Lady Constance unfolded her hands. Her timid, engagingly vague gaze dwelt appealingly upon Richard's handsome face.

"I think, perhaps, if you do not mind, I will go now," she said. "I must bid Lady Calmady good-bye. We dine at Lady Combmartin's to-night. You dine there too, don't you? And my sister Louisa may want me to drive with her, or write some notes, before I dress."

"Wait half a minute," Dickie said. "I've got something for you. Let's see—— Oh! there it is!"

Raising himself he stood, for a moment, on the seat of the chair, steadying himself with one hand on the back of it, and reached a little, silver-paper covered parcel from the neighbouring table. Then he slipped back into a sitting position, drew the silken blanket up across his thighs, and tossed the little parcel gently into Lady Constance Quayle's lap.

"I as near as possible let you go without it," he said. "Not that it's anything very wonderful. It's nothing—only I saw it in a shop in Bond Street yesterday, and it struck me as rather quaint. I thought you might like it. Why—but—Constance, what's the matter?"

For the girl's pretty, heart-shaped face had blanched to the whiteness of her white dress. Her eyes were strained, as those of one who beholds an object of terror. Not only her chin but her round, baby mouth quivered. Richard looked at her, amazed at these evidences of distressing emotion. Then suddenly he understood.

"I frighten you. How horrible!" he said.

But little Lady Constance had not suffered persistent training at the hands of nurses, and governesses, and elder sisters, during all her eighteen years of innocent living for nothing. She had her own small code of manners and morals, of honour and duty, and to the requirements of that code, as she apprehended them, she yielded unqualified obedience, not unheroic in its own meagre and rather puzzle-headed fashion. So that now, notwithstanding quivering lips, she retained her intention of civility and entered immediate apology for her own weakness.

"No, no, indeed you do not," she replied. "Please forgive me. I know I was very foolish. I am so sorry. You are so kind to me, you are always giving me beautiful presents, and indeed I am not ungrateful. Only I had never seen—seen—you like that before. And, please forgive me—I will never be foolish again—indeed, I will not. But I was taken by surprise. I beg your pardon. I shall be so dreadfully unhappy if you do not forgive me."

And all the while her trembling hands fumbled helplessly with the narrow ribbon tying the dainty parcel, and big tears rolled down slowly out of her great, soft, wide-set, heifer's eyes. Never was there more moving or guileless a spectacle! Witnessing which, Richard Calmady was taken somewhat out of himself, his personal misfortune seeming matter inconsiderable, while his childlike fiancee had never appeared more engaging. All the sweetest of his nature responded to her artless appeal in very tender pity.

"Why, my dear Constance," he said, "there's nothing to forgive. I was foolish, not you. I ought to have known better. Never mind. I don't. Only wipe your pretty eyes, please. Yes—that's better. Now let me break that tiresome ribbon for you."

"You are very kind to me," the girl murmured. Then, as the ribbon broke under Richard's strong fingers, and the delicate necklace of many, roughly-cut, precious stones—topaz, amethyst, sapphire, ruby, chrysolite, and beryl joined together, three rows deep, by slender, golden chains—slipped from the enclosing paper wrapping into her open hands, Constance Quayle added, rather tearfully:—"Oh! you are much too kind! You give me too many things. No one I know ever had such beautiful presents. The cobs you told me of, and now this, and the pearls, and the tiara you gave me last week. I—I don't deserve it. You give me too much, and I give nothing in return."

"Oh yes, you do!" Richard said, flushing. "You—you give me yourself."

Lady Constance's tears ceased. Again she stared at him in gentle perplexity.

"You promise to marry me——"

"Yes, of course, I have promised that," she said slowly.

"And isn't that about the greatest giving there can be? A few horses, and jewels, and such rubbish of sorts, weigh pretty light in the balance against that—I being I"—Richard paused a moment—"and you—you."

But a certain ardour which had come into his speech, for all that he sat very still, and that his expression was wholly gentle and indulgent, and that she felt a comfortable assurance that he was not angry with her, rather troubled little Lady Constance Quayle. She rose to her feet, and stood before him again, as a child about to recite a lesson.

"I think," she said, "I must go. Louisa may want me. Thank you so much. The necklace is quite lovely. I never saw one like it. I like so many colours. They remind me of flowers, or of the colours at sunset in the sky. I shall like to wear this very much. You—you will forgive me for having been foolish—or if I have bored you?"

Her bosom rose and fell, and the words came breathlessly.

"I shall see you at Lady Combmartin's? So—so now I will go."

And with that she departed, leaving Richard more in love with her, somehow, than he had ever been before or had ever thought to be.



CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH HONORIA ST. QUENTIN TAKES THE FIELD

It had been agreed that the marriage should take place, in the country, one day in the first week of August. This at Richard's request. Then the young man asked a further favour, namely, that the ceremony might be performed in the private chapel at Brockhurst, rather than in the Whitney parish church. This last proposal, it must be owned, when made to him by Lady Calmady, caused Lord Fallowfeild great searchings of heart.

"I give you my word, my dear boy, I never felt more awkward in my life," he said, subsequently, to his chosen confidant, Shotover. "Can quite understand Calmady doesn't care to court publicity. Told his mother I quite understood. Shouldn't care to court it myself if I had the misfortune to share his—well, personal peculiarities, don't you know, poor young fellow. Still this seems to me an uncomfortable, hole and corner sort of way of behaving to one's daughter—marrying her at his house instead of from my own. I don't half approve of it. Looks a little as if we were rather ashamed of the whole business."

"Well, perhaps we are," Lord Shotover remarked.

"For God's sake, then, don't mention it!" the elder man broke out, with unprecedented asperity. "Don't approve of strong language," he added hastily. "Never did approve of it, and very rarely employ it myself. An educated man ought to be able to express himself quite sufficiently clearly without having recourse to it. Still, I must own this engagement of Constance's has upset me more than almost any event of my life. Nasty, anxious work marrying your daughters. Heavy responsibility marrying your daughters. And, as to this particular marriage, there's so very much to be said on both sides. And I admit to you, Shotover, if there's anything I hate it's a case where there's very much to be said on both sides. It trips you up, you see, at every turn. Then I feel I was not fairly treated. I don't wish to be hard on your brother Ludovic and your sisters, but they sprung it upon me, and I am not quick in argument, never was quick, if I am hurried. Never can be certain of my own mind when I am hurried—was not certain of it when Lady Calmady proposed that the marriage should be at Brockhurst. And so I gave way. Must be accommodating to a woman, you know. Always have been accommodating to women—got myself into uncommonly tight places by being so more than once when I was younger——"

Here the speaker cheered up visibly, contemplating his favourite son with an air at once humorous and contrite.

"You're well out of it, you know, Shotover, with no ties," he continued, "at least, I mean, with no wife and family. Not that I don't consider every man owning property should marry sooner or later. More respectable if you've got property to marry, roots you in the soil, gives you a stake, you know, in the future of the country. But I'd let it be later—yes, thinking of marriageable daughters, certainly I'd let it be later."

From which it may be gathered that Richard's demands were conceded at all points. And this last concession involved many preparations at Brockhurst, to effect which Lady Calmady left London with the bulk of the household about the middle of July, while Richard remained in Lowndes Square and the neighbourhood of his little fiancee—in company with a few servants and many brown holland covers—till such time as that young lady should also depart to the country. It was just now that Lady Louisa Barking gave her annual ball, always one of the latest, and this year one of the smartest, festivities of the season.

"I mean it to be exceedingly well done," she said to her sister Alicia. "And Mr. Barking entirely agrees with me. I feel I owe it not only to myself, but to the rest of the family to show that none of us see anything extraordinary in Connie's marriage, and that whatever Shotover's debts may have been, or may be, they are really no concern at all of ours."

In obedience to which laudable determination the handsome mansion in Albert Gate opened wide its portals, and all London—a far from despicable company in numbers, since Parliament was still sitting and the session promised to be rather indefinitely prolonged—crowded its fine stairways and suites of lofty rooms, resplendent in silks and satins, jewels and laces, in orders and titles, and manifold personal distinctions of wealth, or office, or beauty, while strains of music and scent of flowers pervaded the length and breadth of it, and the feet of the dancers sped over its shining floors.

It chanced that Honoria St. Quentin found herself, on this occasion, in a meditative, rather than an active, mood. True, the scene was remarkably brilliant. But she had witnessed too many parallel scenes to be very much affected by that. So it pleased her fancy to moralise, to discriminate—not without a delicate sarcasm—between actualities and appearances, between the sentiments which might be divined really to animate many of the guests, and those conventional presentments of sentiment which the manner and bearing of the said guests indicated. She assured Lord Shotover she would rather not dance, that she preferred the attitude of spectator, whereupon that gentleman proposed to her to take sanctuary in a certain ante-chamber, opening off Lady Louisa Barking's boudoir, which was cool, dimly lighted, and agreeably remote from the turmoil of the entertainment now at its height.

