Then had followed the first moments of relief—incredibly sweet—but fugitive, soon swallowed up in returning discomfort; yet lengthening, deepening, passing by degrees into a new and tremulous sense of security of a point gained and passed. And at last on this tenth morning—a still and cloudy morning of early June, he found himself suddenly fully awake, and as it seemed to him once more in possession of himself. A dull, dumb anguish lay behind him, already half effaced; and the words of a psalm familiar at school and college ran idly through his mind: "My soul hath escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler."

"Where am I?" Not in a hospital. Hospital ceilings are not adorned with wreaths and festoons in raised stucco, or with medallion groups of winged children playing with torches, or bows and arrows.

"I have a gem like that one," he thought, sleepily.

"A genius with a torch."

Then for a long time he was only vaguely conscious of more light than usual in the room—of an open window somewhere—of rustling leaves outside—and of a chaffinch singing....

Another couple of days passed, and he began to question the kind woman whom he had come to regard as a sort of strong, protective force between him and anguish, without any desire to give it a name, or realize an individual. But now he saw that he had been nursed by hands as refined as they were skilful, and he dimly perceived that he owed his life mainly to the wholly impersonal yet absorbed devotion of two women—gentle, firm-faced, women—who had fought death for him and won. Just a professional service for a professional fee; yet his debt was measureless. These are the things, he feebly understood, that women do for men; and what had been mere hearsay to his strong manhood had become experience.

Actually a ray of sunshine had been allowed to penetrate the shaded room. He watched it enchanted. Flowers were on the table near him. There was a delicious sense of warmth and summer scents.

"Where am I?" He turned his bandaged head stiffly toward the nurse beside him.

"In Threlfall Tower—the house of Mr. Edmund Melrose," she said, bending over him.

The nurse saw him smile.

"That's queer. What happened?"

His companion gave him a short account of the accident and of Undershaw's handling of it. Then she refused to let her patient talk any more, and left him with instructions not to tire his head with trying to remember. He lay disconnectedly dreaming. A stream of clear water, running shallow over greenish pebbles and among stones, large and small—and some white things floating on it. The recollection teased him, and a slight headache warned him to put it aside. He tried to go to sleep.

Suddenly, there floated into view a face vaguely seen, a girl's figure, in a blue dress, against a background of mountain. Who was it?—where had he come across her?

A few days later, when, for the first time, he was sitting up raised on pillows, and had been allowed to lift a shaking hand to help the nurse's hand as it guided a cup of soup to his lips, she said to him in her low, pleasant voice:

"Several people have been to inquire for you to-day. I'll bring you the cards."

She fetched them from a table near and read the names. "Lord Tatham, and his mother, Lady Tatham. They've sent you flowers every day. These are Duddon roses." She held up a glass vase before him. "Mrs. Penfold and Miss Penfold."

He shook his head feebly.

"Don't know any of them."

Nurse Aston laughed at him.

"Oh, yes, you do. Lord Tatham was at college with you. He's coming to see you one day soon. And Miss Penfold saw you just before the accident. She was sketching in St. John's Vale, and you helped her fish something out of the water."

"By Jove!—so I did," he said, slowly. "Tatham?" He pondered. "Tell Lady Tatham I'm much obliged to her."

And he went to sleep again.

The next time he woke, he saw an unfamiliar figure sitting beside him. His hold upon himself seemed to have grown much stronger. It was evening, and though the windows were still wide open a lamp had been lit.

"Are you Mr. Melrose?" he asked, amazed at the clearness of his own voice.

A gray-haired man moved his chair nearer.

"That's all right. You'll soon be well now. Do you feel much better?"

"I—I feel nearly well. How long have I been here?"

"About three weeks."

"I say—that's a nuisance! I'm very sorry to put you to inconvenience."

"Wasn't your fault. It was the doctor who brought you here." The tone of the words was round and masterful. "Are you comfortable? Have you all you want?"

"Everything. The nurses are A1. I say—has some one written to my uncle?"

"Undershaw wrote to a Mr. George Faversham last week. He was ill with rheumatic gout, couldn't come. Is that the uncle you mean?"

The young man nodded.

"He's the only relation I've got. The other one died. Hullo!"

He made a sudden movement. His hand slipped into his breast and found nothing. He raised himself in bed, with a frowning brow.

"I say!"—he looked urgently at Melrose. "Where are my gems?—and my ring?"

"Don't trouble yourself. They were brought to me. I have them locked up."

Faversham's expression relaxed. He let himself slide down upon his pillows.

"By George!—if I'd lost them."

Melrose studied him closely.

"They're all right. What do you know about gems?"

"Only what Uncle Mackworth taught me. We were great pals. He was my guardian. I lived with him in the holidays after my parents died. I knew all his gems. And now he's left them to me."

"Where are the rest?"

"I left the cabinet in charge of a man I know at the British Museum. He promised to lock it up in one of their strong rooms. But those six I always carry with me."

Melrose laughed.

"But those are just the six that should have been locked up. They are worth all the rest."

The young man slowly turned his head.

"Did you know my Uncle Mackworth?"

"Certainly. And I too knew all his gems. I could tell you the histories of those six, anyway, for generations. If it hadn't been for a fool of an agent of mine, your uncle would never have had the Arconati Bacchus."

Faversham was silent—evidently trying to feel his way through some induction of thought. But he gave it up as too much for him, and merely said—nervously—with the sudden flush of weakness:

"I'm afraid you've been put to great expense, sir. But it's all right. As soon as they'll let me sign a check, I'll pay my debts."

"Good gracious, don't trouble your head about that!" said Melrose rising. "This house is at your disposal. Undershaw I daresay will tell you tales of me. Take 'em with a grain of salt. He'll tell you I'm mad, and I daresay I am. I'm a hermit anyway, and I like my own society. But you're welcome here, as long as you've any reason to stay. I should like you to know that I do not regard Mackworth's nephew as a stranger."

The studied amiability of these remarks struck Faversham as surprising, he hardly knew why. Suddenly, a phrase emerged in memory.

"Every one about here calls him the Ogre."

The girl by the river—was it? He could not remember. Why!—the Ogre was tame enough. But the conversation—the longest he had yet held—had exhausted him. He turned on his side, and shut his eyes.

* * * * *

Then gradually, day by day, he came to understand the externals, at any rate, of the situation. Undershaw gave him a guarded, though still graphic, account of how, as unconscious as the dead Cid strapped on his warhorse, he and his bodyguard had stormed the Tower. The jests of the nurse, as to the practical difficulties of living in such a house, enlightened him further. Melrose, it appeared, lived like a peasant, and spent like a peasant. They brought him tales of the locked rooms, of the passages huddled and obstructed with bric-a-brac, of the standing feuds between Melrose and his tenants. None of the ordinary comforts of life existed in the Tower, except indeed a vast warming apparatus which kept it like an oven in winter; the only personal expenditure, beyond bare necessaries, that Melrose allowed himself. Yet it was commonly believed that he was enormously rich, and that he still spent enormously on his collections. Undershaw had attended a London stockbroker staying in one of the Keswick hotels, who had told him, for instance, that Melrose was well known to the "House" as one of the largest holders of Argentine stock in the world, and as having made also immense sums out of Canadian land and railways. "The sharpest old fox going," said the Londoner, himself, according to Undershaw, no feeble specimen of the money-making tribe. "His death duties will be worth raking in!"

Occasional gossip of this, or a more damaging kind, enlivened convalescence. Undershaw and the nurses had no motives for reticence. Melrose treated them uncivilly throughout; and Undershaw knew very well that he should never be forgiven the forcing of the house. And as he, the nurses, and the Dixons were firmly convinced that for every farthing of the accommodation supplied him Faversham would ultimately have to pay handsomely, there seemed to be no particular call for gratitude, or for a forbearance based upon it.

Meanwhile Faversham himself did not find the character and intentions of his host so easy to understand. Although very weak, and with certain serious symptoms still persisting to worry the minds of doctor and nurse, he was now regularly dressed of an afternoon, and would sit in a large armchair—which had had to be hired from Keswick—by one of the windows looking out on the courtyard. Punctually at tea-time Melrose appeared. And there was no denying that in general he proved himself an agreeable companion—a surprisingly agreeable companion. He would come slouching in, wearing the shabbiest clothes, and a black skullcap on his flowing gray hair; looking one moment like the traditional doctor of the Italian puppet-play, gaunt, long-fingered, long-featured, his thin, pallid face a study in gray amid its black surroundings; and the next, playing the man of family and cosmopolitan travel, that he actually was. Faversham indeed began before long to find a curious attraction in his society. There was flattery, moreover, in the fact that nobody else in living memory had Melrose ever been known to pay anything like the attention he was now daily devoting to his invalid guest. The few inmates and visitors of the Tower, permanent and temporary, became gradually aware of it. They were astonished, but none the less certain that Melrose had only modified his attitude for some selfish reason of his own which would appear in due time.

The curious fact, however, emerged, after a while, that between the two men, so diverse in age, history, and circumstance, there was a surprising amount in common. Faversham, in spite of his look of youth, much impaired for the present by the results of his accident, was not so very young; he had just passed his thirtieth birthday, and Melrose soon discovered that he had seen a good deal both of the natural and the human worlds. He was the son, it seemed, of an Indian Civil Servant, and had inherited from his parents, who were both dead, an income—so Melrose shrewdly gathered from various indications—just sufficient to keep him; whereby a will, ambitious rather than strong, had been able to have its way. He had dabbled in many things, journalism, law, politics; had travelled a good deal; and was now apparently tired of miscellaneous living, and looking out discontentedly for an opening in life—not of the common sort—that was somewhat long in presenting itself. He seemed to have a good many friends and acquaintances, but not any of overmastering importance to him; his intellectual powers were evidently considerable, but not working to any great advantage either for himself or society.

Altogether an attractive, handsome, restless fellow; persuaded that he was destined to high things, hungry for them, yet not seeing how to achieve them; hungry for money also—probably as the only possible means of achieving them—and determined, meanwhile, not to accept any second best he could help. It was so, at least—from the cynical point of view of an observer who never wasted time on any other—that Melrose read him.

