The Duchess, greatly diverted by his demeanour, and reinforced on her other side by an amusing, sad dog of thirty, who wrote wicked novels, thoroughly enjoyed her dinner. There are so many reasons for enjoying one's dinner; some people do because they like to meet their fellow-creatures; some because they like being seen at certain houses; some because they have beauty to display or stories to tell; and some because they enjoy eating and drinking simply as eating and drinking. The Duchess, in that she enjoyed dining for all the reasons above cited, except that of bothering her ancient head about whose house she was seen at, was extremely pleased with her entertainment. She wagged her old head—white now, quite frankly, after many years of essays in difficult tints—whispered to her novelist, and made love to Tommy quite shamelessly.

"You look like an Eastern potentate, you are so silent and serious," she told him once. "Do I bore you so horribly, or is it Miss Letchworth?"

"I am not bored at all, Duchess," answered the boy simply; "I am thinking."

"And what are you thinking about?"

Tommy hesitated. Under her frivolous manner he knew the Duchess had a heart, and very human sympathies.

"I want to be a violinist," he said slowly, after a pause during which the Duchess, with a little shriek, rescued her salad, which William had pounced upon.

"A violinist!"

"Hush! Please don't tell."

"Of course I'll not tell, but——"

"Have you heard him play?"

"Joyselle? Of course I have."

"Well?" asked Tommy in quiet triumph. What more could anyone say?

The old woman smiled sweetly at him. She, too, had been young, and remembered. And there was in this little, plain boy a certain strain of blood that she loved; his grandmother had been a Yeoland.

"So you really love it that much, do you? It means hard work, Tommy."

"I know," nodded the boy gravely.

And his mother, seeing his gravity, feared that he was not being sufficiently quaint to amuse the old lady, and screamed down the table at him to tell the Duchess the story of the jibbing pony at the Irish race meeting. The story was not told.

On her right hand Lady Kingsmead had the local M.F.H., a dull man with his head full of hounds, as she expressed it. But on her left sat Joyselle, and as a guest he was certainly perfect. Lady Kingsmead in pale pink and pearls was good enough to look at, and feeling that she wished to be made love to, he made love to her, as was his duty. And he did it well, for he was an artist. He was not conspicuous, or over-impassioned, or over-adoring (very few women like unmixed adoration), but he was amusing, a trifle outrageous, admiring, and tactful. He was also amazingly handsome.

Down to her left Lady Kingsmead could see Carron being bored to death by the wife of the M.F.H., who, someone said, if he had his head full of hounds and foxes, certainly had hers full of coals and blankets. For the vicar was a bachelor, and poor Lady Brinsley hated hounds and foxes, and really loved helping the poor. And being of the simple-minded who talk to strangers out of the fulness of their hearts, she was telling him sadly of the shameful way in which the coal-dealer had cheated poor, dear Mr. Smith.

Mentally damning poor, dear Mr. Smith and his friend, as well as the whole race of coal-dealers, Carron watched Brigit as she talked to Theo and her other neighbour, Pat Yelverton, who watched her in quite evident surprise.

"May I be rude and make a personal remark?" he asked her presently. She smiled. "Yes." Yelverton hesitated, and then said slowly: "You have changed wonderfully since I last saw you, Lady Brigit."

"You mean that I am not so disagreeable?"

"I mean——"

"I know. And you are right, Mr. Yelverton. I was very horrid, and now I am—nicer—because I am very happy. It's a selfish reason, but I hope I can use it as—as a kind of means to a good end."

Yelverton held his breath. Was it possible that the mere fact of being engaged to a sweet-natured youth like Theo Joyselle could cause such a miracle as this before his eyes? What was the boy to change Brigit from a sullen, caustic woman into a charming, lovely young girl?

"I am very glad for you," he said presently, "and for him. I'm a sorry old stager, Lady Brigit, but it is good to see two young things like you and Joyselle find each other—in time."

As so often happens, his mood was answering hers, and she remembered some story she had heard long ago about him and some girl who had drowned herself.

"Thank you," she said very gently, and turned to Theo, for she had a manlike fear of intruding on people's secrets. But Yelverton was one of those unfortunate beings who, when they turn to their sentimental past, must turn not to the memory of one face, but to a kind of romantic mosaic of many faces that in time takes on the horrid semblance of a composite photograph. So it is to be feared that the sad little story of the girl who drowned herself because he who loved her, made casual and, so to speak, duty-love to a married woman, had not occurred to him, as Brigit in her new-found kindliness of supposition, took for granted.

It was a wonderful dinner to the girl; wonderful in the indulgence that had come over her regarding her convives, and in the interesting things she found it possible to glean from the snatches of talk she caught from time to time. Alert, bright-eyed, an unwonted smile ever hovering on her mouth, she listened, and young Joyselle watched her in a fearful ecstasy of joy.

He felt, in his innocent youth, so old, so wicked, so world-worn for this radiant angel who had given, herself to him. It was too good to be true, and he trembled at the thought. But after dinner, when he had at last been able to fly to the drawing-room, the Duchess had a beautiful word to say to him. "Mr. Joyselle," the old woman began abruptly, beckoning to him, "come here for a second, I want to congratulate you."

"Thank you, Duchess. I—I am indeed to be congratulated, for she is the most perfect——"

"Ta, ta, ta, I don't mean that at all! I mean I want to congratulate you on what you have been able to do for her in so short a time."

"I? To do for her?" He was honestly puzzled.

"Yes, you. Do you suppose she has always been what she is now? Not a bit of it. The last time I saw Brigit Mead—it was at Ascot—she was a very good-looking, of course—oh, unbelievably beautiful, if you prefer it, but an ill-tempered, black-faced young minx, who should have been put on bread and water for a month to correct her manner."

"Her manners!" shouted Theo, unable to believe his ears.

"No. Her manners were always all right, but her manner was atrocious. And you have made her most delightful, as well as ten times lovelier than I would have thought possible. There, now, you may go to her." And Theo wasted no time.

"Love is a strange thing, isn't it?" went on the old woman to her neighbour, without looking to see who he was, for it is a remark that may safely be addressed to anybody.

"It is a damnable thing," growled the afflicted Carron, for it was he who chanced, for his sins, to have paused just then under the pretence of lighting a cigarette.

"Exactly," assented the Duchess briskly. "It has led you an awful life, Gerald, hasn't it?"

"The absurdity of calling that boy's feelings for Brigit by the same word that must express——"

"Yours for her mother, eh? Go away, you immoral thing!"



CHAPTER TWELVE

There was to be no Bridge that evening, and by unspoken consent everyone sat in the hall. It was a cold night, and the roaring fire was pleasant to hear, and in the expressive slang of the time, "things went."

Everyone was amused; for the time being, the bores had ceased from boring, and the bored were at rest. Brigit, who loved to look into wet and be dry, to look into cold and be warm, sat in the one plain glass window in the place (its coloured predecessor had been broken by a Roundhead cannon-ball and for vainglorious Family Reasons never been replaced), so that she could look alternately into the storm and at the comfortable, cheery scene within.

She wore white, and in her hair a tiny wreath of green enamel bay-leaves. And to her beauty was, as the Duchess had so plainly felt, added the great graces of good humour and simplicity.

"After all," thought the wise old lady, watching her, "all happy women are simple."

Tommy, big with his splendid secret, roamed about the room, his hands in his pockets, his chin poked up thoughtfully.

It was all very well to be an earl if one wanted to rule one's mother and get one's own way generally, but when one wants to be a violinist, then an earldom is distinctly a bore. He had never heard of a British peer who at the same time was a great musician, but which of the two positions precluded the other he could not decide.

He wished, naturally, to begin work at once. He would have to have a serious talk with his mother to-night. If these people ever went to bed!

Bicky looked heavenly to-night. My word! what a sister for any fellow to have!

And Joyselle—he was far too great a person to be "Mistered." Fancy Mr. Beethoven, or Mr. Paderewski! Joyselle the Great and Glorious would help him. The mater appeared to like him. It was strange, for she had been in a terrible rage the first day or two—but she certainly was as pleased as Punch now.

Joyselle had crossed the room and was sitting by Bicky now. By Jove, he was patting her hand! And before everybody!

Suddenly he rose, she smiled up into his dark face, and he called Tommy.

"Tommy, will you go to my room and bring me my Amati?"

Why Tommy did not then and there burst with joy, that enraptured little boy never knew. When he put the violin into the master's hand the child trembled so that the master saw it. "When I have played one thing, you are to go to bed," he said gravely. "You are tired."

And the spoiled and headstrong Tommy, he whose word was law to his mother and many other people, nodded obediently. "I will play again for you alone to-morrow," added Joyselle.

Then he went and stood near the fire, the red light flashing on him, and played.

The first thing, plainly for Tommy, was a Norman cradle-song, very slow and monotonous, and full of strange harmonies. When it was over, Tommy quietly withdrew. To-morrow was to be his day.

Brigit Mead had stayed at the house in Golden Square for a full week, and during that week she had heard her future father-in-law play a dozen times or more.

He had played in the crimson velvet dressing-gown, in morning clothes, in evening dress, once even in the fur-lined coat. Yet it seemed to her, as she watched and listened now, in the great hall of the house of her fathers, that she had never heard quite this same man play.

At home he had been "Beau-papa," noisy and demonstrative, or solemn with artistic responsibility and reverence, but always the oldish man playing to his family. Now, in some way, he was metamorphosed. He was now "Joyselle"; he was, as she listened and watched, an unusually handsome, not yet middle-aged gentleman, playing the violin as an artist, but indisputably a gentleman.

She recalled, with a shudder, his awful lack of taste displayed the day Pontefract called; she remembered her amusement on his insisting on wearing a pale blue satin tie one day when he was lunching at a club to meet a great pianist, and Theo's subsequent search among his belongings for other similar horrors.

She remembered his over-loud laugh and his too-ready gesture. She smiled, however, as she told herself that he was a peasant.

As she listened, her love for music quite subordinated to her strange interest in the mere man, Theo leant forward and whispered quietly: "Brigit, do you really care a little for me?"

"Yes." She smiled affectionately at him, for was it not he who made her so happy?

And then the poor girl drew a long, shuddering breath, and leant back behind the curtain, for she had suddenly realised that it was not Theo who made her happy. It was the fact that he was Victor Joyselle's son.

And it was the big man with the violin who—who—who made her happy.

