"Still, he might be faithful to his first love," giggled Fanny.

"Fanny!" Toni faced her angrily. "You are simply odious when you talk like that. Leonard Dowson's first love, indeed? If he says that about me it is simply impertinence, and I don't care to hear you talk such nonsense."

She got up indignantly as she spoke and moved to the door.

"If that is all you have got to say," she said, "I will go and talk to Auntie." And she had the door open before Fanny found her tongue.

Then:

"Oh, I say, Toni, don't be horrid and stuck-up." Fanny's wail brought Toni to a standstill. "If you are Mr. Rose's wife, and a fine lady, and in with a lot of smart people, you needn't go and be nasty to your own cousin."

Something in her voice brought Toni quickly back into the room.

"Don't be silly, Fan!" She spoke impetuously. "Of course I am not being stuck-up; you know I wouldn't be nasty to you for the world, but I do so hate that sort of talk about men being fond of you and all that."

"Well, I didn't know you minded," said Fanny humbly, and Toni's heart smote her.

"Oh, Fan, I don't mind—really—and I didn't mean to be cross. Now tell me, how do you like my frock? It's the first time I've had it on."

And in the ensuing animated discussion on frocks and frills Fanny lost that queer, uncomfortable sense of inferiority which had sprung to birth beneath Toni's manner.

Somehow, after that Toni found the time drag. She was gentle and friendly with her aunt, affectionate towards Lu, cordial with her uncle and the rest; but she found herself longing for Owen's arrival as a signal for her release.

The good-natured chatter, the well-meant inquisitiveness which found vent in a ceaseless inquiry into the details of her new life, the noisy jokes and laughter, the very persistence of the hospitality which filled her cup and plate over and over again—they all jarred this afternoon; and quite involuntarily Toni sighed for the peace and spaciousness, the gracious calm and tranquillity of Greenriver.

When Owen at last arrived it was with an inward glee that Toni heard the clock strike six; for now his visit must of necessity be short.

Possibly Owen saw her pallor, for he announced almost at once that although he regretted the fact, he must carry off his wife without delay; and after a brief interchange of courtesies, the family escorted Toni to the car, whose glories most of them now beheld for the first time.

As Owen was still unable to drive, he took his seat by Toni in the body of the car; and when they were safely away Toni turned to him with a sigh of pleasure.

"Owen, I thought you were never coming."

"Was I very long?" Owen was struck by her tone. "What's the matter, Toni? Are you tired, dear, or have the cousins been too much for you?"

"Oh, no, not exactly," Toni was always loyal, but to-day her loyalty had been severely tried. "But I can't help comparing the house with Greenriver, and I was longing all the time to get back to the garden and the big rooms."

Owen did not smile at her naive confession.

"You like your home, Toni? Greenriver pleases you?"

"I think it's the loveliest house in the world," Toni said fervently. "And sometimes I can hardly believe it is I who live there. You see, all my life I have been used to little houses, and it seems almost incredible that I should have the right to go about as I like—and even pick the flowers in the garden."

"Poor little Toni." Her gratitude touched Owen. "Sometimes I have fancied you found it rather dull. I have been obliged to leave you so much alone lately; but now we can have a holiday until the book's fate is decided."

"Will you be busy then?"

"Well, there will be the proofs to revise. And, to tell you the truth, Toni, I'm dying to get to work on another story."

"Are you? But what about the Bridge?"

"Oh, I won't neglect that, of course. But everything is running smoothly there and Barry is turning out trumps, too. He has grasped the whole thing as I never expected him to do. He's going to get a bigger salary almost at once, and then I suppose he will marry Miss Lynn."

He gave a sudden exclamation as the car swerved aside to avoid a lumbering cart which took up more than its share of the road.

"What's Fletcher doing, confound him? I say, Toni, this wretched arm of mine doesn't seem to me to be getting on very well. The bone's knit all right, but I have a fearful lot of pain in it sometimes."

"Oh, have you, Owen?" Toni grew pale in an instant. "What does Dr. Mayne say? You saw him a few days ago, didn't you?"

"Yes, but I don't think he knows very much about it. He's a nice old chap, but a bit behind the times. I have a good mind to go and see some man in town one day next week. It's such a confounded handicap for a writer not to be able to hold a pen."

"What about your proofs?" Her heart sank as she asked the question.

"Oh, Miss Loder can do those—under my supervision," he said carelessly. "I'm not bothering about them so much as about my new book; and I've been commissioned to write a series of articles for the Lamp, which really ought to be put in hand at once."

For a moment there was silence. Then:

"Could I do your proofs?" Toni said, in a voice which shook in spite of all her efforts.

"Oh, it's awfully sweet of you, dear." Owen tried his hardest to avoid hurting her. "But there is no occasion to worry you. I don't like to see you bending over a desk when there is no need. Miss Loder has to do something, anyway, and she might just as well do my work as anyone's."

"Must she come down to Greenriver?" Now Toni's voice betrayed her, and Owen looked up sharply.

"Why not? Do you mean you would rather she did not come?"

"Much rather." For once Toni's inward feelings burst their bounds, driving her to open revolt. "I don't like Miss Loder about all day—I never feel free—there's an oppression in the air so long as she is in the house."

Owen was surprised and annoyed by this speech; and showed his annoyance plainly.

"Don't you think you are rather prejudiced, Toni? You have never liked the girl, and I can't imagine why. She does her work well, and doesn't interfere with you in the least."

"Interfere with me—no, perhaps not," said Toni, her breast heaving stormily, her cheeks very red. "She laughs at me, though, which is worse—sneers—oh, I know she thinks I'm a little fool, and so I am; but I am at least your wife—the mistress of Greenriver, and she might remember that and treat me with a little more respect."

"Respect? My dear Toni, you are talking nonsense. How should the girl treat you? She is always polite," said Owen, "and you know after all she is ten years older than you——"

"Only ten?" Toni's assumption of surprise was excellently done. "I thought she was much more—she always seems to me so staid—so—so middle-aged."

Owen's brow cleared suddenly and he burst out laughing.

"You silly little thing! Compared with you, Miss Loder is middle-aged, but she's a rattling secretary and I don't like to hear her abused. Still, if you dislike the idea of her coming, I'll go to town, or do without her. After all, I must not get too dependent on the girl—I'm afraid I'm growing lazy. But if my arm still bothers me——"

Instantly Toni's anger melted away and a rush of affection and sympathy took its place.

"I'm sorry, Owen—I didn't mean to be cross. I was talking nonsense—of course you must have Miss Loder, I suppose I am jealous of her—because she is so clever, and I'm such a little idiot."

"I don't want a clever wife, thank you," laughed Owen, little dreaming how his careless words cut into the quivering soul of the girl beside him. "I want a pretty, lively, jolly little girl—half Italian for choice—who is a cross between a wood-nymph and—sometimes—a tiger-cat—or kitten! And it seems to me I have got just exactly what I want."

With an effort Toni smiled, in response to his good-natured jesting; and Owen never knew that his well-meant words caused Toni to shed tears before she slept that night.



CHAPTER XIX

Mr. Anson's reader reported favourably on Owen's book, and in a very short time satisfactory terms were agreed upon between author and publisher, and the work of proof-reading and revision began.

Unfortunately at the same time Owen felt his arm to be more than usually painful; and a visit to town proved the necessity for further treatment, of which perfect rest was a feature: with the result that once again Owen was forced to accept the help of a secretary in his work.

Miss Loder, naturally, filled the post; and once more she came to Greenriver, and took her place in the stately old library, where she and Owen passed strenuous hours daily.

To Toni Miss Loder's presence was growing ever more and more distasteful. Although Toni was not an intellectual woman, she had sharp wits; and possibly she understood Millicent Loder's personality a good deal better than Owen was able to do. And what Toni saw—and Toni's intuition was rarely at fault—led her to distrust the other girl with all her heart and soul.

Miss Loder belonged to a rather uncommon variant of the type of emancipated womanhood. Although intensely modern in many ways she had never been able to lose her inborn sense of the superiority of man in mental as well as in physical matters.

She had none of the loudly-expressed scorn of the other sex by which many women seek to hide their disappointment at the indifference of members of that sex towards them.

Although she was by force of circumstance a Suffragist, she did not for one moment imagine that with the coming of votes for women the whole industrial and social problem of the country would be solved. Unlike many women, she was quite content to work under a man, and although she was well able to think for herself on all vital questions, she liked to hear and assimilate the opinions of the men with whom she came in contact.

She preferred men, indeed, to women; and her attitude towards them, though never in the least familiar, held a good comradeship, a kind of large tolerance which annoyed and irritated those of her girl acquaintances who looked upon men as their natural enemies and the enemies of all feminine progress.

Shrewd, competent, fully assured of her own ability to face the world alone, Miss Loder had never thought seriously of marriage. She delighted in her independence, was proud of the fact that she was able to command a good salary, and her habit of mind was too genuinely practical to allow of any weak leanings towards romance. She did not wish to marry. She had none of the fabled longing for domesticity, as exemplified in a well-kept house and a well-filled nursery, with which the average man endows the normal woman. She looked on children, indeed, mainly as the materials on whom this or that system of education might be tested; and she was really of too cold, too self-sufficing a nature to feel the need of any love other than that of relation or friend.