The acquaintance of these two persons was, in as far as time and the number of their meetings went, but slight, and, at first sight, their tastes and temperaments would seem wide asunder as the poles. But contrast can form a strong bond of union. And the young man, when his fancy was engaged, was among those who do not waste time over preliminaries. If pleased, he bundled, neck and crop, into intimacy. And Miss St. Quentin, her fearless speech, her amusingly detached attitude of mind, and her gallant bearing, pleased him mightily from a certain point of view. He pronounced her to be a "first-rate sort," and entertained a shrewd suspicion that, as he put it, Ludovic "was after her." He commended his brother's good taste. He considered she would make a tip-top sister-in-law. While the young lady, on her part, accepted his advances in a friendly spirit. His fraternal attitude and unfailing good-temper diverted her. His rather doubtful reputation piqued her curiosity. She accepted the general verdict, declaring him to be good-for-nothing, while she enjoyed the conviction that, rake or no rake, he was incapable of causing her the smallest annoyance, or being guilty,—as far as she herself was concerned,—of the smallest indiscretion.

"You know, Miss St. Quentin," he remarked, as he established himself comfortably, not to say cosily, on a sofa beside her,—"over and above the pleasure of a peaceful little talk with you, I am not altogether sorry to seek retirement. You see, between ourselves, I'm not, unfortunately, in exactly good odour with some members of the family just now. I don't think I'm shy——"

Honoria smiled at him through the dimness.

"I don't think you're shy," she said.

"Well, you know, when you come to consider it from an unprejudiced standpoint, what the dickens is the use of being shy? It's only an inverted kind of conceit at best, and half the time it makes you stand in your own light."

"Clearly it's a mistake every way," the young lady asserted. "And, happily, it's one of which I can entirely acquit you of being guilty."

Lord Shotover threw back his head and looked sideways at his companion.—Wonderfully, graceful woman she was certainly! Gave you the feeling she'd all the time there was or ever would be. Delightful thing to see a woman who was never in a hurry.

"No, honestly I don't believe I'm weak in the way of shyness," he continued. "If I had been, I shouldn't be here to-night. My sister Louisa didn't press me to come. Strange as it may appear to you, Miss St. Quentin, I give you my word she didn't. Nor has she regarded me with an exactly favourable eye since my arrival. I am not abashed, not a bit. But I can't disguise from myself that again I have gone, and been, and jolly well put my foot in it."

He whistled very softly under his breath.—"Oh! I have, I promise you, even on the most modest computation, very extensively and comprehensively put my foot in it!"

"How?" inquired Honoria.

Lord Shotover's confidences invariably amused her, and just now she welcomed amusement. For crossing her hostess' boudoir she had momentarily caught sight of that which changed the speculative sarcasm of her meditations to something approaching pain—namely, a pretty, wide-eyed, childish face rising from out a cloud of white tulle, white roses, and diamonds, the expression of which had seemed to her distressingly remote from all the surrounding gaiety and splendour. Actualities and appearances here were surely radically at variance? And, now, she smilingly turned on her elbow and made brief inquiry of her companion, promising herself good measure of superficial entertainment which should serve to banish that pathetic countenance, and allay her suspicion of a sorrowful happening which she was powerless alike to hinder or to help.

Lord Shotover pushed his hands into his trousers pockets, leaned far back on the sofa, turning his head so that he could look at her comfortably without exertion and chuckling, a little, as he spoke.

"Well, you see," he said, "I brought Decies. No, you're right, I'm not shy, for to do that was a bit of the most barefaced cheek. My sister Louisa hadn't asked him. Of course she hadn't. At bottom she's awfully afraid he may still upset the apple-cart. But I told her I knew, of course, she had intended to ask him, and that the letter must have got lost somehow in the post, and that I knew how glad she'd be to have me rectify the little mistake. My manner was not jaunty, Miss St. Quentin, or defiant—not a bit of it. It was frank, manly, I should call it manly and pleasing. But Louisa didn't seem to see it that way somehow. She withered me, she scorched me, reduced me to a cinder, though she never uttered one blessed syllable. The hottest corner of the infernal regions resided in my sister's eye at that moment, and I resided in that hottest corner, I tell you. Of course I knew I risked losing the last rag of her regard when I brought Decies. But you see, poor chap, it is awfully rough on him. He was making the running all through the winter. I could not help, feeling for him, so I chucked discretion——"

"For the first and only time in your life," put in Honoria gently. "And pray who and what is this disturber of domestic peace, Decies?"

"Oh! you know the whole affair grows out of this engagement of my little sister Connie's. By the way, though, the Calmadys are great friends of yours, aren't they, Miss St. Quentin?"

The young man regarded her anxiously, fearful least he should have endangered the agreeable intimacy of their present relation by the introduction of an unpalatable subject of conversation. Even in this semi-obscurity he perceived that her fine smile had vanished, while the lines of her sensitive face took on a certain rigidity and effect of sternness. Lord Shotover regretted that. For some reason, he knew not what, she was displeased. He, like an ass, evidently had blundered.

"I'm awfully sorry," he began, "perhaps—perhaps——"

"Perhaps it is very impertinent for a mere looker-on like myself to have any views at all about this marriage," Honoria put in quickly.

"Bless you, no, it's not," he answered. "I don't see how anybody can very well be off having views about it—that's just the nuisance. The whole thing shouts, confound it. So you might just as well let me hear your views, Miss St. Quentin. I should be awfully interested. They might help to straighten my own out a bit."

Honoria paused a moment, doubting how much of her thought it would be justifiable to confide to her companion. A certain vein of knight-errantry in her character inclined her to set lance in rest and ride forth, rather recklessly, to redress human wrongs. But in redressing one wrong it too often happens that another wrong—or something perilously approaching one—must be inflicted. To save pain in one direction is, unhappily, to inflict pain in the opposite one. Honoria was aware how warmly Lady Calmady desired this marriage. She loved Lady Calmady. Therefore her loyalty was engaged, and yet——

"I am no match-maker," she said at last, "and so probably my view is unnecessarily pessimistic. But I happened to see Lady Constance just now, and I cannot pretend that she struck me as looking conspicuously happy."

Lord Shotover flattened his shoulders against the back of the sofa, expanding his chest and thrusting his hands still farther into his pockets with a movement at once of anxiety and satisfaction.

"I don't believe she is," he asserted. "Upon my word you're right. I don't believe she is. I doubted it from the first, and now I'm pretty certain. Of course I know I'm a bad lot, Miss St. Quentin. I've been very little but a confounded nuisance to my people ever since I was born. They're all ten thousand times better than I am, and they're doing what they honestly think right. All the same I believe they're making a ghastly mistake. They're selling the poor, little girl against her will, that's about the long and short of it."

He bowed himself together, looking at his companion from under his eyebrows, and speaking with more seriousness than she had ever heard him yet speak.

"I tell you it makes me a little sick sometimes to see what excellent, well-meaning people will do with girls in respect of marriage. Oh, good Lord! it just does! But then a high moral tone doesn't come quite gracefully from me. I know that. I'm jolly well out of it. It's not for me to preach. And so I thought for once I'd act—defy authority, risk landing myself in a worse mess than ever, and give Decies his chance. And I tell you he really is a charming chap, a gentleman, you know, and a nice, clean-minded, decent fellow—not like me, not a bit. He's awfully hard hit too, and would be as steady as old time for poor little Con's sake if——"

"Ah! now I begin to comprehend," Honoria said.

"Yes, don't you see, it's a perfectly genuine, for-ever-and-ever-amen sort of business."

Lord Shotover leaned back once more, and turned a wonderfully pleasant, if not preeminently responsible, countenance upon his companion.

"I never went in for that kind of racket myself, Miss St. Quentin," he continued. "Not being conspicuously faithful, I should only have made a fiasco of it. But I give you my word it touches me all the same when I do run across it. I think it's awfully lucky for a man to be made that way. And Decies is. So there seemed no help for it. I had to chuck discretion, as I told you, and give him his chance."

He paused, and then asked with a somewhat humorous air of self-depreciation:—"What do you think now, have I done more harm than good, made confusion worse confounded, and played the fool generally?"

