Tatham afterward devoted himself till nearly midnight to composing a letter to Lydia. He had unaccountably missed her that afternoon, for when he arrived at the cottage from Pengarth she was out, and neither Mrs. Penfold nor Susy knew where she was. In fact she was at Mainstairs, and with Faversham. She had mistaken a phrase in Tatham's note of the morning, and did not expect him till later. He had waited an hour for her, under the soft patter of Mrs. Penfold's embarrassed conversation; and had then ridden home, sorely disappointed, but never for one instant blaming the beloved.

But later, in the night silence, he poured out to her all his budget: the arrival of the Melroses; their story; his interview with Faversham; and his plans for helping them to their rights. To a "friend" it was only allowed, besides, to give restrained expression to his rapturous joy in being near her again, and his disappointment of the afternoon. He thought over every word, as he wrote it down, his eyes sometimes a little dim in the lamp-light. The very reserve imposed upon him did but strengthen his passion. Nor could young hopes believe in ultimate defeat.

At the same time, the thought of Faversham held the background of his mind. Though by now he himself cordially disliked Faversham, he was quite aware of the attraction the new agent's proud and melancholy personality might have for women. He had seen it working in Lydia's case, and he had been uncomfortably aware at one time of the frequent references to Faversham in Lydia's letters. It was evident that Faversham had pushed the acquaintance with the Penfolds as far as he could; that he was Lydia's familiar correspondent, and constantly appealing for help to her knowledge of the country folk. An excellent road to intimacy, as Tatham uneasily admitted, considering Lydia's love for the people of the dales, and her passionate sympathy with the victims of Melrose's ill-deeds.

Ah! but the very causes which had been throwing her into an intimacy with Faversham must surely now be chilling and drawing her back? Tatham, the young reformer, felt an honest indignation with the failure of Claude Faversham to do the obvious and necessary work he had promised to do. Tatham, the lover, knew very well that if he had come back to find Faversham the hero of the piece, with a grateful countryside at his feet, his own jealous anxiety would have been even greater than it was. For it was great, argue with himself as he might. A dread for which he could not account often overshadowed him. It was caused perhaps by his constant memory of Faversham and Lydia on the terrace at Threlfall—of the two faces turned to each other—of the sudden fusion as it were of the two personalities in a common rush of memories, interests, and sympathies, in which he himself had no part....

He put up his letter on the stroke of midnight, and then walked his room a while longer, struggling with himself and the passion of his desire; praying that he might win her. Finally he took a well-worn Bible from a locked drawer, and read some verses from the Gospel of St. John, quieting himself. He never went to sleep without reading either a psalm or some portion of the New Testament. The influence of his Eton tutor had made him a Christian of a simple and convinced type; and his mother's agnosticism had never affected him. But he and she never talked of religion.

Nothing arrived from Threlfall the following day during the morning. After luncheon, Victoria announced her intention of going to call on the Penfolds.

"You can follow me there in the motor," she said to her son; "and if any news comes, bring it on."

They were in the drawing-room. Netta, white and silent, was stretched on the sofa, where Victoria had just spread a shawl over her. Felicia appeared to be turning over an illustrated paper, but was in reality watching the mother and son out of the corners of her eyes. Everything that was said containing a mention of the Penfolds struck in her an attentive ear. The casual conversation of the house had shown her already that there were three ladies—two of them young—who were living not far from Duddon, and were objects of interest to both Lady Tatham and her son. Flowers were sent them, and new books. They were not relations; and not quite ordinary acquaintances. All this had excited a furious curiosity in Felicia. She wished—was determined indeed—to see these ladies for herself.

"You will hardly want to go out," said Victoria gently, standing by Netta's sofa, and looking down with kind eyes on the weary woman lying there.

Netta shook her head; then putting out her hand she took Victoria's and pressed it. Victoria understood that she was waiting feverishly for the answer from Threlfall, and could do nothing and think of nothing till it arrived.

"And your daughter?" She looked round for Felicia.

"I wish to drive in a motor," said Felicia, rising and speaking with a decision which amused Victoria. Pending the arrival from London of some winter costumes on approval, Victoria's maid had arranged for the little Italian a picturesque dress of dark blue silk, from a gown of her mistress', by which the emaciation of the girl's small frame was somewhat disguised; while the beauty of the material, and of the delicate embroideries on the collar and sleeves, strangely heightened the grace of her curly head, and the effect of her astonishing eyes, so liquidly bright, in a face too slight for them.

In forty-eight hours, even, of comfort and cosseting her elfish thinness had become a shade less ghastly; and the self-possession which had emerged from the state of collapse in which she had arrived amazed Victoria. A week before, so it appeared, she had been earning a franc a day in the vineyard of a friendly contadino. And already one might have thought her bred in castles. She was not abashed or bewildered by the luxuries of Duddon, as Netta clearly was. Rather, she seemed to seize greedily and by a natural instinct upon all that came her way—motors, pretty frocks, warm baths in luxurious bathrooms, and the attentions of Victoria's maid. Victoria believed that she had grasped the whole situation with regard to Threlfall. She was quite aware, it seemed, of the magnitude of her father's wealth; of all that hung upon her own chances of inheritance; and of the value, to her cause and her mother's, of the support of Duddon. Her likeness to her father came out hour by hour, and there were moments when the tiny creature carried herself like a Melrose in miniature.

Victoria's advent was awaited at Green Cottage, she having telephoned to Mrs. Penfold in the morning, with something of a flutter. Her visits there had not been frequent; and this was the first time she had called since Tatham's proposal to Lydia. That event had never been avowed by Lydia, as we have seen, even to her mother; Lydia and Victoria had never exchanged a word on the subject. But Lydia was aware of the shrewd guessing of her family, and she did not suppose for one moment that Lady Tatham was ignorant of anything that had happened.

Mrs. Penfold, scarcely kept in order by Susy, was in much agitation. She felt terribly guilty. Lady Tatham must think them all monsters of ingratitude, and she wondered how she could be so kind as to come and see them at all. She became at last so incoherent and tearful that Lydia prepared for the worst, while Susy, the professed psychologist, revelled in the prospect of new "notes."

But when Victoria arrived, entering the cottage drawing-room with her fine mannish face, her stately bearing, and her shabby clothes, the news she brought seized at once on Mrs. Penfold's wandering wits, and for the moment held them fast. For Victoria, whose secret object was to discover, if she could, any facts about Lydia's doings and feelings during the interval of separation, that might throw light upon her Harry's predicament, made it cunningly appear that she had come expressly to tell her neighbours of the startling event which was now agitating Duddon, as it would soon be agitating the countryside.

Mrs. Penfold—steeped in long years of three-decker fiction—sat entranced. The cast-off and ill-treated wife returning to the scene of her misery—with the heiress!—grown up—and beautiful: she saw it all; she threw it all into the moulds dear to the sentimentalist. Victoria demurred to the adjective "beautiful"; suggesting "pretty—when we have fed her!" But Mrs. Penfold, with soft, shining eyes, already beheld the mother and child weeping at the knees of the Ogre, the softening of the Ogre's heart, the opening of the grim Tower to its rightful heiress, the happy ending, the marriage gown in the distance.

"For suppose!"—she turned gayly to her daughters for sympathy—"suppose she were to marry Mr. Faversham! And then Mr. Melrose can have a stroke, and everything will come right!"

Lydia and Susy smiled dutifully. Victoria sat silent. Her silence checked Mrs. Penfold's flow, and brought her back, bewildered to realities; to the sad remembrance of Lydia's astonishing and inscrutable behaviour. Whereupon her manner and conversation became so dishevelled, in her effort to propitiate Lady Tatham without betraying either herself or Lydia, that the situation grew quickly unbearable.

"May I see your garden?" said Victoria abruptly to Lydia. Lydia rose with alacrity, opened the glass door into the garden, and by a motion of the lips only visible to Susy appealed to her to keep their mother indoors.

A misty October sun reigned over the garden. The river ran sparkling through the valley, and on the farther side the slopes and jutting crags of the Helvellyn range showed ghostly through the sunlit haze.'

A few absent-minded praises were given to the phloxes and the begonias. Then Victoria said, turning a penetrating eye on Lydia:

"You heard from Harry of the Melroses' arrival?"

"Yes—this morning."

Bright colour rushed into Lydia's cheeks. Tatham's letter of that morning, the longest perhaps ever written by a man who detested letter-writing, had touched her profoundly, caused her an agonized searching of conscience. Did Lady Tatham blame and detest her? Her manner was certainly cool. The girl's heart swelled as she walked along beside her guest.

"Everything depends on Mr. Faversham," said Victoria. "You are a friend of his?" She took the garden chair that Lydia offered her.

"Yes; we have all come to know him pretty well."

Lydia's face, as she sat on the grass at Lady Tatham's feet, looking toward the fells, was scarcely visible to her companion. Victoria could only admire the beauty of the girl's hair, as the wind played with it, and the grace of her young form.

"I am afraid he is disappointing all his friends," she said gravely.

"Is it his fault?" exclaimed Lydia. "Mr. Melrose must be mad!"

"I wonder if that excuses Mr. Faversham?"

"It's horrible for him!" said Lydia in a low, smothered voice. "He wants to put things right?"

It was on the tip of Victoria's tongue to say, "Does he too write to you every day?" but she refrained.