But since she had worked for Owen Rose, Millicent had begun to change her views. At first she had merely been attracted by his brilliance, as any clever girl might have been, had found it stimulating to work with him, and had been pleased and proud when he selected her to be his coadjutor in the task of writing his first book. She had been, in truth, so keenly interested in the author that she had overlooked the man; and it is a fact that until she came down, at his request, to his house to work there, away from the busy office, his personality had been so vague to her that she could not even have described his appearance with any accuracy.

But the sight of his home, the stately old house set in its spacious gardens and surrounded by magnificent trees, had shaken Millicent out of her intellectual reverie into a very shrewd and wide-awake realization of the man himself.

In his own home he shook off the conventions of the office, became more human, more approachable; and no woman, least of all one as mentally alert, as open-eyed as Miss Loder, could have passed with him through those strenuous hours in which his book was born without gaining a pretty complete insight into his character.

And with knowledge came a new and less comprehensible emotion. At first Miss Loder had accepted the fact of her employer's marriage as one accepts any fixed tradition; and the subject rarely entered her thoughts during working hours.

Gradually she began to feel a faint curiosity as to what manner of woman Owen Rose's wife might be; and she welcomed her summons to Greenriver on the ground that now she would be able to solve the problem for herself. When she finally saw Toni, her first emotion was one of surprise that this dark-eyed girl should be the mistress of Greenriver; and very slowly that surprise died and was succeeded by a feeling of envy which grew day by day. At first Miss Loder grudged the unconscious Toni her established position as chatelaine of this eminently desirable home; and Toni's very simplicity, the youthful insouciance with which she filled that position, was an added annoyance. Later, Miss Loder began to grudge Toni more than that. As she spent more and more time in Owen's company, as she grew more and more intimate with the workings of his mind, of his rich and poetic imagination, Miss Loder began to fall under the spell of the man himself.

Quite unconsciously she was becoming ever more attracted by his manner, his voice, his ways; and once or twice she found herself wondering, with a kind of sick envy, in what light he appeared to the woman who was his wife.

Through it all, however, Miss Loder's paramount emotion was one of envy for the mistress of Greenriver. She used to think, as she came into the house each morning, that it would have suited her much better, as a background, than it would ever suit the quaint, childish-looking Toni; and it grew almost unendurable to her to have to sit at the luncheon table as a guest—not even that—and watch Toni's ridiculous assumption of dignity as she sat in her high-backed chair opposite her husband.

There was no doubt about it that Greenriver would have suited Miss Loder very well as a home; and she grew to dislike Toni more and more as the full realization of the girl's good fortune penetrated her mind.

Toni had been quite right in detecting the malice beneath Millicent's pretended friendliness. It seemed to Miss Loder that the only way to pierce this upstart girl's armour of complacency was to launch shafts of cleverly-veiled contempt; and although to Owen these darts were either imperceptible or merely accidental, Toni knew very well that they were intended to wound.

Owen, wrapped up in his book, and only anxious to further the work as rapidly as possible, had no time to spare for these feminine amenities. He realized, of course, that Toni did not care for Miss Loder; but he thought he understood that her dislike came, rather pathetically, from her consciousness of her own shortcomings: and had no idea that Miss Loder herself was largely responsible for the lack of harmony between them.

On what might be called the literary side of him, he thought Millicent Loder an excellent secretary, the one woman with whom he found it possible to work; but on what might be called the personal side, his interest was nil. True, he liked her trim appearance, though he would never have dreamed of comparing it with Toni's more unconventional attraction. He admired her quiet independence, and recognized her at once as belonging to his own world; but he never thought of her in any relation save that of secretary and general assistant; and even Toni was sufficiently wise to recognize the fact.

All the same Toni mistrusted the other woman; and it was with a feeling of intensest apprehension that she received Owen's announcement that Barry had arranged for a substitute at the office—thus setting Miss Loder free to resume her work at Greenriver.

* * * * *

It chanced on a beautiful October day that Owen found it necessary to go to town on business connected with the Bridge; and for once he went up by train, bidding Toni use the car if she felt so inclined.

She did feel inclined; and after a very early lunch, jumped into the waiting motor, and directed Fletcher to drive over to Cherry Orchard, in the hope of inducing the doctor's daughters to share her excursion.

Disappointment awaited her, however. Both the Tobies were away from home on a short visit, and Toni was obliged to proceed alone.

She had enjoyed a couple of hours' spin in the frosty air, when she found herself being carried swiftly past the railway station, and a thought struck her which she communicated to Fletcher without delay.

Yes, Fletcher opined, it was just time the London train was due, and since it was quite possible Mr. Rose had travelled by it, he obligingly brought the car to a standstill outside the station entrance.

Toni jumped lightly out, an alluring little figure in her beautiful sable coat and cap, and made her way swiftly on to the platform, glancing at the big station clock as she did so.

The train was not due for five minutes; and to pass the interval of waiting, Toni strolled over to the bookstall in search of a paper. As she stood turning over a few magazines, a familiar voice accosted her, and she moved quickly to face the speaker.

"Mrs. Rose—I hope you have not quite forgotten me?"

"Mr. Dowson! Of course I've not forgotten you." She put out a friendly little hand, which the young man seized in a fervent grasp. "My cousin Fanny told me you were coming down to Sutton."

"Yes. I had to change here. It's an awkward little journey." He was gazing at her fixedly, but withal so respectfully that Toni could not take offence. "You are, I believe, a resident of this little riverside colony of Willowhurst?"

"Well, we live by the river," said Toni cheerfully, amused, as of yore, by his somewhat pedantic diction. "But do tell me, Mr. Dowson, how do you expect to make a fortune here?"

"I do not expect to do so," he informed her promptly. "I assure you this move on my part was not actuated by any mercenary motive, Mrs. Rose."

"Wasn't it?" She felt vaguely uncomfortable. "Well, I hope you will succeed. After all, I suppose people do have toothache in the country."

"Fortunately, they do," was Mr. Dowson's reply, and Toni was happily able to acquit him of any unkind meaning. "But may I say that I have never seen you looking so well, Mrs. Rose? Evidently the river life suits you admirably."

Toni did look particularly well at that moment. The keen frosty air had brought a tinge of wild-rose to her cheeks, and a sparkle to her eyes; and the animation of her expression hid the very slight traces of mental distress which at a less favourable moment might have been evident to a searching scrutiny.

"I'm very well, thanks," she replied carelessly. "I've been motoring, and now I'm waiting for my husband. He has been in town to-day."

Although she did not wish to dismiss the young man summarily, he imagined she desired him to go; and since to the true lover his mistress' unspoken wish has the force of a command, Mr. Dowson hastened to obey what he deemed her bidding.

"I must hurry to the other side to take my train," he said immediately. "May I express my pleasure at meeting you, Mrs. Rose—and also to see you look so well," he added heartily, if ungrammatically.

She shook hands with him, debating with herself as to the advisability of inviting him to Greenriver; but fortunately the arrival of the London train cut short their farewells at an opportune moment, and Mr. Dowson left her before she had time to decide the point.

Owen was not among the few passengers who got out of the train; and after waiting a moment or two to make sure, Toni turned away to find herself confronted with Mr. Herrick, who with a worried look on his face was interrogating one of the sleepy porters.

"No, sir, there isn't no cabs. There wasn't but three, and the gentlemen was very quick about taking 'em."

"Well, I must get one somehow." Herrick, quite overlooking Toni in his disturbance, spoke sharply, and Toni wondered vaguely why he was so annoyed. "You can ring one up from the livery stables, can't you?"

"What's the matter, Jim? No cab, I suppose. Well, they can just fetch one—and quick, too."

The words, spoken behind her in an unmistakably Irish voice made Toni start. She understood, all at once, that this was Mrs. Herrick's home-coming; and she felt a sudden curiosity to see the woman who had lately gone through so bitter an experience.

She half turned away; then a thought struck her, and she turned quickly back again and rushed into speech.

"Mr. Herrick, I couldn't help hearing you say you wanted a cab just now. Will you let me drive you—and your wife—home in the car? Do—it would save you having to wait so long."

Herrick, whose usual philosophic calm appeared to have deserted him, hesitated.

"Why, Mrs. Rose, it's awfully good of you—but——"

"Oh, do!" Toni spoke eagerly, and the woman who stood by turned to her impulsively.

"Are you offering to take us home in your car?" Her voice was full of Irish melody. "It is very kind of you—and for myself, I'm so tired I'd accept with pleasure. But"—there was something malignant in the glance she gave her husband—"perhaps we'd better wait for a cab."

"Oh, do come, please," Toni begged, her bright eyes pleading to be allowed to do this little service. "It's a big car, and I'm all alone in it."

