"I'm here, Tommy darling," she told him a hundred times, but he only shook his head and frowned gently. "You are very nice, and I like your hands, because they are cool and dry, but you are not Bicky. Bicky is beautiful."

His mother, on the contrary, the child always recognised, and his manner to her was almost protecting.

"Don't cry, mother," he would say. "I'm not so bad, really I'm not. You had better go and lie down, or you will not look pretty to-night."

His idea of evenings was, of course, of a time when mothers must look their best at any cost, and when no mother ever stayed upstairs.

Every evening, therefore, he could not rest until Lady Kingsmead had gone "to dress."

Brigit had never known how much the little fellow noticed the details of dress, and so on, but now she learned, for his remarks about his mother usually took the form of appreciation or dislike of some particular toilette.

"Wear pink, mother—it suits you best—and pearls. The diamonds make you look older."

Poor Lady Kingsmead, more lovable in her distress than her daughter had ever seen her, obeyed him humbly, and promising to wear pink, or whatever the colour might be, crept away to her bedroom and cried until she was scarcely recognisable.

Two days passed thus, the doctor coming many times and shaking his head doubtfully over questions about his patient. "The throat is much better—the danger from that is quite past; but—the fever does not go down, and I can't quite tell what the complication is. He is too young to have had a mental shock, so I can only assume that the too great activity of his mind is now against us. I understand that he has been studying very hard?"

This Brigit denied, but the doctor, on insisting, was told to interview Mr. Babington, and to the girl's amazement she learned that only a day or two before he was taken ill Tommy had betrayed the fact that for weeks he had been in the habit of spending part of each night in the disused chapel, practising on his violin.

"He is quite mad about his music," the young man mourned. "I never could get him to take the least interest in anything else, and as he always worked as little as possible for me, I could not understand his looking so tired, until, finding that he had heard the stable clock strike four, and knowing that one cannot hear the clock from his room, I pinned him down and he told me."

Brigit's eyes filled with tears.

The chapel, disused for many years, had evolved into a sort of lumber-room, and she could see, in her imagination, the pathetic picture of her little brother fiddling away among the piled-up boxes and old furniture, trying to hasten the moment when his beloved master would find him worthy of personal instruction.

It was all clear to his sister. Left alone, the child's whole strength—far more strength than he should have been allowed to expend—had gone to his passion for his violin, and now, unless a change for the better should come very soon, he must die, burnt with fever. And the fault would be hers. For the first time she felt the meaning of the word "duty." Tommy had been her duty, and she had neglected him.

At length one day she made a further discovery.

She was sitting by the bed, and for over an hour the child had lain still, his eyes half shut. It was five o'clock and a dark afternoon, so that the room was full of shadows.

Suddenly Tommy turned and looked at her.

"Brigit," he asked, recognising her for the first time, "are you in love with Joyselle?"

For a full minute she could not answer, and then said very gently, "Darling Tommy—you know me?"

"Yes, yes, of course I know you. But—are you? Carron and mother think so."

"Do they, Tommy? Well—I love him dearly—and so do you, don't you?"

"I don't mean that," he returned, with a gesture of impatience; "I mean the way people are who are going to marry each other."

His eyes, so huge in his wasted face, looked eagerly at her.

"Carron and mother think you do," he repeated, "and it makes me sorry."

She did not answer for a long time, and then she said humbly, not knowing how far he understood that whereof he spoke, and therefore obliged to feel her way, "Tommy dear—you forget petite mere."

"No, I don't—but she is old."

"She is younger than he."

But ill though he was, Tommy's sense of humour was still alive. "That doesn't matter! Oh, Bick, darling, I am so tired! And I do hope you aren't—I mean, that."

So, of course, she lied, and the little boy went to sleep, his hand in hers.

When, an hour later, she went to her room, she found a wire from Theo, announcing their arrival in London, and in spite of herself her spirits rose. Things must be better now that he was near her.

But things were not better, and the doctor, the next morning, looked very grave. "I think it bad to allow him to have his violin," he said; "it excites him and increases the fever. And—I think I should like a consultation."

Lady Kingsmead burst into tears and hurried from the room, but Brigit wrote a telegram, as dictated by the old doctor who had brought the boy into the world, to a famous physician in London, and a groom was sent galloping to the station to send it.

"Who is this person he always takes me for?" asked the doctor, polishing his glasses. "This morning he insisted on my—on my playing for him. I have never played anything except the cornet, when I was a young man. I—it very nearly upset me, Lady Brigit. I love Tommy."

Brigit flushed. "Wanted you to play the violin?" she returned.

"Yes. He has not done so until this morning for several days, but he quite insisted to-day."

"It must be—Joyselle. We—we know him very well, and Tommy adores him."

As she spoke the nurse came in.

"Would you mind coming, my lady? He is very restless and insists on trying to play. I can't quiet him at all——"

They went back into the sick-room and found Tommy sitting up in bed, holding his violin in the position for playing, and scolding in a sharp staccato voice because he couldn't find his bow.