Incidentally he discovered that Faversham was well acquainted with the general lines and procedure of modern financial speculation, was in fact better versed in the jargon and gossip of the Stock Exchange than Melrose himself; and had made use now and then of the large amount of information and the considerable number of useful acquaintances he possessed to speculate cautiously on his own account—without much result, but without disaster. Also it was very soon clear that, independently of his special reasons for knowing something about engraved gems and their value, he had been, through his Oxford uncle, much brought across collectors and collecting. He could, more or less, talk the language of the tribe, and indeed his mere possession of the famous gems had made him, willy-nilly, a member of it.

So that, for the first time in twenty years, Melrose found himself provided with a listener, and a spectator who neither wanted to buy from him nor sell to him. When a couple of vases and a statuette, captured in Paris from some remains of the Spitzer sale, arrived at the Tower, it was to Faversham's room that Melrose first conveyed them; and it was from Faversham's mouth that he also, for the first time, accepted any remarks on his purchases that were not wholly rapturous. Faversham, with the arrogance of the amateur, thought the vases superb, and the statuette dear at the price. Melrose allowed it to be said; and next morning the statuette started on a return journey to Paris, and the Tower knew it no more.

Meanwhile the old collector would appear at odd moments with a lacquered box, or a drawer from a cabinet, and Faversham would find a languid amusement in turning over the contents, while Melrose strolled smoking up and down the room, telling endless stories of "finds" and bargains. Of the store, indeed, of precious or curious objects lying heaped together in the confusion of Melrose's den, the only treasures of a portable kind that Faversham found any difficulty in handling were his own gems. Melrose would bring them sometimes, when the young man specially asked for them, would keep a jealous eye on them the whole time they were in their owner's hands, and hurry them back to their drawer in the Riesener table as soon as Faversham could be induced to give them up.

One night the invalid made a show of slipping them back into the breast-pocket from which they had been taken while he lay unconscious.

"I'm well enough now to look after them," he had said, smiling, to his host. "Nurse and I will mount guard."

Whereupon Melrose protested so vehemently that the young man, in his weakness, did not resist. Rather sulkily, he handed the case back to the greedy hand held out for it.

Then Melrose smiled; if so pleasant a word may be applied to the queer glitter that for a moment passed over the cavernous lines of his face.

"Let me make you an offer for them," he said abruptly.

"Thank you—I don't wish to sell them."

"I mean a good offer—an offer you are not likely to get elsewhere—simply because they happen to fit into my own collection."

"It is very kind of you. But I have a sentiment about them. I have had many offers. But I don't intend to sell them."

Melrose was silent a moment, looking down on the patient, in whose pale cheeks two spots of feverish red had appeared. Then he turned away.

"All right. Don't excite yourself, pray."

"I thought he'd try and get them out of me," thought Faversham irritably, when he was left alone. "But I shan't sell them—whatever he offers."

And vaguely there ran through his mind the phrases of a letter handed to him by his old uncle's solicitor, together with the will: "Keep them for my sake, my dear boy; enjoy them, as I have done. You will be tempted to sell them; but don't, if you can help it. The money would be soon spent; whereas the beauty of these things, the associations connected with them, the thoughts they arouse—would give you pleasure for a lifetime. I have loved you like a father, and I have left you all the little cash I possess. Use that as you will. But that you should keep and treasure the gems which have been so much to me, for my sake—and beauty's—would give me pleasure in the shades—'quo dives Tullus et Ancus'—you know the rest. You are ambitious, Claude. That's well. But keep you heart green."

What precisely the old fellow might have meant by those last words, Faversham had often rather sorely wondered, though not without guesses at the answer. But anyway he had loved his adopted father; he protested it; and he would not sell the gems. They might represent his "luck"—such as there was of it—who knew?

* * * * *

The question of removing his patient to a convalescent home at Keswick was raised by Undershaw at the end of the third week from the accident. He demanded to see Melrose one morning, and quietly communicated the fact that he had advised Faversham to transfer himself to Keswick as soon as possible. The one nurse now remaining would accompany him, and he, Undershaw, would personally superintend the removal.

Melrose looked at him with angry surprise.

"And pray what is the reason for such an extraordinary and unnecessary proceeding?"

"I understood," said Undershaw, smiling, "that you were anxious to have your house to yourself again as soon as possible."

"I defended my house against your attack. But that's done with. And why you should hurry this poor fellow now into new quarters, in his present state, when he might stay quietly here till he is strong enough for a railway journey, I cannot conceive!"

Undershaw, remembering the first encounter between them, could not prevent his smile becoming a grin.

"I am delighted Mr. Faversham has made such a good impression on you, sir. But I understand that he himself feels a delicacy in trespassing upon you any longer. I know the house at Keswick to which I propose to take him. It is excellently managed. We can get a hospital motor from Carlisle, and of course I shall go with him."

"Do you suggest that he has had any lack of attention here from me or my servants?" said Melrose, hotly.

"By no means. But—well, sir, I will be open with you. Mr. Faversham in my opinion wants a change of scene. He has been in that room for three weeks, and—he understands there is no other to which he can be moved. It would be a great advantage, too, to be able to carry him into a garden. In fact"—the little doctor spoke with the same cool frankness he had used in his first interview with Melrose—"your house, Mr. Melrose, is a museum; but it is not exactly the best place for an invalid who is beginning to get about again."

Melrose frowned upon him.

"What does he want, eh? More space? Another room? How many rooms do you suppose there are in this house, eh?" he asked in a voice half hectoring, half scornful.

"Scores, I daresay," said Undershaw, quietly. "But when I inquired of Dixon the other day whether it would be impossible to move Mr. Faversham into another room he told me that every hole and corner in the house was occupied by your collections, except two on the ground floor that you had never furnished. We can't put Mr. Faversham into an unfurnished room. That which he occupies at present is, if I may speak plainly, rather barer of comforts than I like."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Well, when an invalid's out of bed a pleasant and comfortable room is a help to him—a few things to look at on the walls—a change of chairs—a bookcase or two—and so on. Mr. Faversham's present room is—I mean no offence—as bare as a hospital ward, and not so cheerful. Then as to the garden"—Undershaw moved to a side window and pointed to the overgrown and gloomy wilderness outside—"nurse and I have tried in vain to find a spot to which we could carry him. I am afraid I must say that an ordinary lodging-house, with a bit of sunny lawn on which he could lie in his long chair, would suit him better, at his present stage, than this fine old house."

"Luxury!" growled Melrose, "useless luxury and expense! that's what every one's after nowadays. A man must be as cossu as a pea in a pod! I'll go and speak to him myself!"

And catching up round him the sort of Tennysonian cloak he habitually wore, even in the house and on a summer day, Melrose moved imperiously toward the door.

Undershaw stood in his way.

"Mr. Faversham is really not fit yet to discuss his own plans, except with his doctor, Mr. Melrose. It would be both wise and kind of you to leave the decision of the matter to myself."

Melrose stared at him.

"Come along here!" he said, roughly. Opening the door of the library, he turned down the broad corridor to the right. Undershaw followed unwillingly. He was due at a consultation at Keswick, and had no time to waste with this old madman.

Melrose, still grumbling to himself, took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, and fitted one to the last door in the passage. It opened with difficulty. Undershaw saw dimly a large room, into which the light of a rainy June day penetrated through a few chinks in the barred shutters. Melrose went to the windows, and with a physical strength which amazed his companion unshuttered and opened them all, helped by Undershaw. One of them was a glass door leading down by steps to the garden outside. Melrose dragged the heavy iron shutter which closed it open, and then, panting, looked round at his companion.

"Will this do for you?"

"Wonderful!" said Undershaw heartily, staring in amazement at the lovely tracery which incrusted the ceiling, at the carving of the doors, at the stately mantelpiece, with its marble caryatides, and at the Chinese wall-paper which covered the walls, its mandarins and pagodas, and its branching trees. "I never saw such a place. But what is my patient to do with an unfurnished room?"

"Furniture!" snorted Melrose. "Have you any idea, sir, what this house contains?"

Undershaw shook his head.

Melrose pondered a moment, and took breath. Then he turned to Undershaw.

"You are going back to Pengarth? You pass that shop, Barclay's—the upholsterer's. Tell him to send me over four men here to-morrow, to do what they're told. Stop also at the nurseryman's—Johnson's. No—I'll write. Give me three days—and you'll see."

He studied the doctor's face with his hawk's eyes.

Undershaw felt considerable embarrassment. The owner of the Tower appeared to him more of a lunatic than ever.

"Well, really, Mr. Melrose—I appreciate your kindness—as I am sure my patient will. But—why should you put yourself out to this extent? It would be much simpler for everybody concerned that I should find him the quarters I propose."

"You put it to Mr. Faversham that I am quite prepared to move him into other quarters—and quarters infinitely more comfortable than he can get in any infernal 'home' you talk of—or I shall put it to him myself," said Melrose, in his most determined voice.

"Of course, if you persist in asking him to stay, I suppose he must ultimately decide." Undershaw's tone betrayed his annoyance. "But I warn you, I reserve my own right of advice. And moreover—supposing you do furnish this room for him, allow me to point out that he will soon want something else, and something more, even, than a better room. He will want cheerful society."

"Well?" The word was challenging.

"You are most kind and indefatigable in coming to see him. But, after all, a man at his point of convalescence, and inclined to be depressed—the natural result of such an accident—wants change, intellectual as well as physical, and society of his own age."

"What's to prevent his getting it?" asked Melrose, shortly. "When the room is in order, he will use it exactly as he likes."

Undershaw shrugged his shoulders, anxious to escape to his consultation.

"Let us discuss it again to-morrow. I have told you what I think best." He turned to go.

"Will you give that order to Barclay?"

Undershaw laughed.

"If I do, I mustn't be taken as aiding and abetting you. But of course—if you wish it."

"Ten o'clock to-morrow," said Melrose, accompanying him to the door. "Ten o'clock, sharp." He stood, with raised forefinger, on the threshold of the newly opened room, bowing a stiff farewell.

Undershaw escaped. But as he turned into the pillared hall, Nurse Aston hurriedly emerged from Faversham's room. She reported some fresh trouble in one of the wounds on the leg caused by the accident, which had never yet properly healed. There was some pain, and a rise in temperature.