"Very well." Mrs. Herrick turned to her husband. "Come along, Jim; the luggage can come on later."

And in less than five minutes the matter was arranged. Herrick elected to sit beside the chauffeur, so that Toni and her new acquaintance sat together in the body of the car. Mrs. Herrick's large and rather new-looking dressing-bag on the floor at their feet.

Toni gave the direction to the openly interested Fletcher, and the car glided away through the group of loafers hanging round the station entrance, and settled down into a steady hum on the road leading to the Hope House.

Toni seized a moment while Mrs. Herrick was busy with the fastening of her bag to steal a look at her companion; and in that brief glance she received two distinct impressions—one that Eva Herrick was a bitterly unhappy woman, the other that she had no intention of allowing other people to escape from her own aura of bitterness.

In person Mrs. Herrick was short and slight, with a look of finish about her probably handed down through generations of her Irish ancestors. Her small features were cut as clearly as a cameo, and her short upper lip, while giving her an air of pride which was unpleasing, was in itself beautiful. Her eyes, the big Irish eyes which had first enslaved Herrick, were lovely in shape and colour, but they were encircled by disfiguring blue shadows, and the fine skin had a tell-tale pallor which spoke of long indoor confinement.

Her hair, by nature crisp and golden, looked dull and lifeless in the shadow of her hat; and over the whole dainty face and figure there was an indefinable blight, a sort of shadow which dimmed and blurred their naturally clean and clear contours.

As she removed her gloves to fumble with the lock of her bag. Toni noticed that the small, well-shaped hands were rough and badly kept; and Toni's soft heart was wrung by these evidences of a sordid, toilsome past.

Suddenly Mrs. Herrick sat upright and gazed at Toni with a look which held something of criticism.

"You live down here I suppose?"

"Yes. We live at Greenriver, about a mile from your bungalow."

"Ah. Been here long?"

"Only a few months."

"I see. You haven't known my husband very long, then?"

"No. He pulled me out of the river one day," said Toni, "and we have seen him pretty often during the summer."

"Then I suppose you know where I've been?" Her eyes shone maliciously. "Oh, don't pretend you didn't know. I'm sure my worthy husband must have told you the whole story."

Toni, scarlet with embarrassment, and wishing from the bottom of her heart that she had never offered the use of her car, said nothing; and with a grating little laugh the other woman continued her speech.

"I expect everyone knows I have been in prison." Luckily she did not raise her voice; and Herrick, possibly foreseeing the necessity, had taken care to engage the chauffeur in conversation. "Eighteen months—almost—spent in hell. Oh!" Her small, sharp teeth bit her lip venomously. "It drives me mad to think of it. And it could all have been avoided if my husband had been a man."

"Oh!" Toni revolted inwardly against her callousness.

"Oh, I suppose he's told you some tale or other." Mrs. Herrick spoke fiercely, and all her childish beauty waned beneath her passion; "Well, whatever he says, it is I who have paid the bill. Prison! My God, you don't know what it is to be shut up in a cell like a beast—to be ordered about like a dog, to be starved on coarse food, made to sleep on a bed you wouldn't dare to give your servant!"

Toni, very pale, tried to stem the torrent of her words.

"Mrs. Herrick—please—really I don't think you ought to say this to me——"

"Ought? Why do you say that?" Eva Herrick looked contemptuously at her would-be mentor. "If you had been shut up as I have been, you would talk as you liked. Thank God I can talk if I can do nothing else."

Quite suddenly her manner changed. She gave a little laugh which was oddly fascinating, and laid her hand on Toni's arm.

"Come, now, Mrs. Rose, don't be getting angry with me." Her brogue lent a charm to her speech. "I'll admit I've no earthly right to talk so; it's bad form to begin with and a poor return for your kindness. But remember, I've gone through an experience that's enough to kill a woman, and you can't expect me to forget it all at once. So you must forgive me. Will you?"

"Oh, of course I will." Toni spoke quickly. "And I had no right to speak as I did. But—you must forget all that is past. Won't you try?"

"Sure, I'll try." Eva's lovely eyes filled with tears. "But I know what will happen. Your husband won't let you know me, of course, and if Jim and I are left alone, we'll be murdering one another one fine day."

"Oh, please don't talk so. Of course my husband will let me know you," said Toni in distress; and she was glad to find from the slackening of the car that their conversation must be cut short.

Jim Herrick, more silent and worn-looking than Toni had ever seen him, helped his wife to alight and then shook hands gratefully with Toni.

"So many thanks, Mrs. Rose." His big, bright eyes looked into hers, almost as the eyes of a nice dog might have done. "You have saved us a long wait, and I'm only sorry we have taken you out of your way."

"Oh, that's nothing," Toni said. "I like being out on these bright days, and I'm ever so glad I happened to be at the station."

She shook hands with Mrs. Herrick, who looked a pitifully fragile figure as she stood beside the car; and then Toni gave the order for home, and Fletcher obeyed that order too promptly to allow of any further leave-takings.

Just for one moment Jim Herrick stood looking after the car, and in his heart there was a great sickness of apprehension.

With the best intention in the world to be fair to his wife, he could not help comparing the fresh, simple-hearted Toni with the world-weary and disillusioned Eva; and at the thought of the future his spirits sank to zero.

A mocking voice broke on his ear as he watched the car gliding swiftly down the road.

"When you've finished staring at that young woman, Jim, perhaps you'll open the gate." Eva stood back to allow him to reach the latch. "I must say this is a nice place to bring me to. Is it a cottage or what?"

"It's quite a decent little place, dear," he said steadily, as he held open the gate for her to pass through. "Of course, I quite understand that it is only a temporary arrangement, but you will try to put up with it, won't you?"

"I suppose I shall have to," she replied ungraciously; and then she uttered an impatient exclamation as the big white dog tore over the lawn to meet her master, uttering deep-throated bays of welcome the while. "You've still got that beast, then—go down, you brute," she added, as Olga approached, with instinctive courtesy, to greet her former mistress.

"Don't snap at her, dear," said Herrick kindly. "The poor creature is only trying to say how do you do."

"Then she can say it to someone else," said Eva curtly. "I hate big dogs—I wish you'd get rid of her."

Herrick made no reply, but opened the door, and they went into the house together.

Eva passed into the quaintly attractive sitting-room with a frown on her face, which lightened, however, at sight of the tea-table standing ready, and pulling off her gloves and coat she flung herself into a low chair with a sigh of fatigue.

"Heavens, how thirsty I am," she said. "Give me some tea, Jim—quickly." And as he moved forward to obey her, her eyes followed him with a curious expression in their grey depths.

"What's for dinner?" she asked, suddenly, and Herrick looked his memory to recall the menu.

"Soup, roast chicken, plum tart, and a savoury," he said at last, smiling with a rather pathetic attempt at cheerfulness. "Mrs. Swastika, as I call her, is what is known as a 'good plain cook,' but anything at all elaborate throws her off her balance altogether."

"Have you no other servants?" she demanded shortly.

"Not yet. I didn't want them, you know, and I thought you would prefer to choose them yourself."

"I? If I can get any," she said darkly, drawing her delicate brows together resentfully. "Of course they won't stay when they find out things; but we must be decently waited on."

Herrick made no reply; and his silence exasperated the girl, whose nerves were all on edge.

"Oh, don't stand there saying nothing." Her voice was shrill. "Of course, you think I ought to wait on myself—now. And I suppose because I've been in prison you expect me to be thankful to be here—even in a hole like this. Well, I'm not. I hate the place. It's common and shabby and horrid, and I'm not going to live all anyhow, to please you."

Herrick, dismayed at the vehemence of her manner, could find no words; and she went on with increasing passion:

"I'm your wife—if I am a jail-bird!" She flung the taunt at him, and her whole little figure was shaken with the intensity of her emotion. "If you think I'm going to pretend to be penitent—and grateful to you—you are wrong! I hate you, Jim, I loathe and despise you—you might have taken the blame on your shoulders—and instead you stood by and watched them torture me. You've not been to prison, you've not been bullied and despised—you've not spent weeks and months in a loathsome little cell where the sun never shone and there was never a breath of air—you've not been called by a number, and preached at by the chaplain—oh, no, you've been living here in the sunshine—enjoying yourself, eating good food—your chicken and your savouries—and for all I know passing as a single man, and keeping your disgraced wife in the background!"

She struck the table sharply with her hand, and her cup and saucer fell to the ground and smashed, the tea trickling in a brown stream over the dim blues and greens of the Persian carpet.

She ignored the catastrophe.

"Well, you've got me back now, and I'm going to make your life what mine has been for the last year and a half! I've longed for this moment, Jim"—she set her teeth—"longed for it during the horrible days and the still more horrible nights. It was only my hatred of you that kept me alive in the first ghastly weeks. I could have died—I was very ill at first, and they thought I'd die—but I knew I wouldn't. I meant to live so that I could tell you again to your face that I hate you, hate you—hate you! And I'm going to show you what hate is, Jim—I'm going to make you wish you were dead—or in prison, as I have been. Oh, my God—I wish—I wish I were dead!"