It was a miserable end to her childish dream of felicity, for she was brave enough to admit to herself without the least hesitation what it was that had happened.

And when Joyselle at length stopped playing and came back to sit by her, she smiled at him in very good imitation of her own smile of half an hour before.

But he was not satisfied.

"You did not like it?" he asked simply.

"Of course I did—it was splendid."

"Yet I could not hold you," he persisted, his vanity evidently a little hurt. He could not hold her!

"Didn't we like it, Theo?" she urged, turning to the young man.

"To tell the truth, I didn't hear a note," he admitted, not in the least shamefacedly. "I was looking at you."

"Lucky young beggar," laughed Joyselle, "small wonder! You two make a very pleasant picture," he added, "and in a year or two——"

"Father," protested Theo, blushing scarlet in quick French sympathy for the strange susceptibilities of his English fiancee, "don't!"

Brigit rose slowly. "I must go and say good night to Tommy," she said. "I shall be down in a few minutes."

Tommy was in bed, reading a very large book by the light of an electric lamp.

"What have you got there?" his sister asked, lying down by him and pressing her face to the cool pillow.

"Oh, nothing. I just thought I ought to know something about—Amatis. It's very interesting," he returned solemnly, and then burst out: "Oh, Bick, isn't he simply glorious!"

"Yes, Tommy."

"There was never anyone like him. Not only the fiddling, but—everything. Don't you think so? Don't you, Bicky?" he persisted anxiously.

"Yes, Tommy, dear."

"I do think you the luckiest girl in the whole world. Just fancy being his daughter."

"Yes, Tommy."

Her head whirled, her heart beat hard, her hands were as cold as ice. This, she told herself, was the plunge; it would be better shortly. And when it was better, then she could begin to fight. For she would fight. It was a monstrous thing, a nightmare, and she would fight it down.

"Brigit."

"Yes, Tommy?" With an effort she roused herself and sat up.

Tommy had closed the book and put it away. He now sat hunched in bed, his thin arms in their pale blue sleeves clasping his knees. "Brigit, do you think a peer could ever be a really great violinist?"



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A sleepless night is always a bad thing, but it is full of horror when its victim is haunted by an ever-recurring thought.

Brigit Mead went to her room, dismissed what her brother called her half of Amelie, the French maid, put on a dressing-gown, and sat down by the fire to think.

Her room was very exposed, and the wind howled dismally round the corner of the house, while the rain fell in violent gusts against the ancient panes. It was a comfort to hear the storm, for it made the fire welcome, and a fire is comforting.

The girl huddled close to it, and according to her wont began uttering her thoughts in a whisper.

"It is that. There's no doubt. And that is why I was so happy. He doesn't know, that's one comfort. Only—what on earth am I to do? I wonder if it will get worse or better, the more I see him? If only he would make some more horrible blunders, or—or what? It isn't what he does, it's what he is. It isn't even the playing. I barely heard him to-night. And Theo—poor Theo! He must never suspect. But then, he never would, unless I shouted it in his ear!"

She paused and put another log on the fire.

"He will, though, unless I am very careful. He isn't old at all, forty-two is young nowadays, and I'm sure he likes women. I daresay, if I hadn't been engaged to Theo, he would have liked me. Most of 'em do. And I never looked better in my life than I looked to-night. Vain beast!"

Presently she got up, and roamed aimlessly about the room. The door leading into her little sitting-room was open, and she went in and switched on the light. "He wants to come in here to-morrow, and see where I live. Live! He wants to see my books. I'll hide those French ones; they'd shock Beau-papa, I suppose, though they aren't very bad. But what am I to do? Can I go on being engaged—can I marry Theo while I—love his father? Would marrying Theo cure me, or make it worse? And suppose he fell in love with me after we were married! And she—Gerald's 'clean old peasant,' wouldn't she be horrified? Poor old thing, she is very nice, but—and Tommy wanting to be a violinist! A nice family party, upon my word!"

She laughed harshly and pulled her dressing-gown closer about her. It was cold in here.

"I suppose I'd better tell Theo the truth—or, no, just that I've changed my mind. No, I can't do that, for I'd never see him again. I want to see him; there's no danger; he'll never suspect me."

Up and down the two rooms she paced, her two long black plaits hanging over her shoulders and accentuating the red-Indian character of her face. "How Gerald would gloat!" she thought suddenly, clenching her hands. "The beast!"

The stable clock struck one. She had thought that wretched old Duchess would never want to go to bed.

"I wish I could tell Pam. According to the Duchess, Pam is a mine of wisdom. But I know what she did about that Peele man, and I haven't the courage to do that. Oh, why did I ever see Theo? Then I'd have married Ponty, and—what's that?" Wheeling fiercely, she faced the door leading from her sitting-room into the passage. It opened noiselessly and Carron came in, dressed as she had last seen him. "Hush! don't be frightened, Brigit. I saw your light and——"

"Well—and?" She looked as if she were about to spring at his throat, and he closed the door quietly and entered her bedroom.

"My good child, don't be melodramatic! I only wanted to tell you that—that I am sorry I was rude to you the day you left——"

"Rude, were you? I had quite forgotten it. Now go!"

"No, thanks. I will sit down for a moment. Brigit, you are a very foolish woman. Hush, I will tell you why. Firstly, because you are going to marry the son of that musical mountebank; and secondly, because you seem bound to make an enemy of me."

"Threats?"

She stood looking down at him with a smile as disagreeable, though not as evil, as his own. "Don't you be melodramatic! And please go. If you don't, I'll ring for Amelie."

"I don't mind."

And she knew that he did not. She, on the other hand did, for she had always disliked and distrusted the Frenchwoman. "If you prefer one of the men?"

"They won't hear you; men-servants never do. And, besides, I'm going in a minute. Listen, Brigit; you have, during the past year, done everything you could to hurt me. Do you think it's fair, all things considered?"

"Fair or unfair, your—attentions annoy me."

"Well—your attitude annoys me, and unless you change it, I'll—get even with you. Now, there's plain English for you." He rose. "That's all I wanted to say. Rather pretty, your room."

"Very good," she sneered. "In the language of your favourite branch of dramatic art, 'do your worst.'"

"And you intend to continue to torture me till—till I can't bear it?" His face whitened, and there was real agony in his voice. After all, he was suffering too, and suddenly, for the first time, she pitied him.

"I am sorry, Gerald," she said, bending towards him and laying her hand on his shoulder. "I——"

"Hush!" reaching out his hand he switched off the light, for they had both heard slow footsteps coming softly down the passage.

The room was dark now but for the fire which had died down, and luckily they stood in the shadow. The soft footsteps, heavy, though they would have been noiseless at any other hour than this most quiet one, approached slowly and deliberately. Instinctively the girl clung to the man, and he put his arms round her for the first time since she was a little child. Even in their mutual fright she felt his heart give a wild throb.

Then the door opened gently and on the threshold appeared—Tommy, sound asleep, hugging to his unconscious breast the volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which he had been reading about the Amati.

Slowly the boy crossed the room and disappeared into the sitting-room.

"Go," whispered Brigit, desperately; "he mustn't be waked up—go this way——"

But Carron had lost his head, and kissed her, breathlessly, hungrily, and then, just as the little blue-clad figure again appeared in the one doorway, he disappeared by the other.

The girl stood quite still, not daring to scream, so angry that only the unconscious presence of Tommy prevented her rushing after the man she hated, to try to kill him with her two hands.

And Tommy, after a moment's hesitation, made his slow way back to his room and to bed. When she had tucked him up in safety she went to her mother's room.

"Sorry to wake you, mother," she said, her voice shaky, "but might I sleep with you? I have had such a bad dream and am nervous."

Lady Kingsmead luckily liked to have her vanity played upon by such requests. It pleased her to have her daughter turn to her. "Of course, darling," she said sleepily.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Carron was late for breakfast the next morning, and when he came in found Brigit sitting in her mother's place, laughing and talking with Sir Henry Brinsley, who, much pleased by the manner in which his dull and endless stories were received, subsequently declared that it was all rot calling that handsome girl of Lady Kingsmead's dull; very intelligent girl indeed, as a matter of fact.

But for all her composure, Brigit never quite lost her that-morning-conceived hatred of people who have two goes at ham and eggs; and an infantile remark of Tommy's that eggs should be eaten only out of the shell, because they "bled all over the plate," recurred to her again and again as she watched the worthy baronet satisfy his enormous appetite.

"Mornin', Brigit." "Morning, Gerald." She nodded, and he went to a side table for some fish.

Theo, who sat opposite Brigit for the excellent reason that his father had insisted on sitting by her, took some marmalade. "What are we to do this morning?" he asked.

She frowned with sudden impatience. It was a horrible question. Would he always ask it at breakfast?

Then she smiled at him, for his fresh happy face was good to look at. "Oh, nothing—or anything you like. Why?"

"Because I thought it might be well, if you can spare the time, to take papa for a spin in the motor. He did not sleep well."

She turned to Joyselle. "It is true. I am one of the best sleepers in the world, but last night I had a bad dream, and it got on my nerves and I lay awake for nearly two hours," He spoke with an air of only half-amused grievance.

"I am sorry," she murmured perfunctorily, rising to shake hands with Miss Letchworth, whom she had always disliked as being one of those people who are jocund in the morning. Then, as Yelverton proceeded to provide food for the unfortunate jocund one (who was really as inclined to matutinal depression as any of her betters, but considered it her duty to be "cheery"), Brigit realised that she was not sorry Joyselle had slept badly; she was glad.

"My dream, Brigitte," he went on, his thought answering hers, "was about you. You were so unhappy, poor child, and I was trying to help you, but could not reach you. It was very dreadful, for I could hear you call to me."

"How—pathetic," she answered, with stiffening lips. "But—would you like to go motoring?" He nodded delightedly, for his mouth was full of toast.

"I love it," he went on, a moment later, "I love to go fast, fast, fast. It is wonderful. What is your car?"

"It is mother's; nothing very remarkable in the way of speed, I fear. Would you care to go for a drive, Lady Brinsley?"

But Lady Brinsley had letters to write, and no one else volunteering for the excursion, half-past eleven found Brigit and Joyselle in the tonneau of the car, and Theo sitting with the chauffeur.

"Go to Kletchley, Hubbard."

It was a cold, grey day, with a steely sky and a wind that threatened to be high later on. Brigit's cap was tied on firmly with a strong green veil, but she wore nothing over her face, and the chill air made her feel better. She had not slept at all, and was tired, although nothing in her aspect betrayed the fact. All night her mind had been busy with its new-found problem, and the unusual presence of her mother had made her very nervous. But—she had not dared return to her room, for fear of finding Carron there.