* * * * *

The unfavourable symptoms soon subsided. But as the fear of blood-poisoning had been in Undershaw's mind from the beginning, they led him to postpone, in any case, the arrangements that had been set on foot for Faversham's departure. During three or four days afterward he saw little or nothing of Melrose. But he and Nurse Aston were well aware that unusual things were going on in the house. Owing to the great thickness of the walls, the distance of Faversham's room from the scene of action, and the vigilance of his nurse, who would allow no traffic whatever through the front hall, the patient was protected from the noise of workmen in the house, and practically knew nothing of the operations going on. Melrose appeared every evening as usual, and gave no hint.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, Melrose met Undershaw in the hall, as he entered the house.

"How is he?"

"All right again, I think, and doing well. I hope we shall have no further drawbacks."

"Be good enough to give me ten minutes—before you see Mr. Faversham?"

The invitation could not have been more grand-seigneurish. Undershaw, consumed with curiosity, accepted. Melrose led the way.

But no sooner had they passed a huge lacquer screen, newly placed in position, and turned into the great corridor, than Undershaw exclaimed in amazement. Melrose was striding along toward the south wing. Behind them, screened off, lay regions no longer visible to any one coming from the hall. In front, stretched a beautiful and stately gallery, terminating in a pillared window, through which streamed a light to which both it and the gallery had been strangers for nearly a score of years. A mass of thick shrubbery outside, which had grown up close to the house, and had been allowed for years to block this window, together with many others on the ground floor, had been cut sheer away. The effect was startling, and through the panes, freed from the dust and cobwebs of a generation, the blue distant line of the Pennines could be distinctly seen far away to the southeast. The floor of the gallery was spread with a fine matting of a faint golden brown, on which at intervals lay a few old Persian or Indian rugs. The white panelling of the walls was broken here and there by a mirror, or a girandole, delicate work of the same date as the Riesener table; while halfway down two Rose du Barri tapestries faced each other, glowing in the June sun. It was all spacious—a little empty—the whole conception singularly refined—the colour lovely.

Melrose stalked on, silently, pulling at his beard. He made no reply to Undershaw's admiring comments; and the doctor wondered whether he was already ashamed of the impulse which had made him do so strange a thing.

Presently, he threw open the door he had unlocked the week before, Undershaw stepped into a room no less attractive than the gallery outside. A carpet of old Persian, of a faded blue—a few cabinets spaced along the walls—a few bookcases full of books old and new—a pillared French clock on the mantelpiece—a comfortable modern sofa, and some armchairs—branches of white rhododendron in a great enamelled vase—and two oval portraits on the walls, a gentleman in red, and a gentleman in blue, both pastels by Latour—in some such way one might have catalogued the contents of the room. But no catalogue could have rendered its effect on Undershaw, who was not without artistic leanings of a mild kind himself—an effect as of an old debt paid, an injustice remedied, a beautiful creation long abused and desecrated, restored to itself. The room was at last what it had been meant to be; and after a hundred and fifty years the thought of its dead architect had found fruition.

But this was not all. The garden door stood open, and outside, as he walked up to it, Undershaw saw a stretch of smooth grass, with groups of trees—the survivors of a ragged army—encircling it; a blaze of flowers; and beyond the low parapet wall of lichened stone, from which also a dense thicket of yew and laurel had been removed, the winding course of the river, seventy feet below the Tower, showed blue under a clear sky. A deck chair stood on the grass and a garden table beside it, holding an ash-tray and cigarettes.

Undershaw, after a pause of wonder, warmly expressed his admiration. Melrose received it ungraciously.

"Why, the things were all in the house. Clumsy brutes!—Barclay's men would have broken the half of them, if I hadn't been here," he said, morosely. "Now will you tell Mr. Faversham this room is at his disposal, or shall I?"

* * * * *

Half an hour later Faversham, assisted by his nurse, had limped along the corridor, and was sitting beside the glass door in an utter yet not unpleasant bewilderment. What on earth had made the strange old fellow take such an odd fancy to him? He had had singularly little "spoiling" in his orphaned life so far, except occasionally from "Uncle Mackworth." The experience was disturbing, yet certainly not disagreeable.

He must of course stay on for a while, now that such extraordinary pains had been taken for his comfort. It would be nothing less than sheer ingratitude were he not to do so. At the same time, his temperament was cautious; he was no green youngster; and he could not but ask himself, given Melrose's character and reputation, what ulterior motive there might be behind a generosity so eccentric.

Meanwhile Melrose, in high spirits, and full of complaisance, now that the hated Undershaw had departed, walked up and down as usual, talking and smoking. It was evident that the whole process of unpacking his treasures had put him in a glow of excitement. The sudden interruption of habit had acted with stimulating power, his mind, like his home, had shaken off some of its dust. He talked about the pictures and furniture he had unearthed; the Latour pastels, the Gobelins in the gallery; rambling through scenes and incidents of the past, in a vivacious, egotistical monologue, which kept Faversham amused.

In the middle of it, however, he stopped abruptly, eying his guest.

"Can you write yet?"

"Pretty well. My arm's rather stiff."

"Make your nurse write some notes for you. That man—Undershaw—says you must have some society—invite some people."

Faversham laughed.

"I don't know a soul, either at Keswick or Pengarth."

"There have been some people inquiring after you."

"Oh, young Tatham? Yes, I knew him at Oxford."

"And the women—who are they?"

Faversham explained.

"Miss Penfold seems to have recognized me from Undershaw's account. They are your nearest neighbours, aren't they?" He looked smiling at his host.

"I don't know my neighbours!" said Melrose, emphatically. "But as for that young ass, Tatham—ask him to come and see you."

"By all means—if you suggest it."

Melrose chuckled.

"But he won't come, unless he knows I am safely out of the way. He and I are not on terms, though his mother and I are cousins. I dare say Undershaw's told you—he's thick with them. The young man has been insolent to me on one or two occasions. I shall have to take him down. He's one of your popularity-hunting fools. However you ask him by all means if you want him. He'll come to see you. Ask him Thursday. I shall be at Carlisle for the day. Tell him so."

He paused, his dark eyeballs, over which the whites had a trick of showing disagreeably, fixing his visitor; then added:

"And ask the women too. I shan't bite 'em. I saw them from the window the day they came to inquire. The mother looked perfectly scared. The daughter's good looking."

Manner and tone produced a vague irritation in Faversham. But he merely said that he would write to Mrs. Penfold.

Two notes were accordingly despatched that evening from the Tower; one to Duddon Castle, the other to Green Cottage. Faversham had succeeded in writing them himself; and in the exhilaration of what seemed to him a much-quickened convalescence, he made arrangements the following morning to part with his nurse within a few days. "Do as you like, in moderation," said Undershaw, "no railway journey for a week or two."



VII

Melrose had gone to Carlisle. The Cumbria landscape lay in a misty sunshine, the woods and fields steaming after a night of soaking rain. All the shades of early summer were melting into each other; reaches of the river gave back a silvery sky, while under the trees the shadows slept. The mountains were indistinct, drawn in pale blues and purples, on a background of lilac and pearl. And all the vales "were up," drinking in the streams that poured from the heights.

Tatham and his mother were walking through the park together. He was in riding-dress, and his horse awaited him at the Keswick gate. Lady Tatham beside him was attired as usual in the plainest and oldest of clothes. Her new gowns, which she ordered from time to time mechanically, leaving the whole designing of them to her dress-maker, served her at Duddon, in her own phrase, mainly "for my maid to show the housekeeper." They lay in scented drawers, daintily folded in tissue paper, and a maid no less ambitious than her fellows for a well-dressed mistress kept mournful watch over them. This carelessness of dress had grown upon Victoria Tatham with years. In her youth the indulgence of a taste for beautiful and artistic clothes had taken up a great deal of her time. Then suddenly it had all become indifferent to her. Devotion to her boy, books, and natural history absorbed a mind more and more impatient of ordinary conventions.

"You are quite sure that Melrose will be out of the way?" she asked her son as they entered on the last stretch of their walk.

"Well, you saw the letter."

"No—give it me."

He handed it. She read it through attentively.

"Mr. Melrose asks me to say that he will not be here. He is going over to the neighbourhood of Carlisle on business, and cannot be home till ten o'clock at night."

"He has the decency not to 'regret,'" said Lady Tatham.

"No. It is awkward of course going at all"—Tatham's brow was a little furrowed—"but I somehow think I ought to go."

"Oh, go," said his mother. "If he does play a trick you will know how to meet it. It would be very like him to play some trick," she added, thoughtfully.

"Mother," said Tatham impetuously, "was Melrose ever in love with you?"

He coloured boyishly as he spoke. Lady Tatham looked up startled; a faint red appeared in her cheeks also.

"I believe he supposed himself to be. I knew him very well, and I might—possibly—have accepted him—but that some information came to my knowledge. Then, later on, largely I think to punish me, he nearly succeeded in entangling my younger sister—your Aunt Edith. I stood in his way. He hates me, of course. I think he suffered. In those days he was very different. But his pride and self-will were always a madness. And gradually they have devoured everything else." She paused. "I cannot tell you anything more, Harry. There were other people concerned."

"Dearest, as if I should ask! He did my mother no injury?"

Under the shadow of the woods the young man threw his arm round her shoulders, looking down upon her with a proud tenderness.

"None. I escaped; and I won all along the line. I was neither to be pitied—nor he," she added slowly, "though I daresay he would put down his later mode of life to me."

"As if any woman could ever have put up with him!"

Lady Tatham's expression showed a mind drawn back into the past.

"When I first saw him, he was a magnificent creature. For several years I was dazzled by him. Then when I—and others—broke with him, he turned his back on England and went to live abroad. And gradually he quarrelled with everybody who had ever known him."

"But you never did care about him, mother?" cried Tatham, outraged by the mere notion of any such thing.

"No—never." There was a deliberate emphasis on the words. The smile that followed was slight but poignant. "I knew that still more plainly, when, six months after I ceased to see him, your father came along."