But again Honoria vouchsafed him no immediate reply. The meditative mood still held her, and the present conversation offered much food for meditation. Her companion's confession of faith in true love, if you had the good fortune to be born that way, had startled her. That the speaker enjoyed the reputation of being something of a profligate lent singular point to that confession. She had not expected it from Lord Shotover, of all men. And, as coming from him, the sentiment was in a high degree arresting and interesting. Her own ideals, so far, had a decidedly anti-matrimonial tendency, while being in love appeared to her a much overrated, if not actively objectionable, condition. Personally she hoped to escape all experience of it. Then her thought traveled back to Lady Calmady,—the charm of her personality, her sorrows, her splendid self-devotion, and to the object of that devotion—namely, Richard Calmady, a being of strange contrasts, at once maimed and beautiful, a being from whom she—Honoria—shrank in instinctive repulsion, while unwillingly acknowledging that he exercised a permanent and intimate fascination over her imagination. She dwelt, in quick pity, too, upon the frightened, wide-eyed, childish face recently seen rising from out its diaphanous cloud of tulle, the prettiness of it heightened by fair wealth of summer roses and flash of costly diamonds, and upon Mr. Decies, the whole-hearted, young soldier lover, whose existence threatened such dangerous complications in respect of the rest of this strangely assorted company. Finally her meditative survey returned to its point of departure. In thought she surveyed her present companion,—his undeniable excellence of sentiment and clear-seeing, his admittedly defective conduct in matters ethical and financial. Never before had she been at such close quarters with living and immediate human drama, and, notwithstanding her detachment, her lofty indifference and high-spirited theories, she found it profoundly agitating. She was sensible of being in collision with unknown and incalculable forces. Instinctively she rose from her place on the sofa, and, moving to the open window, looked out into the night.

Below, the Park, now silent and deserted, slept peacefully, as any expanse of remote country pasture and woodland, in the mildly radiant moonlight. Here and there were blottings of dark shadow cast by the clumps or avenues of trees. Here and there the timid, yellow flame of gas lamps struggled to assert itself against the all-embracing silver brightness. Here and there windows glowed warm, set in the pale, glistering facades of the adjacent houses. A cool, light wind, hailing from the direction of the unseen Serpentine, stirred the hanging clusters of the pink geraniums that fell over the curved lip of the stone vases, standing along the broad coping of the balcony, and gently caressed the girl's bare arms and shoulders.

Seen under these unaccustomed conditions familiar objects assumed a fantastic aspect. For the night is a mighty magician, with power to render even the weighty brick and stone, even the hard, uncomprising outlines of a monster, modern city, delicately elusive, mockingly tentative and unsubstantial. Meanwhile, within, from all along the vista of crowded and brilliantly illuminated rooms, came the subdued, yet confused and insistent, sound of musical instruments, of many voices, many footsteps, the hush of women's trailing garments, the rise and fall of unceasing conversation. And to Honoria standing in this quiet, dimly-seen place, the sense of that moonlit world without, and this gas and candle-lit world within, increased the nameless agitation which infected her. A haunting persuasion of the phantasmagoric character of all sounds that saluted her ears, all sights that met her eyes, possessed her. A vast uncertainty surrounded and pressed in on her, while those questionings of appearances and actualities, of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, justice and injustice, with which she had played idly earlier in the evening, took on new and almost terrible proportions, causing her intelligence, nay, her heart itself, to reach out, as never before, in search of some sure rock and house of defense against the disintegrating apprehension of universal instability and illusion.

"Ah! it is all very difficult, difficult to the point of alarm!" she exclaimed suddenly, turning to Lord Shotover and looking him straight in the face, with an unself-consciousness and desire of support so transparent, that that gentleman found himself at once delighted and slightly abashed.

"Bless my soul, but Ludovic is a lucky devil!" he said to himself.—"What's—what's so beastly difficult, Miss St. Quentin?" he asked aloud. And the sound of his cheery voice recalled Honoria to the normal aspects of existence with almost humorous velocity. She smiled upon him.

"I really believe I don't quite know," she said. "Perhaps that the two people, of whom we were speaking, really care for each other, and that this engagement has come between them, and that you have chucked discretion and given him his chance. Tell me, what sort of man is he—strong enough to make the most of his chance when he's got it?"

But at that moment Lord Shotover stepped forward, adroitly planting himself right in front of her and thus screening her from observation.

"By George!" he said under his breath, in tones of mingled amusement and consternation, "he's making the most of his chance now Miss St. Quentin, and that most uncommonly comprehensively, unless I'm very much mistaken."

Her companion's tall person and the folds of a heavy curtain, while screening Honoria from observation, also, in great measure, obscured her view of the room. Yet not so completely but that she saw two figures cross it, one black, one white, those of a man and a girl. They were both speaking, the man apparently pleading, the girl protesting and moving hurriedly, the while, as though in actual flight. She must have been moving blindly, at random, for she stumbled against the outstanding, gilded leg of a consol table, set against the further wall, causing the ornaments on it to rattle. And so doing, she gave a plaintive exclamation of alarm, perhaps even of physical pain. Hearing which, that nameless agitation, that sense of collision with unknown and incalculable forces, seized hold on Honoria again, while Lord Shotover's features contracted and he turned his head sharply.

"By George!" he repeated under his breath.

But the girl recovered herself, and, followed by her companion,—he still pleading, she still protesting,—passed by the further window on to the balcony and out of sight. There followed a period of embarrassed silence on the part of the usually voluble Shotover, while his pleasant countenance expressed a certain half-humorous concern.

"Really, I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I'd not the slightest intention of landing you in for the thick of the brown like this.".

"Or yourself either," she replied, smiling, though, with that sense of nameless agitation still upon her, her heart beat rather quick.

"Well, perhaps not. Between ourselves, moral courage isn't my strong point. There's nothing I funk like a row. I say, what shall we do? Don't you think we'd better quietly clear out?"

But just then a sound caught Honoria's ear before which all vague questions of ultimate truth and falsehood, right and wrong fled away. Whatever might savour of illusion, here was something real and actual, something pitiful, moreover, arousing the spirit of knight-errantry in her, pushing her to lay lance in rest and go forth, reckless of conventionalities, reckless even of considerations of justice, to the succour of oppressed womanhood. What words the man, on the balcony without, was saying she could not distinguish—whether cruel or kind, but that the young girl was weeping, with the abandonment of long-resisted tears, she could not doubt.

"No, no, listen Lord Shotover," she exclaimed authoritatively. "Don't you hear? She is crying as if her poor heart would break. You must stay. If I understand you rightly your sister has only got you to depend on. Whatever happens you must stand by her and see her through."

"Oh! but, my dear Miss St. Quentin——" The young man's aspect was entertaining. He looked at the floor, he looked at Honoria, he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as though there might be placed the seat of fortitude. "You're inviting me to put my head into the liveliest hornet's nest. What the deuce—excuse me—am I to say to her and all the rest of them? Decies, even, mayn't quite understand my interference and may resent it. I think it is very much safer, all round, to let them—him and her—thrash it out between them, don't you know. I say though, what a beastly thing it is to hear a woman cry! I wish to goodness we'd never come into this confounded place and let ourselves in for it."

As he spoke, Lord Shotover turned towards the door, meditating escape in the direction of that brilliant vista of crowded rooms. But Honoria St. Quentin, her enthusiasm once aroused, became inexorable. With her long swinging stride she outdistanced his hesitating steps, and stood, in the doorway, her arms extended—as to stop a runaway horse—her clear eyes aglow as though a lamp burned behind them, her pale, delicately cut face eloquent of very militant charity. A spice of contempt, moreover, for his display of pusillanimity was quite perceptible to Shotover in the expression of this charming, modern angel, clad in a ball-dress, bearing a fan instead of the traditional fiery-sword, who, so determinedly, barred the entrance of that comfortably conventional, worldly paradise to which he, just now, so warmly desired to regain admittance.

"No, no," she said, with a certain vibration in her quiet voice, "you are not to go! You are not to desert her. It would be unworthy, Lord Shotover. You brought Mr. Decies here and so you are mainly responsible for the present situation. And think, just think what it means. All the course of her life will be affected by that which takes place in the next half-hour. You would never cease to reproach yourself if things went wrong."

"Shouldn't I?" the young man said dubiously.

"Of course you wouldn't," Honoria asserted. "Having it in your power to help, and then shirking the responsibility! I won't believe that of you. You are better than that. For think how young she is, and pretty and dependent. She may be driven to do some fatally, foolish thing if she's left unsupported. You must at least know what is going on. You are bound to do so. Moreover, as a mere matter of courtesy, you can't desert me and I intend to stay."

"Do you, though?" faltered Lord Shotover, in tones curiously resembling his father's.

Honoria drew herself up proudly, almost scornfully.