With a sudden collapse of all her powers she dropped, face downwards, on the big divan, and burst into a fit of wild and uncontrollable sobbing.

With an effort whose magnitude he himself only half realized, Herrick went softly over to the weeping, writhing figure, and laid his hand very gently on her shoulder.

"Eva, for pity's sake——"

She flung off his hand as though it had been a venomous serpent which had touched her; and again her wild sobbing filled the room.

"Eva, listen to me, dear." Herrick sat down beside her and spoke in a quiet tone, which yet pierced through her sobs. "You must not say anything like that to me again. There isn't any question of hatred between you and me. We are together now, and we must build up a new and happy life together which will help us to forget the less happy past. Come, dear, look up and tell me you will help me to make a fresh start."

She did not speak, but her sobs lessened as though she were listening.

"Now, Eva, sit up and dry your eyes and we will drop the subject. Come upstairs and have a rest before dinner. You are tired out and want a good sleep."

She rose without a word, but in her face he read only fatigue, none of the softening which he had hoped to see.

"Yes. I'm tired—dead tired." She moved languidly towards the door. "I think I shall never be anything else—now."

Her fit of passion had indeed worn her out. For the rest of the evening she was quiet and listless; and she went upstairs very early to bed, leaving Herrick to sit alone with his dog, smoking his pipe, and facing the future with a sinking heart.

He sat there until the hour was really late; and then crept upstairs very softly to avoid waking Eva, if indeed she slept.

Just as he reached her door he heard a faint, strangled cry, and rushed into her room to find her in the throes of one of the nightmares which he found, later, were a dreadful legacy from her prison life. On waking, her relief at finding she was not, as usual, alone was so great that for the first time she clung to Herrick as she might have done in happier days; and as he soothed her and pushed the damp golden curls from her brow she spoke naturally, with none of the resentment she had hitherto displayed.

Her husband's heart melted towards her in this gentler mood; and long after she had fallen asleep again, soothed by his presence, he sat watching her uneasy slumber with a feeling of compassion which, had she realized it, must surely have done something to bridge the gulf which now yawned between them.

In the morning she was her hard, mocking self again; and Herrick's patience was sorely tried in the days which followed.

It seemed, indeed, as though she had stated her feelings for him correctly, as though she did really hate him with a bitter and relentless hatred. The prison life had changed her whole being, turned her from a brilliant, reckless, worldly girl, warmhearted and extravagant, but generous to a fault, into a cold, malignant, callous woman, nursing a grudge until it attained gigantic proportions, and fully resolved to exact from her husband and the world a heavy payment for the humiliating punishment she had been forced to undergo.

Herrick could never discover that she felt that punishment to be deserved. The whole world was to blame, but never she herself. It was the fault of her husband, who had kept her short of money; of the tradespeople who had pressed her, of the usurers who had got her into their clutches—the fault of everyone save Eva Herrick; and the fact that they had all, as it were, combined against her, that together they had been too much for her, embittered her outlook on life to such a degree that she was positively incapable of any reasonable analysis of her own guilt.

It was her husband against whom her resentment was chiefly directed. With all the perversity of her ill-regulated, half-formed mind, she refused to realize the fact that it had been absolutely impossible for Herrick to take her crime on to his own shoulders. She clung childishly to the notion that if he had wished he could have borne the blame and endured the consequences; and since there is no reason to doubt that to a girl in her position her life in prison was a horrible experience, her bitterness is perhaps hardly to be wondered at, after all.

Her sentence had left on soul and body traces which would never be effaced; and sometimes Herrick could hardly believe that this cold, cynical, bitter-tongued woman was indeed the gay Irish girl he had married.

But in spite of everything she was his wife. And Herrick was not the man to shirk an obligation which was so plainly marked as this. Although he shrank inwardly from her constant recriminations, he never let her see how he was wounded by her biting tongue; and to all her reproaches he presented so serene and complacent a front that she sometimes desisted from very weariness.

So the autumn days went on; and if Herrick felt sometimes that in spite of the beautiful world around him, life was no longer full of "sweet things," he never wavered in his resolve to do all in his power to make up to Eva, for the misery she had endured behind those heartless prison walls.



CHAPTER XX

"Toni, do you think it quite wise to go about so much with Mrs. Herrick?"

It was Owen who asked the question one cold morning as the two sat at breakfast; and Toni looked up with something like defiance in her bright eyes.

"Why not, Owen? Oh, I know she has been—well, you know where—but she is free again now; and it is very hard if one mistake is to dog her footsteps wherever she goes for the rest of her life."

"It was a pretty serious mistake," Owen reminded her quietly, "and to tell you the truth I hardly like you to go about so constantly with a woman who did what she was proved to have done."

"Oh, don't be such a Pharisee, Owen." Toni spoke sharply and Owen glanced at her in dismay. "I suppose someone has been saying something to you. But I don't intend to give up Eva Herrick to please a lot of spiteful old women like Lady Martin and Mrs. Madgwick."

"Certainly one or two people have commented on your friendship," said Owen thoughtfully, "and I'm bound to say I don't like it myself. To begin with Mrs. Herrick treats her husband abominably; and I should not have thought you would have been attracted by her shallow, futile way of talking."

"You forget I'm shallow and futile myself," said Toni with a faint, bitter smile. "The gossips of the neighbourhood have long since decided that I was an ignorant little fool who wasn't fit to be the mistress of Greenriver; and I suppose it's a case of birds of a feather, isn't it?"

"Toni!" Owen's voice expressed bewilderment. "What on earth do you mean? Who ever dared to say you weren't fit to be mistress of Greenriver?"

"Oh, heaps of people," said Toni recklessly. "You know quite well you were ashamed of me when we first went out to dinner parties here, and I didn't know how to behave—and lately we have been invited nowhere—not even to the Golf Club Ball."

Owen bit his lip. In truth the matter of the ball had puzzled him considerably. Although not a golfer, he was on friendly terms with many of the members of the local Club; and since Toni's friends, Mollie and Cynthia Teach, were ardent golfers, it had seemed most probable that Owen and his wife would receive an invitation to the annual ball.

The Tobies had indeed gone so far as to assure Toni of her invitation when first the ball was mentioned; and though as the day grew near the two girls grew uneasy when the topic was broached, Toni never dreamed that their avoidance of the subject covered a real and distressing awkwardness.

Certainly neither Toni nor Owen imagined that they had been quietly excluded from the list of guests; but such was the astounding fact, as Mollie and Cynthia were guiltily aware.

It was largely due to Lady Martin's plain-speaking that this came about.

Somehow the real truth about Eva Herrick had leaked out; as such truths do invariably leak out; and Toni's ill-advised friendship with Herrick's wife was easily turned to her disadvantage by so skilful an adversary as Lady Martin.

From the first her ladyship had been unable to bring herself to tolerate Toni; and had lost no opportunity of spreading abroad Toni's rash admission as to the nature of her cousin's employment—with the immediate result that in a good many people's eyes Toni herself was looked upon as an unusually fortunate shop-girl raised by a stroke of good luck to a position which she was quite unsuited to adorn.

Possibly there was in the case of some of her detractors an element of jealousy in their comments on Owen Rose's wife. There were a good many houses along the river where daughters were at a discount; and to see an unknown and attractive girl like Toni step into the place which many of these girls would have dearly liked to fill was doubtless somewhat galling.

At any rate Lady Martin found plenty of supporters when she broached her avowed intention of excluding Mrs. Rose from the ball of which she was patroness, on the ground of her friendship with the woman who had been, as they all knew, in prison for a serious offence; and so it happened that when the ball took place neither Owen nor Toni contributed by their presence to the success of the evening.

It was perfectly true that Toni had struck up a friendship with Jim Herrick's wife; and it is only fair to Toni to state that in the first instance she had made overtures to Eva Herrick from a purely good-hearted desire to return Herrick's kindness to her in the one way possible.

She was not, in truth, greatly attracted to Eva at first. She found her hard, bitter, at times ungenerous; but Mrs. Herrick was clever enough to see that such attributes failed to endear her to Toni; and since to Eva's perverted mind her husband's companionship was unendurable, she quickly determined to make a friend of this soft-hearted, unworldly little girl who was evidently sorry for her in her wordless fashion; and was too candid herself to suspect deceit or double-dealing in others.

Eva knew very well that the neighbourhood, which prided itself on its exclusiveness, would have little or nothing to do with her; and motor rides with Toni in the luxurious grey car, with lunch or tea at some riverside hotel, formed an agreeable method of passing the days which were otherwise horribly long and empty.

* * * * *

"I wasn't thinking of the Golf Ball," Owen said, in reply to Toni's last speech. "But honestly, Toni, I don't care for Mrs. Herrick. Oh, I'm not talking now of the necklace affair. That's over and done with; but it's the woman herself I don't approve of."

"Why not?" She spoke abruptly and Owen frowned.