Tatham who had drawn her hand within his arm, laid his own upon it for a moment. He was in the happy position of a son in whom filial affection represented no enforced piety, but the spontaneous instinct of his nature. His mother had been so far his best friend; and though he rarely spoke of his father his childish recollections of him, and the impression left by his mother's constant and deliberate talk of him, during the boyish years of her son, had entered deep into the bases of character. It is on such feelings and traditions that all that is best in our still feudal English life is reared; Tatham had known them without stint; and in their absence he would have been merely the trivially prosperous young man that he no doubt appeared to the Radical orators of the neighbourhood.

The wood thinned. They emerged from it to see the Helvellyn range lying purple under a southwest sky, and Tatham's gray mare waiting a hundred yards away.

"You have no note?"

Tatham tapped his breast pocket.

"Rather!"

"All right—go along!" Lady Tatham came to a halt. "And Harry—don't call too often! Is this the third visit this week?"

"Oh, but the others were such little ones!" he said eagerly.

"Don't try to go too quick." The tone was serious.

"Too quick! I make no way at all," he protested, his look clouding.

Tatham rode slowly along the Darra, the little river which skirted his own land and made its way at last into that which flowed beneath the Tower. He was going to Threlfall, but on his way he was to call at Green Cottage and deliver a note from his mother.

He had seen a good deal of Lydia Penfold during the weeks since her first appearance at Duddon. The two sisters had been induced to lunch there once or twice; there had been a picnic in the Glendarra woods; and for himself, in spite of his mother's attack, he thought he had been fairly clever in contriving excuses for calls. On one occasion he had carried with him—by his mother's suggestion—a portfolio containing a dozen early proofs of the "Liber Studiorium," things about which he knew little or nothing; but Lydia's eyes had sparkled when he produced them, which was all he cared for. On the second, he had called to offer them a key which would admit their pony-carriage to some of the private drives of the park, wild enchanted ways which led up to the very eastern heart of Blencathra. That was not quite so successful, because both Lydia and her mother were out, and his call had been made chiefly on Susan, who had been even queerer than usual. After taking the key, she had let it fall absently into a waste-paper basket, while she talked to him about Ibsen; and he had been forced to rescue it himself, lest Lydia should never know of his visit. On all other occasions he had found Lydia, and she had been charming—always charming—but as light and inaccessible as mountain birds. He had been allowed to see the drawing she was now busy on—the ravines of Blencathra, caught sideways through a haze of light, edge beyond edge, distance behind distance; a brave attempt on the artist's part at poetic breadth and selection. She had been much worried about the "values," whatever they might be. "They're quite vilely wrong!" she had said, impatiently. "And I don't know how to get them right." And all he could do was to stand like an oaf and ask her to explain. Nor could he ignore the fact—so new and strange to a princeling!—that her perplexities were more interesting to her than his visit.

Yet of course Tatham had his own natural conceit of himself, like any normal young man, in the first bloom of prosperous life. He was accustomed to be smiled on; to find his pleasure consulted, and his company welcome, whether as the young master of Duddon, or as a comrade among his equals of either sex. The general result indeed of his happy placing in the world had been to make him indifferent to things that most men desire. No merit in that! As he truly said, he had so much of them! But he was proud of his health and strength—his shooting and the steady lowering of his golf handicap. He was proud also of certain practical aptitudes he possessed, and would soon allow no one to interfere with him—hardly to advise him—in the management of his estate. He liked nothing better than to plan the rebuilding of a farm, or a set of new cottages. He was a fair architect, of a rough and ready sort, and a decent thatcher and bricklayer. All the older workmen on the estate had taught him something at one time or another; and of these various handicrafts he was boyishly vain.

None of these qualifications, however, gave him the smallest confidence in himself, with regard to Lydia Penfold. Ever since he had first met her, he had realized in her the existence of standards just as free as his own, only quite different. Other girls wished to be courted; or they courted him. Miss Penfold gave no sign that she wished to be courted; and she certainly had never courted anybody. Many pretty girls assert themselves by a kind of calculated or rude audacity, as though to say that gentleness and civility are not for the likes of them. Lydia was always gentle—kind, at least—even when she laughed at you. Unless she got upon her "ideas." Then—like Susan—she could harangue a little, and grow vehement—as she had at Duddon that day, talking of the new independence of women. But neither her gentleness nor her vehemence seemed to have any relation to what a man—or men—might desire of her. She lived for herself; not indeed in any selfish sense; for it was plain that she was an affectionate daughter and sister; but simply the world was so interesting to her in other ways that she seemed to have no need of men and matrimony. And as to money, luxury, a great train de vie—he had felt from the beginning that those things mattered nothing at all to her. It might be inexperience, it might be something loftier. But, at any rate, if she were to be bribed, it must be with goods of another kind.

As to himself, he only knew that from his first sight of her at the Hunt Ball, she had filled his thoughts. Her delicate, pale beauty, lit by those vivacious eyes; so quiet, so feminine, yet with its suggestion of something unconquerable, moving in a world apart—he could not define it in any such words; but there it was, the attraction, the lure. Something difficult; something delightful! A dear woman, a woman to be loved; and yet a thorn hedge surrounding her—how else can one put the eternal challenge, the eternal chase?

But as three parts of love is hope, and hope is really the mother of invention, Tatham, though full of anxiety, was also, like General Trochu, full of plans. He had that morning made his mother despatch an invitation to one of the great painters of the day; a man who ruled the beauties of the moment en Sultan; painted whom he would; when he would; and at what price he would. But while those who were dying to be painted by him must often wait for years, and put up with manners none too polite, there were others who avenged them; women, a few, very few women, whom the great man, strange to say, sighed to paint, and sighed in vain. Such women were generally women of a certain age; none of your soft-cheeked beauties. And Lady Tatham was one of them. The great artist had begged her to let herself be painted by him. And Victoria had negligently replied that, perhaps, at Duddon, some day, there might be time. Several reminders, launched from the Chelsea studio, had not brought her to the point; but now for her son's sake she had actually named a time; and a jubilant telegram from London had clenched the bargain. The great man was to arrive in a fortnight from now, for a week's visit; and Tatham had in his pocket a note from Lady Tatham to Mrs. Penfold requesting the pleasure of her company and that of her two daughters at dinner, to meet Mr. Louis Delorme, the day after his arrival.

And all this, because, at a mention of the illustrious name, Lydia had looked up with a flutter of enthusiasm. "You know him? How lucky for you! He's wonderful! I? Oh, no. How should I? I saw him once in the distance—he was giving away prizes. I didn't get one—alack! That's the nearest I shall ever come to him."

Tatham chuckled happily as he thought of it.

"She shall sit next the old boy at dinner, and she shall talk to him just as much as she jolly well pleases. And of course he'll take to her, and offer to give her lessons—or paint her—or something. Then we can get her over—lots of times!"

Still dallying with these simple plans, Tatham arrived at Green Cottage, and tying up his horse went in to deliver his note.

He had no sooner entered the little drive than he saw Lydia under a laburnum tree on the lawn. Hat in hand, the smiling youth approached her. She was sewing, apparently mending house-linen, which she quietly put down to greet him. There was a book before her; a book of poetry, he thought. She slipped it among the folds of the linen.

He could not flatter himself that his appearance disturbed her composure in the least. She was evidently glad to see him; she was gratefully sure that they would all be delighted to dine with Lady Tatham on the day named; she came with him to the gate, and admired his horse. But as to any flutter of hand or eye; any consciousness in her, answering to the eager feeling in him—he knew very well there was nothing of the kind. Never mind! There was an inner voice in him that kept reassuring him all the time; telling him to be patient; to go at it steadily. There was no other fellow in the way, anyhow! He had a joyous sense of all the opportunities to come, the summer days, the open country, the resources of Duddon.

With his hand on his horse's neck, and loath to ride away, he told her that he was on his way to the Tower to call on Faversham.

"Oh, but we're coming too, mother and I!" she said, in surprise. "Mr. Faversham sent us a note. I don't believe he ought to have two sets of visitors just yet."

Tatham too was surprised. "How on earth Faversham is able to entertain anybody, I can't think! Undershaw told me last week he must get him away, as soon as possible, into decent quarters. He doesn't get on very fast."

"He's been awfully ill!" said Lydia, with a soft concern in her voice, which made the splendid young fellow beside her envious at once of the invalid. "Well, good-bye! for the moment. We have ordered the pony in half an hour."

"You'll see a queer place; the piggery that old fellow lives in! You didn't know Faversham—I think you said—before that day of the accident?" He looked down on her from the saddle.

"Not the least. I feel a horrid pang sometimes that I didn't warn him of that hill!"

"Any decent bike ought to have managed that hill all right," said Tatham scornfully. "Scores of tourists go up and down it every day in the summer."

Lydia bade him speak more respectfully of his native hills, lest they bring him also to grief. Then she waved good-bye to him; received the lingering bow and eager look, which betrayed the youth; thought of "young Harry with his beaver on," as she watched the disappearing horseman, and went back for a while to her needlework and cogitation.

That she was flattered and touched, that she liked him—the kind, courteous boy—that was certain. Must she really assume anything else on his part—take his advances seriously—check them—put up restrictions—make herself disagreeable? Why? During her training in London, Lydia had drunk of the modern spring like other girls. She had been brought up in a small old-fashioned way, by her foolish little mother, and by a father—a stupid, honourable, affectionate man—whom she had loved with a half-tender, half-rebellious affection. There had been no education to speak of, for either her or Susy. But the qualities and gifts of remoter ancestors had appeared in them—to the bewilderment of their parents. And when after her father's death Lydia, at nineteen, had insisted on entering the Slade School, she had passed through some years of rapid development. At bottom her temperament always remained, on the whole, conservative and critical; the temperament of the humourist, in whose heart the old loyalties still lie warm. But that remarkable change in the whole position and outlook of women which has marked the last half century naturally worked upon her as upon others. For such persons as Lydia it has added dignity and joy to a woman's life, without the fever and disorganization which attend its extremer forms. While Susy, attending lectures at University College, became a Suffragist, Lydia, absorbed in the pleasures and pains of her artistic training, looked upon the suffrage as a mere dusty matter of political machinery.

But the ideas of her student years—those "ideas" which Tatham felt so much in his way—were still dominant. Marriage was not necessary. Art and knowledge could very well suffice. On the whole, in her own case, she aspired to make them suffice.