"Yes, I shall stay," she continued. "I am no matchmaker. I have no particular faith in or admiration for marriage——"

"Haven't you, though?" said Lord Shotover. He was slightly surprised, slightly amused, but to his credit be it stated that he put no equivocal construction upon the young lady's frank avowal. He felt a little sorry for Ludovic, that was all, fearing the latter's good fortune was less fully established than he had supposed.

"No, I don't believe very much in marriage—modern, upper-class marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a—a—loveless marriage is the disgrace. And so at the very church door I would urge and encourage a woman to turn back, if she doubted, and have done with the whole thing."

"Upon my word!" murmured Lord Shotover.—The infinite variety of the feminine outlook, the unqualified audacity of feminine action, struck him as bewildering. Talk of women's want of logic! It was their relentless application of logic—as they apprehended it—which staggered him.

Honoria had come close to him. In her excitement she laid her fan on his arm.

"Listen," she said, "listen how Lady Constance is crying. Come—you must know what is happening. You must comfort her."

The young man thrust his hands into his pockets with an air of good-humoured and despairing resignation.

"All right," he replied, "only I tell you what it is, Miss St. Quentin, you've got to come too. I refuse to be deserted."

"I have not the smallest intention of deserting you," Honoria said. "Even yet discretion, though so lately chucked, might return to you. And then you might cut and run, don't you know."



CHAPTER VII

RECORDING THE ASTONISHING VALOUR DISPLAYED BY A CERTAIN SMALL MOUSE IN A CORNER

As Honoria St. Quentin and the reluctant Shotover stepped, side by side, from the warmth and dimness obtaining in the anteroom, into the pleasant coolness of the moonlit balcony, Lady Constance Quayle, altogether forgetful of her usual careful civility and pretty correctness of demeanour, uttered an inarticulate cry—a cry, indeed, hardly human in its abandon and unreasoning anguish, resembling rather the shriek of the doubling hare as the pursuing greyhound nips it across the loins. Regardless of all her dainty finery of tulle, and roses, and flashing diamonds, she flung herself forward, face downwards, across the coping of the balustrade, her bare arms outstretched, her hands clasped above her head. Mr. Decies, blue-eyed, black-haired, smooth of skin, looking noticeably long and lithe in his close-fitting, dress clothes, made a rapid movement as though to lay hold on her and bear her bodily away. Then, recognising the futility of any such attempt, he turned upon the intruders, his high-spirited Celtic face drawn with emotion, his attitude rather dangerously warlike.

"What do you want?" he demanded hotly.

"My dear good fellow," Lord Shotover began, with the most assuaging air of apology. "I assure you the very last thing I—we—I mean I—want is to be a nuisance. Only Miss St. Quentin thought—in fact, Decies, don't you see—dash it all, you know, there seemed to be some sort of worry going on out here and so——"

But Honoria did not wait for the conclusion of elaborate explanations, for that cry and the unrestraint of the girl's attitude not only roused, but shocked her. It was not fitting that any man, however kindly or even devoted, should behold this well-bred, modest and gentle, young maiden in her present extremity. So she swept past Mr. Decies and bent over Lady Constance Quayle, raised her, strove to soothe her agitation, speaking in tones of somewhat indignant tenderness.

But, though deriving a measure of comfort from the steady arm about her waist, from the strong, protective presence, from the rather stern beauty of the face looking down into hers, Lady Constance could not master her agitation. The train had left the metals, so to speak, and the result was confusion dire. A great shame held her, a dislocation of mind. She suffered that loneliness of soul which forms so integral a part of the misery of all apparently irretrievable disaster, whether moral or physical, and places the victim of it, in imagination at all events, rather terribly beyond the pale.

"Oh!" she sobbed, "you ought not to be so kind to me. I am very wicked. I never supposed I could be so wicked. What shall I do? I am so frightened at myself and at everything. I did not recognise you. I didn't see it was only Shotover."

"Well, but now you do see, my dear Con, it's only me," that gentleman remarked, with a cheerful disregard of grammar. "And so you mustn't upset yourself any more. It's awfully bad for you, and uncomfortable for everybody else, don't you know. You must try to pull yourself together a bit and we'll help you—of course, I'll help you. We'll all help you, of course we will, and pull you through somehow."

But the girl only lamented herself the more piteously.

"Oh no, Shotover, you must not be so kind to me! You couldn't if you knew how wicked I have been."

"Couldn't I?" Lord Shotover remarked, not without a touch of humorous pathos. "Poor little Con!"

"Only, only please do not tell Louisa. It would be too dreadful if she knew—she, and Alicia, and the others. Don't tell her, and I will be good. I will be quite good, indeed I will."

"Bless me, my dear child, I won't tell anybody anything. To begin with I don't know anything to tell."

The girl's voice had sunk away into a sob. She shuddered, letting her pretty, brown head fall back against Honoria St. Quentin's bare shoulder,—while the moonlight glinted on her jewels and the night wind swayed the hanging clusters of the pink geraniums. Along with the warmth and scent of flowers, streaming outward through the open windows, came a confused sound of many voices, of discreet laughter, mingled with the wailing sweetness of violins. Then the pleading, broken, childish voice took up its tale again:—

"I will be good. I know I have promised, and I have let him give me a number of beautiful things. He has been very kind to me, because he is clever, and of course I am stupid. But he has never been impatient with me. And I am not ungrateful, indeed, Shotover, I am not. It was only for a minute I was wicked enough to think of doing it. But Mr. Decies told me he—asked me—and—and we were so happy at Whitney in the winter. And it seemed too hard to give it all up, as he said it was true. But I will be good, indeed I will. Really it was only for a minute I thought of it. I know I have promised. Indeed, I will make no fuss. I will be good. I will marry Richard Calmady."

"But this is simply intolerable!" Honoria said in a low voice.

She held herself tall and straight, looking gallant yet pure, austere even, as some pictured Jeanne d'Arc, a great singleness of purpose, a high courage of protest, an effect at once of fearless challenge and of command in her bearing.—"Is it not a scandal," she went on, "that in a civilised country, at this time of day, woman should be allowed, actually forced, to suffer so much? You must not permit this martyrdom to be completed—you can't!"

As she spoke Decies watched her keenly. Who this stately, young lady—so remarkably unlike the majority of Lord Shotover's intimate, feminine acquaintance—might be, he did not know. But he discerned in her an ally and a powerful one.

"Yes," he said impulsively, "you are right. It is a martyrdom and a scandalous one. It's worse than murder, it's sacrilege. It's not like any ordinary marriage. I don't want to be brutal, but it isn't. There's something repulsive in it, something unnatural."

The young man looked at Honoria, and read in her expression a certain agreement and encouragement.

"You know it, Shotover—you know it just as well as I do. And that justified me in attempting what I suppose I would not otherwise have felt it honourable to attempt.—Look here, Shotover, I will tell you what has just happened. I would have had to tell you to-morrow, in any case, if we had carried the plan out. But I suppose I have no alternative but to tell you now, since you've come."

He ranged himself in line with Miss St. Quentin, his back against one of the big stone vases. He struggled honestly to keep both temper and emotion under control, but a rather volcanic energy was perceptible in him.

"I love Lady Constance," he said. "I have told her so, and—and she cares for me. I am not a Croesus like Calmady. But I am not a pauper. I have enough to keep a wife in a manner suitable to her position, and my own. When my Uncle Ulick Decies dies—which I hope he'll not hurry to do, since I am very fond of him—there'll be the Somersetshire property in addition to my own dear, old place in County Cork. And your sister simply hates this marriage——"

"Lord bless me, my dear fellow, so do I!" Lord Shotover put in with evident sincerity.

"And so, when at last I had spoken freely, I asked her to——"

But the young girl cowered down, hiding her face in Honoria St. Quentin's bosom.

"Oh! don't say it again—don't say it," she implored. "It was wicked of me to listen to you even for a minute. I ought to have stopped you at once and sent you away. It was very wrong of me to listen, and talk to you, and tell you all that I did. But everything is so strange, and I have been so miserable. I never supposed anybody could ever be so miserable. And I knew it was ungrateful of me, and so I dared not tell anybody. I would have told papa, but Louisa never let me be alone with him. She said papa indulged me, and made me selfish and fanciful, and so I have never seen him for more than a little while. And I have been so frightened."—She raised her head, gazing wide-eyed first at Miss St. Quentin and then at her brother. "I have thought such dreadful things. I must be very bad. I wanted to run away. I wanted to die——"

"There, you hear, you hear," Decies cried hoarsely, spreading abroad his hands, in sudden violence of appeal to Honoria. "For God's sake help us! I am not aware whether you are a relation, or a friend, or what. But I am convinced you can help, if only you choose to do so. And I tell you she is just killing herself over this accursed marriage. Some one's got at her and talked her into some wild notion of doing her duty, and marrying money for the sake of her family."