"Well, she's not the sort of girl I like my wife to be intimate with. I'm sorry for that poor fellow Herrick. He is a sensible man, and knows that if his wife's past is to be forgotten it will be by living quietly and decently, and not by pushing into the society of the neighbourhood whether she is welcome or no."

"Owen, you're perfectly hateful." Toni was really angry. "She is always welcome here, anyway. You know quite well that no one round about really likes me. Oh, they call and all that sort of thing; but no one is really friendly to me, and all the time they are saying horrid things about me behind my back."

"I think you are talking nonsense, dear," said Owen quietly. "No one says horrid things. To begin with, what should they say?"

"They say I'm common and ignorant, and so I am," said Toni passionately, with a sudden desire to blurt out the conversation she had overheard on that miserable day in August. "Mrs. Madgwick says so, and Lady Martin. I heard them—and lots of other people say so too. I thought it wasn't true at first—and then I saw it was. I asked Mr. Herrick, and he told me to read and educate myself and then I could be useful to you—and instead of that you went and got that perfectly hateful Miss Loder, and everyone knows it was because you were sick of me trying to help you and doing it so badly."

Owen's face as he listened to this speech was a study in bewilderment. The introduction of Herrick's name puzzled him considerably; and although he frowned at Toni's description of Miss Loder, he realized that by some means Toni had been made unhappy over her own position as his wife.

"See here, Toni, I don't quite understand." He looked at her keenly. "Who says you are ignorant—and all the rest? And what on earth has Herrick to do with our affairs?"

"I told him—he saw me crying and asked me why. It was at the Vicarage Bazaar—I was sitting in a summer-house and Lady Martin and Mrs. Madgwick were outside, and they began to talk about me and they said all those horrible things——"

"Toni, were you obliged to listen? Couldn't you have got away!"

"No." She lifted her clear eyes to his and he repented his question. "I couldn't come out when they had begun; and I didn't know at first that they were talking secrets."

Her childish phraseology made Owen smile in the midst of his annoyance.

"So Mr. Herrick advised you to read? Well, Toni, that was good advice."

"Yes—and I took it," she said eagerly. "I read heaps and heaps of dull books and worked at French—and poetry—and then when I tried to help you, you wouldn't let me. You brought that horrid Loder here instead."

Her reiteration of Miss Loder's name jarred. Owen had been genuinely surprised and interested by this revelation, and if Toni had been wise enough to stick to her own side of the affair, it is probable she would have captured Owen's sympathy, and, incidentally, his heart; but she weakened her case by her senseless prejudice against Millicent Loder; and with a quick sense of irritation Owen told himself that she was only jealous—in a purely unsentimental way—after all.

She had never liked being ousted from her position, as would-be helper; but Owen knew—or fancied he did—the exact value of her aid; and after all his work was too important for him to run the risk of spoiling it by any lack of efficiency in his helpers.

"I wish you'd leave Miss Loder's name out of the question," he said at last, and his tone struck coldly on Toni's excited ear. "When the book is published I will dispense with her assistance, if you wish it; but until then I tell you frankly I intend to avail myself of her most valuable help."

He had expected an angry reply; but none came. Instead Toni said in a low voice:

"Very well, Owen. I know Miss Loder is useful to you and I am not. But if you refuse to let me help you, I don't think you can complain if I try to fill my time with other things—and if Mrs. Herrick is pleasant and nice to me I cannot very well refuse to know her, can I?"

"To know her? Certainly not—but there is a difference between knowing her casually and being with her all day long."

"I am not that," she replied quietly. "I take her motoring sometimes, because it is dull going alone, and it is a treat to her. But of course if you object—it is your car——"

"Oh, don't be silly, Toni." All Owen's pent-up irritation found vent in the words. "I'm not a dragon—or an ogre, am I? Take Mrs. Herrick by all means—have her here if you like, only for goodness' sake don't talk as though I wished to condemn you to perpetual loneliness."

"Very well. I won't." She rose as she spoke. "You've finished, haven't you? Then I'll go and see Mrs. Blades—she is ill again to-day, Kate says."

"Is she? Poor old soul." Owen rose too, and passing round the table laid his hands on Toni's shoulders. "Toni, we're not quarrelling, are we? Have I neglected you lately? I'm sorry if I have—when the book's out we will have a trip abroad, go on the Riviera or somewhere nice and warm."

He stooped, and kissed her, but though she lifted her face obediently and even returned his caress, Toni's lips were cold and her eyes had lost their sparkle.

Owen's inflexibility frightened her. She had half expected that when he knew her real and vital dislike for Miss Loder he would promise to send her away; but he had done nothing of the kind: and Toni felt again, as she had already felt once or twice of late, that Owen had no intention of giving in to his wife's fancies, as some men were always ready to do.

She had intended to offer to give up Eva Herrick's friendship if Owen would send away Miss Loder. In the quiet hours of the night such a bargain had seemed simple enough; but when it came to making the suggestion Toni's heart failed her.

"Are you going motoring to-day, Toni?"

"I had thought of it," she said slowly; "but—do you want the car?"

"No, thanks, dear. I'm going up to town by the twelve-thirty—I promised to meet Barry for lunch. Shall you be in?"

"No. I thought of lunching out," said Toni rather vaguely.

"Oh. Well, you'll order Miss Loder's lunch then, won't you? She must have it alone to-day."

Owen, occupied with a letter he held in his hand, had spoken thoughtlessly; but an exclamation from Toni made him pause and regard his wife in amazement. Toni's pallor had given way to a deep flush, and her usually sweet eyes blazed with rage.

"Oh, I'll order Miss Loder's lunch." She spoke in sharp staccato tones. "You needn't be afraid I will neglect her because you're away. I can keep house, if I'm not a B.A.; and thank Heaven I shan't have to sit at the table and listen to her sneering at me all the time."

"Toni!" In Owen's eyes a flame similar to that in her own had sprung to life. "What do you mean by this nonsense about Miss Loder? Let me tell you once and for all that I won't have it. You never cease libelling that unfortunate woman from morning to night. Considering she is here, in your house, in a subordinate position, your behaviour is both unladylike and ungenerous; and if you continue to talk in this way about a girl who has to earn her own living, and has never done you any harm—well, we shall quarrel, that's all."

"I don't care if we do." Toni's hot temper—a heritage from her Italian mother—was let loose. "I'd sooner quarrel than submit to everything you like to do. If you loved me, treated me as you ought to treat your wife, you'd send her away. Oh, I'm not jealous in a silly way—I know you aren't likely to make love to her——"

"Toni!" Owen's voice frightened her into silence. "Don't dare to put such a vulgar insinuation into words, if you please. If you are so lost to your own dignity and self-respect as your anger seems to imply, at least remember that you are my wife, and don't let me hear such a thoroughly degrading and unworthy remark from you again."

"I didn't!" Toni, crimson-faced, had tears in her eyes. "I said I didn't think it. It's not fair of you to pretend I did.... I only meant——"

"I'm afraid you don't know what you do mean," said Owen, his anger dying down at the sight of her tears. "But in any case we had better drop the subject."

He paused for a moment, then something in Toni's forlorn aspect touched his heart and he spoke more kindly.

"Come, Toni, don't let's make a scene over this. You're my wife, you know—I didn't marry you because I wanted a secretary, I married you because I wanted you for my wife——"

"Even though you didn't love me." Toni spoke quietly, even a little sadly, and Owen's heart sank as he realized what her words implied.

"I didn't love you?" For the life of him he did not know what to say.

"No. I thought you did—but it doesn't matter," said Toni a little drearily. "I'm sorry I made a scene just now, Owen. Please forgive me. I won't do it again."

And without waiting for a reply she opened the door and went out of the room, leaving Owen staring after her, stirred to the depths of his soul by something he thought he had read in her usually child-like eyes.

It was no child who had gazed at him as she spoke those last few words. It was a woman who had looked through Toni's Southern eyes in that moment of stress; and for the first time since his marriage, Owen wondered whether his estimate of Toni had been incorrect after all.

He had thought her soulless, a pretty, light-hearted, unselfish little comrade, swayed by feminine whims and caprices, but incapable of rising to the stature of the perfect woman; and lo, in one moment of unconscious revelation she had shown herself to him as a woman indeed, one who had realized that he had married her for some other cause than love, yet did not stoop to blame him.

But if Toni were indeed a woman, one capable, moreover, of a totally unexpected magnanimity, he had indeed been guilty of a serious mistake, and the very idea that he had misread Toni's character so hopelessly filled Owen with a humility as disturbing as it was complete.



CHAPTER XXI

The immediate effect of the little scene at the breakfast table was unfortunately that of an increased intimacy between Toni Rose and Herrick's wife.

Although Toni's exit from the battlefield had been quiet and even dignified, she found it hard to forgive Owen's plain-speaking on the subject of what he supposed to be her silly prejudice against Miss Loder. He had called her conduct vulgar and ungenerous, had spoken, moreover, in the tone in which a harsh schoolmaster might censure a naughty child; and all her love for Owen could not prevent a feeling of humiliation which galled her sorely.