"If he really wants to put things right, why has he done nothing all these seven weeks?" she asked severely. "I saw Colonel Barton this morning. He and Mr. Andover are in despair. They felt such confidence in Mr. Faversham. The state of the Mainstairs village is too terrible! Everybody is crying out. The Carlisle papers this week are full of it. But there are scores of other things almost as bad. Mr. Faversham rushes about—here, there, and everywhere—but with no result, they tell us, as far as any of the real grievances are concerned. Mr. Melrose seems to be infatuated about him personally; will give him everything he wants; and pays no attention whatever to his advice. And you know the latest report?"

"No." Lydia's face was bent over the grass, as she tried to aid a bumble-bee which was lying on its back.

"It is generally believed that Mr. Melrose has made him his heir."

Lydia lifted a face of amazement, at first touched strangely with relief. "Then—surely—he will be able to do what he wants!"

"On the contrary. His silence has been bought—that's what people say. Mr. Melrose has bribed him to do his work, and defend his iniquities."

"Oh! Is that fair?" The humble-bee was so hastily poked on to his legs that he tumbled over again.

"Well, now, we shall test him!" said Victoria quietly. "We shall see what he does with regard to Mrs. Melrose and her daughter. Harry will have told you how he went to him yesterday. We had a telephone message this morning to say that a letter would reach us this afternoon from Mr. Faversham. Harry will bring it on here; and I asked him to bring Felicia Melrose with him in the car. We thought you would be interested to see her."

There was a pause. At last Lydia said slowly:

"How will you test Mr. Faversham? I don't understand."

"Unless the man is an adventurer," said Victoria, straightening her shoulders, "he will, of course, do his best to put this girl—who is the rightful heiress—into her proper place. What business has he with Mr. Melrose's estates?"

Lady Tatham spoke with imperious energy.

Lydia's eyes showed an almost equal animation.

"May he not share with her? Aren't they immense?"

"At present he takes everything—so they say. It looks ugly. A complete stranger—worming himself in a few weeks or months into an old man's confidence—and carrying off the inheritance from a pair of helpless women! And making himself meanwhile the tool of a tyrant!—aiding and abetting him in all his oppressions!"

"Oh, Lady Tatham! no, no!" cried Lydia—the cry seemed wrung from her—"I—we—have only known Mr. Faversham this short time—but how can one believe—"

She paused, her eyes under their vividly marked eyebrows painfully searching the face of her companion.

Victoria said to herself, "Heavens!—she is in love with him—and she is letting Harry sit up at nights to write to her!"

Her mother's heart beat fast with anger. But she held herself in hand.

"Well; as I have said, we shall soon be able to test him," she repeated, coldly; "we shall soon know what to think. His letter will show whether he is a man with feeling and conscience—a gentleman—or an adventurer!"

There was silence. Lydia was thinking passionately of Mainstairs and of the deep tones of a man's voice—"If you condemn and misunderstand me—then indeed I shall lose heart!"

A humming sound could be heard in the far distance.

"Here they are," said Lady Tatham rising. Victoria's half-masculine beauty had never been so formidable as it was this afternoon. Deep in her heart, she carried both pity for Harry, and scorn for this foolish girl walking beside her, who could not recognize her good fortune when it cried out to her.

They hastened back to the drawing-room; and at the same moment Tatham and Felicia walked in.

Felicia advanced with perfect self-command, her small face flushed with pink by the motion of the car. In addition to the blue frock, Victoria's maid had now provided her with a short cape of black silk, and a wide straw hat, to which the girl herself had given a kind of tilt, a touch of audacity, in keeping with all the rest of her personality.

As she came in, she glanced round the room with her uncannily large eyes—her mother's eyes—taking in all the company. She dropped a little curtsey to Mrs. Penfold, in whom the excitement of this sudden appearance of Melrose's daughter had produced sheer and simple dumbness. She allowed her hand to be shaken by Lydia and Susy, looking sharply at the former; while Susy looked sharply at her. Then she subsided into a corner by Lady Tatham. It was evident that she regarded herself as under that lady's particular protection.

"Well?" said Lady Tatham in an eager aside to her son. She read his aspect as that of a man preoccupied.

Tatham shrugged his shoulders with a glance at Felicia. Victoria whispered to Lydia: "Will you tell your mother I want to speak a few words to Harry on business?"

Mother and son passed into the garden together.

"A declaration of war!" said Tatham, as he handed a letter to her. "I propose to instruct our solicitors at once."

Victoria read hastily. The writing was Faversham's. But the mind expressed was Melrose's. Victoria read him in every line. She believed the letter to have been simply dictated.

"DEAR LORD TATHAM:

"I have laid Mrs. Melrose's statement before Mr. Melrose. I regret to say that he sees no cause to modify the arrangements made years ago with regard to his wife, except that, in consideration of the fact that Miss Melrose is now grown up, he will add L20 yearly to Mrs. Melrose's allowance, making it L100 a year. Provision will be made for the continuance of this allowance to Mrs. Melrose till her death, and afterward to the daughter for her lifetime; on condition that Mr. Melrose is not further molested in any way. Otherwise Mr. Melrose acknowledges and will acknowledge no claim upon him whatever.

"I am to add that if Mrs. Melrose is in difficulties, it is entirely owing to the dishonest rapacity of her family who have been living upon her. Mr. Melrose is well acquainted with both the past and recent history of Mr. Robert Smeath, who made a tool of Mrs. Melrose in the matter of a disgraceful theft of a valuable bronze from Mr. Melrose's collection—"

"The Hermes!" cried Victoria. "She has never said one word to me about it."

"Miss Melrose has been telling me the story," said Tatham, smiling at the recollection. "By George, that's a rum little girl! She glories in it. But she says her mother has been consumed with remorse ever since. Go on."

"And if any attempt is made to blackmail or coerce Mr. Melrose, he will be obliged, much against his will, to draw the attention of the Italian police to certain matters relating to Mr. Smeath, of which he has the evidence in his possession. He warns Mrs. Melrose that her father's career cannot possibly bear examination.

"I regret that my reply cannot be more satisfactory to you.

"Believe me,

"Yours faithfully,

"CLAUDE FAVERSHAM."

Victoria had turned pale.

"How abominable! Why, her father is bedridden and dying!"

"So I told Faversham—like a fool. For it only—apparently—gives Melrose a greater power of putting on the screw. Well, now look here—here's something else." He drew another letter from his pocket, and handed it to her.

Victoria unfolded a second note from Faversham—marked "confidential," and written in evident agitation.

"MY DEAR TATHAM:

"I am powerless. Let me implore you to keep Mrs. Melrose quiet! Privately a great deal may be done for her. If she will only trust herself to me, in my private capacity, I will see that she is properly supplied for the future. But she will simply bring disaster on herself if she attempts to force Melrose. She—and you—know what he is. I beg of you to be guided—and to guide her—as I advise."

"An attempt, you see, to buy us off," said Tatham scornfully. "I propose to take the night train from Pengarth this evening, and consult old Fledhow to-morrow morning."

"Old Fledhow," alias James Morton Fledhow, solicitor, head of one of that small group of firms which, between them, have the great estates of England in their pigeon-holes, had been the legal adviser of the Tatham family for two generations. Precipitation is not the badge of his tribe; but Victoria threw herself upon this very natural and youthful impulse, before even it could reach "old Fledhow."

"My dear Harry, be cautious! What did Mrs. Melrose say? Of course you showed her the letter?"

Tatham candidly admitted that he hardly knew what Mrs. Melrose had said. The letter had thrown her into a great state of agitation, and she had cried a good deal. "Poor papa, poor papa!" pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, seemed to have been all that she had been able to articulate.

"You know, Harry, there may be a great deal in it?" Victoria's countenance showed her doubts.

"In the threat about her father? Pure bluff, mother!—absolute bluff! As for the bronze—a wife can't steal from her husband. And under these circumstances!—I should like to see a British jury that would touch her!"

"But she admits that half the proceeds went to her father."

"Twenty years ago?" Tatham's shrug was magnificent. "I tell you he'll get no change out of that!"

"But he hints at other things?"

"Bluff again! Why the man's helpless in his bed!"

"I suppose even dying can be made more unpleasant by the police," said Victoria. She pondered, walking thoughtfully beside a rather thwarted and impatient youth, eager to play the champion of the distressed in his own way; and that, possibly, from more motives than one. Suddenly her face cleared.

"I will go myself!" she said, laying her hand on her son's arm.

"Mother!"

"Yes! I'll go myself. Leave it to me, Harry. I will drive over to Threlfall to-morrow evening—quite alone and without notice. I had some influence with him once," she said, with her eyes on the ground.

Tatham protested warmly. The smallest allusion to any early relation between his mother and Melrose was almost intolerable to him. But Lady Tatham fought for her idea. She pointed out again that Melrose might very well have some information that could be used with ghastly effect even upon a dying man; that Netta was much attached to her father, and would probably not make up her mind to any drastic step whatever in face of Melrose's threats.

"I don't so much care about Mrs. Melrose," exclaimed Tatham. "We can give her money, and make her comfortable, if it comes to that. But it's the girl—and the hideous injustice of that fellow there—that Faversham—ousting her from her rights—getting the old man into his power—boning his property—and then writing hypocritical notes like that!"

He stood before her, flushed and excited; a broad-shouldered avenger of the sex, such as any distressed maiden might have been glad to light upon. But again Victoria was aware that the case was not as simple as it sounded. However, she was no less angry than he. Mother and son were on the brink of making common cause against a grasping impostor; who was not to be allowed to go off—either with money that did not belong to him, or with angelic sympathies that still less belonged to him. Meanwhile on this point, whatever may have been in their minds, they said on this occasion not a word. Victoria pressed her plan. And in the end Tatham most reluctantly consented that she should endeavour to force a surprise interview with Melrose the following day.