But not in any cloistered world. Women who lived merely womanish lives, without knowledge of and comradeship with men, seemed to her limited and parochial creatures. She was impatient of her sex, and the narrowness of her sex's sphere. She dreamed of a broadly human, practical, disinterested relation between men and women, based on the actual work of the world; its social, artistic, intellectual work; all that has made civilization.

"We women are starved"—she thought, "because men will only marry us—or make playthings of us. But the world is only just—these last years—open to us, as it has been open to men for thousands of generations. We want to taste and handle it for ourselves; as men do. Why can't they take us by the hand—a few of us—teach us, confide in us, open the treasure-house to us?—and let us alone! To be treated as good fellows!—that's all we ask. Some of us would make such fratchy wives—and such excellent friends! I vow I should make a good friend! Why shouldn't Lord Tatham try?"

And letting her work fall upon the grass, she sat smiling and thinking, her pale brown hair blown back by the wind. In her simple gray dress, which showed the rippling beauty of every line, she was like one of these innumerable angels or virtues, by artists illustrious or forgotten, which throng the golden twilight of an Italian church; drawing back the curtains of a Doge; hovering in quiet skies; or offering the Annunciation lily, from one side of a great tomb, to the shrinking Madonna on the other. These creations of Italy in her early prime are the most spontaneous of the children of beauty. There are no great differences among them; the common type is lovely; they spring like flowers from one root, in which are the forces both of Greece and the Italy of Leonardo. It was their harmony, their cheerfulness, their touch of something universal, that were somehow reproduced in this English girl, and that made the secret of her charm.

She went on thinking about Tatham.

Presently she had built a castle high in air; she had worked it out—how she was to make Lord Tatham clearly understand, before he had any chance of proposing (if that were really in the wind, and she were not a mere lump of conceit), that marrying was not her line; but that, as a friend, he might rely upon her. Anything—in particular—that she could do to help him to a wife, short of offering herself, was at his service. She would be eyes and ears for him; she would tell him things he did not in the least suspect about the sex.

But as to marrying! She rose from her seat, stretching her arms toward the sky and the blossoming trees, in that half-wild gesture which so truly expressed her. Marrying Duddon! that vast house, and all those possessions; those piles of money; those county relations, and that web of inherited custom which would lay its ghostly compulsion on Tatham's wife the very instant he had married her—it was not to be thought of for a moment! She, the artist with art and the world before her; she, with her soul in her own keeping, and all the beauty of sky and fell and stream to be had for the asking, to make herself the bond slave of Duddon—of that formidably beautiful, that fond, fastidious mother!—and of all the ceremonial and paraphernalia that must come with Duddon! She saw herself spending weeks on the mere ordering of her clothes, calling endlessly on stupid people, opening bazaars, running hospitals, entertaining house parties, with the clef des champs gone forever—a little drawing at odd times—and all the meaning of life drowned in its trappings. No—no—no!—a thousand times, no! Not though her mother implored her, and every creature in Cumbria and the universe thought her stark staring mad. No!—for her own sake first; but, above all, for Lord Tatham's sake.

Whereat she repentantly reminded herself that after all, if she despised the world and the flesh, there was no need to give herself airs; for certainly Harry Tatham was giving proof—stronger proof indeed, of doing the same; if it were really his intention to offer his handsome person, and his no less handsome possessions to a girl as insignificant as herself. Custom had not staled him. And there was his mother too; who, instead of nipping the silly business in the bud, and carrying the foolish young man to London, was actually aiding and abetting—sending gracious invitations to dinner, of the most unnecessary description.

What indeed could be more detached, more romantic—apparently—than the attitude of both Tatham and his mother toward their own immense advantages?

Yes. But they were born to them; they had had time to get used to them. "It would take me half a lifetime to find out what they mean, and another half to discover what to do with them."

"And, if one takes the place, ought one not to earn the wages? Lady Tatham sits loose to all her social duties, scorns frocks, won't call, cuts bazaars, has never been known to take the chair at a meeting. But I should call that shirking. Either refuse the game; or play it! And of all the games in the world, surely, surely the Lady Bountiful game is the dullest! I won't be bored with it!"

She went toward the house, her smiling eyes on the grass. "But, of course, if I could not get on without the young man, I should put up with any conditions. But I can get on without him perfectly! I don't want to marry him. But I do—I do want to be friends!"

"Lydia! Mother says you'll be late if you don't get ready," said a voice from the porch.

"Why, I am ready! I have only to put on my hat."

"Mother thought you'd change."

"Then mother was quite wrong. My best cotton frock is good enough for any young man!" laughed Lydia.

Susan descended the garden steps. She was a much thinner and dimmer version of her sister. One seemed to see her pale cheeks, her dark eyes and hair, her small mouth, through mist, like a Whistler portrait. She moved very quietly, and her voice was low, and a little dragging. The young vicar of a neighbouring hamlet in the fells, who admired her greatly, thought of her as playing "melancholy"—in the contemplative Miltonic sense—to Lydia's "mirth." She was a mystery to him; a mystery he would have liked to unravel. But she was also a mystery to her family. She shut herself up a good deal with her books; she had written two tragedies in blank verse; and she held feminist views, vague yet fierce. She was apparently indifferent to men, much more so than Lydia, who frankly preferred their society to that of her own sex; but Lydia noticed that if the vicar, Mr. Franklin, did not call for a week Susan would ingeniously invent some device or other for peremptorily inducing him to do so. It was understood in the family, that while Lydia enjoyed life, Susan only endured it. All the same she was a good deal spoilt. She breakfasted in bed, which Mrs. Penfold never thought of doing; Lydia mended her stockings, and renewed her strings and buttons; while Mrs. Penfold spent twice the time and money on Susan's wardrobe that she did on Lydia's. There was no reason whatever for any of these indulgences; but when three women live together, one of them has only to sit still, to make the others her slaves. Mrs. Penfold found her reward in the belief that Susan was a genius and would some day astonish the world; Lydia had no such illusion; and yet it would have given her a shock to see Susan mending her own stockings.

Susan approached her now languidly, her hand to her brow. Lydia looked at her severely.

"I suppose you have got a headache?"

"A little."

"That's because you will go and write poetry directly after lunch. Why it would even give me a headache!"

"I had an idea," said Susan plaintively.

"What does that matter? Ideas'll keep. You have just to make a note of them—put salt on their tails—and then go and take a walk. Indigestion, my dear—which is the plain English for your headache—is very bad for ideas. What have you been doing to your collar?"

And Lydia took hold of her sister, straightening her collar, pinning up her hair, and generally putting her to rights. When the operation was over, she gave a little pat to Susan's cheek and kissed her.

"You can come with us to Threlfall, that would take your headache away; and I don't mind the back seat."

"I wasn't asked," said Susan with dignity. "I shall go for a walk by myself. I want to think."

Lydia received the intimation respectfully, merely recommending her sister to keep out of the sun; and was hurrying into the house to fetch her hat when Susan detained her.

"Was that Lord Tatham who came just now?"

"It was." Lydia faced her sister, holding up the note from Lady Tatham. "We are all to dine with them next week."

"He has been here nearly every other day for a fortnight," said Susan, with feminine exaggeration. "It is becoming so marked that everybody talks."

"Well, I can't help it," said Lydia defiantly. "We are not a convent; and we can hardly padlock the gate."

"You should discourage him—if you don't mean to marry him."

"My dear, I like him so!" cried Lydia, her hands behind her, and tossing her fair head. "Marrying!—I hate the word."

"He cares—and you don't," said Susan slowly, "that makes it very unfair—to him."

Lydia frowned for a moment, but only for a moment.

"I'm not encouraging him, Susy—not in the way you mean. But why should I drive him away, or be rude to him? I want to put things on a proper footing—so that he'll understand."

"He's going to propose to you," said Susan bluntly.

"Well, then, we shall get it over," said Lydia, reluctantly. "And you don't imagine that such a golden youth will trouble about such a trifle for long. Think of all the other things he has to amuse him. Why, if I broke my heart, you know I should still want to paint," she added, flippantly.

"I'd give a good deal to see you break your heart!" said the tragedienne, her dark eyes kindling—"you'd be just splendid!"

"Thanks, awfully! There's the pony."

Susan held her.

"You're really going to the Tower?"

"I am. It's mean of me. When you hate a man, you oughtn't to go to his house. But I can't help it. I'm so curious."

"Yes, but not about Mr. Melrose," said Susan slowly.

Lydia flushed suddenly from brow to chin.

"Goose! let me go."

Susan let her go, and then stood a while, absorbed, looking at the mysterious Tower. Her power of visualization was uncannily strong; it amounted almost to second sight. She seemed to be in the Tower—in one of its locked and shuttered rooms; to be looking at a young man stretched on a sofa—a wizardlike figure in a black cloak standing near—and in the doorway, Lydia entering, bringing the light on her fair hair....



VIII

Tatham had to open the gate of Threlfall Park for himself. The lodge beside it, of the same date and architecture as the house, had long ceased to be inhabited. The gate was a substantial iron affair, and carried a placard, peremptorily directing the person entering to close it behind him. And on either side of it, the great wall stretched away with which, some ten years before this date, Melrose, at incredible cost, had surrounded the greater part of his property, in consequence of a quarrel with the local hunt, and to prevent its members from riding over his land.

Tatham, having carefully shut the gate, rode slowly through the park, casting a curious and hostile eye over the signs of parsimonious neglect which it presented. Sheep and cattle were feeding in part of it; part of it was standing for hay; and everywhere the fences were ruinous, and the roads grass-grown. It was, Tatham knew, let out to various small farmers, who used it as they pleased. As to the woods which studded it, "the man must be a simple fool who could let them get into such a state!" Tatham prided himself hugely on the admirable forestry with which the large tracts of woodland in his own property were managed. But then he paid a proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education. Melrose's woods, with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser is, scientifically, only a species of idiot.

Only once before in his life had he been within the park—on one of the hunts of his boyhood, the famous occasion when the fox, started on the other side of the river, had made straight for Threlfall, and, the gate closing the private foot-bridge having been, by a most unusual chance, left open, had slipped thereby into the park, with the hounds in full cry after him. The hunt had momentarily paused, and then breaking loose from all control had dashed through the yard of the Home Farm in joyous pursuit, while the enraged Melrose, who with Dixon and another man had rushed out with sticks to try and head them back, had to confine himself and his followers to manning the enclosure round the house—impotent spectators of the splendid run through the park—which had long remained famous in Cumbrian annals. Tatham was then a lad of fourteen, mounted on one of the best of ponies, and he well remembered the mad gallop which had carried him past the Tower, and the tall figure of its furious master. The glee, the malicious triumph of the moment ran through his pulses again as he thought of it.