"Oh! I say, damn it all," Lord Shotover exclaimed, smitten with genuine remorse.

"And so she believes she's committing the seven deadly sins, and I don't know what besides, because she rebels against this marriage and is unhappy. Tell her it's absurd, it's horrible, that she should do what she loathes and detests. Tell her this talk about duty is a blind, and a fiction. Tell her she isn't wicked. Why, God in heaven, if we were none of us more wicked than she is, this poor old world would be so clean a place that the holy angels might walk barefoot along the Piccadilly pavement there, outside, without risking to soil so much as the hem of their garments! Make her understand that the only sin for her is to do violence to her nature by marrying a man she's afraid of, and for whom she does not care. I don't want to play a low game on Sir Richard Calmady and steal that which belongs to him. But she doesn't belong to him—she is mine, just my own. I knew that from the first day I came to Whitney, and looked her in the face, Shotover. And she knows it too, only she's been terrorised with all this devil's talk of duty."

So far the words had poured forth volubly, as in a torrent. Now the speaker's voice dropped, and they came slowly, defiantly, yet without hesitation.

"And so I asked her to go away with me, now, to-night, and marry me to-morrow. I can make her happy—oh, no fear about that! And she would have consented and gone. We'd have been away by now—if you and this lady had not come just when you did, Shotover."

The gentleman addressed whistled very softly.

"Would you, though?" he said, adding meditatively:—"By George now, who'd have thought of Connie going the pace like that!"

"Oh, Shotover, never tell, promise me you will never tell them!" the poor child cried again. "I know it was wicked, but——"

"No, no, you are mistaken there," Honoria put in, holding her still closer. "You were tempted to take a rather desperate way out of your difficulties. It would have been unwise, but there was nothing wicked in it. The wrong thing is—as Mr. Decies tells you—to marry without love, and so make all your life a lie, by pretending to give Richard Calmady that which you do not, and cannot, give him."

Then the young soldier broke in resolutely again.

"I tell you I asked her to go away, and I ask her again now——"

"The deuce you do!" Lord Shotover exclaimed, his sense of amusement getting the better alike of astonishment and of personal regrets.

"Only now I ask you to sanction her going, Shotover. And I ask you"—he turned to Miss St. Quentin—"to come with her. I am not even sure of your name, but I know by all that you've said and done in the last half-hour, I can be very sure of you. And, I perceive, that if you come nobody will dare to say anything unpleasant—there'll be nothing, indeed, to be said."

Honoria smiled. The magnificent egoism of mankind in love struck her as distinctly diverting. Yet she had a very kindly feeling towards this black-haired, bright-eyed, energetic, young lover. He was in deadly earnest—to the removing even of mountains. And he had need to be so, for that mountains immediately blocked the road to his desires was evident even to her enthusiastic mind. She looked across compellingly at Lord Shotover. Let him speak first. She needed time, at this juncture, in which to arrange her ideas and to think.

"My dear good fellow," that gentleman began obediently, patting Decies on the shoulder, "I'm all on your side. I give you my word I am, and I've reason to believe my father will be so too. But you see, an elopement—specially in our sort of highly respectable, humdrum family—is rather a strong order. Upon my honour, it is, you know, Decies. And, even though kindly countenanced by Miss St. Quentin, and sanctioned by me, it would make a precious undesirable lot of talk. It really is a rather irregular fashion of conducting the business you see. And then—advice I always give others and only wish I could always remember to take myself—it's very much best to be off with the old love before you're on with the new."

"Yes, yes," Miss St. Quentin put in with quick decision. "Lord Shotover has laid his finger on the heart of the matter. It is just that.—Lady Constance's engagement to Richard Calmady must be cancelled before her engagement to you, Captain Decies, is announced. For her to go away with you would be to invite criticism, and put herself hopelessly in the wrong. She must not put herself in the wrong. Let me think! There must be some way by which we can avoid that."

An exultation, hitherto unexperienced by her, inspired Honoria St. Quentin. Her attitude was slightly unconventional. She sat on the stone balustrade, with long-limbed, lazy grace, holding the girl's hand, forgetful of herself, forgetful, in a degree, of appearances, concerned only with the problem of rescue presented to her. The young man's honest, wholehearted devotion, the young girl's struggle after duty and her piteous desolation, nay, the close contact of that soft, maidenly body that she had so lately held against her in closer, more intimate, contact than she had ever held anything human before, aroused a new class of sentiment, a new order of emotion, within her. She realised, for the first time, the magnetism, the penetrating and poetic splendour of human love. To witness the spectacle of it, to be thus in touch with it, excited her almost as sailing a boat in a heavy sea, or riding to hounds in a stiff country, excited her. And it followed that now, while she perched aloft boy-like on the balustrade, her delicate beauty took on a strange effulgence, a something spiritual, mysterious, elusive, and yet dazzling as the moonlight which bathed her charming figure. Seeing which, it must be owned that Lord Shotover's attitude towards her ceased to be strictly fraternal, while the attractions of ladies more fair and kind than wise paled very sensibly.

"I wish I hadn't been such a fool in my day, and run amuck with my chances," he thought.

But Miss St. Quentin was altogether innocent of his observation or any such thinkings. She looked up suddenly, her face irradiated by an exquisite smile.

"Yes, I have it," she cried. "I see the way clear."

"But I can't tell them," broke in Lady Constance.

Honoria's hand closed down on hers reassuringly.

"No," she said, "you shall not tell them. And Lord Shotover shall not tell them. Sir Richard Calmady shall tell Lord Fallowfeild that he wishes to be released from his engagement, as he believes both you and he will be happier apart. Only you must be brave, both for your own sake, and for Mr. Decies', and for Richard Calmady's sake, also.—Lady Constance," she went on, with a certain gentle authority, "do you want to go back to Whitney to-morrow, or next day, all this nightmare of an unhappy marriage done away with and gone? Well, then, you must come and see Sir Richard Calmady to-night, and, like an honourable woman, tell him the whole truth. It must be done at once, or your courage may fail. We will come with you—Lord Shotover and I——"

"Good Lord, will we though!" the young man ejaculated, while the girl's great, heifer's eyes grew strained with wonder at this astounding announcement.

"I know it will be rather terrible," Honoria continued calmly. "But it is a matter of a quarter of an hour, as against a lifetime, and of honour as against a lie. So it's worth while, don't you think so, when your whole future, and Mr. Decies'"—she pressed the soft hand again steadily—"is at stake? You must be brave now, and tell him the truth—just simply that you do not love him enough—that you have tried,—you have, I know you have done that,—but you have failed, that you love some one else, and that therefore you beg him, in mercy, before it is too late, to set you free."

Fascinated both by her appearance and by the simplicity of her trenchant solution of the difficulty, Lord Shotover stared at the speaker. Her faith was infectious. Yet it occurred to him that all women, good and bad, are at least alike in this—that their methods become radically unscrupulous when they find themselves in a tight place.

"It is a fine plan. It ought to work, for—cripple or not—poor Calmady's a gentleman," he said, slowly. "But doesn't it seem just a trifle rough, Miss St. Quentin, to ask him to be his own executioner?"

Honoria had slipped down from the balustrade, and stood erect in the moonlight.

"I think not," she replied. "The woman pays, as a rule. Lady Constance has paid already quite heavily enough, don't you think so? Now we will have the exception that proves the rule. The man shall pay whatever remains of the debt. But we must not waste time. It is not late yet, we shall still find him up, and my brougham is here. I told Lady Aldham I should be home fairly early. Get a cloak Lady Constance and meet us in the hall. I suppose you can go down by some back way so as to avoid meeting people. Lord Shotover, will you take me to say good-night to your sister, Lady Louisa?"

The young man fairly chuckled.

"And you, Mr. Decies, must stay and dance."—She smiled upon him very sweetly. "I promise you it will come through all right, for, as Lord Shotover says, whatever his misfortunes may be, Richard Calmady is a gentleman.—Ah! I hope you are going to be very happy. Good-bye."

Decies' black head went down over her hand, and he kissed it impulsively.

"Good-bye," he said, the words catching a little in his throat. "When the time comes, may you find the man to love you as you deserve—though I doubt if there's such a man living, or dead either, for that matter! God bless you."