They returned to the little drawing-room where Felicia Melrose, it seemed, had been giving the Penfolds a difficult half hour. For as soon as the Tathams had stepped into the garden, she had become entirely monosyllabic; after a drive from Duddon at Harry Tatham's side, during which, greatly to her host's surprise, she had suddenly and unexpectedly found her tongue, talking, in a torrent of questions, all the way, insatiably.

Mrs. Penfold, on her side, could do little but stare at "the heiress of Threlfall." Susy, studying her with shining eyes, tried to make her talk, to little purpose.

But Lydia in particular could get nothing out of her. It seemed to her that Felicia looked at her as though she disliked her. And every now and then the small stranger would try to see herself in the only mirror that the cottage drawing-room afforded; lengthening out her long, thin neck, and turning her curly head stealthily from side to side like a swan preening. Once, when she thought no one was observing her, she took a carnation from a vase near her—it had been sent over from Duddon that morning!—and put it in her dress. And the next moment, having pulled off her glove, she looked with annoyance at her own roughened hand, and then at Lydia's delicate fingers playing with a paper-knife. Frowning, she hastily slipped her glove on again.

As soon as Tatham and his mother reappeared, she jumped up with alacrity, a smile breaking with sudden and sparkled beauty on her pinched face, and went to stand by Victoria's side, looking up at her with eager docility and admiration.

Victoria, however, left her, in order to draw Lydia into a corner beside a farther window.

"I am sorry to say Harry has received a very unsatisfactory letter from Mr. Faversham."

"May I ask him about it?"

"He wants to tell you. I am carrying Miss Melrose back with me. But Harry will stay."

Words which cost Victoria a good deal. If what she now believed was the truth, how monstrous that her Harry should be kept dangling here! Her pride was all on edge. But Harry ruled her. She could make no move till his eyes too were opened.

Meanwhile, on all counts, Faversham was the enemy. To that chasse first and foremost, Victoria vowed herself.

* * * * *

"Well, what do you think of her?" said Tatham, good-humouredly, as he raised his hat to Felicia and his mother disappearing in the car. "She's more alive to-day; but you can see she has been literally starved. That brute Melrose!"

Lydia made some half audible reply, and with a view to prolonging his tete-a-tete with her, he led her strolling along the road, through a golden dusk, touched with moonrise. She followed, but all her pleasant self-confidence with regard to him was gone; she walked beside him, miserable and self-condemned; a theorist defeated by the incalculable forces of things. How to begin with him—what line to take—how to undo her own work—she did not know; her mind was in confusion.

As for him, he was no sooner alone with her than bliss descended on him. He forgot Faversham and the Melroses. He only wished to talk to her, and of himself. Surely, so much, "friendship" allowed.

He began, accordingly, to comment eagerly on her letters to him, and his to her, explaining this, questioning that. Every word showed her afresh that her letters had been the landmarks of his Scotch weeks, the chief events of his summer; and every word quickened a new remorse. At last she could bear it no longer. She broke abruptly on his talk.

"Mayn't I know what's happened at Threlfall? Your mother told me—you had heard."

He pulled himself together, while many things he would rather have forgotten rushed back upon him.

"We're no forrader!" he said impatiently. "I don't believe we shall get a brass farthing out of Melrose, if you ask me; at least without going to law and making a scandal; partly because he's Melrose, and that sort—sooner die than climb down, and the rest of it—but mostly—"

He broke off.

"Mostly?" repeated Lydia.

"I don't know whether I'd better go on. Faversham's a friend of yours."

Tatham looked down upon her, his blunt features reddening.

"Not so much a friend that I can't hear the truth about him," said Lydia, smiling rather faintly. "What do you accuse him of?"

He hesitated a moment; then the inner heat gathered, and flashed out. Wasn't it best to be frank?—best for her, best for himself?

"Don't you think it looks pretty black?" he asked her, breathing quick; "there he is, getting round an old man, and plotting for money he's no right to! Wouldn't you have thought that any decent fellow would sooner break stones than take the money that ought to have been that girl's—that at least he'd have said to Melrose 'provide for her first—your own child—and then do what you like for me.' Wouldn't that have been the honest thing to do? But I went to him yesterday—told him the story—he promised to look into it—and to use his influence. We sent him a statement in proper form, a few hours later. It's horrible what those two have suffered! And then, to-day—it's too dark for you to read his precious letter, but if you really don't mind, I'll tell you the gist of it."

He summarized it—quite fairly—yet with a contempt he did not try to conceal. The girl at his side, muffled in a blue cloak, with a dark hood framing the pale gold of the hair, and the delicate curves of the face, listened in silence. At the end she said:

"Tell me on what grounds you think Mr. Melrose has left his property to Mr. Faversham?"

"Everybody believes it! My Carlisle lawyers whom I saw this morning are convinced of it. Melrose is said to have spoken quite frankly about it to many persons."

"Not very strong evidence on which to condemn a man so utterly as you condemn him," said Lydia, with sudden emotion. "Think of the difficulty of his position! May he not be honestly trying to steer his way? And may not we all be doing our best to make his task impossible, putting the worst construction—the very worst!—on everything he does?"

There was silence a moment. Tatham and Lydia were looking into each other's faces; the girl's soul, wounded and fluttering, was in her eyes. Tatham felt a sudden and choking sense of catastrophe. Their house of cards had fallen about them, and his stubborn hopes with it. She, with her high standards, could not possibly defend—could not possibly plead—for a man who was behaving so shabbily, so dishonourably, except—for one reason! He leapt indignantly at certainty; although it was a certainty that tortured him.

"There is evidence enough!" he said, in a changed voice. "I don't understand how you can stick up for him."

"I don't," she said sadly, "not if it's true. But I don't want to believe it. Why should one want to believe the worst, you and I, about anybody?"

Tatham kept an explosive silence for a moment, and then broke out hoarsely:

"Do you remember, we promised we'd be real friends?—we'd be really frank with each other? I've kept my bargain. Are you keeping it? Isn't there something you haven't told me!—something I ought to know?"

"No, nothing!" cried Lydia, with sudden energy. "You misunderstand—you offend me."

She drew her breath quickly. There were angry tears in her eyes, hidden by the hood.

A gust of passion swept through Tatham, revealing his manhood to itself. He stopped, caught her hands, and held them fiercely, imprisoned against his breast. She must needs look up at him; male strength compelled; they stood motionless a few seconds under the shadows of the trees.

"If there is nothing—if I do misunderstand—if I'm wrong in what I think—for God's sake listen to me—give me back my promise. I can't—I can't keep it!"

He stooped and kissed the fingers he held, once, twice, repeatedly; then turned away, shading his eyes with his hand.

Lydia said, with a little moan:

"Oh, Harry!—we've broken the spell."

Tatham recovered himself with difficulty.

"Can't you—can't you ever care for me?" The voice was low, the eyes still hidden.

"We oughtn't to have been writing and meeting!" cried Lydia, in despair. "It was foolish, wrong! I see it now. I ask your pardon. We must say good-bye, Harry—and—oh!—oh!—I'm so sorry I let you—"

Her voice died away.

In the distance of the lane, a labourer emerged whistling from a gate, with his dog. Tatham's hands dropped to his sides; they walked on together as before. The man passed them with a cheerful good-night.

Tatham spoke slowly.

"Yes—perhaps—we'd better not meet. I can't—control myself. And I should go on offending you."

A chasm seemed to have opened between them. They turned and walked back to the gate of the cottage. When they reached it, Tatham crushed her hand again in his.

"Good-bye! If ever I can do anything to serve you—let me know! Good-bye!—dearest—dearest Lydia." His voice sank and lingered on the name. The lamp at the gate showed him that her eyes were swimming in tears.

"You'll forgive me?" she said, imploringly.

He attempted a laugh, which ended in a sound of pain. Then he lifted her hand again, kissed it, and was gone; running—head down—through the dimness of the lane.

Meanwhile, wrapped in the warm furs of the motor, Felicia and Lady Tatham sped toward Duddon.

Felicia was impenetrably silent at first; and Victoria, who never found it easy to adapt herself to the young, made no effort to rouse her. Occasionally some passing light showed her the girl's pallid profile—slightly frowning brow, and pinched lips—against the dark lining of the car. And once or twice as she saw her thus, she was startled by the likeness to Melrose.

When they were halfway home, a thin, high voice struck into the silence, deliberately clear:

"Who is the Signorina Penfold?"

"Her mother is a widow. They have lived here about two years."

"She is not pretty. She is too pale. I do not like that hair," said Felicia, viciously.

Victoria could not help an unseen smile.

"Everybody here thinks her pretty. She is very clever, and a beautiful artist," she said, with slight severity.

The gesture beside her was scarcely discernible. But Victoria thought it was a toss of the head.

"Everybody in Italy can paint. It is as common—as common as lizards! There are dozens of people in Lucca who can paint—a whole villa—ceilings, walls—what you like. Nobody thinks anything at all about them. But Italian girls are very clever also! There were two girls in Lucca—Marchesine—the best family in Lucca. They got all the prizes at the Liceo, and then they went to Pisa to the University; and one of them was a Doctor of Law; and when they came home, all the street in which they lived and their palazzo were lit up. And they were very pretty too!"

"And you—did you go to the Liceo, Felicia?"