"Tommy, dear," Brigit said quietly, suddenly seeing her way clear, "I am wiring the Master to come to see you. He will play for you. Now give me your violin and lie down like a good boy."

Under the impression that she was Mrs. Champion, the housekeeper, but perfectly satisfied with her words, he gave up the fiddle obediently and lay down. The doctor nodded his approval and left a few moments later to send the telegram to Joyselle. And Brigit sat down by the bed and waited.



CHAPTER ELEVEN

The weather had changed suddenly, and although it was only the 14th of September, it was cold and cheerless that afternoon.

Brigit, who had been sent out for a walk, tramped steadily down the road towards the village, her hands in her jacket pockets, her chin buried in her little boa.

Tommy was very ill; the London doctor had confirmed old Dr. Long's opinion: an over-developed mind in an under-developed body. These words in themselves were not very alarming, but Brigit's heart had sunk as Sir George uttered them.

"Is he—is he going to die?" she asked abruptly. Sir George hesitated. "We scientists are supposed to be atheists, my dear young lady," he returned, looking at his watch, "but I believe in God. And in all reverence I can say in this case that only He can tell. Lord Kingsmead is very weak, and I greatly dislike the abnormal activity of his brain, but—God is good. So let us hope."

Then the great man had gone.

By the 5.10 express Joyselle was coming. He had been out of town the day before, and the delay had been maddening. But now he was coming, and Brigit pinned her faith to the effects of his presence with savage fanaticism.

"He must help him," she repeated over and over again; "he loves him so."

The darkness of the day was congenial to her; sunshine would have seemed an insult. She reached the village, with its little straight street and modern red-brick inn, and passing through it turned to the left towards the station. It was only three, and Joyselle could not arrive for two hours; yet she felt that she was going towards him.

A motor rushed past her, covering her with dust and causing her to clench her hands in anger. "Beastly thing!" she said aloud.

Then out of the cloud of dust emerged—Joyselle, on foot, his violin-case in his hand.

"You!"

"Yes. I—couldn't wait, so I cut an engagement and took the 1.45, Brigit—how is he?"

He was flushed with the effort of rapid walking in a long coat and his hat was on one side. He was smoking, and forgot to ask her leave to continue. Small things were swept from his mind by his evident anxiety.

"He is—very bad. But—oh, it was good of you to bring your violin!"

"Of course I did. If anything on earth can quiet him, that will. What is the trouble now that the throat is better?"

"I don't know. He thinks and thinks, and can't sleep, and the fever will not go. In a grown person I suppose they'd call it brain-fever."

"Poor little boy."

They had passed the village and struck out on the straight road by the park.

"I—I have missed you, Victor," she burst out suddenly, looking round and laying her gloved hand on his arm.

"Hush!" he answered in a stern voice.

A second later he broke the silence by asking her if Tommy drank milk.

"No," she returned sullenly, "he hates it."

"That is a pity."

When they reached the gate and turned into the avenue she found to her surprise that her eyes were full of tears. She had slept very little for nights, and her nerves were upset. She wanted a personal word from him, a look, but he gave her none.

"Theo sent you his love," he announced presently. "He is coming down to-morrow. How is your mother?"

"All right. Victor—are you glad to see me?"

She stood still as she spoke, but he walked on, and she had to rejoin him as he answered in a matter-of-fact voice:

"Of course I am, my dear child."

His mouth she saw was set and determined. Feeling as though he had struck her, she went on in silence, and the silence remained unbroken until they had reached the house.

"I may go to him at once?" Joyselle asked her, as Burton helped him take off his coat.

"Yes."

They went upstairs together, and outside the door of the boudoir he paused and took the violin out of its case.

Tommy, who was talking very loud about Alexander the Great, stared at him without recognition.

"Allo, Tommy; here I am," Joyselle began, taking the boy's hand. "Come to scold you for being ill and worrying us all."

"I don't want you—not that it isn't very kind of you to come. I want—him. And he won't come."

Joyselle frowned at Brigit, who was about to speak. "Well—I am going to play for you, and it may amuse you till he does come."

He tuned his violin and began to play.

Brigit sat down by the bed and laid her hand in Tommy's.

It was a simple nursery melody that Joyselle played:

"Il etait une bergere, he ron ron ron, petit pa-ta-pon——" She had known it all her life, but to Tommy, who had always sternly refused to have anything to do with the French governesses his mother had got for him, it was new.

He listened with an intent frown, the fingers of his left hand curled inwards and moving as though he were trying to follow the air on imaginary strings.

Then as Joyselle went on to the delightful Pont d'Avignon, his hand relaxed, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

The room was nearly dark, and rain beat in gusts on the windows.

"Fais dodo," sang the fiddle softly, "fais dodo."