The sight of Miss Loder, trim, competent, complacent, acted upon Toni's nerves in much the same way as the red rag is said to act on the nervous system of a bull. Although she dared not give vent openly to her dislike, Toni's behaviour towards her husband's secretary was by no means cordial; and Owen felt a slightly bitter resentment against his young wife for what he considered her most unreasonable inability to understand his position.

Millicent Loder was a god-send to a harassed literary man; and yet Owen began to wonder whether after this book were done it would be advisable to dispense with her services. That, however, seemed unfair to the girl, who liked her work with him, and would consider her dismissal uncalled for; and Owen generally finished his mental discussion with a resolution to ignore Toni's foolishness and trust to time to teach her toleration.

It must be remembered that neither Toni nor her husband had the slightest notion of what lay beneath Miss Loder's calm exterior. Envy of Toni as Rose's wife, scorn of her as the mistress of a beautiful and stately house, mingled in Millicent's breast with a strong and unreasonable longing to attract Toni's husband to herself; and the very fact that the marriage of these two was not what she called a success, lent additional keenness to all her emotions.

Oddly enough, Mrs. Herrick saw Millicent in something very like her true light, with a vision even clearer than that of the more interested Toni; and Eva Herrick, who since her imprisonment hated all men and most women, was not ill-pleased by the spectacle of Toni's dislike for her husband's secretary.

Very adroitly Eva set herself to foster that dislike. Although she had only encountered Miss Loder twice—once on the occasion of a call paid in return for Toni's ceremonious call upon her, and again during a wait at the station for the London train, Mrs. Herrick had quickly realized that Miss Loder liked Toni little better than Toni cared for her; and Eva was not the sort of woman to let any knowledge of that kind lie useless.

Without saying anything definite, she contrived to let Toni know she sympathized with her in the matter of Miss Loder's tenancy of the library; and although Toni never let slip a word which might have savoured of disloyalty to her husband, Mrs. Herrick knew, with a queer, uncanny shrewdness peculiar to her, that the girl's marriage was not altogether happy.

If it had been, it is improbable that Eva would have made a friend of Toni. As she said to herself now and again, she had no use for happy people. Her own life was spoilt—that the spoiling was due to herself she would have been the last to acknowledge—and she was in no humour to watch other people making a success of their lives. What she wanted was to see those around her as unhappy, as disillusioned, as discontented as herself; and all Toni's kindness, all her gentle, unselfish friendliness, went for nothing when the opportunity arose for a further darkening of Toni's already overshadowed sky.

On the surface, however, all was serenity. Eva accepted Toni's companionship with outward gratitude, and when once Herrick was satisfied that Toni knew what she was doing, he put no obstacles in the way of their better acquaintance.

Afterwards he told himself that he should have known better than to allow his wife to take advantage of Toni's unworldliness; but at the moment he was only too glad to find Eva apparently sincere in her liking for the simple-hearted Toni; and assuming, naturally, that Owen did not disapprove of the growing intimacy, he watched the affair with a gratitude made natural by his intense pity for his wife.

One day Mrs. Herrick asked Toni to accompany her to Sutton, where she had made an appointment for twelve o'clock. It appeared that she had suffered agonies of toothache while in prison, and although the authorities had done all they could for her, she was again in urgent need of a dentist's services. She had been informed of the arrival of a new practitioner in the little town, who came from a London practice; and to Toni's mingled surprise and dismay she found herself invited to accompany Mrs. Herrick on a visit to Mr. Dowson's surgery.

On the spur of the moment she confessed to a previous acquaintance with Mr. Dowson; and Eva thereupon plied her with questions as to his proficiency in his work.

"I don't want my teeth breaking or my jaw dislocating," she said. "Do you think the man's any good? It's such a bore to have to go up to town every time. Has he ever done any work for you?"

Toni, who had never had toothache in her life, was obliged to reply in the negative; but assured Eva that Mr. Dowson had an excellent reputation in Brixton.

"Well, I wrote and fixed up an appointment with him," said Eva carelessly, "so I suppose I'd better go. But if he isn't any good I shan't go again."

"I'll run you over in the car," said Toni eagerly, "and we'll go on to lunch somewhere. Miss Loder leaves early to-day, so it doesn't matter about my not being at home."

Mrs. Herrick accepted the offer promptly, and at five minutes past twelve the big car pulled up in front of Mr. Dowson's modest house, much to the excitement of the school children, who were at that moment released from the school-buildings at the end of the street.

A quiet little maid showed the visitors into the usual depressing waiting-room; and reappeared two minutes later to conduct them into the torture chamber itself; and since Eva flatly refused to go alone, Toni perforce accompanied her into the operator's presence.

Mr. Dowson's pale face lighted up at the sight of Toni with a radiance which even the self-engrossed Eva could not fail to note. He recollected himself sufficiently to shake hands professionally with his patient, but Toni he greeted warmly, as an old friend.

He had never dreamed of such a glorious happening as this visit. The dingy room was transfigured by Toni's presence therein; and his long, white, carefully-manicured hands were absolutely unsteady as he opened his little cabinet and selected one or two tiny but deadly-looking instruments from the shining rows within.

Toni, for her part, was occupied in thanking the Providence which had seen fit to equip her with a set of perfectly sound white teeth; and she felt an intense sympathy with the hapless Eva, whose nerves, undermined by her late experience, were already betraying her into signs of agitation.

"I won't hurt you, really," said Mr. Dowson, with a beaming smile, which he felt to be out of place, but could not restrain. "Please lean back a little more—so. Now open—just a leetle wider—thank you, that will do."

It was soon evident that the visit could not be prolonged. Although he had not the clue to his patient's intense nervousness, Mr. Dowson's professional instincts warned him that he must go warily: and while he would willingly have detained Mrs. Herrick, if by such means he could enjoy the felicity of Toni's companionship a little longer, his conscientious spirit forced him to cut the sitting short.

Another appointment was made for the following week; and after that there were others, to all of which Toni accompanied her quaking friend. After four or five visits, however, Toni was unlucky enough to contract a chill during an unusually prolonged motor-ride; and Mrs. Herrick was forced to go alone.

It was Leonard Dowson's intense consternation when told of Toni's illness which first opened Eva's eyes to the seriousness of his devotion. She had seen from the beginning that he admired the girl, that he listened attentively to her lightest word; but she had not realized that Mr. Dowson was really and irrevocably in love with Toni; and it is only fair to the young man to say that he was quite unconscious of his self-betrayal.

He had not been able to hide his anxiety on hearing of Toni's indisposition. With all the exaggeration of true love he immediately feared the worst; and even Eva's callous heart was touched by his incapacity to ask for news on the day of her second visit alone.

He had stammered out a broken question, exhibiting a rather absurd concern over an ordinary slight chill; and when Eva replied casually that she had heard Toni was going on very well, she noticed, with a half-contemptuous amusement, that he had to turn aside and wipe away the drops which glistened on his high forehead.

It was during that second visit that an idea came to Eva, bringing a malicious little smile to her lips in the intervals of Leonard's ministrations.

"You've known Toni—Mrs. Rose—a long time, I suppose?" She asked the question casually as she put on her hat before the glass. "You were friends before her marriage, weren't you?"

"Yes. I had the pleasure of knowing Mrs. Rose some years before that."

"Really? You knew her as a child?"

"She was just fifteen when I saw her first," said Leonard, his voice husky with the emotion called up by the reminiscence. "It was her birthday, I remember, and one of her cousins asked me to go home to tea with him. They were great people for birthdays, her relations."

"Were they?" Eva adjusted her veil carefully. "Friendly, sociable sort of people, I suppose. Was Mr. Rose there that night?"

"Mr. Rose?" For a moment Leonard, lost in dreams of the past, stared uncomprehendingly. Then he pulled himself together vigorously. "No, Mr. Rose was not there in those days. He—he came on the scene much later than that."

"Did he? Was he also a friend of Mrs. Rose's cousins?"

"Oh, no." Mr. Dowson became emphatic. "Nothing of that sort. Toni—Miss Gibbs she was then—met him in the course of business. As a matter of fact, she was his secretary. And then he fell in love with her; and the next thing was that they were married." His tone was dreary.

"Ah, well, I don't wonder he fell in love." Eva watched him closely through the mirror as she spoke. "I have no doubt Mrs. Rose had heaps of admirers at that time. Why, Mr. Dowson"—she spoke laughingly—"what were you about not to seize such a prize before an outsider sailed in and captured it?"

Leonard's pallor gave way to an unbecoming brick-red flush, and his voice shook as he replied:

"I ... I wasn't lucky, you see. I—I would have given my life for that girl, Mrs. Herrick, and she—she wouldn't have me at any price."

His tone of desperate sincerity told Eva all she wanted to know; and in a moment she switched the conversation back to safer ground.

"You needn't give your life for her, Mr. Dowson, but I'll tell you what you can do. You can lend me your Punch to take her. I promised to bring her a copy from Dent's, and he is sold out."