Some half-hour later Honoria stood among the holland-shrouded furniture in Lady Calmady's sitting-room in Lowndes Square. The period of exalted feeling, of the conviction of successful attainment, was over, and her heart beat somewhat painfully. For she had had time, by now, to realise the surprising audacity of her own proceedings. Lord Shotover's parley with Richard Calmady's man-servant, on the door-step, had brought that home to her, placing what had seemed obvious, as a course of action to her fervid imagination, in quite a new light.—Sir Richard Calmady was at home? He was still up?—To that, yes. Would he see Lady Constance Quayle upon urgent business?—To that again, yes—after a rather lengthy delay, while the valet, inscrutable, yet evidently highly critical, made inquiries.—The trees in the square had whispered together uncomfortably, while the two young ladies waited in the carriage. And Lord Shotover's shadow, which had usually, very surely, nothing in the least portentous about it, lay queerly, three ways at once, in varying degrees of density, across the gray pavement in the conflicting gas and moonlight.

And now, as she stood among the shrouded furniture, which appeared oddly improbable in shape seen in the flickering of two hastily lighted candles, Honoria could hear Shotover walking back and forth, patiently, on that same gray pavement outside. She was overstrained by the emotions and events of the past hours. Small matters compelled her attention. The creaking of a board, the rustle of a curtain, the silence even of this large, but half-inhabited, house, were to her big with suggestion, disquietingly replete with possible meaning, of exaggerated importance to her anxiously listening ears.

Lord Shotover had stopped walking. He was talking to the coachman. Honoria entertained a conviction that, in the overflowing of his good nature, he talked—sooner or later—to every soul whom he met. And she derived almost childish comfort from the knowledge of the near neighbourhood of that eminently good-natured presence. Lord Shotover's very obvious faults faded from her remembrance. She estimated him only by his size, his physical strength, his large indulgence of all weaknesses—including his own. He constituted a link between her and things ordinary and average, for which she was rather absurdly thankful at this juncture. For the minutes passed slowly, very slowly. It must be getting on for half an hour since little Lady Constance, trembling and visibly affrighted, had passed out of sight, and the door of the smoking-room had closed behind her. The nameless agitation which possessed her earlier that same evening returned upon Honoria St. Quentin. But its character had suffered change. The questioning of the actual, the suspicion of universal illusion, had departed, and in its place she suffered alarm of the concrete, of the incalculable force of human passion, and of a manifestation of tragedy in some active and violent form. She did not define her own fears, but they surrounded her nevertheless, so that the slightest sound made her start.

For, indeed, how slowly the minutes did pass! Lord Shotover was walking again. The horse rattled its bit, and pawed the ground impatient of delay. Though lofty, the room appeared close and hot, with drawn blinds and shut windows. Honoria began to move about restlessly, threading her way between the pieces of shrouded furniture. A chalk drawing of Lady Calmady stood on an easel in the far corner. The portrait emphasised the sweetness and abiding pathos, rather than the strength, of the original, and Honoria, standing before it, put her hands over her eyes. For the pictured face seemed to plead with and reproach her. Then a swift fear took her of disloyalty, of hastiness, of self-confidence trenching on cruelty. She had announced, rather arrogantly, that whatever balance debt remained to be paid, in respect of Sir Richard and Lady Constance Quayle's proposed marriage, should be paid by the man. But would the man, in point of fact, pay it? Would it not, must it not, be paid, eventually, by this other noble and much enduring woman—whom she had called her friend, and towards whom she played the part, as she feared, of betrayer? In her hot espousal of Lady Constance's cause she had only saved one woman at the expense of another—Oh! how hot the room grew! Suffocating—Lord Shotover's steps died away in the distance. She could look Lady Calmady in the face no more. Secure in her own self-conceit and vanity, she had betrayed her friend.

Suddenly the sharp peal of a bell, the opening of a door, the dragging of silken skirts, and the hurrying of footsteps.—Honoria gathered up her somewhat scattered courage, and swung out into the hall. Lady Constance Quayle came towards her, groping, staggering, breathless, her head carried low, her face convulsed with weeping. But to this, for the moment, Miss St. Quentin paid small heed. For, at the far end of the hall, a bright light streamed out from the open doorway. And in the full glare of it stood a young man—his head, with its cap of close-cropped curls proudly distinguished as that of some classic hero, his features the beautiful features of Katherine Calmady, his height but two-thirds the height a man of his make should be, his face drawn and livid as that of a corpse, his arms hanging down straight at his sides, his hands only just not touching the marble quarries of the floor on either side of him.

Honoria uttered an exclamation of uncontrollable pity and horror, caught Constance Quayle by the arm, and hurried out into the moonlit square to the waiting carriage. Lord Shotover flung away the end of his cigar and strolled towards them.

"Got through, fixed it all right—eh, Connie? Bravo—that's grand!—Oh, you needn't tell me! I can imagine it's been a beastly piece of work, but anyway it's over now. You must go home and go to bed, and I'll account for you somehow to Louisa. My mind's becoming quite inventive to-night, I promise you.—There, get in—try to pull yourself together. Miss St. Quentin, upon my word, I don't know how to thank you. You've been magnificent, and put us under an everlasting obligation, Con and Decies, and my father and I.—Nice night, isn't it? You'll put us down in Albert Gate? All right. A thousand thanks.—Yes, I'll go on the box again. You haven't much room for my legs among all those flounces. Bless me, it occurs to me I'm getting confoundedly hungry. I shall be awfully glad of some supper."



CHAPTER VIII

A MANIFESTATION OF THE SPIRIT

Brockhurst House had slumbered all day long in the steady warmth of the July sun. The last three weeks had been rainless, so that the short turf of the uplands began to grow crisp and discoloured, while the resinous scent of the fir forest, at once stimulating and soothing, was carried afar out over the sloping corn-fields and low-lying pastures. Above the stretches of purple-budding heather and waste sandy places, upon the moors, the heat-haze danced and quivered as do vapours arising from a furnace. Along the underside of the great woods, and in the turn of the valleys, shadows lingered, which were less actual shadows than blottings of blue light. The birds, busy feeding wide-mouthed, hungry fledglings, had mostly ceased from song. But the drowsy hum of bees and chirrup of grasshoppers was continuous, and told, very pleasantly, of the sunshine and large plenty reigning out of doors.

For Katherine the day in question had passed in Martha-like occupations.—A day of organising, of ordering and countermanding, a day of much detail, much interviewing of heads of departments, a day of meeting respectful objections, enlightening thick understandings, gently reducing decorously opposing wills. Commissariat, transport, housing of guests, and the servants of guests—all these entered into the matter of the coming wedding. To compass the doing of all things, not only decently and in order, but handsomely, and with a becoming dignity, this required time and thought. And so, it was not until after dinner that Katherine found herself at leisure to cease taking thought for the morrow. Too tired to rest herself by reading, she wandered out on the troco-ground followed by Camp.

London had not altogether suited the bull-dog as the summer wore on. Now, in his old age, so considerable a change of surroundings put him about both in body and mind. Seeing which, Richard had begged his mother to take the dog with her on leaving town. Camp benefited, unquestionably, by his return to country air. His coat stared less. He carried his ears and tail with more sprightliness and conviction. Still he fretted after his absent master, and followed Katherine's footsteps very closely, his forehead more than ever wrinkled, and his unsightly mouth pensive notwithstanding its perpetual grin. He attended her now, squatting beside her when she paused, trotting slowly beside her when she moved, a silent, persistent, and, as it might seem, somewhat fatefully faithful companion.

Yet the occasion was to all appearances far from fateful, the night and the scene, alike, being very fair. The moon had not yet risen, but a brightness behind the sawlike edge of the fir woods eastward heralded its coming, while sufficient light yet remained in the western and northern sky for the mass of the house, its ruddy walls and ranges of mullioned windows, its pierced, stone parapet and stacks of slender, twisted chimneys, to be seen with a low-toned distinctness of form and colour infinitely charming. Soft and rich as velvet, it rose, with a certain noble serenity, above its terraces and fragrant, red-walled gardens, under the enormous dome of the tranquil, far-off, evening sky.

Every aspect of this place, in rain and shine, summer and winter, from dawn to dark and round to dawn again, was familiar to Katherine Calmady. Coming here first, as a bride, the homely splendour of the house, and the gladness of its situation crowning the ridge of hill, appealed strongly to her imagination. Later it sheltered her long sorrow, following so hard on the heels of her brief joy. But in both alike, during all the vicissitudes of her thought and of her career, the face of Brockhurst remained as that of a friend, kindly, beneficent, increasingly trusted and beloved. And so she had come to know every stick and stone of it, from spacious, vaulted cellar to equally spacious, low-roofed, sun-dried attic—the outlook from each window, the character of each room, the turn of each stairway, the ample proportions of each lobby and stairhead, all the pleasant scents, and sounds, and colours, that haunted it both within and without. It might have been supposed that after so many years of affectionate observation and commerce, Brockhurst could have no new word in its tongue, could hold no further self-revelation, for Lady Calmady. Yet, as she passed now from the arcaded garden-hall, supporting the eastern bay of the Long Gallery, on to the level, green square of the troco-ground, and stood gazing out over the downward sloping park—the rough, short turf of it dotted with ancient thorn trees and broken by beds of bracken and dog-roses—to the Long Water, glistening like some giant mirror some quarter-mile distant in the valley, she became sensible of a novel element in her present relation to this place.