If only she had had a father——

"Vous etes roublee, ma fille," said Joyselle, suddenly taking one of her hands in his befurred ones; "what has happened? Can you not think of me as your old papa, and tell me?"

She started, half-frightened, half angry. "I am not troubled, M. Joyselle," she returned, in French. "I—have a headache, that is all."

Oh, time-honoured evasion; oh, classic lie, thou who hast served, surely, since Eve's day, used without doubt by Helen of Troy, Cleopatra and all the other unsaintly women, ancient and modern, whose stories are so much more entertaining than those of the unco' guid—oh, Splendid Mendax, where should we all be without you?

"A headache?" Joyselle's magnificent eyes looked kindly but searchingly into hers. "No. Not that." Then, asking no further question, he leaned back in his place and looked out over the fields on his left.

"Daughter—father—child—old man——" she told herself with set jaw, "that is what he thinks. He is eight years younger than that brute Gerald, too."

The road climbed dully up for half an hour, and then with a quick turn stretched out over splendid downs, beyond which lay a narrow glittering strip of grey sea. "There is the sea," announced Brigit, perfunctorily. It was not intrinsically beautiful, the scene, but as some chord in the human breast almost invariably vibrates in response to a view of salt water, this point was considered, at Kingsmead, to be a particularly important one, and as the motor flew on Brigit Mead wondered how many hundred times she had brought people there with the same curt introduction, "There is the sea."

Theo, perfectly happy, turned occasionally to look at the other two, but spoke little. It filled him with joy to see his beloved and his father together, and his engagement was still so young that he had not got used to it, and loved to think about it.

Joyselle, too, was unusually silent for a long time. Then at last he turned to Brigit, his face grave as she had hitherto seen it only when he was playing.

"I will not intrude again, Brigitte," he said, his deep voice very gentle; "but when—if—you ever care to come to me for help or advice—of any kind, I shall always be at your service."

"Thank you," she said, and could say no more, for fear of breaking down. Then her sense of humour, never very keen, did for once come to the rescue, and in an absurd mental flash-light she pictured his face if she should suddenly put her head down on his knees and wail out the truth: "Yes, dear Beau-papa, advise and help me, for I am to be your daughter, my children are to be your grandchildren, and—I love you!"

Something in her face hurt him, and for the rest of the drive he quite simply and frankly sulked.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Brigit went for a long walk that afternoon, as was her wont when she wished to think. As she started from the house she met Carron. "Look here, Brigit," he said roughly, "you slept with your mother last night. Was it because you were afraid I might come back?"

She eyed him with great coolness from under the shadow of her felt hat. "No, I was afraid, when I left—my little brother—that you might have come back." And she took her walking-stick from its place.

"I—I beg your pardon," he returned sullenly, looking at her as she stood in the faint autumn sunshine, her well-cut coat and skirt somehow failing to take from her her curious Indian air. "I was a beast."

"You always are, Gerald. Once when I was a child a spider bit me—or do spiders sting? Well, it made me a bit sick at first, and then I—forgot it. Good-bye."

The man's nerves were evidently in a bad state, for at her insult his face broke out into a cold perspiration and went very white. "Oh—I am a spider, am I? All right, I am glad I kissed you. Glad I held you close in my arms. You can't undo that, whatever you may say."

She stood quietly swinging her stick, a smile just touching her disdainful mouth. She was purposely being maddening, and she knew to the uttermost the value, as a means of torture to the trembling man before her, of the slight lift of her upper lip as she looked at him.

"Quite finished?" she asked, as he paused. "Then perhaps you'll let me go? Good-bye."

He watched her out of sight, and then wiping his face carefully with his handkerchief, returned to the house.

Crossing the park by a footpath that was now half-buried in fallen leaves, she came out on the high road, and turning to the left, took a steep path leading to the downs.

She walked with unusual rapidity for a woman, climbing the path without relaxing her gait or losing her breath. The sharp, damp air brought to her face colour that Carron had been unable to call up. He was, poor wretch, so utterly secondary to her, that he was as little important as the long-forgotten spider. It was Joyselle who occupied her thoughts, whom her mental eyes saw, as she walked steadily seawards, as plainly as if he had been with her.

The next morning would begin a respite for her, in one sense, for he was going away. His old mother was ill in Falaise, and he was going to see her. "Then," he had added, "I must visit a friend in Paris. I shall not be back before the last of November."

This information he had volunteered to her immediately after lunch, having quite forgotten his resentment at her lack of response to his offers of advice. His quick changes of humour were very puzzling, and continually made her doubt whether she or anyone else knew him at all, though she had too much discrimination to doubt the sincerity of any one of his moods.

She had left him on the point of going to his room to play for Tommy, and knew that her brother would probably unfold to him during the afternoon his plan of becoming a violinist.

If the child had talent, Joyselle would, she believed, do his utmost to help him, and this was another reason why she could not make up her mind how to manage her own affairs.

Even if she wished to break her engagement and never see Joyselle again, had she the right thus to take from her brother the chance of great happiness and protection that seemed to have come to him?

"Joyselle would never speak to me again if I threw Theo over," she told herself. "First, he would scold me violently, and then he'd lop us all off, trunk and branch. And—he might be the making of Tommy. Theo is so gentle and good, and he so splendid—I could have Tommy a lot with—us——"

On the other hand, however, what if she went from bad to worse regarding Joyselle? Would she be able to bear it?

Her thoughts turning the matter relentlessly over and over, as a squirrel does his wheel, she came home, getting there just at tea-time.

Lady Kingsmead, very much bored with her guests, had her useful headache, and the girl had to hurry into dry clothes, for the rain had come on, and play hostess.

"Tea, M. Joyselle?"

He made a wry and very ludicrous face. "Merci, Lady Brigit!"

"French people always loathe tea, my dear," laughed the Duchess; "they take it when they have colds, as we take quinine."

Miss Letchworth, who had been three times to Paris for a week at a time, looked up from her embroidery. "Oh, Duchess! People of our class often drink it," she protested, the only tea she had ever consumed in Paris being that of her hotel or of Columbins, "don't they, mossoo?"

Joyselle's eyes drew down at the corners and he gave his big moustache a martial, upward twist. "Ask others, mademoiselle," he retorted wickedly. "I am not of your class!"

It was brutal, and there was a short silence. Brigit was annoyed. Last night she had hoped for one of his outbursts, but now that it had come she was ashamed for him. And she shivered as she realised that this shame was a serious sign.

"Horrid speech," she remarked, looking into the teapot she had forgotten to fill with water, "isn't it, Theo?"

But Theo only laughed and shrugged his shoulders. His father was his father, and except in little matters, such as satin and too flamboyant ties, not to be even mentally criticised.

"But it is true, my dear," continued Joyselle, the mischief suddenly gone from his face, a shrewd look of inquiry taking its place. "You are going to marry into a peasant family, you know." Another change of mood! He was severe now and disapproving.

She held up her head. "No one could call Theo a peasant, could they, Duchess?"

Joyselle understood, and with bewildering rapidity again changed. "Bravo!" he cried, laughing heartily. "You are marrying the son, you mean, not the father. C'est vrai, c'est vrai!"

His utter unconsciousness was a great blessing, no doubt, but at that moment it nearly maddened her. Was he blind?

Apparently he was, as he drank some mineral water and talked to the Duchess.

The arrival of Lady Brinsley's poor dear Mr. Smith, the vicar, was the next mild event of the day, and as his head too was filled with coals and blankets, the story of the abominable coal-dealer had again to be listened to and lamented over.

"The very worst coals I ever saw in my life, positively, are they not, Lady Brinsley?"

"Eh, yes, Mr. Smith, quite too shocking. Nothing but dust, Duchess, positively."

"We are all dust," returned the Duchess, who was whispering to Joyselle about the Grand Duchess Anastasia-Katherine, dans le temps. "Oh, no, we are all worms, aren't we?"

"Positively, I never saw such very inferior coals," went on the Vicar, wondering what on earth she was talking about.

Brigit looked at him as he babbled on. He was a very thin man, who always reminded her of a plucked bird. Soon he would ask her why he had not had the pleasure of seeing her in church for so long. He would hope that she had not had a cold.

He did both these things, poor man, for it was his role in life always to say and do the perniciously obvious.

It was a very trying hour, but at last, under the dutiful pretext of going to look after her mother, Brigit escaped and flew to Tommy's room.

It was a strange apartment for a little boy, for it had been assigned to him once when he was ill, as being sunny, and beyond his brass bedstead and small boy hoards, contained nothing whatever that looked as if it belonged to one of few years.

For it was hung in faded plum-coloured satin, the eighteenth-century furniture was quaint and beautiful, and the narrow oval mirrors, set in tarnished gilded frames like a frieze about its walls, presented to Brigit's eye as she opened the door an infinite and bewildering number of Tommies, bending studiously over a large sheet of writing-paper, that he held on a book on his knees.

"Hello, Tommy, what are you up to?"

The boy looked up, his face full of ecstasy. "I say, Bick, he will! He will help me learn to be a violinist! He's going to find a good teacher for me, and then, when I have got over the first grind, you know, he's going—oh, Bicky, darling—he's going to teach me himself, at the same time. Isn't he an angel!"

She sat down. "Yes, Tommy. But what on earth are you writing?"

"Well, you see, he—he says I must be educated. I had to promise him to go in for Latin and all that rot. It's—a bore, but he says a musician must be educated——"

She started. And he himself, was he educated? Did he know the ordinary things known, colloquially speaking, by everybody? She did not know. It had never occurred to her before.

"Yes, dear, but—what is that paper?"

Tommy blushed.

"Well, he's so keen on it, you know, I thought I'd advertise for a—a tutor."

"Advertise for a tutor!"

"Yes. There is no good in wasting time, is there? And she would potter about asking people their advice, etc., so I—I have just drawn up this. You won't tell?"

She shook her head with much gravity and then read what he had written:

"Wanted, by the Earl of Kingsmead, a tutor. Oxford man preferred. Must be fond of sport, particularly ratting and cricket."

"Do you think it's all right?" he asked, as he read it.

"Y—yes—only there isn't any 'k' in 'particularly.' But I think we'd better—ask someone, little brother. I don't imagine that children usually advertise for their own tutors."