"I like that. Play it again. Ah, Master—it is you. I am so glad——"

Joyselle did not stop, but he smiled down at the boy as he played on very softly. "Of course it is I. I am delighted to see you so much better. Do you know 'Ma Normandie'? This is it——"

Tommy moved a little and settled his head more comfortably.

The boudoir was in an angle of the house opposite to which, a floor higher, was the gallery. As he played, someone in the picture-gallery turned on the electric lights, and one long shaft, coming through the window, shone down on the player's head.

"See the Halo, Bicky?" asked the boy in a natural voice. "Isn't he splendid?" Then he added, with the frown she so dreaded: "Take me away before they begin to clap, will you?"

"No clapping allowed, Tommy," Joyselle assured him quietly. "Know this?"

And he played on.

His face, full of tender solicitude, was, Brigit thought, almost divinely beautiful as she watched it. And by some curious freak of the down-falling light only his head and shoulders were visible, and seemed almost to be floating in the gloom. Never had he been so handsome, and never so pitilessly remote. He had forgotten her; he had forgotten love; he was not even the Musician—he was a Healer, a being miles above and beyond her and her weak human longing.

Tommy's eyes had closed, and the low music went on and on. The room was now quite dark, save for the light that encircled Joyselle's head. It was like a wonderful picture, and the innate nobility of the man obliterated for the time all else from his fine face.

Tommy was asleep, and still the music went on.

"Salut demeure chaste et pure," he was playing now, and Brigit recalled with a great heart throb the evening she had met him in the train. "Salut demeure——" The high note, pure and thrilling, lingered long, and then, as it had come, the light went, and it was dark.

The music ceased, and there was a long pause. Then, without a word, Joyselle left the room, closing the door softly behind him.



CHAPTER TWELVE

The morning of the fifth day after his arrival Joyselle went downstairs early, and out into the garden.

He looked, as he felt, very tired, for he had been with Tommy most of the time, day and night, and played until even his great strength was nearly exhausted.

For Tommy had clung to his presence in a very piteous way, crying weakly, since the fever had gone, every time the Master left the room, restless and unable to sleep unless played to, capricious and naughty about his food unless the Master sat by him while he ate.

Many children are disquietingly good during serious illness, and Tommy had been very patient while at his worst; but once on the road to recovery, the natural imp in him revived and flourished, making the road a hard one for his fellow-travellers.

There had been a phase when he smuggled his food under the bedclothes, pretending with diabolical cleverness to eat it; when the milk left by his side was poured out of the window the moment he had been left alone. But Joyselle, discovering these crimes, had taken to sitting by the boy when his meals were brought, and with him Tommy was almost painfully eager to be good.

The danger, Dr. Long declared, was now over, and within a week the invalid was to be moved to Margate.

In a few hours Joyselle was returning to town, and he was glad, for the strains, more than one, to which his stay had subjected him, were telling on his nerves.

The rose-garden, even in mid-September, was a pleasant place, and as he walked along its broad grass paths the violinist wished it were July, and that the fine standard roses might be in bloom. He loved flowers, and with the curiously rapid assimilation of superficial knowledge common to artistic natures, had picked up a considerable amount of rose-lore at the house of some friends in Devonshire.

There was one big yellow rose on a bush near the middle of the garden, and bending over it, he buried his nose in it.

"Victor!"

Brigit had joined him unheard, and stood looking at him, her hand held out. "Let me give you that rose."

But he shook his head. "No, let it die there. It is so beautiful among the leaves. You are up early."

"Yes. I saw you from the window, and brought you your letters." She handed him several as she spoke.

"Thanks."

"And—I want to thank you for staying. It is you, and only you, who have saved Tommy."

He nodded gravely. "I love Tommy. We must not let him overwork again, Brigit."

"No."

Joyselle turned over his letters without looking at them. "Did Theo speak to you the other day about—our—that is to say, his plan?"

Her face stiffened. "No."

This was the first time she had succeeded in seeing Victor alone during all the five days of his stay. Unobtrusively but effectively he had avoided her, shutting himself, when he was not in the sick-room, in his own room, under the pretext of fatigue or correspondence. And she had not submitted to this without repeated efforts to foil his intentions.

Again and again she had made little plans to catch him alone, but she had invariably failed, and as the days passed and she realised his strength of determination, a dull, slow fire of anger had begun to burn in her.

Theo, who had been down twice, had found her manner very unsatisfactory; she was strikingly different from what she had been in Falaise, and the young man was puzzled and hurt. While Tommy was still very ill he had borne with her change of mood with great patience, but the time was coming when he must demand an explanation. All this she felt and resented.

She looked, as she stood by the rose-bush, very tired, and older than her years, but she looked remarkably handsome; pallor and heavy eyelids did not disfigure her as they do most women.

Joyselle took out his silver box and made a cigarette.

"He was talking to me about it," he went on, disregarding the final quality of her negative. "And I find it very good. It is that Tommy should live much with—you—when you are married. Your mother does not know how to bring him up; he is delicate and high-strung, and Theo is very fond of him."