For the first time, in all her long experience, she was at Brockhurst quite alone. The house was vacant even of a friend. For Julius March had, rather to Katherine's surprise, selected just this moment for the paying of his yearly visit to a certain college friend, a scholarly and godly person, now rector of a sleepy, country parish away in the heart of the great, Midlandshire grasslands. Katherine experienced a momentary sense of injury at his going. Yet perhaps it was as well. Between the turmoil of the past London season, the coming turmoil of the wedding, and the large and serious issues which that wedding involved, this time of solitude might be salutary. To Katherine, just now, it seemed as a bridge carrying her over from one way of life to another. A but slightly known country lay ahead. Solitude and self-recollection are good for the soul if it would possess itself in peace. The fair brightness of the Indwelling Light had not been obscured in her during these months devoted to the world and to society. But it was inevitable that her consciousness of it, and consequently its clear-shining, should have suffered diminution at times. The eager pressure of things to be done, things to be seen, of much conversation, the varied pageant of modern life perpetually presented to her eyes and her intelligence, could not but crowd out the spiritual order somewhat. Of late she had had only time to smile upon her God in passing, instead of spending long hours within the courts of His temple. This she knew. It troubled her a little. She desired to return to a condition of more complete self-collectedness. And so, the first movement of surprise past, she hailed her solitude as a means of grace, and strove, in sweet sincerity, to make good use of it.

And yet—since the human heart, if sound and wholesome, hungers, even when penetrated by Godward devotion, for some fellow-creature on whom to expend its tenderness—Katherine, just now, regretted to be alone. The scene was so beautiful, she would gladly have had some one look on it beside herself, and share its charm. Then thoughts of the future obtruded themselves. How would little Constance Quayle view Brockhurst? Would it claim her love? Would she embrace the spirit of it, and make it not only the home of her fair young body, but the home of her guileless heart? Katherine yearned in spirit over this girl standing on the threshold of all the deeper experiences of a woman's life, of those amazing revelations which marriage holds for an innocent and modest maiden.—But oh! how lovely are such revelations when the lover is also the beloved!

Katherine moved on a few paces. The thought of all that, even now at forty-eight, cut her a little too sharply. It is not wise to call up visions of joys that are dead. She would think of something else, so she told herself, as she paused in her rustling gray dress upon the dry, gravel path, the surface of which still sensibly held the warmth of the sun, while Camp squatted soberly on his haunches beside her. But, at first, only worrying thoughts responded to her call.—It was not quite kind, surely, of Julius to have left home just now. It was a little inconsiderate of him. If she dwelt on the thought of that, clearly it would vex her—so it must be banished. Reynolds, the housekeeper, had really been very perverse about the turning of the two larger china-closets into extra dressing-rooms for the week of the wedding, and Clara showed an inclination to back her up in opposition. Of course the maids would give in—they always did, and that without any subsequent attempt at small reprisals. Still the thought of that, too, was annoying and must be banished. At dinner she had received a singular letter from Honoria St. Quentin. It contained what appeared to Katherine as rather over-urgent protestations of affection and offers of service, if at any future time she—the writer—could be of use. The letter was charming in its slight extravagance. But it struck Katherine as incomprehensibly penitent in tone—the letter of one who has not treated a friend quite loyally and is hot with anxiety to atone. It was dated this morning too, and must have been posted at some surprisingly early hour to have thus reached Brockhurst by the day mail. Lady Calmady did not quite relish the missive, somehow, notwithstanding its affection. It lacked the perfection of personal dignity which had pleased her heretofore in Honoria St. Quentin. She felt vaguely disappointed. And it followed that this thought, therefore, must go along with the rest. For she refused to be disquieted. She would compel herself to be at peace.

So, putting these small sources of discomfort from her, as unworthy both of her better understanding and of this fair hour and fair place, Katherine yielded herself wholly to the influences of her surroundings. The dew was rising—promise of another hot, clear day to-morrow—and along with it rose a fragrance of wild thyme from the grass slopes immediately below. That fragrance mingled with the richer scents of jasmine, full-cupped, July roses, scarlet, trumpet-flowered honeysuckle, tall lilies, and great wealth of heavy-headed, clove carnations, veiling the red walls or set in the trim borders of the gardens behind. A strangely belated nightingale still sang in the big, Portugal laurel beside the quaint, pepper-pot summer-house in the far corner of the troco-ground, where the twenty-foot brick wall dips, in steps of well-set masonry, to the gray three-foot balustrade. She never remembered to have heard one sing so late in the summer. The bird was answered moreover by another singer from the coppice, bordering the trout-stream which feeds the Long Water, away across the valley. In each case the song was, note for note, the same. But the chant of the near bird was hotly urgent in its passion of "wooing and winning," while the song of the answerer came chastened and etherealised by distance. A fox barked sharply on the left, out in the Warren. And the churring of the night-jars, as they flitted hither and thither over the beds of bracken and dog-roses, like gigantic moths, on swift, silent wings, formed a continuous accompaniment, as of a spinning-wheel, to the other sounds.

Never, as she watched and listened, had the genius of Brockhurst appeared more potent or more enthralling. For a space she rested in it, asking nothing beyond that which sight and hearing could give. It was very good to breathe the scented air and be lulled by the inarticulate music of nature. It was good to cease from self and from all individual striving, to become a part merely of the universal movement of things, a link merely in the mighty chain of universal being. But such an impersonal attitude of mind cannot last long, least of all in the case of a woman! Katherine's heart awoke and cried again for some human object on which to expend itself, some kindred intelligence to meet and reflect her own. Ah, were she but better, more holy and more wise, these cravings would doubtless not assail her! The worship of the Indwelling Light would suffice, and she would cease from desire of the love of any creature. But she had not journeyed so far upon the road of perfection yet, as she sadly told herself. Far from it. The nightingale sang on, sang of love, not far hence, not far above, not within the spirit only, but here, warm, immediate, and individual. And, do what she would, the song brought to her mind such love, as she herself had known it during the few golden months of her marriage—of meetings at night, sweet and sacred, of partings, sweet and sacred too, at morning, of secret delights, of moments, at once pure and voluptuous, known only to virtuous lovers. It was not often that remembrance of all this came back to her, save as a faint echo of a once clear-sounding voice. Indeed she had supposed it all laid away forever, done with, even as the bright colours it had once so pleased her to wear were laid away in high mahogany presses that lined one side of the lofty state-bedroom up-stairs. But now remembrance laid violent hands on her, shaking both mind and body from their calm. The passion of the bird's song, the caressing suavity of the summer night, the knowledge, too, that so soon another bride and bridegroom would dwell here at Brockhurst, worked upon her strangely. She struggled with herself, surprised and half angered by the force of her own emotion, and pleaded at once against, and for, the satisfaction of the immense nostalgia which possessed her.

"Ah! it is bitter, very bitter, to have had at once so much and so little. Bow my proud neck, O Lord, to Thy yoke. If my beloved had but been spared to me I had never walked in darkness, far from the way of faith, and my child had never suffered bodily disfigurement. Perfect me, O God, even at the cost of further suffering. It is sad to be shut away from the joys of my womanhood, while my life is still strong in me. Break me, O Lord, even as the ploughshare breaks the reluctant clod. Hold not Thy hand till the work be fully accomplished, and the earth be ready for the sowing which makes for harvest. Give me back the beloved of my youth, the beloved of my life, if only for an hour. Teach me to submit. Show me, beyond all dread of contradiction that vows, truly made, hold good even in that mysterious world beyond the grave. Show me that though the body—dear home and vehicle of love—may die, yet love in its essence remains everlastingly conscious, faithful and complete. Bend my will to harmony with Thine, O Lord, and cleanse me of self-seeking. Ah! but still let me see his face once again, once again, oh, my God—and I will rebel no more. Let me look on him, once again, if only for a moment, and I shall be content. Hear me, I am greatly troubled, I am athirst—I faint——"

Katherine's prayer, which had risen into audible speech, sank away into silence. The near nightingale had fallen silent also. But from across the valley, chastened and etherealised by distance, still came the song of the answering bird. To Katherine those fine and delicate notes were full of promise. They bore testimony to the soul which dwells forever behind the outward aspect and sense. Whether she fainted in good truth, or whether she passed, for a while, into that sublimated state of consciousness wherein the veils of habit cease to blind and something of the eternal essence and values of things is revealed, perception overstepping, for once, the limits of ordinary, earth-bound apprehension and transcending ordinary circumscription of time and place, she could not tell. Nor did she greatly care. For a great peace descended upon her, accompanied by a gentle, yet penetrating expectancy. She stood very still, her feet set on the warm gravel, the night air wrapping her about as with a fragrant garment, the ghostly sweetness of that far-away bird-song in her ears, while momentarily the conviction of the near presence of the man who had so loved her, and whom she had so loved, deepened within her. And therefore it was without alarm, without any shock of amazement, that gradually she found her awareness of that presence change from something felt, to something actually seen.