A short-lived triumph indeed, as far as the hunt was concerned; for the building of the ten-foot wall had followed, and Melrose's final breach with the gentry of his county. Never since had Tatham set foot in the Ogre's demesne; and he examined every feature of it with the most lively interest. The dilapidated buildings of the Home Farm reminded him of a lawsuit brought by a former tenant against his landlord, in which a story of mean and rapacious dealing on the part of Melrose, toward a decent though unfortunate man, had excited the disgust of the whole countryside. Melrose had never since been able to find a tenant for the farm, and the bailiff he had put in was a drunken creature whose mismanagement of it was notorious. Such doings by a man so inhumanly shrewd as Melrose in many of his affairs could only be accounted for by the combination in him of miserly dislike of spending, with a violent self-will. Instances, however, had been known when to get his own way, or gain a sinister advantage over an opponent, Melrose had been willing to spend extravagantly.

After passing the farm, Tatham pressed on eagerly, expecting the first sight of the house. The dense growth of shrub and creeper, which had been allowed to grow up around it, the home according to the popular legend of uncanny multitudes of owls and bats, tickled imagination; and Tatham had often brought a field-glass to bear upon the house from one of the neighbouring hills. But as he turned the last corner of the drive he drew up his horse in amazement.

The jungle was gone—! and the simple yet stately architecture of the house stood revealed in the summer sunshine. In the west wing, indeed, the windows were still shuttered, and many of them overgrown with ivy; but the dingy thickets of laurel and yew were everywhere shorn away; and to the east all the windows stood free and open. Moreover, two men were at work in the front garden, clearing the flagged paths, traced in the eighteenth century, from encumbrance, and laying down turf in a green circle round one of the small classical fountains that stood on either side of the approach.

"What on earth is the old villain up to now?" was the natural comment of the surprised Tatham.

Was it simply the advent of a guest—an invalid guest—that had wrought such changes?

One of the gardeners, seeing him as he approached the gate, came running up to hold his horse. Tatham, who knew everybody and prided himself on it, recognized him as the son of an old Duddon keeper.

"Well, Backhouse, you're making a fine clearance here!"

"Aye! It's took us days, your lordship. But we're about through wi' this side, howivver." He pointed to the east wing.

"One can see now what a jolly old place it is," said Tatham, pausing in the gateway to survey the scene.

Backhouse grinned responsively.

"I do believe, my lord, Muster Melrose hissel' is pleased. He stood a lang while lookin' at it this morning, afore he started oot."

"Well, no one can deny it's an improvement!" laughed Tatham, as he walked toward the house.

Dixon had already opened the door. Slave and factotum of Melrose as he was, he shared the common liking of the neighbourhood for young Lord Tatham. Two of his brothers were farmers on the Duddon estate; and one of them owed his recovery from a dangerous and obscure illness to the fact that, at the critical moment, Tatham had brought over a specialist from Leeds to see him, paying all expenses. These things—and others besides—were reflected in the rather tremulous smile with which Dixon received the visitor.

"Mr. Faversham expects me?"

"Aye, aye, my lord." The old man quickly led the way through the front hall, more quickly than Tatham's curiosity liked. He had time to notice, however, the domed and decorated ceiling, the classical mantelpiece, with its medallions and its pillars of Sienese marble, a couple of bold Renaissance cabinets on either side, and a central table, resting on carved sphinxes, such as one might find in the sala of a Venetian palace.

But as they turned into the corridor or gallery Tatham's exclamation brought Dixon to a halt. He faced round upon the young man, revealing a face that worked with hardly repressed excitement, and explained that the furnishing and arrangement had been only completed that day. It had taken them eight days, and Barclay's men were only just gone.

Tatham frankly expressed his surprise and admiration. The whole gallery and both of its terminal windows had now been cleared. The famous series of rose-coloured tapestries, of which Undershaw had seen the first specimens, had been hung at intervals throughout its length; and from the stores of the house had been brought out more carpets, more cabinets, mirrors, pictures, fine eighteenth-century chairs, settees, occasional tables, and what not. Hastily as it had been done, the brilliance of the effect was great. There was not, there could not be, the beauty that comes from old use and habit—from the ordered life of generations moving among and gradually adapting to itself a number of lovely things. Tatham brought up amid the surroundings of Duddon was scornfully conscious of the bric-a-brac element in the show, as he stood contemplating Melrose's latest performance. Nevertheless a fine taste had presided both at the original selection of the things shown, and at the arrangement of them in the stately gallery, which both harmonized and displayed them.

"There's not a thing yo' see, my lord, that hasna been here—i' this house—for years and years!" said Dixon, pointing a shaky finger at the cabinets on either side. "There's soom o' them has been i' their packing-cases ever sin' I can remember, an' the carpets rolled up aw deep in dust. And there's not a thing been unpacked now i' the house itsel', for fear o' t' dust, an' Mr. Faversham. The men carried it aw oot o' that door"—he pointed to the far western end of the gallery—"an' iverything was doon out o' doors, all t' carpets beaten an' aw, where Mr. Faversham couldna hear a sound. An' yesterday Muster Melrose and Muster Faversham—we browt him in his wheeled chair yo' unnerstan'—fixed up a lot o' things together. We havna nailed doon th' matting yet, for fear o't' noise. But Muster Faversham says noo he won't mind it."

"Is Mr. Faversham staying on some time?"

"I canno' say, my lord, I'm sure," was the cautious reply. "But they do say 'at he's not to tak' a journey for a while yet."

Tatham's curiosity was hot within him, but his very dislike of Melrose restrained him from indulging it. He followed Dixon through the gallery in silence.

There was no one in the new sitting-room. But outside on some newly laid grass, Tatham perceived the invalid on a deck chair, with a table holding books and cigarettes beside him.

Dixon had departed. Faversham offered cigarettes.

"Thank you," said Tatham, "I have my own."

And he produced his case with a smile, handing it to Faversham.

"A drink?"

Tatham declined again. As he sat there smoking, his hat on the back of his head, and his ruddy, good-humoured face beaming on his companion, it did not occur to Faversham that Tatham was thereby refusing the "salt" of an enemy.

"They'll bring some tea when Mrs. and Miss Penfold come," said Faversham.

Tatham nodded, then grinned irrepressibly.

"I say! I told Miss Penfold she'd find you in 'piggery.'"

Faversham's dark face showed a certain discomposure. Physical delicacy had given a peculiar distinction to the gaunt black and white of his eyes, hair, and complexion, and to the thinness of his long frame, so that Tatham, who would have said before seeing him that he remembered him perfectly, found himself looking at him from time to time in surprise. As to his surroundings, Faversham appeared not only willing but anxious to explain.

"It's a queer business," he said frankly. "I can assure I you I never asked for anything, never wished for anything of the sort. Everything was arranged for me to go to Keswick—to a home there—when—this happened."

"When old Melrose broke out!" Tatham threw back his head and gurgled with laughter. "I suppose you know that nobody but yourself has ever had bite or sup in this house for twenty years, unless it were some of the dealers, who—they say—come occasionally. What have you done to him? You've cast a spell on him!"

Faversham replied again that he had done nothing, and was as much puzzled as anybody.

"My mother was afraid you would be anything but comfortable," said Tatham. "She knows this gentleman of old. But she didn't know your powers of soothing the savage breast! However, you have only to say the word, and we shall be delighted to take you in for as long as you like."

"Oh, I must stay here now," said Faversham decidedly. "One couldn't be ungrateful for what has been done. But my best thanks to Lady Tatham all the same. I hope I may get over to see her some day."

"You must, of course. Dixon tells me there is a carriage coming—perhaps a motor; why not!"

A flush rose in Faversham's pale cheek.

"Mr. Melrose talked of hiring one yesterday," he said, unwillingly. "How far are you?"

They fell into talk about Duddon and the neighbourhood, avoiding any further discussion of Melrose. Then Faversham described his accident, and spoke warmly of Undershaw, an occupation in which Tatham heartily joined.

"I owe my life to him," said Faversham; adding with sudden sharpness, "I suppose I must count it an advantage!"

"That would be the common way of looking at it!" laughed Tatham. "What are you doing just now?"

"Nothing in particular. I am one of the large tribe of briefless barristers. I suppose I've never given enough of my mind to it. The fact is I don't like the law—never have. I've tried other things—fatal, of course!—but they haven't come off, or at least only very moderately. But, as you may suppose—I'm not exactly penniless. I have a few resources—just enough to live on—without a wife."

Tatham felt a little awkward. Faversham's tone was already that of a man to some extent disappointed and embittered.

"You had always so much more brains than the rest of us," he said cordially. "You'll be all right."

"It's not brains that matter nowadays—it's money. What do you get by brains? A civil service appointment—and a pension of seven hundred a year. What's the good of slaving for that?"

Faversham turned to his companion with a smile, in which however there was no good-humour. It made Tatham disagreeably conscious of his own wealth.

"Well, of course, there are the prizes—"

"A few. So few that they don't count. A man may grind for years, and get passed over or forgotten—just by a shave—at the end. I've seen that happen often. Or you get on swimmingly for a while, and everybody supposes you're going to romp in; and then something crops up you never thought of. Some boss takes a dislike to you—or you make a mistake, and cut your own throat. And there you are—pulled!"

Tatham was silent a moment, his blunt features expressing some bewilderment. Then he said—awkwardly:

"So you don't really know what you're going to take up?"

Faversham lit another cigarette.

"Oh, well, I have some friends—and some ideas. If I once get a foothold, a beginning—I daresay I could make money like other people. Every idiot one meets seems to be doing it."

"Do you want to go into politics—or something of that kind?"

"I want to remain my own master, and do the things I want to do—and not the things I must do," laughed Faversham. "That seems to me the dividing line in life—whether you are under another man's orders or your own. And broadly speaking it's the line between poverty and money. But you don't know much about it, old fellow!" He looked round with a laugh.