"I am not going to marry Theo!" she burst out, exasperated beyond endurance.

He looked up. "Are you mad?" he asked quietly.

"No. But—you seem to be trying to make me mad. I can't understand you, Victor."

"Can't you, Brigit? I should think it was very easy. You remember what we agreed at Falaise? That——"

"That I was to marry Theo and 'live happy ever after'? Oh, yes, I remember. But do you remember how miserable you were the day before—and the day of—the wedding? And why that was?"

He was silent for a moment.

"Yes," he answered humbly. "I know. I was—jealous."

"Well—and you expect me to be happy and content while you behave as you are doing now? You never speak to me; you never look at me; you fly from me as if I were an infectious disease. It is—unbearable," she ended passionately. "I can't bear it."

He smoked in silence for some seconds. "I am—sorry to have hurt you, Brigit."

"Sorry to have hurt me! I don't believe you love me. If you were jealous, so am I! I will not be treated like this."

His white face was like a mask. "I am sorry," he repeated, with a kind of dogged patience.

"Then if you are—be good to me. I love you, Victor."

He met her eyes and his did not falter in their steady gaze. "Please do not excite yourself," he said very gently, "and—I think I will go in now. It must be breakfast time."

Driven beyond her own control by his tone, she caught his arm and pleaded with him, her voice harsh and broken, and she could not stop, although she saw that she was, besides annoying him, injuring herself in his eyes.

"Please—Brigit——"

"Then tell me that you love me. You can't have stopped—it is only a week since the wedding—I—can't bear this——"

But her mistaken line of conduct brought its inevitable punishment. "This is—absurd," he said coldly, "and—undignified. I told you at Falaise that I was ashamed of myself for being jealous of my son. It was monstrous and hideous. I think I have been not quite in my right mind for some time. But I have a strong will and can force myself to anything——"

"And you are forcing yourself to kill your love for me——"

"No. I am trying to learn to love you as a—a daughter, and I am beginning to succeed. But if you insist in making scenes like this——" He broke off and gave his shoulders an expressive shrug. "It is—not womanly."

Then, breaking the yellow rose from the bush, he drew its stem through his button-hole and strolled leisurely away, whistling under his breath.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For two days Brigit Mead remained in her room, refusing to see anyone. Tommy, who had reached the period when convalescents sleep most of the time, was told that she was resting, and that he must be very good and eat a great deal, with a view to surprising her by his progress when she reappeared.

But the girl was not resting.

Up and down the two rooms she paced, day and night, her face set, her hands clenched, talking aloud to herself sometimes, sometimes silent, always thinking, thinking, thinking of Joyselle.

Had he ceased to love her, or was it merely a pose, or—ten thousand theories occurred to her, to drive her perilously near madness in her solitude. Things he had done, words he had said, characteristics she had observed in him, all these things flashed into her mind, upsetting and confirming each and every theory with an utter lack of logic, but with pitiless conclusiveness.

And the longer she thought the more hopeless things grew. Theo himself she dismissed with furious impatience; his letters remained unopened, an affectionate wire of congratulation on Tommy's improvement she did not answer. He and everyone else were swept aside by the flood of emotional analysis regarding Joyselle that, in its headlong course, threatened to carry her reason with it.

"If I had been married," she thought over and over again with cruel shrewdness, "things—would have been different, and then he could not have escaped."

She wrote to Joyselle long letters full of incoherent self-accusations, and made appeals for pity, but she knew that he would not answer her, and so burned the letters.

She could not eat; did not even try, and the little sleep she got from sheer exhaustion, after tramping up and down for hours, was heavy and unrestful. Lady Kingsmead came to her door once or twice, but was not allowed to enter, and went away unprotesting. And then, the third morning, Dr. Long insisted on seeing her.

"Humph! Tired, are you? You look it. Tommy is going to Margate to-morrow. You had better go too."

"Is my mother going?"

"No. Nurse is taking him. It will do him good—and you. Is anything specific the matter?"

She looked at him and shook her head. "I am tired," she repeated.

"Very well. I'll give you some phosphites—and you had better go for a walk. You need air."

The old man bustled away, and Brigit, after a few minutes' reflection, went to her mother's room.

"I am going to town, mother," she began, without preamble, "and in a day or so I shall join Tommy at Margate. Dr. Long says I had better go, but—I have some things to see to first."

Lady Kingsmead, who was blackening her eyebrows before her glass, turned, one eye made up, the other very undressed-looking in its natural condition.

"But—you'll come back, Brigit? You aren't angry any more?"

"I—I don't know, mother. I—am so tired, I can't think."