Mr. Dowson was genuinely delighted to follow the suggestion and insisted on depleting the table in his waiting-room of various periodicals which might relieve the tedium of a day in bed; and Eva took the bundle amiably, promising to deliver them in person to Toni on her way home.

She fulfilled her mission punctually; and when Owen, unaware of her presence in the house, came to see how his wife was getting on, he found her bed literally strewn with the papers which should have soothed the fears of the quaking patients in Mr. Dowson's gloomy waiting-room.

"Hallo, Toni." He turned to her smilingly, after greeting Eva. "I hope you've got plenty to read. I didn't know you hankered after the illustrated papers, or I'd have sent out for some. It's very good of Mrs. Herrick to bring you such an assortment."

"Ah, but these were sent by a friend of your wife's," smiled Eva sweetly. "I'm not the principal party in the transaction—I'm only the middleman."

"Really? Who has been so generous then?" asked Owen, taking up one of the papers at random as he spoke.

"Mr. Dowson, the dentist at Sutton," said Eva, turning her large Irish eyes on him pleasantly. "You know, of course, he is an old friend of Mrs. Rose's, and I must say he is a most gentle and satisfactory person in his work."

"A dentist? Dowson?" Owen's eyes roamed from Eva's face to Toni's, and something in the manner of both girls puzzled him. "I don't know him, do I, Toni? Is he really an old friend of yours? But you've never asked him here, have you?"

"He—he's not exactly an old friend," said Toni, annoyed to feel herself colouring. "I mean—oh, I've known him a long time in a way—he was a friend of the boys—my cousins, but that was all. And anyway he has not been here long."

"Oh." Owen was still vaguely perplexed by her manner. "Well, if he's a decent chap you must ask him over."

"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't come." Toni spoke quickly. "He is not your sort, Owen. I mean—I don't think he would care to come. Do you, Mrs. Herrick?"

Thus appealed to, Eva gave her verdict with a show of hesitation.

"N-no, I hardly think he would." She turned to Owen. "I don't think I would ask him, if I were you, Mr. Rose. I expect it would make him feel a little—well, awkward."

"But——" Owen did not know what to make of it. "You see, if he is sufficiently intimate with my wife to send her all these papers and things, it looks rather odd if I take no notice of him, doesn't it? I really think we must ask him over when Toni is herself again, eh, Toni?"

"I wouldn't, Mr. Rose." Eva threw a deep earnestness into her melodious Irish voice. "Really—it's not my business, of course, but if I were you I'd not bother about the matter."

She saw the look of uneasiness in Owen's eyes, and knew she had said enough.

"Is it really five o'clock!" She jumped up in pretended dismay. "And I promised Jim faithfully I'd be back by half-past four. He gets fidgety when I'm out of his sight for long—thinks I'm getting into mischief, I suppose."

She laughed rather hardly, and Owen felt an inner repulsion to the woman who could thus misconstrue her husband's consideration. He watched her bid Toni an effusive farewell and then escorted her downstairs, and stood talking to her for a few moments at the hall door.

Somehow he had never liked her so little as on this afternoon; and although he admitted that she was a pretty woman in her way, he told himself that her face was curiously unattractive.

She looked better now than on her first arrival in the neighbourhood, less haggard, a little plumper, but as he compared her dulled and faded beauty with Toni's youthful bloom he wondered, not for the first time, if her companionship were altogether innocuous.

He was still puzzling over the question when he re-entered Toni's room; and his first words showed her what was in his mind.

"Rather bad taste—that allusion to her husband's anxiety. Don't you think so, Toni? After all, he might well be uneasy about a woman who has once got into such serious mischief as she has done."

"Why? It's not likely to happen again." Toni, poring over Punch, spoke shortly.

"No, of course not." Owen hesitated, but as Toni evinced no signs of wishing to continue the conversation he went out of the room hurriedly, leaving his wife alone with the evidences of Mr. Dowson's good-will.

The next time Eva visited Toni she said jocularly:

"Well, I do think you're mean, Toni!" They had recently advanced to this stage of intimacy. "Fancy not telling me that Mr. Dowson had once proposed to you."

Toni, taken aback, blushed vividly.

"He didn't—at least—not exactly. I mean——"

"Oh, I know what you mean!" Eva laughed. "Of course you couldn't have accepted him—he's a nice fellow in his way, but impossible as a husband." At times Squire Payton's daughter was quite blatantly aristocratic. "But you might have told me, all the same."

"Why? It doesn't matter—now."

"Not to you, dear." Eva jeered lightly. "But the poor fellow is quite upset at meeting you again. He told me to-day he would never marry, and when I asked him why he said surely I could guess."

"Very impertinent of him," said Toni sharply; and Eva smiled inwardly.

"Oh, you mustn't blame him, Toni. I'm afraid it was my fault. We Irish are so sympathetic, you know—people always tell us their secrets. And anyhow there is nothing to be ashamed of. If he likes to go adoring you privately, you needn't be angry."

She said no more just then, for Toni's manner displayed her displeasure; but Eva smiled again when she was alone; and her warped and twisted mind seized eagerly on the idea of the very amusing situation which a little careful engineering might bring to pass.

Like all true intriguers, Eva kept her thoughts to herself; and Toni had not the faintest idea of the plans which her so-called friend turned about in her mind as the autumn days glided swiftly by under the golden and blue skies of a perfect season.



CHAPTER XXII

Owen and his wife were sitting at dinner one evening when a note was brought to Owen whose contents brought an angry exclamation to his lips as he, read.

"By gad, Toni, this is a bit thick! What the devil does the woman mean?"

Toni, suddenly pale, bit her lips, while her eyes filled with apprehension.

"I ... who is it from, Owen? What does it say?"

"There—read it yourself," said Owen, throwing the blue-grey sheet across the table. "I suppose there is some explanation, though I confess I can't understand it—yet."

Still deadly pale, her eyes shining like blue jewels, Toni took up the sheet and read the letter which Lady Martin had written with so much satisfaction a couple of hours earlier.

"DEAR MR. ROSE,

"After the occurrence of this afternoon I am sure you will see the advisability of Mrs. Rose's resignation from the Badminton Club. It is with great regret that I suggest this course; but after the scene which took place this afternoon, in the presence of a dozen members and several visitors, among them Lady Saxonby, a former friend of your own, I speak for the Committee when I request you to advise your wife to resign for the present season at least."

Toni laid the paper quietly down on the table and spoke to Owen with a mingling of terror and defiance in her tone.

"Well?"

"Well?" Owen reached across the table and picked up the letter. "What is all this about, Toni? Why should you be requested to resign?"

"I don't know"—Toni began in a lifeless voice; then suddenly—"yes, I do know. It's all a plot of Lady Martin's and Mrs. Madgwick's. They hate me, I always told you so—and now they want to make you hate me too."

"But what happened this afternoon?"

"Oh, it's a long story." Toni spoke recklessly. "To begin with, I was elected to the Club a long time ago—in September; and when Mrs. Herrick came home she wanted to be a member too. I tried to get her in, but they didn't want her——"

"Of course not." Owen frowned. "You never seem to understand, Toni, that all people are not so unworldly as you. It was a mistake for Mrs. Herrick to attempt to enter a private club of that sort so soon. She should have waited until the scandal had blown over."

"Well, she was very disappointed about it. But every member can take a friend in once a month, so I took Eva this afternoon."

She broke off in dismay.

"Oh, Toni, will you never learn sense?" In spite of himself Owen spoke sharply. "Of all the foolish things to do! Well, what happened when you got there?"

"People weren't very nice." Toni flushed again at the memory of the whispers and averted faces which had greeted her entrance with Mrs. Herrick. "But we just sat down and watched, and everything would have been all right if Lady Martin hadn't interfered."

"What did she do?"

"She had a woman with her—Lady Saxonby, someone called her—and she heard me addressed as Mrs. Rose, and turned to me at once and asked me if I were your wife."

"She did? By Jove!" Owen guessed that Vivian's curiosity had nerved her to the step.

"Yes. So I said I was, and she was beginning to talk to me—quite politely—but somehow as if she were taking me in all the time——"

Owen could well imagine how Lady Saxonby's eyes would scrutinize the face of the girl with whom he had consoled himself after her defection; and he felt both anger and surprise at the thought of the scrutiny.

"Well, go on." Insensibly his tone had hardened, and Toni hurried on.

"Well, as she was talking to me, Lady Martin came up and tried to draw her away, but she wouldn't go. So Lady Martin got vexed, I suppose, and she bent down and whispered something to her—something about Eva, because I heard the words 'necklace' and 'prison' quite plainly, and Eva heard it too and turned crimson."

"And then?"

"Then Lady Saxonby looked straight at me and asked me to give you a message."

"Did she?" Owen was astonished. "What was it?"

"She asked me to say that she hoped you had forgiven her and were as happy as she is."

"Gad, what impertinence!" He flushed darkly. "She had no right to send me such a message; it was nothing but a piece of unwarranted presumption on her part."