Tatham screwed up his blue eyes, not finding reply very easy, and not certain that he liked the "old fellow," though their college familiarity justified it. He changed the subject, and they fell into some gossip about Oxford acquaintances and recollections, which kept the conversation going.

But at the end of it the two men were each secretly conscious that the other jarred upon him; and in spite of the tacit appeal made by Faversham's physical weakness and evident depression to Tatham's boundless good-nature, there had arisen between them at the end an incipient antagonism which a touch might develop. Faversham appeared to the younger man as querulous, discontented, and rather sordidly ambitious; while the smiling optimism of a youth on whom Fortune had showered every conceivable gift—money, position, and influence—without the smallest effort on his own part, rang false or foolish in the ears of his companion. Tatham, cut off from the county, agricultural, or sporting subjects in which he was most at home, fumbled a good deal in his efforts to adjust himself; while Faversham found it no use to talk of travel, art, or music to one who, in spite of an artistic and literary mother and wonderful possessions, had himself neither literary nor artistic faculty, and in the prevailing manner of the English country gentleman, had always found the pleasures of England so many and superior that there was no need whatever to cross the Channel in pursuit of others. Both were soon bored; and Tatham would have hurried his departure, but for the hope of Lydia. With that to fortify him, however, he sat on.

And at last she came. Mrs. Penfold, it will easily be imagined, entered upon the scene, in a state of bewildered ravishment.

"She had never expected—she could not have believed—it was like a fairy-tale—a real fairy-tale—wasn't the house too beautiful—Mr. Melrose's taste!—and such things!" In the wake of this soft, gesticulating whirlwind, followed Lydia, waiting patiently with her bright and humorous look till her mother should give her the chance of a word. Her gray dress, and white hat, her little white scarf, a trifle old-fashioned, and the pansies at her belt seemed to Tatham's eager eyes the very perfection of dress. He watched her keenly as she came in; the kind look at Faversham; then the start—was it, of pity?—for his altered aspect, the friendly greeting for himself; and all so sweet, so detached, so composed. His heart sank, he could not have told why.

"I ought to have warned you of that hill!" she said, standing beside Faversham, and looking down upon him.

"You couldn't know I was such a duffer!" laughed Faversham. "It wasn't me—it was the bike. At least, they tell me so. As for me, everything, from the moment I left you till I woke up here six weeks ago, is wiped out. Did you finish your sketch? Were the press notices good?"

She smiled. "Did you see what they were?"

"Certainly. I saw your name in one as I picked it out."

"I still sleep with it under my pillow—when I feel low," said Lydia. "It said the nicest things. And I sold my pictures."

"Magnificent!" said Faversham. "But of course you sold them."

"Oh, no, Mr. Faversham, not 'of course'!" cried Mrs. Penfold, turning round upon him. "You can't think how Lydia was envied! Hardly anybody sold. There were friends of hers exhibiting—and it was dreadful. The secretary said they had hardly ever had such a bad year—something to do with a bank breaking—or the influenza—or something. But Lydia, lucky girl, sold hers within the first week. And we don't know at all who bought them. The secretary said he was not to tell. There are many buyers, he told us, who won't give their names—for fear of being bothered afterward. As if Lydia would ever bother any one!"

The guilty Tatham sat with his cane between his knees twirling it, his eyes on the ground. No one noticed him.

"And the sketch you were making that day?" said Faversham.

"As you liked it, I brought it to show you," said Lydia shyly. And she produced a thin parcel she had been carrying under her arm.

Faversham praised the drawing warmly. It reminded him, he said, of some work he had seen in March, at one of the Bond Street galleries; a one-man show by a French water-colourist. He named him. Lydia flushed a little.

"Next to Mr. Delorme"—she glanced gratefully at Tatham—"he is the man of all the world I admire most! I am afraid I can't help imitating him."

"But you don't!" cried Faversham. "You are quite independent. I didn't mean that for a moment."

Lydia's eyes surveyed him with a look of amusement, which seemed to say that she was not at all duped by his compliment. He proceeded to justify it.

"I'll tell you who do imitate him—"

And forthwith he began to show a remarkable knowledge of certain advanced groups among the younger artists and their work. Lydia's face kindled. She listened; she agreed; she interrupted; she gave her view; it was evident that the conversation both surprised and delighted her.

Tea came out, and, at Faversham's invitation, Lydia presided. The talk between her and Faversham flowed on, in spite of the girl's pretty efforts to make it general, to bring Tatham into it. He himself defeated her. He wanted to listen; so did Mrs. Penfold, who sat in open-mouthed wonder at Lydia's cleverness; while Tatham was presently conscious of a strong discomfort, a jealous discomfort, which spoilt for him this nearness to Lydia, and the thrill stirred in him by her movements and tones, her soft laugh, her white neck, her eyes....

Here, between these two people, Faversham and Lydia, who had only seen each other for some ten minutes in their lives before, there seemed to have arisen, at once, an understanding, a freemasonry, such as he himself had never reached in all his meetings with Lydia Penfold.

How had it come about? They talked of people, struggling people, to whom art was life, though also livelihood; of men and women, for whom nothing else counted, beside the fascination and the torment of their work; Lydia speaking from within, as a humble yet devout member of the band; Faversham, as the keen spectator and amateur—not an artist, but the frequenter of artists.

And all the time Lydia's face wore a happy animation which redoubled its charm. Faversham was clearly making a good impression upon her, was indeed set on doing so, helped always by the look of delicacy, the traces of suffering, which appealed to her pity. Tatham moved restlessly in his chair, and presently he got up, and proposed to Mrs. Penfold that they should examine the improvements in the garden.

* * * * *

When they returned, Lydia and Faversham were still talking and still absorbed.

"Lydia, my dear," cried her mother, "I am afraid we shall be tiring Mr. Faversham! Now you must let Lord Tatham show you the garden—that's been made in a week! It's like that part in 'Monte Cristo,' where he orders an avenue at breakfast-time, that's to be ready by dinner—don't you remember? It's thrilling!"

Lydia rose obediently, and Mrs. Penfold slipped into her seat. Lydia, strolling with Tatham along the rampart wall which crowned the sandstone cliff, was now and then uncomfortably aware as they passed the tea-table of the soft shower of questions that her mother was raining upon Faversham.

"You really think, Mr. Faversham"—the tone was anxiously lowered—"the daughter is dead?—the daughter and the mother?"

"I know nothing!"

"She would be the heiress?"

"If she were alive? Morally, I suppose, not legally, unless her father pleased."

"Oh! Mr. Faversham!—but you would never suggest—"

Lydia came to the rescue:

"Mother, really we ought to ask for the pony-carriage."

Faversham protested, but Lydia was firm, and the hand-bell beside him was rung. Mrs. Penfold flushed. She quite understood that Lydia thought it unseemly to be putting a guest through a string of questions about the private affairs of his host; but the inveterate gossip in her whimpered.

"You see when one has watched a place for months—and people tell you such tales—and you come and find it so different—and so—so fascinating—"

She paused, her plaintive look, under her wistful eyebrows, appealing to Faversham to come to her aid, to justify her curiosity.

Suddenly, a sound of wheels from the front.

Lydia offered her hand to Faversham.

"I'm afraid we've tired you!"

"Tired! When will you come to see me again?"

"Will it be permitted?" She laid a finger on her lip, as she glanced smiling at the house.

He begged them to repeat their visit. Tatham looked on in silence. The figure of Lydia, delicately bright against the dark background of the Tower, absorbed him, and this time there was something painful and strained in his perception of it. In his first meeting with her that day he had been all hopefulness—content to wait and woo. Now, as he saw her with Faversham, as he perceived the nascent comradeship between them, and the reason for it, he felt a first vague suffering.

A step approached through the sitting-room of which the door was open to the terrace.

The two ladies escorted by Tatham moved toward the house expecting Dixon with the announcement of their carriage.

A tall figure stood in the doorway. There was a checked exclamation from Tatham, and Faversham perceived to his amazement that it was not Dixon—but—Melrose!

* * * * *

Melrose surveyed the group. Removing his old hat he bowed gravely to the ladies. His flowing hair, and largely cut classical features gave him an Apollonian aspect as he towered above the startled group, looking down on them with an expression half triumphant, half sarcastic. Tatham was the first to recover himself. He approached Melrose with a coolness like his own.

"You are back early, sir? I apologize for my intrusion, which will not be prolonged. I came, as you see, to inquire after my old friend, Mr. Faversham."

"So I understand. Well—what's wrong with him? Isn't he doing well—eh? Faversham, will you introduce me to your friends?"

Mrs. Penfold, so much shaken by the sudden appearance of the Ogre that words failed her, bowed profoundly; Lydia slightly. She was indignant for Tatham. Mr. Melrose, having announced his absence for the day, ought not to have returned upon them by surprise, and his manner convinced her that it had been done on purpose.

"They gave you tea?" said Melrose to Mrs. Penfold, with gruff civility, as he descended the steps. "Oh, we keep open house nowadays. You're going?" This was in answer to Tatham's bow which he slightly acknowledged. "Good-day, good-day! You'll find your horse. Sorry you're so hurried."

Followed by the old man's insolent eyes, Tatham shook hands with Faversham and the Penfolds; then without reentering the house, he took a short cut across the garden and disappeared.

"Hm!" said Melrose, looking after him, "I can't say he resembles his mother. His father was a plain fellow."

No one answered him. Mrs. Penfold nervously pressed for her carriage, throwing herself on the help of Dixon, who was removing the tea things. Melrose meanwhile seated himself, and with a magnificent gesture invited the ladies to do the same. Mrs. Penfold obeyed; Lydia remained standing behind her mother's chair. The situation reminded her of a covey of partridges when a hawk is hovering.

Mrs. Penfold at once began to make conversation, saying the most dishevelled things for sheer fright. Melrose threw her a monosyllable now and then, reserving all his attention for the young girl, whose beauty he instantly perceived. His piercing eyes travelled from Faversham to Lydia repeatedly, and the invalid rather angrily divined the conjectures which might be passing in their owner's brain.

* * * * *

"How are you?" asked Melrose abruptly, when he returned from accompanying the Penfolds to the front door.