Lady Kingsmead took up a letter that lay beside her and handed it to her daughter. "Read this—dear," she said rather humbly. And Brigit read:

"Dear Tony," it ran, in a curious irregular, downward-trending hand, "I've been awfully bad again, or I should have written before. I was at the Joyselles' yesterday, and they told me that the danger is over. I am so glad, poor old girl. How are you? And how is Brigit? I hope she will believe you when you tell her about that day after I saw her in Tite Street. I told her that you did not believe me and went for me, but she wouldn't listen to me, and I don't blame her. I'm pretty bad. I shan't last long, I think. Heart's getting bad, too. May I come down and see you some time? Joyselle tells me the wedding is to be next month——"

Brigit crushed the letter violently in her hand and threw it down, her face distorted with anger.

"Poor old Gerald," commented her mother absently. After a pause she turned. "Brigit—I give you my sacred word of honour that I did not believe him that day. I never doubted you for a second. But he was so queer—so ill—that I was alarmed, and was trying to comfort him when you came in.

"Do you believe me?" she added, after a long pause.

Brigit, who stood by the window, nodded without turning.

"Oh, yes, I believe you," she said indifferently.

Then, before her mother could again speak, the girl left the room.

On her own table she found another letter, and to her surprise recognised Carron's writing in the address. With a sudden foreboding of evil, she sat down and opened the letter.

It was very long, written in pencil, and began:

"Before God, I swear you wronged your mother in thinking she believed what I said about you that day in Pont Street. Before God, I give you my word. Brigit, I am going to die; I cannot live. I don't like to live. The world is abominable. I hate everybody. I hate you. I hate God. The only way I can forget is to take morphine, and it is beginning to go back on me. Sometimes I don't feel it at all. And it is only the last of many friends to desert me——"

There were four pages of this, growing more and more incoherent, and then at the last, the writer went on, his writing suddenly larger and more distinct, as if he had taken pains to render it legible:

"I am going to die, Brigit, so good-bye. If you would have married me I should not have done this. It is all your fault. "Gerald Carron."

For an instant her indignation at the incredible cowardice of the man crushed every other feeling. Then a thrill of horror came over her. Looking again at the last page she saw below the signature:

"If you will come to see me at five o'clock to-morrow, and are kind to me, I won't do it."

Returning to her mother's room the girl handed her the letter. "Read the last page," she said briefly.

Lady Kingsmead shuddered. "We must wire him. We'll tell him to come down here—he must be mad—I—oh, Brigit!"

Brigit shook her head. "Of course he's mad. But we must go to him. We'll wire from the station."

Hurrying her distracted mother to the train, the girl settled into a corner and remained in unbroken silence until they reached town.

"It is odious, disgusting of him," she broke out in the hansom as they went up St. James Street. "When he is quieted down, mother, you must make him understand that I absolutely refuse to accept the responsibility of his deeds. I never could bear him."

Lady Kingsmead nodded. "It is the morphine he takes. He must go into one of these great cure places—or no, that is for drinking, I believe——"

They had reached the house and gone up the stairs before she spoke again. "I hope he won't be violent," she declared, "I wish you hadn't insisted on coming. A wire would have done every bit as well——"

No one answering the ring, Brigit tried the door on which a card bearing Carron's name was neatly tacked.

To her surprise the door was open, and crossing the little ante-chamber the two women went into the sitting-room.

Lying on his face by the fireplace, in which red ashes still glowed, Gerald Carron lay dead, a revolver near him, his face in a small pool of blood.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lady Kingsmead fainted dead away for once in her life, dropping in a huddled heap near the man she had loved and unloved.

Brigit stared at them for a moment, wondering vaguely which of them was dead, which only fainting. Then, just as she was kneeling to raise her mother to a better position, the door opened and two men, one of them Giacomo, Carron's valet, entered in great haste.

The second man was, he explained, a doctor, whom the valet had gone for on finding his master's body.

The next few minutes were minutes that Brigit never forgot. The Italian servant, chattering and weeping, the young doctor helping her to loosen Lady Kingsmead's tight clothes; his hurried explanations and questions; the very closeness of the air, with the smell of gunpowder still faintly perceptible.

Lady Kingsmead, laid upon Carron's bed, came to in a few minutes in violent hysterics, and the young doctor, when he had given her a soothing draught, insisted on the two women leaving.

"I must send for the coroner," he explained, "and it will be unpleasant. Your cab is still at the door, I think? May I have your address?"

He was very civil and sympathetic, this young medico, but he was also rather too obviously impressed by his own importance and this gruesome occasion. Brigit gave him the address of her flat, and helping her mother into a four-wheeler, as more suitable than a hansom, the two women drove away towards Kensington.

"I hadn't been in his room for years," sobbed Lady Kingsmead, forgetting her complexion. "Did you see the pastel of me on the wall between the windows? And I gave him the clock, too, for his thirty-fifth birthday. Oh, Brigit! He loved me insanely, poor Gerald, perfectly madly, and so did I." She broke off, to her daughter's relief, and sobbed again.