"But there isn't any 'usually' about me, Bick. And certainly mother isn't 'usual,' nor you. And if she got a man I'd be sure to loathe him. Think of that chap Baker that she thought such a lot of. Why, he read poetry!"

"Poetry isn't any worse than music, is it?"

Tommy's mouth, as he smiled, was its most fawn-like. "Music! Rather different, my dear Brigit. Well—can you lend me some money for my ad?"

She was silent for a moment, and then answered in a kind of desperate impatience, "Oh, dear! Suppose you go and ask him what to do."



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Duchess, that evening, watched Brigit with dismayed surprise. What had happened to the girl? Where were her happy expression and youthful spirits?

Theo had not changed; that they had not quarrelled was quite evident, for when she spoke to him there was something of the gentleness of the day before in her manner; but this exception excepted, the girl had reverted to her old air of silent, resentful indifference, and her strange beauty was to the watchful old woman as repellent as she had ever seen it.

Once, when Carron spoke to her, Brigit answered without turning her head, and with her narrowed eyes and slow-moving lips looked almost venomous.

If she had produced a knife and plunged it into him, the Duchess told herself she would not have been surprised.

"An uncommonly unpleasant young person," thought the old lady, "with the temper of a fiend. I wonder where she got it; poor Henry had no temper at all, and her mother is at worst a spitfire."

Yelverton, too, noticed the disquieting change that had come over Lady Brigit, and observed with some amusement that she had noticed his observation and did not care about it, one way or the other.

Theo, seeing his love with the rosiest of spectacles, asked her gently what was the matter, and was told in a quiet voice that she was cross. "I have an abominable temper, poor boy," she said.

And possibly because it was the simple truth, it never occurred to him to believe her, and he set this remark down as an example of her divine humility.

Her mother, glaring at her toward the end of dinner, shrugged her shoulders.

"Cross again," she thought; "what an infernal temper she has. I'm glad I haven't, it makes so many wrinkles."

But Brigit had some reason for looking tragic, for she had made up her mind, while dressing, to break her engagement. Perhaps, after all, Joyselle would prove large-minded enough to continue to see Tommy, and even if he did not, she must end matters.

Regarding herself, the girl had a curious prescience, and the vague foreboding she had felt ever since her realisation of her love for Joyselle had, as she sat before her glass while her maid dressed her hair, suddenly developed into a definite terror. She knew that something dreadful would happen if she continued to see Joyselle, and the fact that he was quite innocent, and unsuspecting of the threatened danger, gave her the sensation of one who sees a child playing with a poisonous snake. He was in danger as well as she, and not only they two, but his son and his wife. Her beauty was so great, and she was so accustomed to see its effect on men, that there was no vanity at all in her suddenly awakened solicitude for him. At any moment he might see her with the eyes of a man, instead of, as he had hitherto done, with those of a father.

"And if he fell in love with me," she told herself as the maid clasped her pearls round her neck, "there would be no hope for any of us."

It is remarkable that the possibility of Joyselle's loving her only added to her misery, for most women in like cases would have clutched at the bare chance of such a contingency in rapturous disregard of all consequences.

She, however, who had been the object of more strong passions than many women ever even hear of, knew although, or possibly because, she had never before cared a jot for any man, that her time had come, and that for her love must be a perilous thing. She had once been called a stormy petrel, and now as, racked with the agony of her resolve, she sat through the interminable dinner, she recalled the name, and smiled bitterly to herself. Yes, she was a stormy petrel, and she had no right to ruin Victor Joyselle and his family. She would break her engagement and go to Italy for the winter. The Lenskys were going, and she would go with them.

Joyselle was in high spirits that evening. He had had a letter from La-bas, as he always called Normandy, and his mother was better, and greatly looking forward to his visit. "She is old, my mother," he told the party, "eighty years old, but her cheeks are still rosy! They live in Falaise, in a small little house near the parish church, and in her garden she grows vegetables—ah, such vegetables!"

"It is a great age," observed someone, and he laughed aloud. "Yes—for here. La-bas with us, she is not so old as she would be here. I am an old man here, but there, I am still jeune Joyselle! And my big boy, my betrothed boy, is still le petit du jeune Joyselle."

It was not particularly interesting, but nevertheless everyone at the table listened with delight. The man's vividness, his simple certainty of their sympathy, were irresistible.

"Next September," he went on, draining his champagne glass and wiping his moustache upward, in a martial way, "is their golden wedding, mes vieux! It will be very fine. Very fine indeed, for all the children and grandchildren," he glanced slily at Brigit, who clasped her hands lightly on her lap, "will be there, and we shall eat until we can eat no more, and tell each other old tales, and boast about our successes in life—ah, it will be very pleasant!"

"You will come too, my Brigit," whispered Theo under his breath. "I can show them my wonderful—wife?"

She could not answer, and he took her distress for girlish confusion, and, manlike, rejoiced in it.

After dinner Joyselle came straight to her. "May I talk to you about Tommy?" he began, "I love Tommy very much."

"He—adores you."

"Yes. Let us go into the library, Most Beautiful, where we can talk quietly." Before she could protest he had turned to her mother and announced his intention. "I leave to-morrow, before she will be up," he declared, "and there are things I must say. You allow me, Lady Kingsmead?"

Then he put his arm round the girl's waist and marched her down the hall and up the stairs leading to the library.

"Isn't he quaint?" giggled Lady Kingsmead to the Duchess, and the old woman assented with a laugh. "He is an amazing mixture of the boyish and the paternal. I thoroughly like him."

Meantime Brigit had sat down in a tall-backed carved chair, and, her hands on its arms, waited for Joyselle to speak. He walked about the room for a few moments, looking up at the book-covered walls, opening one of the windows, examining an ivory dragon that grinned on the chimney-piece. Then he burst out, "Eh, bien, my dearest, and when is it to be?"

"When is what to be?"

"The wedding."

A hot blush crept over her, leaving her cold.

"Theo wants his wife, and I want my daughter," he continued, sitting down by her and taking her hand affectionately, "why waste time!"

She looked at him in hopeless dismay. He was so big, so strong, so overpowering, she felt that her strength to resist his will was as nothing.

"You think I ask too soon?" He looked at her, an anxious pucker in his eyelids, "But no. There is never too much time in which to be happy, ma Brigitte——"

For the first time in her recollection she was glad to see Gerald Carron, as he came up the stairs, and approached them slowly.

"Does mother want me?" she asked, rising.

"No. I—just wondered what you were doing."

"I brought Lady Brigit here because I wanted to talk to her," explained Joyselle, mildly. Carron laughed.

"So do I want to talk to her!"

Brigit gave a nervous laugh. "Let's all go downstairs and talk there. My conversation isn't usually so appreciated."

The two men followed her in silence, and to her immense relief were both promptly accosted by someone of the party, and she could escape to her window seat.

What would have happened if Carron had not come, she asked herself with a shudder. Would her strength have come back, and would she have been able to tell Joyselle that he must make no plans for her wedding?

Until she had known his father, Theo had never seemed to her to lack personality; he was young, but his very boyishness was individual. Yet now with Joyselle clamouring for her to fix her wedding-day, Theo seemed to fade into insignificance, and her task to become that of breaking the news of her intended rupture with the son, to the father.

And as she sat there in the background watching the members of the little party as they smoked and chatted to each other, she gave up and resolved on flight. "If I told Theo he would rush to his father," she thought, "and then Joyselle would come to me. And we'd quarrel, and then anything might happen." His utter unconsciousness was at once a safeguard and a menace.

"I'll say nothing until he is safe in Normandy," she decided.



PART II



CHAPTER ONE

There is on an olive-covered slope near the Mediterranean a certain shabby pink villa which is remarkable for one thing. In it, years ago, dwelt for a long time a man and a woman who, having no legal right to love, yet not only loved, but were perfectly happy. They lived almost alone, they had little money, the house was shabby even then, they had few servants and but indifferent Italian food, and nothing but old-fashioned tin baths to wash in. Yet they were English, and they were happy because they loved each other so much that nothing else mattered. Now this phrase about nothing else mattering is as common in love affairs as the pathetic abuse of the poor old word eternity; but in the case I instance, it fitted. Nothing else did matter. Not even, to any extent, the presence of the one child that had come to them. Contrary to all ethical and reasonable law, these two sinners were happy in their pink house by the sea, and years after they had left it there seemed to hang about the old place a kind of atmosphere of romance, as if the sun and the moon, that have seen so much changeableness, loved still to look down at the place where two human beings had been faithful to each other.

These two people were Pamela Lensky's father and mother, and hither came, early in the November that followed her meeting with Victor Joyselle, Lady Brigit Mead as the guest of the Lenskys. And here she stayed, while the mild, sunny winter days drifted by unmarked, a silent, ungenial guest.

The Lenskys were happy people and enjoyed life as it came. He, a slim, blond, exceedingly well-dressed little man, was attached to the Russian Embassy in London, in some more or less permanent quality, having given up his secretaryship after a miserable sojourn in a Continental city that he and his wife both hated.

They had money enough to live comfortably, in the quiet way they both liked, in England, and a year before that November his mother had died, leaving them the richer by a few hundred pounds a year. So they were well-off in the sense that they had plenty of money to spend, and the certainty that their children would one day be in still better circumstances.

One day in January Mrs. de Lensky was sitting on the floor in the brick-floored nursery, building a Moorish palace for her son, aged eighteen months.

She was a thin woman of thirty-six or seven, with large dark eyes, somewhat hollow now, and a brown vivid face on which life had put several deep lines—all of which, though unbeautiful in themselves, were good lines, and made for character.

"And here's the tower in which the little boy lived," she said to the baby, who, very fat and peculiarly blond, regarded her rapturously, "and here's the dungeon where they put him when he was naughty. If Thaddeus bites Elvira again," she added gravely, "what will happen to him?"

But Thaddeus, who was possessed of the courage incidental to a sound digestion and dormant nerves, only laughed and showed the wicked fangs that had bitten the nurse.

It was a pleasant, bare, sunny room, the rug covered with shabby toys, the walls nearly hidden by pictures from illustrated papers. Through an open door one saw a table at which sat a little girl of six, bending over a book with the unmistakable air of a child learning something uninteresting.

"Eliza!"

"Yes, mother?" Eliza looked up. She too was blonde, but her eyes were dark.

"Where is Pammy, dear?"