"No! I had never any education—none, none, none! But I could get it, if I wanted," said the voice, defiantly.

"Of course you could. I have asked your mother to stay with us till Christmas. You might get some lessons in Carlisle. We could send you in."

Felicia, however, made no response to this at all, and Victoria felt that her proposal had fallen flat. But, after a minute or two, she heard:

"I should like—to learn—to ride!"

Much emphasis on the last word; accompanied by nodding of the fantastic little head.

"Well, we shall see!" laughed Victoria, indulgently.

"And then—I would go out—with Lord Tatham!" said Felicia. "Oh, but he is too divine on horseback! There were some Italian cavalry officers at Lucca. I used to run to the window every time to see them pass by. But he is nobler—he is handsomer!"

Victoria, taken by surprise, wondered if it would not be well to administer a little snubbing to compliments so unabashed. She tried. But Felicia interrupted her:

"Do you not admire him—your son?" she said eagerly, slipping up close to Victoria. "Can he jump and swim rivers—on his horse—and come down mountains—on his haunches—like our cavalleria? I am certain he can!"

"He can do most things on a horse. When the hunting begins, you will see," said Victoria, smiling in spite of herself.

"Tell me, please, what is the hunting? And about the shooting, too. Lord Tatham told me—this afternoon—some ladies shoot. Oh, but I will learn to shoot! I swear it—yes! Now tell me!"

Thus attacked, the formidable Victoria capitulated. She was soon in the midst of stories of her Harry, from his first pony upward. And she had not gone far before a tiny hand slipped itself into hers and nestled there; moving and quivering occasionally, like a wild bird voluntarily tame. And when the drive ended, Victoria was quite sorry to lose its lithe softness.



XVI

Victoria very soon perceived that a crisis had come and gone. She had been accustomed for a while before they went to Scotland to send about once a week a basket of flowers and fruit from the famous gardens of Duddon, with her "kind regards" to Mrs. Penfold. The basket was generally brought into the hall, and Tatham would slip into it the new books or magazines that seemed to him likely to attract the cottage party. He had always taken a particular pleasure in the dispatch of the basket, and in the contrivance of some new offering of which it might be the bearer. Victoria, on the other hand, though usually a lavish giver, had taken but a grudging part in the business, and merely to please her son.

On the day following the visit to the cottage, the basket, in obedience to a standing order, lay in the hall as usual, heaped with a gorgeous mass of the earliest chrysanthemums. Victoria observed it—with an unfriendly eye—as she passed through the hall on her way to breakfast.

Harry came up behind her, and she turned to give him her morning kiss.

"Please don't send it," he said abruptly, pointing to the basket. "It wouldn't be welcome."

She started, but made no reply. They went into breakfast. Victoria gave the butler directions that the flowers should be sent to the Rectory.

After breakfast she followed Tatham into the library. He stood silent a while by the window, looking out, his hands in his pockets; she beside him, leaning her head against his arm.

"It's all over," he said at last; "we decided it last night."

"What's over, dear old boy?"

"I broke our compact—I couldn't help it—and we saw it couldn't go on."

"You—asked her again?"

He nodded. "It's no good. And now it only worries her that I should hang about. We can't—even be friends. It's all my fault."

"You poor darling!" cried his mother indignantly. "She has played with you abominably."

He flushed with anger.

"You mustn't say that—you mustn't think it, mother! All these weeks have been—to the good. They haven't been the real thing. But I shall always have them—to remember. Now it's done with."

Silence fell upon them again, while their minds went back over the history of the preceding six months. Victoria felt very bitter. And so, apparently, in his own way, did he. For he presently said, with a vehemence which startled her:

"I'd sooner be shot than see her marry that fellow!"

"Ah! you suspect that?"

"It looks like it," he said reluctantly. "And unless I'm much mistaken, he's a mean cad! But—for her sake—we'll make sure—we'll give him every chance."

"It is of course possible," said Victoria grudgingly, "that he has honestly tried to do something for the Melroses."

"I daresay!" said Tatham, with a shrug.

"And it is possible also that if he is the heir, he means to make it up to Felicia, when he comes into it all."

Tatham laughed.

"To throw her a spare bone? Very likely. But how are we to know that Melrose won't bind him by all sorts of restrictions? A vindictive old villain like that will do anything. Then we shall have Faversham calmly saying, 'Very sorry I can't oblige you! But if I modify the terms of the will in your favour, I forfeit the estates.' Besides isn't it monstrous—damnable—that Melrose's daughter should owe to charity—the charity of a fellow who had never heard of Melrose or Threlfall six months ago—what is her right—her plain and simple right?"

Victoria agreed. All these ancestral ideas of family maintenance, and the practical rights dependent on family ties, which were implied in Harry's attitude, were just as real to her as to his simpler mind. Yet she knew very well that Netta and Felicia Melrose were fast becoming to him the mere symbols and counters of a struggle that affected him more intimately, more profoundly than any crusading effort for the legal and moral rights of a couple of strangers could possibly have done.

Lydia had broken with him, and his hopes were dashed. Why? Because another man had come upon the scene whose influence upon her was clear—disastrously clear.

"If he were a decent fellow—I'd go out of her life—without a word. But he's a thievish intriguer!—and I don't intend to hold my hand till I've brought him out in his true colours before her and the world. Then—if she chooses—with her eyes open—let her take him!" It was thus his mother imagined his thought, and she was not far from the truth. And meanwhile the sombre changes in the boyish face made her own heart sore. For they told of an ill heat of blood, and an embittered soul.

At luncheon he sat depressed and silent, doing his duty with an effort to his mother's guests. Netta also was in the depths. She had lost the power of rapid recuperation that youth gave to Felicia, and in spite of the comforts of Threlfall her aspect was scarcely less deplorable than when she arrived. Moreover she had cried much since the delivery of the Threlfall letter the day before. Her eyes were red, and her small face disfigured. Felicia, on the other hand, sat with her nose in the air, evidently despising her mother's tears, and as sharply observant as ever of the sights about her—the quietly moving servants, the flowers, and silver, the strange, nice things to eat. Tatham, absorbed in his own thoughts, did not perceive how, in addition, she watched the master of the house; Victoria was uncomfortably aware of it.

After luncheon Tatham took up a Bradshaw lying on a table in the panelled hall, where they generally drank coffee, and looked up the night mail to Euston.

"I shall catch it at Carlisle," he said to his mother, book in hand. "There will be time to hear your report before I go."

She nodded. Her own intention was to start at dusk for Threlfall.

"Why are you going away?" said Felicia suddenly.

He turned to her courteously:

"To try to straighten your affairs!"

"That won't do us any good—to go away." Her voice was shrill, her black eyes frowned. "We shan't know what to do—by ourselves."

"And it's precisely because I also don't know exactly what to do next, that I'm going to town. We must get some advice—from the lawyers."

"I hate lawyers!" The girl flushed angrily. "I went to one in Lucca once—we wanted a paper drawn up. Mamma was ill. I had to go by myself. He was a brute!"

"Oh, my old lawyer is not a brute," said Tatham, laughing. "He's a jolly old chap."

"The man in Lucca was a horrid brute!" repeated Felicia. "He wanted to kiss me! There was a vase of flowers standing on his desk. I threw them at him. It cut him. I was so glad! His forehead began to bleed, and the water ran down from his hair. He looked so ugly and silly! I walked all the way home up the mountains, and when I got home I fainted. We never went to that man again."

"I should think not!" exclaimed Tatham, with disgust. For the first time he looked at her attentively. An English girl would not have told him that story in the same frank, upstanding way. But this little elfish creature, with her blazing eyes, friendless and penniless in the world, had probably been exposed to experiences the English girl would know nothing of. He did not like to think of them. That beast, her father!

He was going away, when Felicia said, her curly head a little on one side, her tone low and beguiling:

"When you come back, will you teach me to ride? Lady Tatham said—perhaps—"

Tatham was embarrassed—and bored—by the request.

"I have no doubt we can find you a pony," he said evasively, and taking up the Bradshaw he walked away.

Felicia stood alone and motionless in the big hall, amid its Gainsboroughs and Romneys, its splendid cabinets and tapestries, a childish figure in a blue dress, with crimson cheeks, and compressed lips. Suddenly she ran up to a mirror on the wall, and looked at herself vindictively.

"It is because you are so ugly," she said to the image in the glass. "Ugh, you are so ugly! And yet I can't have yellow hair like that other girl. If I dyed it, he would know—he would laugh. And she is all round and soft; but my bones are all sticking out! I might be cut out of wood. Ah"—her wild smile broke out—"I know what I'll do! I'll drink panna—cream they call it here. Every night at tea they bring in what would cost a lira in Florence. I'll drink a whole cup of it!—I'll eat pounds of butter—and lots, lots of pudding—that's what makes English people fat. I'll be fat too. You'll see!" And she threw a threatening nod at the scarecrow reflected in the tortoise-shell mirror.

The October evening had fallen when Tatham put his mother into the motor, and stood, his hands in his pockets—uncomfortable and disapproving—on the steps of Duddon, watching the bright lights disappearing down the long avenue. What could she do? He hated to think of her in the old miser's house, browbeaten and perhaps insulted, when he was not there to protect her.

However she was gone, on what he was certain would prove a futile errand, and he turned heavily back into the house.

The head keeper was waiting in the inner hall, in search of orders for a small "shoot" of neighbours on the morrow, planned some weeks before.

"Arrange it as you like, Thurston!" said Tatham hurriedly, as he came in sight of the man, a magnificent grizzled fellow in gaiters and a green uniform. "I don't care where we go."