"Was it?" Toni spoke rather wistfully. "You see, I didn't know at first who she was, and I thought she meant to be quite decent. But then Eva jumped up and said very quickly that the woman who had jilted an honourable man ought to be ashamed of sending such a message through that man's wife—and when I said something she told me that Lady Saxonby was the woman who threw you over when you came home, for all the world to see."

Owen, vexed to the soul by the thought of this miserable publicity, set his teeth hard and said nothing; and Toni hurried on.

"Well, then there was a scene. Lady Saxonby turned on Eva quite furiously, and said she had no right to talk of anyone being ashamed of anything, seeing that everyone knew what she had done. And then all the other women crowded round, and Eva lost her temper, and said it was quite true and she had been in prison and was a criminal and all that, but she'd sooner be that than a dishonourable, mercenary woman who would jilt one man because another had more money and a title ... and ... oh, there was a most frightful row, and the end was that the secretary hurried up and asked me to take Eva away quickly before she said any more. She was awfully cross, and said I ought not to have brought Mrs. Herrick, and that Lady Saxonby would be sure to talk, and the Club would be ruined."

"So you came away?"

"Yes. Eva was horribly upset—you know her nerves are all wrong—and she fainted dead away in the hall and they had to send for a doctor and we took her home ... and altogether," said Toni, breaking at last into tears, "it was a fearful scene, and I wish I'd never gone near the Club!"

"I wish to God you hadn't!" Owen sprang up, more upset than he cared to confess. He could visualize the whole scene: Vivian, with her beautiful, scornful face, taunting Eva, playing the hypocrite with Toni, and sending insulting messages to the man she had jilted; and the mere thought of the talk, the gossip, the raking up of old stories which would inevitably follow, set all his nerves jarring furiously.

Even the sight of Toni's tears did not soften his heart. Rather he felt exasperated with her, since it was her folly which had precipitated the whole scene.

"Come, don't cry," he said rather curtly. "You've done a very silly thing, and goodness knows where it will end; but it's no use crying and making yourself ill."

Naturally his tone did not tend to set his wife at ease; and she cried the more.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, stop!" Owen felt himself to be a brute, but the thought of Vivian's malice was gall to his spirit. "The mischief's done, and crying won't undo it. But I hope you've learned a lesson, Toni; I always told you it was a mistake to go about with that woman, and you wouldn't believe me. Well, now you see what's happened. You've made us both ridiculous in the eyes of the world, and we shall be more severely ostracized than ever."

Suddenly Toni's tears ceased and she raised her head to stare at him.

"You mean people will be horrid—to you—about it?"

"Well, naturally, they'll think me a fool for encouraging you," said Owen rather irritably. "If only you would have been guided by me! But it's been the same all through. You chose to go your own way, and the end will be that we shall have to leave Greenriver and go to live somewhere else."

"Leave Greenriver?" She echoed the words dully.

"Well, what can we do?" He spoke impatiently. "You have never seemed very happy here, so far as the people go. And now, after this fiasco, we may expect the neighbourhood to drop us altogether."

"Drop us?"

"Well, you know what I mean. Oh, I don't care two straws about the people themselves. They're a stupid lot anyway, and too conventional to know how to got the best out of life. But still—Greenriver's my home, and I thought we should learn to settle down here."

"And I've prevented you?"

"Well, you've never hit it off with the people, have you? And after this I don't see how we can settle down. I'm not going to have people neglecting my wife or being rude to her, but still this Badminton Club affair is a pretty big slap in the face for both of us."

Toni, resting her small chin on the cup of her hollowed hands, stared at him thoughtfully, and in her eyes, still wet with tears, he caught again that elusive hint of a tragic womanhood which had puzzled him on a former occasion.

"Eva was right," she said, and her voice was low. "She said I was out of place here, and so I am."

"Mrs. Herrick said that?" Owen's anger suddenly swung round. "Then it was a damned silly thing to say, and I'm surprised you listened to it."

"But she was right. She said everyone wondered why you married me; and now that I have seen Lady Saxonby, I wonder too."

Owen's heart sank.

"Toni, what do you mean?"

"I mean that I understand now. Lady Saxonby was the woman you were to have married. She is very beautiful," said Toni simply. "And she would have been the right mistress for Greenriver. I can't understand how it was you married me. Eva said—when we were driving home—that it must have been pique. She said you wanted to show the other woman you did not care ... and when I thought about it, I saw that it was true."

"Toni, it wasn't true." All thought of personal anger was swallowed up in Owen's sudden longing to convince the girl that Eva had lied. "I married you because"—in spite of himself he faltered—"because I loved you. What if Vivian did treat me badly? I was well out of it, since she was a woman of that kind."

"Oh, I don't mind—now," said Toni, with a faint smile. "I did at first. When Lady Martin and Mrs. Madgwick said it, last summer, I thought my heart would break; but I suppose I got used to the idea, and when I saw Lady Saxonby to-day I knew it was just one of the things that no one can help."

Owen, not understanding her, only stared.

"You see, I knew all the time it wasn't likely, really, that you would care for me," said Toni quietly. "I tried to make myself believe you did, but I don't think I ever really believed it. Only I was so fond of you—you were so kind—and when we were married you were so good to me that I began to hope you might grow fond of me in time."

"Toni—for God's sake——"

"But I soon found out it was a mistake—our marriage—for you. I wasn't half clever enough. I was only an ignorant, silly, unformed girl, and you were so different. Oh, I tried my hardest to improve. I wanted to prove to you that I wasn't quite such a little fool as you thought me. I wanted to show you I had a soul—Mr. Herrick said I had, and I tried to make myself more companionable to you—oh, I know I didn't succeed very well," said Toni humbly, "but, you see, you didn't understand. I only bothered you when I tried to help you in your work; and of course you didn't want to talk to me about the things that really mattered to you."

"Toni—Toni—don't say such things."

"But you were always kind," said Toni wistfully, "and I sometimes wondered if I had been wrong and you did care for me a little. But I always knew, deep down in my heart, that it was all a mistake, and now"—suddenly the composure which had supported her so far gave way—"now I know I ought not to have married you—and—and I'm sorry, Owen—I'm most frightfully sorry——"

All at once she pressed her hands to her eyes as though to shut out the sight of his face; and then, as he started forward, vague words of comfort on his lips, she flung her arms out over the table and laid her head down on them in an attitude of utter desolation.

For a moment Owen stood motionless, while the light from the rose-shaded candles played over the silky black hair and cast a pool of red colour on the smooth white neck rising out of its chiffon draperies. The scene was one which would never fade from Owen's memory; and in after days he could visualize it to the minutest detail.

The red and yellow of the chrysanthemums in a big silver bowl, the purple bloom of the piled-up grapes before Toni, the ruby of the wine in the decanters, the reflections cast by the candles in the shining surface of the uncovered table, the ruddy glow of the firelight playing over Toni's pale-coloured skirts—to the day of his death Owen would be able to recall the scene at will: and never would he forget the chill in his veins as he realized that the girl he had thought a child was a woman after all....

"Toni—Toni dear." He laid his hand on her shoulder. "For heaven's sake, Toni, look up and tell me you don't mean all the terrible things you've been saying. Of course I love you. Why, haven't I shown you that all along? Toni, don't let those silly women and their chatter hurt you. You can believe me, can't you? And I tell you I married you because I loved you—and Lady Saxonby and all the rest can go to Jericho!"

He half thought he had won her ear; in another moment he felt sure he would have had her in his arms, sobbing her heart out—since she must cry—in the safe shelter of his breast; but at that moment the young butler, deceived by the low voices into thinking the room empty, entered briskly to fulfil his duties; and Toni sprang up before Andrews had time to advance round the big screen, which fortunately hid her from his eyes.

Owen swore softly under his breath at this most untimely interruption; but Toni was already half-way to the door, and he judged it best to engage Andrews in conversation about the wine and leave Toni to seek the sanctuary she desired.

* * * * *

The next day the Secretary of the Badminton Club received Mrs. Rose's resignation; and there, for the present, the matter ended.



CHAPTER XXIII

When Toni related the episode of Lady Martin's note to Eva Herrick, the latter asked a startling question.

"Toni, why don't you leave your husband?"

"Leave my husband?" Toni stared at her, wide-eyed.

"Yes. Oh, anyone can see you're neither of you happy. Mr. Rose knows all the time that he ought not to have married you just to get even with that horrid Saxonby woman, and anyhow you're not the least bit in the world suited to one another."

Toni was very pale.

"You don't think so?"

"I'm sure of it." Eva threw away the cigarette she held and sat upright. "You ought to have married a man who would love you whatever you did—who wouldn't want you to be booky and clever, but would think you perfect in every way. Not a man who feels himself superior to you half the time, and finds fault the other half."

"But my husband doesn't find fault." She spoke in a low voice.

"Doesn't he? Well, it sounds like it," said Eva, piling the cushions behind her curly golden head. "I heard him scolding you over a book you'd mislaid one day, and he nearly jumped down your throat about Miss Loder this very morning."