"I don't know, mother. Perhaps she's eating plaster again," suggested Eliza, with the alertness that even charming children sometimes show when face to face with the crime of some contemporary.

Pam did not laugh. Plaster-eating may be funny in other people's children, but seven-year-old Pammy, her adopted daughter, was too old to persist in the habit, and punishment seemed to have no effect on it. The house was old, and the walls defective in many places, and Pammy's joy was to dig out bits of ancient plaster and consume it on the sly. It was presumably bad for her stomach and indubitably bad for her character, as the child persisted in it with a quiet effrontery that baulked discipline. So Mrs. de Lensky rose, and bidding Eliza look after the baby, started in search of the wicked one.

January was spring at the Villa Arcadie, and as she went downstairs a strong scent of heliotrope and narcissi was wafted towards her. A boy stood in the hall carrying a basket.

"Buon giorno, Beppino. Oh, what lovely flowers! Tell Giovanni to bring them to me in the salone, will you?" Crossing the hall she went into the dining-room, and there, as she had expected, sat Pammy.

Years before, when she had, half out of kindness, half out of loneliness, adopted the little new-born girl, she had never meant to marry. And when she did marry, neither she nor her husband wished to get rid of the child. But the result had not been particularly satisfactory, for Pammy had grown to be a very fat, very stolid person, with no nose to speak of and no sense of humour at all, and every day that passed seemed to leave her a little more unattractive than she had been the day before.

Now, at seven, she was as tall as most children of ten, immensely fat, with pendulous red cheeks that in spite of cold cream and soft water always looked as though they had just been rubbed with a grater. Her hair, long and fair, was dank, hanging in two emaciated pig-tails nearly to her waist, and her nails—another ineradicable trick—bitten to the deepest depths possible.

"Pammy, dear, what have you been doing?" inquired Pam, gently.

"Looking out the window—and I ate some more plaster." Stolidly, with lack-lustre eyes, the culprit gazed at her benefactor.

Pam sighed, but her mouth twitched. "I asked you not to."

"I know. I didn't mean to, but—it looked so good."

"'Tous les gouts sont dans la nature,' my dear," quoted Lensky, coming in at the open window, "there are even people who like German bands!" Looking down at Pammy through his eyeglass, the sun fell full on his head, betraying an incipient bald patch. Otherwise Lensky had aged not at all since his marriage.

"I saw Lady Brigit just now," he said, suddenly, "down in the olive grove. I think something has happened. She looked—queer."

Pam started. "Poor dear—I'll go and speak to her—only, you know, she never says a word to me about her trouble, whatever it is. I wonder——"

"Love story, of course," returned Lensky, briefly. "When a woman looks like that it always is a love story."

"Yes, but—Theo is such a dear! And I know he writes to her."

"Then it isn't Theo. He's not the only man she knows."

Pam frowned thoughtfully. "That's true, but—she is so beautiful."

Lensky smiled at her, and on his strangely white, shrewd, worldly-wise face the smile looked like a sudden flash of sunlight. "Yes, she is without a doubt very beautiful, but——"

"'But'?"

"I think she is taking her trouble the wrong way. She is bearing it without grinning, and the grinning is to my mind the greater half."

"But remember what her surroundings at home are, Jack. She had had no discipline whatever; her mother is horrid——"

Lensky did not answer. Somehow he never cared to hold forth on the subject of mothers to his wife.

And then, thin, erect, light-footed, Pam went out from the house in which her strange childhood had been lived, and turning to her left passed down the dangerously mossy marble steps, and into the olive grove.



CHAPTER TWO

Lady Brigit Mead was sitting on the hummocky sparse grass under an ancient olive-tree, looking seawards. She wore a blue frock without any collar, and her face and long, round neck were very sunburnt. Her face had hardened in the last four months, and there was a tense look about her upper lip, yet an artist would have preferred her face as it now was to what it was before she had become engaged. For now the nervous strain she was living under had told on her more material beauties, leaving more room for expression, as it seemed, to the others.

It was not that her face was better, but the suffering in it was less petty than the resentment that had formerly stamped it.

The dominant characteristic in it had hitherto been disdainful bearing of small annoyances; now it showed a grim endurance of a great suffering.

"Bicky, dear," Pam asked suddenly, coming up unheard, "what is it?"

She started. "What is what?"

"Your trouble. Oh, don't tell me if you don't want to, but I can see you are suffering, and—I used to tell the Duchess, long ago, and it always did me good."

"Did you tell the Duchess about—Mr. Peele, Pam?"

The elder woman smiled and sighed. "No, my dear, I didn't. But—he was her son-in-law."

"That wasn't why." Brigit had not moved, and Pam had seen no more than her profile as she sat down.

"No, it wasn't. But then I was particularly lonely, and literally had no one to tell. Whereas," she added with brisk good sense, "you have me."

For several minutes there was unbroken silence, and then Brigit said slowly, "I believe you're right. And I'll tell you. It's about—myself, of course; nothing else could upset me to this extent! You know I'm engaged to Theo Joyselle. Well—I love his father."

Her voice was defiant, as if deprecating in advance any cut-and-dried disapproval.

Pam did not answer for a moment. Then "Is his mother—I mean Theo's mother—alive?" she then asked, drawing up her knees and clasping them comfortably.

"Yes."

"That—is a pity."

"A pity! Aren't you shocked and frightened?"

"I'm sure I'm not shocked, and I don't think I am frightened. Brigit, does Theo know?"

Then Brigit turned, her face white under the sunburnt skin. "No. I am—afraid to tell him."

"Afraid?"

"Yes, afraid. If I broke the engagement, Joyselle would be furious, and come and scold me."

"Surely you aren't afraid of being scolded?"

"By him, yes. If we had a row—the whole thing would come out."

"I don't see why."

The girl frowned. "You are you, and I am I. When I lose my temper I lose my head and behave like a lunatic. I'd—let it all out as sure as we both live. And then——" She broke off with a shrug.

"But, Brigit dear, I don't quite understand. What does Theo think of your being here all the winter? And the father, doesn't he think it strange?"

"No. You see, Joyselle went away from England in November, and was detained for two months; his mother was ill. When I left, I told Theo I'd write to him once a week, but that I wanted a long rest before—before I saw him again. I lied, and said I wasn't well.

"Then when Joyselle came back he wrote to me, saying I must come home. I wrote him a disagreeable note, practically telling him to mind his own business. He was angry—and besides, he was working hard, and didn't write again until this morning."

"Oh, I see."

"Theo has been—fairly contented—and I have been trying to tide things over—no, I haven't, I've just funked it, Pam. I don't know what I'm to do. I've loved being here, for you and M. de Lensky are so good to me—but I'm afraid he might come——"

"Theo?"

"No," sharply, "Joyselle. He adores Theo and would hack me to pieces if it would do him any good. And—well, I'm afraid of him."

Pam, in like case, would have faced the whole family, successfully broken her engagement, protected her own secret, and done her hiding afterwards, but she was too wise to say so.

"I am sorry for Theo," she remarked presently.

"So am I. And for Tommy, too. Tommy has been staying in Golden Square ever since Joyselle came home, and he is so happy, poor child. It's—all hideous. Will you read his letter?"

There was no need for Pam to ask whose letter, as she took it, and felt Brigit's hot, dry fingers tremble against her own.

"My dear Daughter," she read, "you must come back to us. We want you. Theo says nothing, but I can see how he misses you, and surely it is but natural? And petite mere and I want you. Surely you have had enough of the South? It is unfitted for you, my beautiful one. You are too strong to like warm air in the winter. Come back and go out into the fog with me, and let the chill rain dampen your hair. Come back to your lover who sighs for you, to your old adoring Beau-papa who longs to see again the face of his beautiful child. "Joyselle."

"Brigit—you must go."

Brigit poked at a clump of moss among the tangled roots of the tree under which they sat, and sulked.

"You must, dear. And—you must buck up and break the engagement. It isn't fair," continued Pam, energetically, "to go on stealing their love."

"I stealing their love!—I! And what has he done to me, pray? Do you know that I haven't slept more than an hour at a time, for months? Do you know that I cannot get away from the horrible, haunting thought of him? That a flower, a book, a snatch of music—anything that reminds me of him, turns me cold all over and takes my breath away, so that I simply cannot speak? You are an idiot, an utter fool, to talk that way. He has ruined my life, and you say I have stolen his love!" She gasped in very truth as she ceased, and stood with one hand on her heaving breast, her face white with anger.

"You have, my dear. The man seems really to love you as a father. And you certainly have no right to that kind of affection from him! You must break your engagement."

Suddenly, after a long pause, during which she gazed blindly at the brilliant sea, Brigit sat down, and turning, buried her face in her arms and burst out crying.

It was nervous, irregular sobbing, cut by moans and muttered words, broken by the convulsive movement of her shoulders. Pam was appalled, much as a man might have been, for she herself had never been hysterical, and this mixture of anguish and anger, given vent to so openly, was a strange and horrible thing to her.

However, she knew enough to let the storm pass without interruption, although it took nearly ten minutes for it to subside, and then, while Brigit, her face red and disfigured, sat up and smoothed back her hair and wiped her eyes, Pam spoke.

"It must be lunch-time," she said with great wisdom, and Brigit rose, with a nod.

"I'll go for a walk. Don't want any lunch."

"All right. Good-bye."

Then they separated, Pam going up the sunny slope to her husband and children, Brigit, down through the deserted garden of a long uninhabited house, to the lonely sea.



CHAPTER THREE

Brigit left the villa the next morning and went straight to London. And the nearer she got to the old town which contained, for her, the very kernel of life, her spirits mounted and mounted in spite of herself. She had for so long been "down among the dead men," as Tommy called depression, that her sudden change of mood affected her strangely.

"If I must never see him again," she repeated over and over again aloud to herself, in the solitude of her compartment, "I shall at least see him once, and—hear him speak. I'll make him play to me, too; and I shall see his big unseeing eyes, and his wonderful hands!" The very wheels of the train seemed to be saying, "I'll see him, I'll see him, I'll see him," and when she landed at Dover, in a pouring rain, she could have laughed aloud for sheer joy.

Her mother was living in town, in the tiny house in Pont Street, but had gone to the country for the week-end, so the girl, to her great delight, was alone with the servants.

Putting on a dressing-gown she sat down by her fire and closed her eyes.

"Three months, a fortnight, and six days," she thought. "It seems years. I wonder what he will say to me? Will he be glad to see me? And—how am I to do? Shall I tell Theo, and make him tell? Or shall I be brave—as Pam would—and tell him myself!"