Faversham replied with some coldness. He was disgusted that Melrose should have spoilt the final success of his little festa by the breach of a promise he had himself volunteered.

But Melrose appeared to be in an unusually good temper, and he took no notice. He had had considerable success that morning, it appeared, at an auction of some fine things at a house near Carlisle; having not only secured what he wanted himself, but having punished two or three of his most prominent rivals, by bidding high for some inferior thing, exciting their competition, and then at the critical moment dropping it on the nose, as he explained it, of one of his opponents. "Wilson of York came to me nearly in tears, and implored me to take some beastly pot or other that I had made him buy at a ridiculous price. I told him he might keep it, as a reminder that I always paid those out who bid against me. Then I found I could get an earlier train home; and I confess I was curious to see how young Tatham would look, on my premises. He did not expect that I should catch him here." The Ogre chuckled.

"You told me, if you remember," said Faversham, not without emphasis, "that I was to say to him you would not be at home."

"I know. But sometimes there are impulses—of different kinds—that I can't resist. Of different kinds—" repeated Melrose, his glittering, absent look fixed on Faversham.

There was silence a little. Then Melrose said slowly, as he rose from his chair: "I have—a rather important proposition to make to you. That fellow Undershaw would attack me if I began upon it now. Moreover, it will want a fresh mind. Will it suit you if I come to see you at eleven o'clock to-morrow?"



IX

On the following morning, Faversham, for the first time, dressed without assistance, and walked independently—save for his stick—into his sitting-room. The July day was rather chill and rainy and he decided to await Melrose indoors.

As to the "important proposal" his mind was full of conjectures. What he thought most probable was that Melrose intended, according to various fresh hints and indications, to make him another and a more serious offer for his gems—no doubt a big offer. They were worth at least three thousand pounds, and Melrose of course knew their value to a hair.

"Well, I shall not sell them," thought Faversham, his hands behind his head, his eyes following the misty course of the river, and the rain showers scudding over the fells. "I shall not sell them."

His mind clung obstinately to this resolve. His ambitions with regard to money went, in fact, so far beyond anything that three thousand pounds could satisfy, that the inducement to sell at such a price—which he knew to be the market price—and wound thereby the deepest and sincerest of his affections, was not really great. The little capital on which he lived was nearly double the sum, and could be made to yield a fair income by small and judicious speculation. He did not see that he should be much better off for the addition to it of three thousand pounds; and on the other hand, were the gems sold, he should have lost much that he keenly valued—the prestige of ownership; the access which it gave him to circles, learned or wealthy, which had been else closed to him; the distinction attaching thereby to his otherwise obscure name in catalogues and monographs, English or foreign. So long as he possessed the "Mackworth gems" he was, in the eyes of the world of connoisseurs, at any rate, a personage. Without them he was a personage nowhere. Every month, every week, almost, he was beginning to receive requests to be allowed to see and study them, or appeals to lend them for exhibition. In the four months since his uncle's death, both the Louvre and the Berlin Museum had approached him, offering to exhibit them, and hinting that the loan might lead, should he so desire it, to a very profitable sale. If he did anything of the kind, he was pledged of course to give the British Museum the first chance. But he was not going to do it—he was not even going to lend them—yet a while. To possess them, and the kudos that went with them; not to sell them, for sentimental reasons, and even at a money loss, made a poor man proud, and ministered in strange ways to his self-respect, which went often rather hungry; gave him, in short, a standing with himself, and with the world. All the more, that the poor man's mind was in fact, set passionately on the conquest of wealth—real and substantial wealth—to which the paltry sum of three thousand pounds bore no sort of relation.

No, he would not sell them. But he braced himself to a tussle with Melrose, for he seemed to have gathered from a number of small indications that the fierce old collector had set his heart upon them. And no doubt this business of the newly furnished rooms, and all the luxuries that had been given or promised, made it more difficult—had been intended, perhaps, to make it more difficult? Well, he could but say his No and depart, expressing his gratitude—and insisting on the payment of his score!

But—depart where? The energies of renewed health were pulsing through him, and yet he had seldom felt more stranded, or, except in connection with the gems, more insignificant, either to himself or others; in spite of this palace which had been oddly renovated for his convenience. His uncle's death had left him singularly forlorn, deprived of the only home he had ever possessed, and the only person who felt for him a close and spontaneous affection. For his other uncle—his only remaining relation—was a crusty and selfish widower, with whom he had been on little more than formal terms. The rheumatic gout pleaded in the letter to Undershaw had been, he was certain, a mere excuse.

Well—something must be done; some fresh path opened up. He had in Fact left London in a kind of secret exasperation with himself and circumstance, making an excuse out of meeting the Ransoms—mere acquaintances—at Liverpool; and determined, after the short tour to which they had invited him, to plunge himself for a week or two in the depths of a Highland glen where he might fish and think.

The Ransoms, machine manufacturers from St. Louis, had made matters worse. Such wealth!—such careless, vulgar, easily gotten wealth!—heaped up by means that seemed to the outsider so facile, and were, in truth, for all but a small minority, so difficult. A commonplace man and a frivolous woman; yet possessed, through their mere money, of a power over life and its experiences, such as he, Faversham, might strive for all his days and never come near. It might be said of course—Herbert Ransom would probably say it—that all men are worth the wages they get; with an obvious deduction in his own case. But when or where had he ever got his chance—a real chance? Visions of the rich men among his acquaintance, sleek, half-breed financiers, idle, conceited youths of the "classes," pushed on by family interest; pig-headed manufacturers, inheritors of fortunes they could never have made; the fatteners on colonial land and railway speculation—his whole mind rose in angry revolt against the notion that he could not have done, personally, as well as any of them, had there only been the initial shove, the favourable moment.

* * * * *

He envied those who had beaten him in the race, he frankly admitted it; but he must also allow himself the luxury of despising them.

* * * * *

Melrose was late.

Faversham rose and hobbled to the window, his hands on his sides, frowning—a gaunt figure in the rainy light. With the return of physical strength there had come a passionate renewal of desire—desire for happiness and success. The figure of Lydia Penfold hovered perpetually in his mind. Marriage!—his whole being, moral and physical, cried out for it. But how was he ever to marry?—how could he ever give such a woman as that the setting and the scope she could reasonably claim?

"A bad day!" said a harsh voice behind him, "but all the better for business."

Faversham turned to greet his host, the mental and physical nerves tightening.

"Good morning. Well, here I am"—his laugh showed his nervousness—"at your disposal."

He settled himself in his chair. Melrose took a cigarette from the table, and offered one to his guest. He lit and smoked in silence for a few moments, then began to speak with deliberation:

"I gather from our conversations, Faversham, during the last few weeks that you have at the present moment no immediate or pressing occupation?"

Quick colour leapt in Faversham's lean cheek.

"That is true. It happens to be true—for various reasons. But if you mean to imply by that, that I am necessarily—or willingly—an idler, you are mistaken."

"I did not mean to imply anything of the kind. I merely wished, so to speak, to clear the way for what I have to propose."

Faversham nodded. Melrose continued:

"For clearly it would be an impertinence on my part were I to attempt—suddenly—to lift a man out of a fixed groove and career, and suggest to him another. I should expect to be sent to the devil—and serve me right. But in your case—correct me if I am wrong—you seem not yet to have discovered the groove that suits you. Now I am here to propose to you a groove—and a career."

Faversham looked at him with astonishment. The gems, which had been so urgently present to his mind, receded from it. Melrose in his skullcap, sitting sideways in his chair, his cigarette held aloft, presented a profile which might have been that of some Venetian Doge, old, withered and crafty, engaged, say, in negotiation with a Genoese envoy.

"When you were first brought here," Melrose continued—"your presence, as Undershaw has no doubt told you—of course he has told you, small blame to him—was extremely distasteful to me. I am a recluse. I like no women—and d——d few men. I can do without them, that's all; their intimate company, anyway: and my pursuits bring me all the amusement I require. Such at any rate was my frame of mind up to a few weeks ago. I don't apologize for it in the least. Every man has a right to his own idiosyncrasies. But I confess that your society during the last few weeks—I am in no mood for mere compliment—has had a considerable effect upon me. It has revealed to me that I am no longer so young as I was, or so capable—apparently—of entertaining myself. At any rate your company—I put it quite frankly—instead of being a nuisance—has been a godsend. It has turned out that we have many of the same tastes; and your inheritance of the treasures collected by my old friend Mackworth"—("Ah!" thought Faversham, "now we come to it!")—"has made from the first, I think, a link between us. Have I your assent?"

"Certainly."

Melrose paused a moment, and then resumed. The impression he made was that of one rehearsing, point by point, a prepared speech.

"At the same time, I have become more aware than usual of the worries and annoyances connected with the management of my estates. We live, sir, in a world of robbers"—Melrose suddenly rounded on his companion, his withered face aflame—"a world of robbers, and of rapine! Not a single Tom, Dick, and Harry in these parts that doesn't think himself my equal and more. Not a single tenant on my estate that doesn't try at every point to take advantage of his landlord! Not a single tramp or poacher that doesn't covet my goods—that wouldn't murder me if he could, and sleep like a baby afterward. I tell you, sir, we shall see a jacquerie in England, before we are through with these ideas that are now about us like the plague; that every child imbibes from our abominable press!—that our fools of clergy—our bishops even—are not ashamed to preach. There is precious little sense of property, and not a single rag of loyalty or respect left in this country! But when you think of the creatures that rule us—and the fanatics who preach to us—and the fools who bring up our children, what else can you expect! The whole state is rotten! The men in our great towns are ripe for any revolutionary villainy. We shall come to blood, Faversham!"—he struck his hand violently on the arm of his chair—"and then a dictator—the inevitable round. Well, I have done my part. I have fought the battle of property in this country—the battle of every squire in Cumbria, if the dolts did but know their own interests. Instead they have done nothing but thwart and bully me for twenty years. And young Tatham with his County Council nonsense, and his popularity hunting, is one of the very worst of them! Well, now I've done!—personally. I daresay they'll crow—they'll say I'm beat. Anyway, I've done. There'll have to be fighting, but some one else must see to it. I intend to put my affairs into fresh hands. It is my purpose to appoint a new agent—and to give him complete control of my property!"