"I thought perhaps the Colley Wood beat, my lord—"

"Yes, capital. That'll do. I leave it to you. Sorry I can't stay to talk it over. Good-night!"

"There's a pair of foxes, my lord, in the Nowers spinney that have been doing a shocking amount of damage lately...."

But the door of the library was already shut. Thurston went away, both astonished and aggrieved. There were few things he liked better than a chat with the young fellow whom he had taught to hold a gun; and Tatham was generally the most accessible of masters and the keenest of sportsmen, going into every detail of the shooting parties himself, with an unfailing spirit.

Meanwhile Victoria was speeding eastward in her motor along the Pengarth road. Darkness was fast rushing on. To her left she saw the spreading waste of Flitterdale Common, its great stretches of moss livid in the dusk: and beyond it, westward, the rounded tops and slopes of the range that runs from Great Dodd to Helvellyn. Presently she made out, in the distance, looking southward from the high-level road on which the car was running, the great enclosure of Threlfall Park, on either side of the river which ran between her and Flitterdale; the dim line of its circling wall; its scattered woods; and farther on, the square mass of the Tower itself, black above the trees.

The car stopped at a gate, a dark and empty lodge beside it. The footman jumped down. Was the gate locked?—and must she go round to Whitebeck, and make her attack from that side? No, the gate swung open, and in sped the car.

Victoria sat upright, her mood strung to an intensity which knew no fears. It was twenty years since she had last seen Edmund Melrose, and it was thirty years and more since she had rescued her sister from his grasp, and the duel between herself and him had ended in her final victory.

How dim they seemed, those far-off days!—when for some two or three years, either in London or in Paris, where her father was Ambassador, she had been in frequent contact with a group of young men—of young "bloods"—conspicuous in family and wealth, among whom Edmund Melrose was the reckless leader of a dare-devil set. She thought of a famous picture of the young Beckford, by Lawrence, to which Melrose on the younger side of forty had been frequently compared. The same romantic beauty of feature, the same liquid depth of eye, the same splendid carriage; and, combined with these, the same insolence and selfishness. There had been in Victoria's earlier youth moments when to see him enter a ballroom was to feel her head swim with excitement; when to carry him off from a rival was a passionate delight; when she coveted his praise, and dreaded his sarcasm. And yet—it was perfectly true what she had said to Harry. She had never been in love with him. The imagination of an "unlessoned girl" had been fired; but when the glamour in which it had wrapped the man had been torn away by the disclosure of some ugly facts concerning him; when she broke with him in disgust, and induced others to break with him; it was not her feelings, not her heart, which had suffered.

Nevertheless, so complex a thing is a woman, that as Victoria Tatham drew nearer to the Tower, and to Melrose, she felt herself strangely melting toward him—a prey to pity and the tears of things. She alone in this countryside had been a witness of his meteor like youth; she alone could set it beside his sordid and dishonoured age.

What did she hope to do with him? The plight of his wife and daughter had roused her strongest and most indignant sympathy. The cry of wrong or injustice had always found her fiercely responsive. Whatever an outsider could do to help Melrose's local victims she had done, not once but many times. Her mind was permanently in revolt against him, both as a man and a landlord. She had watched and judged him for years. Yet, now that yet another of his misdeeds was to bring her again into personal contact with him, her pulse quickened; some memory of the old ascendency survived.

It was a still and frosty evening. As the motor drew up in the walled enclosure before the Tower, the noise of its brakes echoed through the profound silence in which the Tower was wrapped. No sign of life in the dark front; no ray of light anywhere from its shuttered windows.

Yet, to her astonishment, as she alighted, and before she had rung the bell, the front door was thrown open, and Dixon with a couple of dogs at his heels ran down the steps.

At sight however of the veiled and cloaked lady who had descended from the motor, the old man stopped short, evidently surprised. With an exclamation Victoria did not catch, he retreated to the threshold of the house.

She mounted rapidly, not noticing that a telegraph boy on a bicycle had come wheeling into the forecourt behind her.

"Is Mr. Melrose at home?"

As she threw back her veil, Dixon stared at her in dumb amazement. Then she suddenly perceived behind him a tall figure advancing. She made a few steps forward through the dimly lighted hall, and found herself within a foot of Edmund Melrose himself.

He gave a start—checked himself—and stood staring at her. He wore spectacles, and was leaning on a stick. She had a quick impression of physical weakness and decay.

Without any visible embarrassment she held out her hand.

"I am lucky to have found you at home, Mr. Melrose. Will you give me twenty minutes' conversation on some important business?"

"Excuse me!" he said with a profound bow, and a motion of the left hand toward the stick on which he supported himself—"or rather my infirmities."

Victoria's hand dropped.

His glittering eyes surveyed her. Dixon approached him holding out a telegram.

"Allow me," said Melrose, as he tore open the envelope and perused the message. "Ah! I thought so! You were mistaken, Lady Tatham—for another visitor—one of those foreign fellows who waste so much of my time—coming to see a few little things of mine. Shut the door, Dixon—the man has missed his train. Now, Lady Tatham!—you have some business to discuss with me. Kindly step this way."

He turned toward the gallery. Victoria followed, and Dixon was left in the hall, staring after them in a helpless astonishment.

The gallery lit by hanging lamps made a swift impression of splendid space and colour on Lady Tatham as she passed through it in Melrose's wake. He led the way without a word, till he reached the door of his own room.

She passed into the panelled library which has been already described in the course of this narrative. On this October evening, however, its aspect was not that generally presented by Melrose's "den." Its ordinary hugger-mugger had been cleared away—pushed back into corners and out of sight. But on the splendid French bureau, and on various other tables and cabinets of scarcely less beauty, there stood ranged in careful order a wealth of glorious things. The light of a blazing fire, and of many lamps played on some fifty or sixty dishes and vases from the great days of Italian majolica—specimens of Gubbio, Faenza, Caffagiolo, of the rarest and costliest quality. The room glowed and sparkled with colour. The gold of Italian sunshine, the azure of Italian skies, the purple of Italian grapes seemed to have been poured into it, and to have taken shape in these lustrous ewers and plaques, in their glistering greens and yellows, their pale opalescence, their superb orange and blue. While as a background to the show, a couple of curtains—Venetian cut-velvet of the seventeenth century, of faded but still gorgeous blue and rose—had been hung over a tall screen.

"What marvellous things!" cried Victoria, throwing up her hands and forgetting everything else for the moment but the pleasure of a trained eye.

Melrose smiled.

"Pray take that chair!" he said, with exaggerated deference. "Your visits are rare, Lady Tatham! Is it—twenty years? I regret I have no drawing-room in which to receive you. But Mr. Faversham and I talk of furnishing it before long. You are, I believe, acquainted with Mr. Faversham?"

He waved his hand, and suddenly Victoria became aware of another person in the room. Faversham standing tall and silent, amid the show of majolica, bowed to her formally, and Victoria slightly acknowledged the greeting. It seemed to her that Melrose's foraging eyes travelled maliciously between her and the agent.

"Mr. Faversham and I only unpacked a great part of this stuff yesterday," said Melrose, with much apparent good humour. "It has been shut up in one of the north rooms ever since a sale in Paris at which I bought most of the pieces. Crockett wished to see it" (he named the most famous American collector of the day). "He shall see it. I understand he will be here to-morrow, having missed his train to-day. He will come no doubt with his check-book. It amuses me to lead these fellows on, and then bid them good morning. They have the most infernal assumptions. One has to teach them that an Englishman is a match for any American!"

Victoria sat passive. Faversham took up a pile of letters and moved toward the door. As he opened it, he turned and his eyes met Victoria's. She wavered a moment under the passionate and haughty resentment they seemed to express, no doubt a reflection of the reply to his letter sent him by Harry that morning. Then the door shut and she was alone with Melrose.

That gentleman leant back in his chair observing her. He wore the curious cloaklike garment of thin black stuff, in which for some years past he had been accustomed to dress when indoors; and the skullcap on his silvery white hair gave added force to the still splendid head and aquiline features. A kind of mocking satisfaction seemed to flicker through the wrinkled face; and the general aspect of the man was still formidable indeed. And yet it was the phantom of a man that she beheld. He had paled to the diaphanous whiteness of the Catholic ascetic; his hand shook upon his stick; the folds of the cloak barely concealed the emaciation of his body. Victoria, gazing at him, seemed to perceive strange intimations and presages, and, in the deep harsh eyes, a spirit at bay.

She began quietly, bending forward:

"Mr. Melrose, I have come to speak to you on behalf of your wife."

"So I imagined. I should not allow any one else, Lady Tatham, to address me on the subject."

"Thank you. I resolved—as you see—to appeal once more to our old—"

"Friendship?" he suggested.

"Yes—friendship," she repeated, slowly. "It might have been called so—once."

"Long ago! So long ago that—I do not see how anything practical can come of appealing to it," he said, pointedly. "Moreover, the manner in which the friendship was trampled on—by you—not once, but twice, not only destroyed it, but—if I may say so—replaced it."

His hollow eyes burned upon her. Wrapped in his cloak, his white hair gleamimg amid the wonderful ewers and dishes, he had the aspect of some wizard or alchemist, of whom a woman might ask poison for her rival, or a philter for her lover. Victoria, fascinated, was held partly by the apparition before her, partly by an image—a visualization in the mind. She saw the ballroom in that splendid house, now the British Embassy in Paris, and once the home of Pauline Borghese. She saw herself in white, a wreath of forget-me-nots in her hair. She has just heard, and from a woman friend, a story of lust and cruelty in which Edmund Melrose was the principal actor. He comes to claim her for a dance; she dismisses him, in public, with a manner and in words that scathe—that brand. She sees his look of rage, as of one struck in the face—she feels again the shudder passing through her—a shudder of release, horror passing into thanksgiving.