Then, realising her absurdity in forgetting that after all it was more Theo's affair than his father's, she laughed aloud.

It was easy to laugh, for whatever happened she would see Victor Joyselle that evening, and beyond that she could not, would not, look. The world might end to-morrow, and it mattered nothing to her. That night he and she would be face to face.

She shuddered, for he would call her his daughter and kiss her forehead. Then the smile came back to her lips, and she rose. It didn't matter; nothing mattered but the great, primary fact that in—how many hours?—four, she would see him. Let his mood be what it would—fatherly, aloof, impish—he would be himself, she would see him, and she loved him.

The Duchess of Wight had written to her, and going to her dressing-table she re-read the note.

It was short, simply telling her that her mother had told of her arrival, and asking her to dine at 8.30 in Charles Street. Not she, she would not lose one second of the glorious anticipations that were hers now. She would sit here close to her fire and gloat over her joy. Sitting down, she took a sheet of paper and began to write——

"Dear Duchess,—Thanks so much for asking me to dine, but——"

She broke off and sat staring at the wall. To-morrow at this time what would have become of her? The world would have run its course, come to its end, and yet she would be still alive! Could she bear it?

She would have told her story; made these people understand that she could never be one of them; broken (for the time) Theo's young heart, and been reviled and cast out by Joyselle.

And she would have to return here, alone, broken with grief, hopeless. Drearily she looked round the room. It would all be the same; nothing would change; the very roses on her dressing-table would still be fresh and sweet, and—she?

Raising her head, she met her own eyes in a glass, and started. Her own beauty amazed her. "If he could see me now," she said aloud, "he couldn't call me 'petite fille.' He doesn't know I am a woman; he has seen me—as if through spectacles. If I had never known Theo, and then met him somewhere by chance——"

She recalled his frank, wondering amazement as she raised her veil that evening in the train.

"He sees me always with Theo's shadow between us. It is—unfair—and——"

She took a fresh sheet of paper and began her letter again:

"Dear Duchess.—Thanks so much for asking me to dine to-night. I shall be delighted to come. Yours sincerely. "Brigit Mead."

Then she rang for the housemaid, who would in the absence of her half of Amelie have to help her dress, and gave her certain directions.

To-morrow might bring what it would. That one evening was hers, and she would use it. Joyselle should see her with his own eyes, as a man sees a woman, not as a father sees a daughter. And he should see her as a man sees a marvellously beautiful woman!

Satisfied with the conclusion to which she had come, she lay down and slept for an hour, after which, the enigmatic smile on her lips bringing into predominance the resemblance to the portrait in the Luxembourg, she dressed, with more care than she had ever devoted to that process in all her five-and-twenty years of life.

When she arrived at Charles Street and had shaken hands with the Duchess, who had had influenza and looked very old, the first person she saw was Gerald Carron.

"Will you speak to me, Brigit?" he said diffidently, "please do."

He, too, looked ill, and moistened his lips nervously as he spoke. She shook hands with him without answering, and he hurried on, "Haven't I been good? I knew where you were, and—I might easily have come——"

"You would not have had a flattering reception," she suggested drily.

"Or written. And I did neither. I was glad you went, though God knows——"

"How do you do, Mrs. Talboys," she cut him short ruthlessly, "when are we to have another book?"

It was a very large dinner, and Brigit, placed between two men who dined out for reasons dietetic and economic, and did not talk, was free to pursue her own thoughts at leisure. She had wired Theo before leaving the de Lenskys', that she was leaving for home, and before starting for the dinner she had sent another wire, addressed simply "Joyselle," to say that she was dining out, but would come to Golden Square after dinner.

She knew that Joyselle, recognising her prompt appearance as an answer to his letter, would be at home late in the evening, no matter where he might have dined. "He has such strong family feelings," she reflected, with a menacing curve of her upper lip.

So deeply was she buried in her thoughts that she was amazed to find suddenly that the Duchess was trying to gather her flock's eye, preparatory to herding it upstairs. Both her hungry neighbours made spasmodic attempts to eradicate from her mind the memory of their fanatical devotion to the rites of the table, and she smiled absently at them, wondering what they would have thought if she had politely thanked them for their silence!

"My dear," said the Duchess, a few minutes later, sitting down in her favourite corner by the fire, "come and tell me about Pam."

"She is well, Duchess."

"Didn't she send me any messages?"

"She did. Much love and some kodaks of the children. Your god-child is a love."

"H'm. And how is the horrid little adopted one?"

"Poor Pammy!"

"Now will you look at Lady Agnes Blundell spilling coffee all over my carpet. She did the same thing the other night at the Beaufoys'! I really believe the woman drinks, or something. What were you saying, my dear? Oh, how is your young man?"

Brigit did not smile. To-morrow was coming.

"I—I haven't seen any young men since I got back, Duchess."

"Oh, well, you tell him from me that his father is a wretch. Is there a wife? I think someone said there was—well, she probably doesn't know all I know." The old woman pulled down her mouth in comic disapproval.

"What—is it?" queried Brigit.

"Oh, nothing, only—a very beautiful foreign actress, a lady famous for her—plastic beauties. Voisin, my hairdresser—you know Voisin? Delightful person, and the most indiscreet man in London—tells me they dined together every evening at a little French place near Leicester Square, where he dines. And it appears your future papa-in-law was furiously epris, or still is—possibly! You will have to keep him in order. What is it, Bishop?"

The butler, whose name, the Duchess had been known to declare, explained why no Anglican or other prelate ever dined or lunched with her—"It is so confusing, my dear; suppose I should say 'Bishop, see if Mrs. Snooks' carriage has come'"—came quietly up to the sofa. "Her ladyship's carriage, your Grace."

Brigit rose. "Yes, I fear I must run away. Thanks so much for having me——"

And when the men came in she had gone.

When she reached Golden Square she found the house in a blaze of light, and smiled. It was like Joyselle to celebrate her return by illuminating his every window; it would have been like him to put up a triumphal arch; to have a big supper awaiting her; these things belonged to the side of his nature that clamoured for expression in white satin ties.

For a moment she sat still in the motor, while the footman held the door open.

"Come back at half-past eleven, Jarvis," she told the man, and got out.

The door was opened by Toinon, somewhat to Brigit's surprise—for it would have been more like Joyselle to rush downstairs on hearing her motor stop, but the reason was soon plainly comprehensible, for Joyselle was playing. It was evidently earlier than they had expected her. Slipping off her cloak and with a finger to her lips, she went quietly upstairs and stood leaning against the side of the door.

It was wild music that she heard; music that made the blood in her temples and throat pulse harder than ever. Breathing deep, she waited for the climax, and when it came, quietly opened the door.

She had chosen her moment well, and as the door faced a long mirror between the windows she saw, as she stood on the threshold, not only Joyselle, who, alone in the room, stood staring in amazement, but also that at which he stared—herself. Clad in a dress made apparently entirely of flexible dull gold scales, the long lines of her figure unbroken by any belt or trimming, the woman in the glass stood smiling like a witch of old, a deep colour in her cheeks, the palms of her hands held down by her side, the fingers outspread and slightly lifted as if in water. Quite silently she stood and smiled until the man before her dropped his violin—for the first time, she knew instinctively, in his life.

Then she spoke, saying his name, the name by which the world knew him: "Joyselle."

"Mon Dieu!" he returned softly. Coming slowly forward he caught her hand with clumsy haste and kissed it. Her heart stopped its mad beating, for she had won. Here was no Beau-papa. Here was the man, Victor Joyselle.



CHAPTER FOUR

"I did not know you," he said. "I thought—juste ciel, how do I know what I thought? You are so beautiful, I——"

She laughed gently. "Beau-papa! Beau-papa! Where is Theo?"

For she knew now that she would not break her engagement to-night. The end was not yet. And by the strange laws that govern things emotional between men and women, her self-control, hitherto utterly lamed by his presence, was now, in face of his involuntary, as yet evidently unconscious awakening, restored to her tenfold strong. She could have spent weeks alone with the man without betraying her secret, now that she had established her power over him. It had been his acceptance of the fact of her future relationship to him, his unexpressed feeling that she was a being of another generation, his tacit refusal to see in her the woman per se, that had beaten her. Now she had, by the plain assertion of her beauty, the enforcing of the appreciation of it as a thing appertaining to her as a woman, not a daughter, got the reins—and the whip—into her own hands.

"Where," she repeated, still smiling, "is Theo?"

"He is in his room; he will come—ah, mon Dieu!" Kneeling by his violin, which luckily had fallen on a bearskin, he took it up and looked at it shamefacedly. "See what you made me do," he said to Brigit, "you and your golden dress! Mon pauvre Amati."

She continued to look at him in silence, her instinct telling her that the strange smile she had seen on the face of the woman in the glass could not be beaten for purposes of subjugation. She continued to look and smile, but she was sorry for him, even while every fibre in her thrilled with triumph.

He realised her now; if she wanted him to love her, he would.

"Will you call Theo?" she asked as he rose. Without a word he left the room, and a few moments later Theo's arms were around her, his fresh lips on hers.

The boy was so happy, so incoherently, innocently jubilant, that if she had in her room for another feeling, it would have been one of pity for him. But there was no room. She was filled with triumph, and a full vessel can contain not one drop more of however precious a liquid.

"Ma Brigitte—mon adoree—que je t'ai desiree!" stammered the boy. "Why did you stay so long? Why was it so long? But, now, it is over and you are here. You have come to me—you, a queen to her slave!"

His delightful face was wet with unconscious tears as they sat together, and his voice trembled. For a moment she wished she could love him. It would be so much more fitting, so much better—and then the demon in her laughed. No. It was his father she loved, and who, if she chose, should love her.

Madame Joyselle came in, splendid in a new brown silk dress that fitted her as its skin fits a ripe grape, her face beaming with joy in her son's joy. She gazed in amazement at Brigit before the younger woman bent and kissed her, and then sat down and folded her hands, as was her way.

"You look like a beautiful dragon—doesn't she, Theo?" she asked, "doesn't she, Victor?"

Joyselle had returned with a look of having just brushed his hair. He looked smoothed down in some way and was a little pale.

"My faith, she does, ma vieille," he returned. "When she opened the door I was so startled that I—guess what I did, children? Dropped the Amati!" When they had stopped exclaiming he went on, gradually, but with a perceptible effort getting back his usual tone, "and stood and gasped like a young prince in a fairy-tale, didn't I, Most Beautiful?"