Brigit's flat was warm and smelt unaired. Two or three letters lay on the mat inside the door, a huge blue-bottle boomed at a window trying to get out.

Lady Kingsmead lay down on Maidie Compton's Chesterfield and wept loudly. "Oh, Gerald, Gerald, how we loved each other," she wailed. "He would have died for me. He very nearly killed himself——"

Suddenly the foolish woman sat up and pointed an accusing finger at her daughter. "And it is all your fault," she cried bitterly; "he said so in that letter—my poor love. Your fault, and you my daughter. You broke his heart, you tortured him, and you took him from me. I—I hate you."

Brigit stared coldly at her. "Don't make a fool of yourself, mother," she said. "You know perfectly well that there is not a word of truth in what you say."

"There is, there is! It was when you began to grow up that he ceased loving me. It is all your fault. He wrote it to you. You are to blame; you murdered him, his blood is on your head! And I scolded him when he told me about you and Joyselle. I refused to believe him. Oh, Gerald, Gerald!"

How much she believed of what she said it is impossible to say, but her lack of self-control and her immense egotism were such that together they made a formidable force to argue against.

Brigit sneered as she looked down at her. "For Heaven's sake, don't be so ridiculous," she said impatiently. "And don't—lie."

"I am not lying. He told me about you and Joyselle, and I believe him. Yes I do, I believe him. You are in love with the man, and that's why you don't marry his son——"

"Look here, mother," Brigit's temper was rising fast. "Answer one question quietly, will you? Do you believe what Gerald Carron told you about me and Joyselle?"

And Lady Kingsmead, whose hysterical excitement was now well beyond control, screamed out that she did believe it.

Brigit rose. "Very well. Think as you like. And—good-bye."

She left the house without a word, and taking a hansom went straight to Golden Square.

Felicite, who was alone, kissed her kindly and insisted on giving her tea. This, however, Brigit refused. Desperate as she was, she had come to the point of feeling that she could never again accept the little woman's hospitality. What she was going to do she did not know, but she was not going to marry Theo, and she would never again come to Golden Square.

"No, thanks," she said gently, "I want to see your husband, so as you think he is there, I will rush up to Chelsea. You look tired—petite mere."

Felicite smiled. "I am. I have been turning out our room and re-hanging all the pictures. But I like doing it. How is dear Tommy?"

"Much better, thanks. He is going to Margate to-morrow—to the sea, you know."

Felicite went downstairs with her and kissed her again at parting. "Theo will be very glad you are in town," she said. "And you, my daughter—do things go better with you?"

Touched by the kind light in her innocent eyes, Brigit lied. "Ah, yes, much better, thank you," she returned; "everything is all right."

And when she was in her hansom hurrying Chelseawards, she felt with a sigh that it was a harmless lie.

"She is a dear, poor Felicite, and when Victor has told her that I will not marry Theo, and I have gone away—she will be less troubled."



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

As she went up the stairs in the house in Tite Street, Brigit recalled the occasion of her other visit there and shuddered. Poor Carron. Could it have been partly her fault?

And that was her only tribute to his memory. Essentially selfish though the girl was, she was no hypocrite, and it did not occur to her now to make excuses for the man simply because he was dead.

But it had been just here at the turning of the dusty stairs that he had waylaid her on her way down after her first love scene with Joyselle, and she could not pass without recalling it.

Then she had been gloriously happy, feeling, because she and Victor loved each other, that the world was theirs; now she came a broken-willed, frightened woman, to plead with the man who had put her out of his life, to take her back. She would tell him that no matter what happened, she would never marry Theo, and—then, when he realised that she meant this, she would beg him to take her back.

And remembering the last days she trembled.

She knocked at his door, and a short, familiar bark answered the sound. Papillon. But-ter-fly.

Joyselle opened the door, which had been locked, and when he saw her, his face, already sombre, darkened ominously.

"Brigitte—what do you want?" he asked, not offering to let her in. Behind him, on a table, she saw his violin-case—unopened, and her heart gave a glad hope. He had not been working. He had been, she hoped, unable to work.

"May I come in, Victor?" she asked.

Still he did not move. "Why?" he asked uncompromisingly.

"Because I have things to tell you. Don't be afraid. I am not going to make a scene——"

He drew aside, and she went in and closed the door. Papillon sprang at her with delight, and she laughed sadly.

"He is glad to see me," she said; "aren't you, Yellow Dog?"

Joyselle shrugged his shoulders and sitting down on the sofa lit a cigarette. "Well?" he asked after a pause.

Brigit sat down by him and took off her gloves.

"Victor—why have things—been as they have been of late?"

"You know why."

"Because the father in you is stronger than the lover?"

"I have never been your lover," he retorted harshly, hurling the words at her as if they had been an accusation.

She winced. "I am speaking English. Well—was it your loyalty to Theo that—that changed you?"