He came towards her—that first Richard Calmady, her husband and lover—across the smooth, green levels of the troco-ground which lay dusky in the mingling half-lights of the nearly departed sunset and the rising moon, as he had come to her a hundred times in life, back from the farms or the moorlands, from sport or from business, or from those early morning rides, the clean freshness of the morning upon him, after seeing his race-horses galloped. He came bareheaded, in easy workmanlike garments, short coat, breeches, long boots and spurs. He came with the repose of movement which is born of a well-knit frame, and a temperate life, and the grace of gentle blood. He came with the half smile on his lips, and the gladness in his eyes when they first met hers, which had always been there however brief the parting. And Katherine perceived it was just thus our beloved dead must needs return to us—should they return at all—laying aside the splendours of the spirit in tenderness for mortal weakness. Even as the Christ laid aside the visible glory of the Godhead, and came a babe among men, so must they come in humble, every-day fashion, graciously taking on the manner and habit common to them during earthly life. Therefore she suffered no shrinking, but turned instinctively, as she had turned a hundred times, laughing very softly in the fulness of content, raising her hands, throwing back her head, knowing that he would come behind her and take her hands in his, and kiss her, so, bending down over her shoulder. And, when he came, she did not need to speak, but only to gaze into the well-beloved face, familiar, yet touched—as it seemed to her—with a mysterious and awful beauty, beholding which she divined the answer to many questions.

For she perceived, as one waking from an uneasy dream perceives the comfortable truth of day, that her love was not given back to her, for the dear reason that her love had never been taken away. The fiction of Time ceased to rule in her, so that the joy of bride and new-wed wife, the strange, sweet perplexities of dawning motherhood were with her now, not as memories merely, but as actual, ever present, deathless fact—the culminating, and therefore permanent, revelation of her individual experience. She perceived this continued and must continue, since it was the fine flower of her nature, the unit of her personal equation, the realisation of the eternal purpose concerning her of Almighty God. This fiction of old age was discredited, so was the bitterness of deposition, the mournful fiction of being passed by and relegated to the second place. Her place was her own. Her standing ground in the universal order, a freehold, absolute and inalienable. She could not abdicate her throne, neither could any wrest it away from her. She perceived that not self-effacement, but self-development, not dissolution, but evolution, was the service required of her. And, as divinely designed contribution to that end was every joy, every sorrow, laid upon her, since by these was she differentiated from all others, by these was she built up into a separate existence, sane, harmonious, well-proportioned, a fair lamp lighted with a burning coal from off the altar of that God of whom it is written, not only that He is a consuming fire, but that He is Love.

All this, and more, did Katherine apprehend, beholding the familiar, yet mysterious countenance of her well-beloved. And the tendency of that apprehension made for tranquillity of spirit, for a sure and certain hope. The faculty which reasons, demands explanation and proof, might not be satisfied, but that higher faculty which divines, accepts, believes, assuredly was so. Nor could it be otherwise, since it is the spirit, the idea, not the letter, which giveth life.

How long she stood thus, in tender and illuminating, though wordless, communion with the dead, Katherine did not know. The deepest spiritual experiences, like the most exquisite physical ones, are to be measured by intensity rather than duration. For a space the vision sensibly held her, the so ardently desired presence there incontestibly beside her, a personality vivid and distinct, yet in a way remote, serene as the immense dome of the cloudless sky, chastened and etherealised as the song of the answering nightingale, and in this differing from any bodily presence, as the song in question differed from that of the bird in the laurel close at hand.

Gradually, and with such sense of refreshment as one enjoys who, bathing in some clear stream at evening, washes away all soil and sweat of a weary journey, Katherine awoke to more ordinary observation of her material surroundings. She became aware that the dog, Camp, had turned singularly restless. He slunk away as though wishing to avoid her near neighbourhood, crawled back to her, with dragging hind quarters, cringing and whining as though in acute distress. And, by degrees, another sound obtruded itself, speaking of haste and effort, notably at variance with the delicate and gracious stillness. It came from the highroad crossing the open moor, which loomed up a dark, straight ridge against the southern horizon. It came in rising and falling cadence, but ever nearer and nearer, increasingly distinct, increasingly urgent—the fast, steady trot of a horse. The moon, meanwhile, had swept clear of the saw-like edge of the fir forest, and, while the thin, white light of it broadened upon the dewy grass and the beat of the horse-hoofs rang out clearer and clearer, Katherine was aware that the dear vision faded and grew faint. As it had come, softly, without amazement or fear, so it departed, without agitation or sadness of farewell, leaving Katherine profoundly consoled, the glory of her womanhood restored to her in the indubitable assurance that what had been of necessity continued, and forever was.

And, therefore, she still listened but idly to the approaching sound, not reckoning with it as yet, though the roll of wheels was now added to the rapid beat of the hoofs of the trotting horse. It had turned down over the hillside by the crossroad leading to the upper lodge. Suddenly it ceased. The shout of a man's voice, loud and imperative, a momentary pause, then the clang of heavy, iron gates swinging back into place, and once again the roll of wheels and that steady, urgent, determined trot, coming nearer and nearer down the elm avenue, whose stately rows of trees looked as though made of ebony and burnished silver in the slanting moonlight. On it came across the bridge spanning the glistering whiteness of the Long Water. And on again steadily, and no less rapidly, as though pressed by the hand of a somewhat merciless driver, hot to arrive, bearer of stirring tidings, up the steeply ascending hill to the house.

Lady Calmady listened, beginning to question whom this nocturnal disturber of the peace of Brockhurst might be. But only vaguely as yet, since that which she had recently experienced was so great, so wide-reaching in its meaning and promise, that, for the moment, it dwarfed all other possible, all other imaginable, events. The gracious tranquillity which enveloped her could not be penetrated by any anxiety or premonition of momentous happenings as yet. It was not so, however, with Camp. For a spirit of extravagant and unreasoning excitement appeared to seize on the dog. Forgetful of age, of stiff limbs and short-coming breath, he gamboled round Lady Calmady, describing crazy circles upon the grass, and barking until the unseemly din echoed back harshly from against the great red and gray facade. He fawned upon her, abject, yet compelling, and, at last, as though exasperated by her absence of response, turned tail and bounded away through the garden-hall and along the terrace, disappearing through the small, arched side-door into the house. And there, within, stir and movement became momentarily more apparent. Shifting lights flashed out through the many-paned windows, as though in quick search of some eagerly desired presence.

Nevertheless, for a little space, Katherine lingered, the fragrance of the wild thyme and of the fair gardens still about her, the somnolent churring of the night-jars and faint notes of the nightingale's song still saluting her ears. It was so difficult to return to and cope with the demands of ordinary life. For had she not been caught up into the third heaven and heard words unspeakable, unlawful, in their entirety, for living man to utter?

But things terrestrial, in this case as in so many other cases, refused to make large room for, or brook delay from, things celestial. Two servants came out, hurriedly, from that same arched side-door. Then Clara, that devoted handmaiden, called from the window of the red drawing-room.

"Her ladyship's there, on the troco-ground. Don't you see, Mr. Winter?"

The butler hurried along the terrace. Katherine met him on the steps of the garden-hall.

"Is anything wrong, Winter?" she asked kindly, for the trusted servant betrayed unusual signs of emotion. "Am I wanted?"

"Sir Richard has returned, my lady," he said, and his voice trembled. "Sir Richard is in the Gun-Room. He gave orders that your ladyship should be told that he would be glad to speak to you immediately."



CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH DICKIE SHAKES HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

"My dear, this is quite unexpected."

Lady Calmady's tone was one of quiet, innate joyousness. A gentle brightness pervaded her whole aspect and manner. She looked wonderfully young, as though the hands of the clock had been put back by some twenty and odd years. Every line had disappeared from her face, and in her eyes was a clear shining very lovely to behold. Richard glanced at her as she came swiftly towards him across the room. Then he looked down again, and answered deliberately:—