But—what long tracts of life since then!—what happiness for her!—what decay and degeneracy for him! A pang of sheer pity, not so much for him as for the human lot, shot through her, as she realized afresh to what evening of life he had come, from what a morning.

At any rate her manner in reply showed no resentment of his tone.

"All these things are dead for both of us," she said quietly.

He interrupted her.

"You are right—or partly right. Edith is dead—that makes it easier for you and me to meet."

"Yes. Edith is dead," she said, with sudden emotion. "And in her last days she spoke to me kindly of you."

He made no comment. She resumed:

"I desire, if I can—and if you will allow me—to recall to you the years when we were cousins and friends together—blotting out all that has happened since. If you remember—twenty years ago, when you and your wife arrived to settle here, I then came to ask you to bury the feud between us, and to let us meet again at least as neighbours and acquaintances. You refused. Then came the breakdown of your marriage. I was honestly sorry for it."

He smiled. She was quite conscious of the mockery in the smile; but she persevered.

"And now, for many years, I have not known—nobody here has known, whether your wife was alive or dead. Suddenly, a few days ago, she and your daughter arrived at Duddon, to ask me to help them."

"Precisely. To make use of you, in order to bring pressure to bear on me! I do not mean to lend myself to the proceeding!"

Victoria flushed.

"In attempting to influence me, Mrs. Melrose, I assure you, had no weapon whatever but her story. And to look at her was to see that it was true. She admits—most penitently—that she was wrong to leave you—" "And to rob me! You forget that."

Victoria threw back her head. He remembered that scornful gesture in her youth.

"What did that matter to you? In this house!"

She looked round the room, with its contents.

"It did matter to me," he said stubbornly. "My collections are the only satisfaction left to me—by you, Lady Tatham—and others. They are to me in the place of children. I love my bronzes—and my marbles—as you—I suppose—love your son. It sounds incredible to you, no doubt"—the sneer was audible—"but it is so."

"Even if it were so—it is twenty years ago. You have replaced what you lost a hundred times."

"I have never replaced it. And it is now out of my reach—in the Berlin Museum—bought by that fellow Jensen, their head man, who goes nosing like a hound all over Europe—and is always poaching in my preserves."

Victoria looked at him in puzzled amazement. Was this mad, this childish bitterness, a pose?—or was there really some breakdown of the once powerful brain? She began again—less confidently.

"I have told you—I repeat—how sorry she is—how fully she admits she was wrong. But just consider how she has paid for it! Your allowance to her—you must let me speak plainly—could not keep her and her child decently. Her family have been unfortunate; she has had to keep them as well as herself. And the end of it is that she—and your child—your own child—have come pretty near to starvation."

He sat immovable. But Victoria rose to her task. Her veil thrown back from the pale austerity of her beauty, she poured out the story of Netta and Felicia, from a heart sincerely touched. The sordid years in Florence, the death of Netta's mother, the bankruptcy of her father, the bitter struggle amid the Apuan Alps to keep themselves and their wretched invalid alive—she described them, as they had been told to her, not rhetorically, for neither she nor Netta Melrose was capable of rhetoric, but with the touches and plain details that bring conviction.

"They have been hungry—for the peasants' food. Your wife and child have had to be content day after day with a handful of bread and a salata gathered from the roadside; while every franc they could earn was spent upon a sick man. Mrs. Melrose is a shadow. I suspect incurable illness. Your little daughter arrived fainting and emaciated at my house. But with a few days' rest and proper food she has revived. She is young. She has not suffered irreparably. One sees what a lovely little creature she might be—and how full of vivacity and charm. Mr. Melrose—you would be proud of her! She is like you—like what you were, in your youth. When I think of what other people would give for such a daughter! Can you possibly deny yourself the pleasure of taking her back into your life?"

"Very easily! Your sentimentalism will resent it; I assure you, nevertheless, that it would give me no pleasure whatever."

"Ah, but consider it again," she pleaded, earnestly. "You do not know what you are refusing—how much, and how little. All that is asked is that you should acknowledge them—provide for them. Let them stay here a few weeks in the year—what could it matter to you in this immense house?—or if that is impossible, at least give your wife a proper allowance—you would spend it three times over in a day on things like these"—her eye glanced toward a superb ewer and dish, of verre eglomisee, standing between her and Melrose—"and let your daughter take her place as your heiress! She ought to marry early—and marry brilliantly. And later—perhaps—in her children—"

Melrose stood up.

"I shall not follow you into these dreams," he said fiercely. "She is not my heiress—and she never will be. The whole of my property"—he spoke with hammered emphasis—"will pass at my death to my friend and agent and adopted son—Claude Faversham."

He spoke with an excitement his physical state no longer allowed him to conceal. At last—he was defeating this woman who had once defeated him; he was denying and scorning her, as she had once denied and scorned him. That her cause was an impersonal and an unselfish one made no difference. He knew the strength of her character and her sympathies. It was sweet to him to refuse her something she desired. She had never yet given him the opportunity! In the twenty years since they had last faced each other, he was perfectly conscious that he had lost mentally, morally, physically; whereas she—his enemy—bore about with her, even in her changed beauty, the signs of a life lived fruitfully—a life that had been worth while. His bitter perception of it, his hidden consciousness that he had probably but a short time, a couple of years at most, to live, only increased his satisfaction in the "No"—the contemptuous and final "No!" that he had opposed, and would oppose, to her impertinent interference with his affairs.

Victoria sat regarding him silently, as he walked to the mantelpiece, rearranged a few silver objects standing upon it, and then turned—confronting her again.

"You have made Mr. Faversham your heir?" she asked him after a pause.

"I have. And I shall take good care that he does nothing with my property when he inherits it so as to undo my wishes with regard to it."

"That is to say—you will not even allow him to make—himself—provision for your wife and daughter?"

"Beyond what was indicated in the letter to your son? No! certainly not. I shall take measures against anything of the sort."

Victoria rose.

"And he accepts your condition—your bequest to him, on these terms?"

Melrose smiled.

"Certainly. Why not?"

"I am sorry for Mr. Faversham!" said Victoria, in a different voice, the colour sparkling on her cheek.

"Because you think there will be a public opinion against him—that he will be boycotted in this precious county? Make yourself easy, Lady Tatham. A fortune such as he will inherit provides an easy cure for such wounds."

Victoria's self-control began to break down.

"I venture to think he will not find it so," she said, with quickened breath. "In these days it is not so simple to defy the common conscience—as it once was. I fear indeed that Mr. Faversham has already lost the respect of decent men!"

"By becoming my agent?"

"Your tool—for actions—cruel, inhuman things—degrading to both you and him."

She had failed. She knew it! And all that remained was to speak the truth to him, to defy and denounce him.

Melrose surveyed her.

"The ejectment order has been served at Mainstairs to-day, I believe; and the police have at last plucked up their courage to turn those shiftless people out. There, too, I understand, Lady Tatham, you have been meddling."

"I have been trying to undo some of your wrong-doing," she said, with emotion. "And now—before I go—you shall not prevent me from saying that I regard it perhaps as your last and worst crime to have perverted the conscience of this young man! He has been well thought of till now: a decent fellow sprung from decent people. You are making an outcast—a pariah of him. And you think money will compensate him! When you and I knew each other, Edmund"—the name slipped out—"you had a mind—one of the shrewdest I ever knew. I appeal to that. It is not so much now that you are wicked or cruel—you are playing the fool! And you are teaching this young man to do the same."

She stood confronting him, holding herself tensely erect—a pale, imperious figure—the embodiment of all the higher ideals and traditions of the class to which they both belonged.

In her agitation she had dropped her glove. Melrose picked it up.

"On that I think, Lady Tatham, we will say farewell. I regret I have not been able to oblige you. My wife comes from a needy class—accustomed to manage on a little. My daughter has not been brought up to luxury. Had she remained with me, of course, the case would have been different. But you will find they will do very well on what I have provided for them. I advise you not to waste your pity. And as for Mr. Faversham, he will take good care of himself. He frames excellently. And I hope before long to see him married—to a very suitable young lady."

They remained looking at each other, for a few seconds, in silence. Then Victoria said quietly, with a forward step:

"I bid you good evening."

He stood at the door, his fingers on the handle, his eyes glittering and malicious.

"I should have liked to have shown you some of my little collections," he said, smiling. "That verre eglomisee, for instance"—he pointed to it—"it's magnificent, though rather decadent. They have nothing like it in London or Paris. Really—you must go?"

He threw the door open, bowing profoundly.

"Dixon!"

A voice responded from the farther end of the corridor.

"Tell her ladyship's car to come round. Excuse my coming to the door, Lady Tatham. I am an old man."

The car sped once more through the gloom of the park. Victoria sat with hands locked on her knee, possessed by the after tremors of battle.

In Melrose's inhuman will there was something demonic, which appalled. The impotence of justice, of compassion, in the presence of certain shameless and insolent forces of the human spirit—the lesson goes deep! Victoria quivered under it.

But there were other elements besides in her tumult of feeling. The tone, the taunting look, with which Melrose had spoken of Faversham's possible marriage—did he, did all the world know, that Harry had been played with and jilted? For that, in plain English, was what it came to. Her heart burnt with anger—with a desire to punish.