She smiled, but she was not pleased. "You did—Beau-papa," she answered. "I didn't know I was so beautiful. I have been dining out, hence the dragon's skin. It is a nice frock, isn't it?" she ended, artistically casual.

And then there were questions to be asked, stories to be told, and an hour and a half passed like five minutes.

No more was said about the length of her untimely visit to Italy, but much about the days in the near future. Would she go to see "Peter Pan" the next night? And would she dine first at a little restaurant, where the cooking was a thing to dream of?

And would she do several other things?

She would. She would do all these things. But—she would not go to a certain little restaurant near Leicester Square, of which she had heard. Joyselle blushed scarlet and for a moment looked as though he intended to thunder out a severe reproof at her. Then she smiled at him with narrowed eyes, and he said nothing.

At about half-past eleven an idea occurred to her. She wanted an omelet. Like the first time. And she must borrow an apron and help make the omelet; and it must be full of little savoury green things, and be flopped in the long-handled frying-pan.

"But your dress!" cried Madame Joyselle, in horror.

"An apron, and I will twist up the tail of the dragon and pin it at the waist, and—oh, come, come, come, it will be such fun!"

Down the stairs they ran, the three, leaving Madame Joyselle to turn out all but one light, and to put another log on the dying fire.

Filled by the relentless spirit of coquetry that had suddenly awakened in her, Brigit Mead danced about the great white kitchen, teasing Joyselle, making love to his wife, laughing openly at Theo's admiration. She, always so silent, chattered like a magpie; she, the uninterested, flushed with intoxicating nonsense; the three people before her were her audience, and she played to them individually, a different role for each; they were her slaves, and she piped her magic music to them until they were literally dazed. Then, suddenly, she whisked off her blue apron and unpinned the dragon's tail.

"The omelet was good," she said, "but it is eaten. And it is to-morrow morning and the motor will be frozen. Come, mon maitre, play one beautiful thing to me before I fly away from you—something very beautiful that I may dream of it."

And he played to her as she had never heard him. If the omelet had been a magic wine, he could not have been more inspired!

His face took on the look it usually wore while he played, and solemnly and reverently he stood, his eyes half shut, him mouth set in noble lines. He had forgotten Brigit, but sub-consciously he was playing for her, and she knew it, and appreciated the tribute, which was all the greater because offered without intent.

She watched him unceasingly, and gradually, as the music went on, her heart sank, and she realised that she had done a most unworthy thing. The feeling she had had that last evening at home came back to her, the feeling that he was a child in horrible danger. Only this time it was she who had deliberately led him into the danger. And his unconsciousness of his peril hurt her so, that as he stopped playing she could have cried to him to go away, to run to the ends of the earth, where she could not reach him.

"You liked it?" he asked gently, and the question seemed so pathetically inadequate, and so plainly emphasised the innocence of his mind, that tears came to her eyes.

"Yes," she said in a very quiet voice, "thank you, dear papa." But this time there was no malice in the term, and when she said good-night to him at the motor door, it was simply and filially. Then she turned to Theo, and he, looking hastily up and down the quiet street, put his head in at the window and kissed her.



CHAPTER FIVE

And that was the beginning of a most extraordinary phase of Brigit Mead's life.

For the next four months she saw Joyselle almost daily. She never broached the subject of her engagement being broken, its permanence was taken for granted by everyone, and Tommy's indefinitely prolonged visit to Golden Square would, if anything more than the fact of her engagement had been necessary, have explained her constant presence there.

Once Theo had urged her to set their wedding-day, but she had put him off and he had never again opened the question. That the young man was not, could not possibly be, perfectly satisfied with the state of affairs, she knew very well, but that, she told herself, she could not help.

She lived on from day to day, more simply and with less self-analysis, in spite of her curious position, than ever before in her life, for the inevitable day of reckoning seemed to be the affair of the Brigit of the future, whereas the Brigit of each day was concerned only with those particular twenty-four hours. It was enough to live in close companionship with the man she loved, and when, as occasionally she tried to do, she reasoned to herself about it, her mind seemed paralysed and utterly refused to make plans of any kind. So, twisting to her own purposes, as people do, the saying about the evil of the day being unto itself sufficient, she let time slip away unremarked and spring came.

It was a cold rainy season that year, with chill dark mornings and flickerings of pale sunshine later on.

People talked much about the weather, and pretty women shivered in their light finery. Tommy, who went home for a fortnight in April, reported that things in the country were deplorable.

"Everyone has colds, and Mr. Smith says there is diphtheria at Spinny Major. Green is disgusted, and from what I can gather from his cheery reports, everyone is going to be ruined by agricultural depression. The Mother of Hundreds has nine new pups—rather good ones."

This was at the end of April, and Lord Kingsmead was coiled in a big chair in his sister's room in Pont Street. Mr. Babington, his tutor, had just gone for a walk, poor man. Tommy's attitude to him had from the first been one of polite tolerance, and Mr. Babington's bump of humour being imperfectly developed, he in return regarded his charge with something like horror.

A boy of twelve, who knew only the very first principles of Latin (Mr. Babington was number three, the other two having proved unsatisfactory to their employer-pupil), and knew the multiplication table only up to "eight-times," disturbed his tidy little mind. There was, moreover, a youth in Sydenham who clamoured for Mr. Babington, and who was after that much-tried young Oxonian's heart. But Mr. Babington stayed on, for—there was Brigit, and in the evenings the tutor locked his door, smoked asthma cigarettes, and wrote sonnets by the yard to the Enchantress.

Tommy, of course, had at once perceived the first shoots of the hapless young man's baby passion as it sprang up in his heart—which did not make it easier to bear, but still Mr. Babington stayed on.

"He'll never go, Bick," complained Tommy that afternoon, after his remarks on Kingsmead. "I even tried smoking the other day, but he had a handkerchief of yours that you left on the hall table, and was so bucked that he barely noticed my iniquity. He is a poisonous person!"

"Yes, I certainly preferred Mr. Catt—but you didn't like him either."

"How could anyone like a fellow named Catt? I nearly choked every time I had to speak to him, and so did the Master." It was thus that the boy designated and addressed Joyselle. "He used to call him Minet. I have learned that rotten old multiplication-table, however, and Latin is easy. I do wish," he went on, gnawing at an ancient bit of almond-rock that he had acquired at the village sweetstuff shop at home, "that mother had had me well whacked when I was a kid. It would have saved me no end of trouble now."

Brigit laughed as she dabbed some cherry-coloured grease on her pointed nails. "Poor old Tommy!"

The almond-rock was an impediment to fluency of conversation, but after a moment Tommy mastered it and went on. "I say, Bicky, what's gone wrong with Carron?"

She started. "I—why do you ask?"

"Because I think he looks very ill. Saw him yesterday as I went out, and hardly knew him."

"Perhaps he's had influenza," she suggested.

She had not seen the man for weeks. He had been away several times, and when he had come to the house had not asked for her. The last time they had met they had, of course, quarrelled, and then she had forgotten him, as she forgot everybody and everything not brought directly under her notice.

In March he had gone to Monte Carlo to see her mother, who was visiting there, and Lady Kingsmead had told her afterwards that he had been wretched all during his stay. Brigit said she was sorry, but it is to be doubted if the afflictions of anyone, if not directly affecting herself, would at that time have given her any pain, and of all people poor Carron was probably the last with whom she could feel any real sympathy.

Tommy had a bad throat and was not to go back to Golden Square that night, but Brigit was dining somewhere with the two Joyselle men, and was to spend the night in the now so-familiar spare-room, with the coloured religious pictures on the walls.

Lady Kingsmead had returned to town that morning, but the perfect freedom she gained by Tommy's long stay with, and her daughter's daily visits to, the Joyselles, had long since overcome her first scruples about "those sort of people being after all quite the associates for Kingsmead," and had accepted Brigit's announcement for her intention with an absent nod.

"Very well, dear, and remind him not to forget that he is dining here on Tuesday. He really is most obliging, about playing, I must say."

"Yes, the poor creature has his qualities," returned the girl, drily. Twice during the past twelve weeks she had gone to Kingsmead for a day or two, and on each occasion her note, written to the violinist at her mother's suggestion, asking him down to dine and spend the night, had met with telegraphic acceptance.

"Good-bye, little brother."

"Good-bye, Bicky, give him my love." Tommy's small eyes beamed with fanatical affection, and Brigit kissed him again.

Then she went downstairs, picked up a passing hansom, and sped to Paradise.



CHAPTER SIX

Felicie Louise Marie Joyselle was sitting in her bedroom, darning her husband's socks.

She sat in a straight-backed chair near the dressing-table, and a huge basket of mending of different kinds stood on the floor by her side. The room was very simple, for she loved the well-polished black-walnut furniture among which she had lived all her married life, and nothing would have induced her to change it for new, however beautiful.

The walls were adorned with religious prints, but on the space over the dressing-table, with its array of ebony and silver hair-brushes, was a group of old, faded photographs, evidently all of the same person—Joyselle; and over the chimney-piece hung four large oval photographs, in varnished black frames, picked out with narrow red stripes; quite evidently four middle-aged peasants in their best attire. Near the door a coloured crayon of Theo at the age of five, in plaid trousers, a short jacket, and a wide collar of crochetted lace, smiled sheepishly down at the world. There was a table covered with books of the kind whose gilt edges invariably stick together, because they are never opened, and on the little table on the left of the broad bed, with its scarlet counterpane and huge, soft-looking pillows, were an old black crucifix and two shabby prayer-books.

It was a plain, inartistic room, and the middle-aged woman whose holy of holies it had been for fifteen years was as old-fashioned and unbeautiful as it; yet there was, somehow, about the place a certain atmosphere of goodness and peace that cannot be described in words.

When Brigit Mead came in that afternoon she kissed Madame Joyselle as usual, and then taking off her hat and coat, drew up another stiff-backed chair and sat down.

"How are you, petite mere?" she asked gently, in French.

"I am well, as I always am, thank God. And you? And Tommy?"

"Tommy has a bad throat, but it is nothing. He sent his love. I am very fit."

Madame Joyselle cut her cotton, scrutinised her work closely, and laid the sock down and took up another.

"Such a man for wearing out socks. And always the heels," she remarked. "It would try the patience of anyone!"

"Does it try even yours?" asked Brigit.