"I have been loyal, have I not? Juste ciel!" Rising, he walked about the great room, his hands clasped behind him. "My conduct was magnificent, was it not? Don't quibble with words, Brigit. In plain language, I was a scoundrel, a beast, and now I am trying to behave—not like a gentleman, but like a decent man. And why you won't let me, I don't know."

He was suffering, she saw with a sigh of relief.

"Then you still love me?" she asked coolly.

"Yes. Does a man change in a week? You are a child. Now tell me what you have come for—if you have any object other than your usual one of seeing how much I can endure, and then—go. I am strong, and you cannot make me change my mind, and I—I despise you for trying to make of me—the—thing I was at one time. But I am not made of stone, and you hurt me—almost too much."

His voice was very even and low-pitched, but she shrank back in her corner and hastened to answer.

"You wrong me. I have not come to tempt you. I have come—to tell you that nothing in the world nor out of it can induce me to marry Theo."

"You will not——"

"No, I will not marry him."

Papillon, who had unearthed a long-cherished bone in a dark corner under a Dutch cabinet, dragged his treasure across the floor and laid it at his master's feet with a pleased growl.

"You will not marry Theo?"

"No."

She had risen, and the two faced each other defiantly, while the little dog between them wagged his tail with joy.

"Why?" asked Joyselle sharply.

"Because—I cannot. I have dawdled and dallied, and refused to face things long enough. Now I see that the worst crime I could commit against him would be to marry him. I love you. Whether you love me or not, I love you, and I always shall. And I ask you as a great favour to tell Theo for me that I cannot marry him."

"But what are you going to do?"

His voice trembled and he spoke very slowly.

"I am—going away. I don't know where. To Italy, probably, with the Lenskys. And I shall, I daresay, marry in the course of time."

"Whom are you going to marry?" he cried furiously, forgetting that she had just said that she loved him, and mad with jealousy.

She laughed. "Qui sait? I don't. Possibly Lord Pontefract—he has just come back from the Andes—possibly someone whom—you do not know."

"Then," returned Joyselle very quietly, "I will kill him."

And she could have laughed aloud.

"You will tell Theo?" she asked, picking up her gloves.

"No, I will not. I cannot. And you shall not go. Or, yes—Brigit—you shall go—with me. If you will not marry him, then there is nothing between us. I have fought, I have done my best, but I can bear no more. We will go, you and I——"

Catching her in his arms he held her close, whispering incoherent, broken words in her ear, while the little yellow dog, thinking it was a game, snapped playfully at her trailing skirts.

"You will go with me, my woman? You and I alone, all alone? For ever and ever and ever?"

And putting her arms round his neck she answered, "Yes, I will go with you. For ever."



CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Brigit Mead did not go to bed at all that night. All night she worked in her little flat making her plans, packing, and writing letters.

She had burnt her boats and the relief was great. Having broken with her mother, there was no need for her to write to Kingsmead. To Tommy she sent a note, saying that she was going away, but would write soon and explain.

To Pam Lensky she wrote a rather long letter, for there were some few things she wanted made clear.

"Dear Pam,"—she began abruptly—"I am going away with Victor Joyselle. I wonder if you will blame me? In case you do, here is my only defence. I hate my present life, I am miserable without Joyselle, and he is miserable without me. My mother, with whom I have been on fairly decent terms since Tommy has been ill, is hopeless. Gerald Carron shot himself to-day, and mother, just, I honestly believe, to indulge her own taste for sentimental scenes, turned on me about him and pretended to believe a story he told her just before I left Pont Street—that I was Joyselle's mistress, in fact. If she believed the story I would forgive her, though it is not true, but I cannot forgive the kind of mind that can amuse itself with such vulgar melodrama. I have always disliked my mother, and now I simply cannot bear her any longer.

"And I have no other ties except Tommy. Tommy, to whom I shall write before long, is nearly well. He will be forbidden to come to see me, but he will come, and I do not think it will hurt him.

"As to Theo, Pam, I am deeply grieved. He is a remarkably nice young man, but I cannot marry him, and the mere fact of his father's loving me will not much hurt him. Whatever his father does, Theo in the long run thinks right, and he, too, will forgive us.

"Then there is poor Felicite. She has been very kind to me, but she has been stupid and over-self-confident, and I cannot consider her. I must consider him. She will suffer and I am indeed sorry, poor soul, but he—he shall be happy. So good-bye, Pam. Remember your own father and mother, and understand. We go to Paris by the eleven o'clock train to-morrow, and thence—to Arcadia, as your people used to say. My love to you. "Brigit."

Re-reading this letter, which she was far too self-engrossed to consider selfish, Brigit addressed it.

Then she looked over her clothes, packed them in three boxes, one of which she labelled, "To be called for," the other two of which were to go with her.

It was long after one when she had finished her work and sat down to rest. She was not tired, nor did she feel any special excitement. It had happened, that was all, and it seemed to her that she had always foreseen this night, with its letter writing and packing.

