's bitterness,' she said quietly. 'It is natural.'

'But her own father!' Sophia remonstrated tearfully, and added tenderly, 'Ah, poor child!'

Henrietta dropped into her chair. She wept without concealment. 'It isn't that I didn't love him,' she sobbed.

'Ah, yes, you loved him,' Sophia said. 'So did we.' She dabbed her face with her lace handkerchief. 'It is Rose who knows nothing about him,' she said, with something approaching anger. 'Nothing!'

'Perhaps that is why I understand,' Rose said.

'No, no, you don't!' Henrietta cried. She could not admit that. She would not allow Aunt Rose to make such a claim. She looked from Caroline to Sophia. 'It's we who know,' she said. Yes, it was they three who were banded together in love for Reginald Mallett, in their sympathy for each other, in the greater nearness of their relationship to the person in dispute. She looked up, and she saw through her tears a slight quiver pass over the face of Rose and she knew she had hurt her and she was glad of it. 'You must forgive me,' she said to Caroline.

'Well, well; he was a wretch—a great wretch—a great dear. Let us say no more about it.'

It was Rose, now, who was in disgrace, and it was Henrietta, Caroline and Sophia who passed an evening of excessive amiability in the drawing-room.

Henrietta felt heroically that she had thrown down her glove and it was annoying, the next morning, to find Rose would not pick it up. She remained charming; she was inimitably calm: she seemed to have forgotten her offence of the night before and Henrietta delighted in the thought that, though Rose did not know it, she and Henrietta were rivals in love, and she told herself that her own time would come.

She had only to wait. She was a great believer in her own luck, and had not Aunt Caroline assured her that all the Mallett women were born to break hearts—all but Aunt Rose? Some day she was bound to meet that man again and, looking in the glass after the Mallett manner, she was pleased with what she saw there. She was her father's daughter. Her father had never denied himself anything he wanted, and since her outbreak against him she felt closer to him; she was prepared to condone his sins, even to emulate them and find in him her excuse. She looked at the portrait on the wall, she kissed her hand to it. Somehow he seemed to be helping her.