The little woman looked up, her shrewd black eyes twinkling under their well-defined brows. "You have observed, then, that I am patient? But yes, my dear, God help the wife of an artist if she is not! He is terrible, my man, at times, but luckily I was born long-suffering. He has, too, a way of wrenching at button-holes in collars that tears them to bits, and desolates me."

"But——" began the girl, and then stopped.

All things considered, there was remarkably little constraint in her feelings for this good woman, but somehow at that moment she wished to change the subject.

Madame Joyselle, however, gave a gentle chuckle, and continued: "He was his most terrific yesterday! Like a lion with no self-control; it was very ridiculous."

Brigit started. Terrible, yes, but—it struck her as very unfitting for the great man's plain little wife to find him ridiculous. And Felicite, as her husband always called her, saw her start, and understood.

"Ah, yes, to you he is the great artist as well as Theo's father—hein? To me he is, of course, just—my husband. All men are, they say, different, but surely all husbands are much alike."

"There are certainly very few men like—him." Brigit took a sock out of the basket and looked at it absently. There was a short silence, during which Felicite did not speak, but she was watching her visitor in the glass. Then she said suddenly, with a certain briskness in her voice, "Shall I tell you about him? About my husband, you know, not about the great artist of—all you others."

Brigit nodded. "Yes, please do. Tell me about—long ago, in Normandy."

"Bien. It will interest you. You like him very much, don't you?" she added, suddenly, looking up and fixing the girl with her bright eyes.

"Like him? Indeed I do. I think him simply glorious," was the answer, given in a gushing voice, but for a moment the girl felt vaguely uneasy. During the last twelve weeks she had not, although seeing Joyselle's wife every day, learned to regard her as a real factor in the game. Joyselle, always tender and considerate of her, yet seemed to regard her as a kind of cross between a mother and a nurse, and she, never precisely retiring, and almost always present during Brigit's visits, appeared to be perfectly used to the role that he assigned her, and sat, usually silent, a kindly spectator of whatever might be going on.

This was the first time that Brigit had realised that she had a real personality, and the girl wondered at her own blindness, for every line in Madame Joyselle's face meant, she now saw, an individuality stronger rather than weaker than the average woman's, even in these days of clamorous individualism.

"Do tell me about him—when he was young," Lady Brigit Mead continued, her thick-looking white eyelids, eyelids that the hapless Mr. Babington compared in his twenty-second sonnet to magnolia-petals, drooping till her lashes made shadows on her cheeks.

And Felicite Joyselle told her story.

"He lived at St. Pol—a mile from Falaise on the way to Caen. His father was gamekeeper to M. de Cerisay. My father, Jacques Rion,—there is his picture to the right, with the beard,—was a tanner in Falaise. We were all poor, but it was very pleasant. Falaise is a beautiful city. Sometimes I used to think there was nothing so beautiful in London as the Place St. Gervais on a market-day in summer, with the fountain playing, and all the friendly people selling their wares. But that," she added simply, "was before I had seen the Albert Memorial. Victor's mother used to sell her fruit in the town, and her sister had married my uncle, anyway! and Victor used to come with her. The first time I remember seeing him, however, was at Mass. It was winter, and very cold, and he kept blowing his hands to warm them. I was twelve, and he about ten. He was a beautiful little boy. Then one day his father brought him to see his aunt—who had married Monsieur Chalumeau, my uncle, you see?—and I was there. And we went up to the castle. You have been there? It is where the Conqueror—who conquered England—was born, in a tiny little stone room high above the tower. You know the story of Arlette?" Brigit nodded, but she did not know. She wanted to hear about Joyselle.

"Bon. And then, when I was twenty, and he eighteen, he came back from Rouen where, did I tell you?—M. de Cerisay had sent him to learn to play the violin—and he told me he wanted me to marry him. He was very splendid then, with city clothes, and oil on his hair, and his hands smooth as a gentleman's.

"We were married at St. Gervais. Then he went back to Rouen and he studied again. That," she added, "was the worst time of my life."

"But why?"

The elder woman looked up. "Because—I was just getting to know him," she returned slowly, "and—he was very wild."

Brigit nodded sympathetically. "Poor you," she said in English.

"Yes. The music made him half-mad, and then he had friends who taught him to gamble. There were other things, too. Women. He was so handsome and so fascinating, and his success was just beginning, they all ran after him, and he enjoyed it. I," she added, "didn't. Then we went to Paris. That was bad, too, only Theo was on the way, which made things better. He was good to me during my illness—ah, very good; and beautiful it was to see the big strong man, mad with his music and his success, washing the little baby and dressing him. When Theo was two—Victor had been working with his violin since he was fourteen—we went to Berlin, and then began his craze for work. He used to work four and five hours at a time for months. Once his health gave way, and we were very poor, so he went to some place for a cure, and the little one and I stayed at home. Then he met a great Prince,—I can never remember his name,—and he invited us to stay with him. It was in a big castle near Munich. Victor loved it, but I was very miserable. I never went anywhere with him again."

"Why were you miserable, petite mere?" Brigit's voice was very gentle; she seemed to see the young violinist, handsome and, as his wife put it, driven half-mad by his music, the centre of attraction at the German castle, and his little plain wife sitting forlorn by herself, looking on.

"It was a Lady Crefinne Cranewitz,"—this name at least, she remembered! "This Crefinne (it means countess) was very beautiful, but too big; large all over like a statue, and blond. She used to wear one flower in her bosom at dinner, and then give it to him afterwards. Also she gave him a lock of her hair."

"And what did he give her?"

Felicite smiled placidly. "He gave her—his love. Ah, yes, he loved her, his Crefinne Gigantesque."

"But——"

The teller of the tale drew a blue silk sock over her hand and poked at the hole in its heel with a thoughtful needle. "He always loves them—for the time, my dear. He is of a sincerity, my man!"

Since the evening of the dragon-skin frock Brigit had done nothing to charm Joyselle; he saw her through his own eyes now, and she, knowing that the game was in her own hands, could afford to wait; when the day came when she wanted to hurt him or to further gratify her own love, she could make him love her almost in a moment. So, so far as she knew, he still enjoyed her beauty without arriere pensee, although he saw her through his own eyes, not Theo's. Yet now, at this phrase of his wife's, "He always loves them—for the time," she started, half angrily. When—if—the day came when he loved her, would this "clean old peasant," as Carron had called her, sit and darn his socks and say to herself—"for the time"?

"You are very—placid about it."

"Yes. In the beginning—no. Then I was jealous, and angry. But a jealous woman is always ridiculous, my child, and men are so vain that the implied homage upsets them. Many a woman has lost a man's love through showing jealousy. So—in time I got used to it, and tout passe," she continued comfortably.

"And you wouldn't mind now, if——" asked Brigit, her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands.

Madame Joyselle laughed. "Wouldn't mind? Oh, ma chere! Just before you came, he had a very bad turn—it was an Italian actress—a pantomimiste, with the most beautiful arms in the world, and the face of a vicious little boy. And he? Epate. His ties wouldn't tie, he got new shoes—fresh gloves every time he went to see her—scent, a new kind, very expensive—he sent her flowers by the cartload, and went every evening to see her act. Every day little mauve letters and wires from her (he always forgot to burn them, and I was afraid Toinon might see them), etc., etc., etc."

"And how did it end?" asked Brigit, her throat dry and hot. She hated the pantomimiste.

"End? My faith, my dear, it is of a simplicity, the end. You came."

"I came——"

"Yes. And he was so delighted with his new—daughter—that he promptly forgot his—love."

"But what did she do?"

"She made a fool of herself, poor thing; wrote, and telegraphed, and threatened to kill herself. So we sent Theo to see her, and she quieted down."

Brigit burst out laughing. "Sent Theo?"

"Yes. He always goes. He is very quiet and reasonable, you see."

"I see."

Madame Joyselle rose. "I must go and see about the dinner. Will you come? Ah, yes," as they went downstairs, "they are like that, the men. But Theo will be faithful to you, of that I am sure. He is like my people, and then, thank God, he is not an artist!"



CHAPTER SEVEN

"Antoinette, I have something to say to you."

"So I ventured to gather from the fact that you have come to see me."

It was mid-May, and a fragrant breeze stirred the delicate curtains of Lady Kingsmead's little drawing-room in Pont Street. There were flowers everywhere, chiefly white lilacs, and the pale green and white chintz and the quantities of light-hued pillows on the sofas (all of which belonged, as yet, to Messrs. Liberty) made of the room a pleasant refuge from the unusual heat outside. Lady Kingsmead, dressed in pale pink, looked in the faint light very pretty as she leaned back in her deep chair and played with the Persian cat.

Carron, upright on his small gilt chair, was pale and agitated, the primitive feelings showing in his ravaged face looking in some way more out of place, because he was exquisitely frock-coated and had a fresh-blown tea-rose in his button-hole, than they would have done if he had been shabby.

When Lady Kingsmead had spoken, he cleared his throat and began hurriedly: "Antoinette—my—my wife is dead."

"Good Lord, Gerald, how you startled me! Is she really?"

"Yes, I—I saw her this morning."

"Drink?" asked Lady Kingsmead, pleasantly.

He frowned. "No. Cancer."

"How—horrid!"

She went to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

"You look ill, poor dear. What is the matter? Your looks are a bit on the blink, too, Gerry! You must buck up."

She sat down and dabbed gingerly at her eyes with a scrap of handkerchief. "It is rather tragic, in its very insignificance, isn't it? Well—what is it? Is it Brigit?"

Mutely and miserably he bowed his head, until she saw the carefully concealed thin place on his crown.

"I thought so. It's no good, Gerald—give me the cat, will you?—she dislikes you."

"She loathes me. And I would be burnt to death for her to-morrow."

She started at something in his tone—something she had not heard for years.

"Can't you get over it?"

"No."

"Then——"

"Oh, my God, Tony, I don't know. Can't—can't you help me?"

"I!"

"Yes. She can't love that boy; he is utterly insignificant. She's marrying him for his money."

"No. She likes him. But, of course, the money helped. But she wouldn't marry you if you were a millionaire yourself. She loathes you. Always has."

"I am going mad, I think. I haven't slept for months. Look at my hand, how it shakes; anyone would think I was a drunkard! Look here, Tony, couldn't you ask her to speak civilly to me, at least?"

She was almost frightened as she looked at his piteous face. He had indeed changed appallingly in the last six or eight months, and there was a tremulous movement about his well-cut mouth that was alarming.