The car passed out of the lodge gates. Its brilliant lamps under the trees seemed to strike into the very heart of night. And suddenly, in the midst of the light they made, two figures emerged, an old man carrying a sack, a youth beside him, with a gun over his shoulder.

They were the Brands—father, and younger son. Victoria bent forward with a hasty gesture of greeting. But they never turned to look at the motor. They passed out of the darkness, and into the darkness again, their frowning, unlovely faces, their ragged clothes and stooping gait, illuminated for an instant.

Victoria had tried that very week, at her son's instance, to try and persuade the father to take a small farm on the Duddon estate, Tatham offering to lend him capital. And Brand had refused. Independence, responsibility, could no longer be faced by a spirit so crushed. "I darena' my lady," he had said to her. "I'm worth nobbut my weekly wage. I canna' tak' risks—no more. Thank yo' kindly; but yo' mun let us be!"



XVII

On the morning following her vain interview with Melrose, Victoria, sorely conscious of defeat, conveyed the news of it to the depressed and disprited Netta.

They were in Victoria's sitting-room. Netta sat, a lamentable figure, on the edge of the sofa, twisting her disfigured hands, her black eyes glancing restlessly about her. Ever since she had read Faversham's letter to Tatham she had been an altered being. The threats as to her father, which it contained, seemed to have withered her afresh. All that small and desperate flicker of hope in which she had arrived had died away, and her determination with it. Her consent to Victoria's interview with Melrose had been only obtained from her with difficulty. And now she was all for retreat—precipitate retreat.

"It's no use. I was a fool to come. We must go back. I always told Felicia it would be no use. We'd better not have come. I'll not have papa tormented!"

While she was speaking a footman entered, bringing a telegram for Victoria. It was from Tatham in London.

"Have just seen lawyers. They are of opinion we could not fail in application for proper allowance and provision for both mother and daughter. Hope you will persuade Mrs. Melrose to let us begin proceedings at once. Very sorry for your telegram this morning, but only what I expected."

Victoria read the message to her guest, and then did her best to urge boldness—an immediate stroke. But Netta shook her head despairingly. She could not and would not have her father harassed. Mr. Melrose would do anything—bribe anybody—to get his way. They would have the police coming, and dragging her father to prison. It was not to be thought of.

Victoria tried gently to investigate what skeleton might be lying in the Smeath closet, whereof Mr. Melrose possessed such very useful information. But Netta held her tongue. "Papa had been very unfortunate, and the Government would like to put him in prison if they could. Edmund had been always so cruel to him." Beyond this Victoria could not get.

But the determination of the frail, faded woman was unshakable, although she glanced nervously at her daughter from time to time, as if much more in dread of her opinion than of Victoria's.

Felicia, who had listened in silence to the conversation between her mother and Victoria, turned round from the window in which she was staring, as soon as Lady Tatham seemed to be finally worsted.

"Mother, you promised to stay here till Christmas!"

The voice was imperious. Felicia's manner to her mother indeed was often of an unfilial sharpness, and Victoria was already meditating some gentle discipline on the point.

"Oh, no, Felicia!" said Netta, helplessly, "not till Christmas." Then, remembering herself, she turned toward her hostess: "It's so kind of you, I'm sure."

"Yes, till Christmas!" repeated Felicia. "You know grandpapa's no worse. You know," the girl flushed suddenly a bright crimson, "Lord Tatham sent him money—and he's quite comfortable. I am not going home just yet! I am not going back to Italy—till—I have seen my father!"

She faced round upon Victoria and her mother, her hands on her hips, her breath fluttering.

"Felicia!" cried her mother, "you can't. I tell you—you can't! I should never allow it!"

"Yes, you would, mother! What are you afraid of? He can't kill me. It's ridiculous. I must see my father. I will! He is getting old—he may die. I will see him before I leave England. I don't care whether he gives us the money or not!"

Victoria's bright eyes showed her sympathy; though she did not interfere. But Netta shrank into herself.

"You are always such a wilful child, Felicia! You mustn't do anything without my leave. You'll kill me if you do."

And ashen-pale, she got up and left the room. Victoria glanced at Felicia.

"Don't do anything against your mother's will," she said gently. "You are too young to decide these things for yourself. But, if you can, persuade her to follow Lord Tatham's advice. He is most anxious to help you in the best way. And he does not believe that Mr. Melrose could hurt your grandfather."

Felicia shook her curly head, frowning.

"One cannot persuade mother—one cannot. She is obstinate—oh, so obstinate! If it were me, I would do anything Lord Tatham asked me!—anything in the world."

She stood with her hands behind her back, her slight figure drawn up, her look glowing.

Victoria bent over her embroidery, smiling a little, unseen, and, in truth, not ill pleased. Yet there was something disturbing in these occasional outbursts. For the little Southerner's own sake, one must take care they led to nothing serious. For really—quite apart from any other consideration—Harry never took the smallest notice of her. And who could know better than his mother that his thoughts were still held, still tormented by the vision of Lydia?

Felicia slipped out of a glass door that led to the columned veranda outside. Victoria, mindful of the girl's delicate look, hurried after her with a fur wrap. Felicia gratefully but absently kissed her hand, and Victoria left her to her own thoughts.

It was a sunny day, and although November was well in, there was almost an Italian warmth in this southern loggia where roses were still blooming. Felicia walked up and down, her gaze wandering over the mountain landscape to the south—the spreading flanks and slopes of the high fells, scarlet with withered fern, and capped with new-fallen snow. Through the distant landscape she perceived the line of the stream which ran under Flitterdale Common with its high cliff-banks, and hanging woods, now dressed in the last richness of autumn. That distant wall of trees—behind it, she knew, was Threlfall Tower. Her father—her unkind, miserly father, who hated both her and her mother—lived there.

How far was it? A long way! But she would get there somehow.

"It is my right to see my father!" she said to herself passionately; adding with a laugh which swept away heroics, "After all, he might take a fancy to me in these clothes!"

And she looked down complacently on the pretty tailor-made skirt and the new shoes that showed beneath Victoria's fur cloak. In less than a fortnight her own ambition and the devotion of Victoria's maid, Hesketh, only too delighted to dress somebody so eager to be dressed, for whom the mere operations of the toilette possessed a kind of religious joy, on whom, moreover, "clothes" in the proper and civilized sense of the word, sat so amazingly well—had turned the forlorn little drudge into a figure more than creditable to the pains lavished upon her. Felicia aimed high. The thought and trouble which the young lady had spent, since her arrival, on her hair, her hands, and the minor points of English manners, not to mention the padding and plumping of her small person—which in spite of all her efforts, however, remained of a most sylphlike slimness—by a generous diet of cream and butter, only she and Hesketh knew. Victoria guessed, and felt a new and most womanish pleasure in the details of her transformation. She realized, poignantly, how pleasant it would have been to dress and spoil a daughter.

All the more, as Felicia, after a first eager grasping at pretty things, as a child holds out covetous hands for toys and sweets, had shown sudden scruples, an unexpected and pretty recoil.

"Don't give me so many things!" she had said, almost with a stamp, the sudden, astonishing tears in her great eyes; when, after the first week, the new clothes began to shower upon her. "I can't help wanting them! I adore them! But I won't be a beggar—no! You will think we only came here for this—to get things out of you. We didn't—we didn't.'"

"My dear, won't you give me the pleasure?" Victoria had said, shamefacedly, putting out a hand to stroke the girl's hair. Whereupon Felicia had thrown herself impulsively on her knees, with her arms round the speaker, and there had been a mingled moment of laughter and emotion which had left Victoria very much astonished at herself, and given Hesketh a free hand. Victoria's solitary pursuits, the awkward or stately reserve of her ordinary manner, were deplorably interfered with, indeed, by the advent of this lovely, neglected child, who on her side had fallen passionately in love with Victoria at first sight and seemed to be now rarely happy out of her company.

After which digression we may return for a moment to Felicia on the loggia, admiring her new shoes.

From that passing ecstasy, she emerged resolved.

"We will stay here till Christmas—and—"

But on the rest of her purpose she shut her small lips firmly. Before she turned indoors, however, she gave some attention to the course of a white road in the middle distance, on which she had travelled with Lord Tatham the day he had taken her to Green Cottage. The cottage where the yellow-haired girl lived lay beyond that nearer hill. Ah! but nobody spoke of that yellow-haired girl now. Nobody sent flowers or books. Nobody so much as mentioned her name. It was strange—but singularly pleasing. Felicia raised herself triumphantly on tiptoe, as though she would peer over the hill into the cottage; and so see for herself how the Signorina Penfold took this sudden and complete neglect.

Tatham returned from London the following day, bringing Cyril Boden—who was again on the sick list—with him.

He arrived full of plans for the discomfiture of Melrose, only to be brought up irrevocably against the stubborn resolve which Netta, wrapped in an irritable and tearful melancholy, opposed to them all. She would not hear of the legal proceedings he urged upon her; and it was only on an assurance that nothing could or would be done without her consent, coupled with a good report of her father, that she at last consented to stay at Duddon till the New Year, so that further ways of helping her might be discussed.

Felicia, when the thing was settled, danced about Victoria's room, kissed her mother and ran off at once, with Victoria's permission, to ask the old coachman who ruled the Duddon stables to give her riding-lessons. Victoria noticed that she carefully avoided consulting Tatham in any way about her lessons. Indeed the earlier, half-childish, half-audacious efforts she had made to attract his attention entirely ceased about this time.