To-morrow at this time they, she and Victor, would be in Paris. And then they would go—where-ever he chose. She did not care.

And, although she did not know it, this unformulated mental attitude was the first sign in her of any approach to an unselfish love.

Through the long hours she sat in her brilliantly lighted little sitting-room, waiting for day. At five o'clock she switched off the electricity and opened the blinds. A wan light came in.

"It is day. It is to-day," she told herself aloud, her beautiful mouth quivering with happiness. "In four hours he will come."

She made herself a cup of tea and then lay down on the sofa where her mother had lain the day before, and went to sleep.

She dreamed that she stood in a sloping, very green meadow; in the distance a flock of dingy sheep browsed, and some invisible person was playing a pipe! "Il etait une bergere he ron, ron, ron,"—it was the nursery song Joyselle had played to Tommy when the little boy was ill. She smiled and moved her head.

Then suddenly she was awake, and Theo stood before her. "Brigit," he said quietly, "my mother is dead. Will you come to father?"



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Felicite had died in her sleep beside her husband. An hour before he had waked, and, lying quietly by her, thinking no doubt of the woman for whom he was going to desert her, he had by chance touched her hand as it lay on the counterpane, with the shabby black rosary in it, and—the hand was cold.

They had not called a doctor, for there was no doubt that she was dead, and she had hated doctors. She had been very happy the day before, and in the evening she had asked Joyselle to play to her, a thing she very rarely did. He had played, they had drunk some Norman cider, and gone to bed early.

"Father was tired," Theo added, as the hansom stopped.

Brigit dared not speak. Could it be that Joyselle had told her, after they had gone to their room? He would have had to tell her either then or the next day—to-day. He had not feared to tell her, for his delirium was such that he feared nothing, and besides, she was always very gentle.

"She will understand," he had told Brigit, "that I cannot help it."

Had he told her? Had the last beats of that gentle heart been unhappy ones, or had the Madonna, to whom she prayed with such simple confidence, spared her that supreme shock, and allowed her to die happy, with her man beside her?

"Father has not spoken since—since the first," Theo whispered as they crept up the stairs. "I—he rather frightens me."

The door of Felicite's room was closed, and for several seconds Brigit dared not open it. Then, very softly, she turned the handle, and motioning Theo not to follow her, went in.

On the bed, the counterpane drawn smoothly over it, the little figure, with the rosary still between its fingers; and kneeling by the pillow, his silvery hair flowing forward, Joyselle.

He started on hearing the door open, and after a pause, rose.

"She is dead," he said slowly. "My wife is dead."

Brigit caught at a chair as she saw his face, for it was the face of an old man, blanched and wrinkled and hollow-eyed.

"My wife is dead," he repeated.

Then he turned to the table, and seeing her shabby old red-lined work-basket, took it up and held it to his breast.

As he stood, his back to her, as to one who did not belong there, who was an intruder, he began to cry, great slow tears dropping into the basket, wetting the red lining, and, no doubt, rusting the very needle she had used yesterday.

Brigit saw his face in the glass.

"Oh, Victor," she faltered, her hands clasped.

He turned and pointed to the bed.

"You will excuse me," he said, with an evident effort to be polite, "but I cannot talk. My wife is dead."

And the girl turned and crept from the room. She understood. And she left him as he wished, alone with his wife, who was dead.

Going quietly downstairs, she went to the nearest flower shop and bought a great mass of the yellow-crumple-leaved roses that Joyselle had once told her grew in Normandy.

Then she went back to Golden Square.

"He will not leave her, Brigitte," Theo told her as he met her on the stairs, "and the doctor is troubled about him. He says—the shock has been almost too great for—for his mind. I—I knew he loved her—oh, petite mere cherie—but I never knew how much. Ah, my dear, they had grown together in the twenty-six years they were man and wife, and now she has left him——" The young man put his arm on the balustrade and wept quite simply and unrestrainedly.

Joyselle, who was sitting by his wife, looked up when Brigit entered with the roses, but he did not speak.

"I have brought these—for her—Beau-papa," the girl faltered, and he rose.

"Thank you. Yes, she loved roses—ma Felicite."

Brigit noticed, with a thrill of horror, remembering what the doctor had said, that he spoke not quite distinctly; his tongue was a little thick.

"Let us," she said, laying her hand on his shoulder, "thank God that she died so happily, with you by her side."

He passed his hand over his forehead where the halo of hair lay so untidy.

"Yes. Let us thank God. You see, ma fille—I have not been a good man. I have loved many women—or thought I did. I have betrayed her love for me; I have—enfin, I have not been good. But—it all meant nothing. She was the bride of my youth, the companion of my—of my young manhood." He stammered again, and went on with the slight difficulty she had noticed before, "and—I know now that after all, and in spite of all, I have loved only her. Felicite, ma vieille, tu m'entends?"

He laid the roses on the pillow near her little peaceful face, and then sat down again.

"My wife is—dead," he added.

THE END.