And he, as soon as it was evident that Mrs. Melrose would not take his advice, and that legal proceedings must be renounced, felt a natural slackening of interest in his mother's guests. He was perfectly kind and polite to them but Netta's cowardice disgusted him; and it was a personal disappointment to be thus balked of that public campaign against Melrose's enormities which would have satisfied the just and long-baffled feelings of a whole county; and—incidentally—would surely have unmasked a greedy and unscrupulous adventurer.

Meanwhile the whole story of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter had spread rapidly through the neighbourhood. The local papers, now teeming with attacks on Melrose, and the management of the Melrose property, had fastened with avidity on the news of their arrival. "Mrs. Edmund Melrose and her daughter, after an absence of twenty years have arrived in Cumbria. They are now staying at Duddon Castle with Countess Tatham. Mr. Claude Faversham is at Threlfall Tower." These few sentences served as symbols of a dramatic situation which was being discussed in every house of the district, in the farms and cottages no less eagerly than by the Andovers and the Bartons. The heiress of Threlfall was not dead! After twenty years she and her mother had returned to claim their rights from the Ogre; and Duddon Castle, the headquarters of all that was powerful and respected in the county, had taken up their cause. Meanwhile the little heiress had been, it seemed, supplanted. Claude Faversham was in possession at Threlfall, and was being treated as the heir. Mr. Melrose had flatly refused even to see his wife and daughter whom he had left in poverty and starvation for twenty years.

Upon these facts the twin spirit of romance and hatred swooped vulturelike. Any story of inheritance, especially when charm and youth are mixed up with it, kindles the popular mind. It was soon known that Miss Melrose was pretty, and small; though, said report, worn to a skeleton by paternal ill-usage. Romance likes its heroines small. The countryside adopted the unconscious Felicia, and promptly married her to Harry Tatham. What could be more appropriate? Duddon could afford to risk a dowry; and what maiden in distress could wish for a better Perseus than the splendid young man who was the general favourite of the neighbourhood?

As to the hatred of Melrose which gave zest to the tale of his daughter, it was becoming a fury. The whole Mainstairs village had now been ejected, by the help of a large body of police requisitioned from Carlisle for the purpose. Of the able-bodied, some had migrated to the neighbouring towns, some were camped on Duddon land, in some wood and iron huts hastily run up for their accommodation. And thus a village which might be traced in Doomsday Book had been wiped out. For the sick Tatham had offered a vacant farmhouse as a hospital; and Victoria, Mrs. Andover, and other ladies had furnished and equipped it. Some twenty cases of enteric and diphtheria, were housed there, a few of them doomed beyond hope. Melrose had been peremptorily asked for a subscription to the fund raised, and had replied in his own handwriting that owing to the heavy expenses he had been put to by the behaviour of his Mainstairs tenants, as reported to him by his agent, Mr. Faversham, he must respectfully decline. The letter was published in the two local papers with appropriate comments, and a week later an indignation meeting to protest against the state of the Threlfall property, and to petition the Local Government Board to hold an inquiry on the spot, was held in Carlisle, with Tatham in the chair. And everywhere the public indignation which could not get at Melrose, who now, except for railway journeys, never showed himself outside the wall of his park, was beginning to fall upon the "adventurer" who was his tool and accomplice, and had become the supplanter of his young and helpless daughter. Men who four months before had been eager to welcome Faversham to his new office now passed him in the street without recognition. At the County Club to which he had been easily elected, Colonel Barton proposing him, he was conspicuously cut by Barton himself, Squire Andover and many others following suit. "An impostor, and a cad!" said Barton fiercely to Undershaw. "He took me in—and I can't forgive him. He is doing all Melrose's dirty work for him, better than Melrose could do it himself. His letters, for instance, to our Council Committee about the allotments we are trying to get out of the old villain have been devilish clever, and devilish impudent! Melrose couldn't have written them. And now this business of the girl!—and the fortune!—sickening!"

"He is a queer chap," said Undershaw thoughtfully. "I've been as mad with him as anybody—but somehow—don't know. Suppose we wait a bit. Melrose's life is a bad one."

But Barton refused to wait, and went off storming. The facts, he vowed, were more than enough.

The weeks passed on. Duddon knew no longer what Green Cottage was doing. Victoria, at any rate, was ignorant, and forbore to ask—by word of mouth; though her thoughts were one long interrogation on the subject of Lydia, both as to the present and the past. Was she still in correspondence with Faversham, as Victoria now understood from Tatham she had been all the summer? Was she still defending him? Perhaps engaged to him? For a fair-minded and sensible woman, Victoria fell into strange bogs of prejudice and injustice in the course of these ponderings.

In her drives and walks at this time, Victoria generally avoided the neighbourhood of the cottage. But one afternoon at the very end of October, she overtook—walking—a slight, muffled figure in the Whitebeck road, and recognized Susy Penfold. A constrained greeting passed between them, and Lady Tatham learnt that Lydia was away—had been away, indeed, since the day following her last interview with Harry. The very next morning she and her mother had been summoned to London by the grave illness of Mrs. Penfold's elder sister. And there they were still; though Lydia was expected home shortly.

Victoria walked on, with relieved feelings, she scarcely knew why. At any rate there had been no personal contact between Faversham and a charming though foolish girl, during these weeks of popular indignation.

By what shabby arts had the mean and grasping fellow now installed at Threlfall ever succeeded in obtaining a hold over a being so refined, so fastidious and—to all appearances—so high-minded, as Lydia Penfold? To refuse Harry and decline on Claude Faversham! Victoria acknowledged indeed a certain pseudo-Byronic charm in the man. She could not forget the handsome head as she had seen it last at the door of Melrose's library; or the melodramatic black and white of the face, of the small, peaked beard, the dark brows, pale lantern cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes. All the picturesque adventurers of the world betray something, she thought, of a common stamp.

At last one evening, when Tatham was away on county business, and Felicia had gone to bed, Victoria suddenly unburdened herself to Cyril Boden, as they sat one on either side of a November fire, while a southwesterly gale from the high fells blustered and raged outside.

Boden was the confessor of a good many people. Not that he was by any means an orthodox Christian; his ascetic ways had very little to do with any accepted form of doctrine. But there was in him the natural priestly power, which the priest by ordination may have or miss. It was because men and women realized in himself the presence of a travailing, questioning, suffering soul, together with an iron self-repression, that those who suffered and questioned came to him, and threw themselves upon him; often getting more buffeting than balm for their pains; but always conscious of some mysterious attractions in him, as of one who, like Sir Boris, had seen the Grail, but might never tell of the vision.

Victoria was truly attached to him. He had been with her during the days of her husband's sudden illness and death; he had advised her with regard to the passing difficulties of Tatham's school and college days and pointed a way for her through many perplexities of her own. Duddon was as much of a home to him, as he probably possessed in the world. When he had worn himself out with some one or other of the many causes he pursued in South London, working with a sombre passion which had in it very little of the mystical joy or hope which sustain others in similar efforts; when he had scarcely a coat to his back, or a shoe to his feet; when his doctor began to talk of tuberculin tests and the high Alps; then he would wire to Duddon, and come and vegetate under Victoria's wing, for just as many weeks as were necessary to send him back to London restored to a certain physical standard. To watch Harry Tatham's wholesome, kindly, prosperous life, untroubled by any of the nightmares that weighed upon his own, was an unfailing pleasure to a weary man. He loved both Harry and his mother. Nevertheless, as soon as he arrived, both felt him the gadfly in the house. His mind was nothing if not critical. And undoubtedly the sight of easy wealth was an irritation to him. He struggled against it; but sometimes it would out.

As he sat this evening crouched over the fire, his hands spread to the blaze, he looked more frail than usual; a fact which perhaps, half-consciously, affected Victoria and drew out her confidence. His dress suit, primevally old, would scarcely, she reflected, hold together another winter. But how it was to be replaced had already cost her and Harry much thought. There was nobody more personally, fanatically proud than Boden toward his well-to-do friends. His clothes indeed were a matter of tender anxiety in the Duddon household, and Tatham's valet and Victoria's maids did him many small services, some of which he repaid with a smile and a word—priceless to the recipient; and some he was never aware of. When his visits to Duddon first began, the contents of his Gladstone bag used to provide merriment in the servants' hall, and legend said that a young footman had once dared to be insolent to him. Had any one ventured the same conduct now he would have been sent to Coventry by every servant in the house.

It was to this austere, incalculable, yet always attractive listener, that Victoria told the story of Harry and Lydia, of the Faversham adventure, and the Melrose inheritance. If she wanted advice, a little moral guidance for herself—and indeed she did want it—she did not get any; but of comment there was plenty.

"That's the girl I saw here last time," mused Boden, nursing his knee—"lovely creature—with some mind in her face. So she's refused Harry—and Duddon?"

"Which no doubt will commend her to you!" said Victoria, not without a certain bristling of her feathers.

"It does," said Boden quietly. "Upon my word, it was a fine thing to do."

"Just because we happen to be rich?" Victoria's eyelids fluttered a little.

"No! but because it throws a little light on what we choose to call the soul. It brings one back to a faint belief in the existence of the thing. Here is one of the great fortunes, and one of the splendid houses of the world, and a little painting girl who makes a few pounds by her drawings says 'No, thank you!' when they are laid at her feet—because—of a little trifle called love which she can't bring to the bargain. I confess that bucks one up. 'The day-star doth his beams restore.'"