Sir James ceased speaking. A heavy silence possessed the room.

Sir James walked quickly up to his companion.

"Now I ask you to notice two points in the story as I have told it. My cross-examination of Wing served its purpose as an exposure of the man—except in one direction. He swore that Mrs. Sparling had made dishonorable advances to him, and had finally become his mistress, in order to buy his silence on the trust money and the continuance of his financial help. On the other hand, the case for the defence was that—as I have stated—it was in the maddened state of feeling, provoked by his attack upon her honor, and made intolerable by the wife's taunts and threats, that Juliet Sparling struck the fatal blow. At the trial the judge believed me; the jury—and a large part of the public—you, I have no doubt among them—believed Wing. The jury were probably influenced by some of the evidence given by the fellow-guests in the house, which seemed to me simply to amount to this—that a woman in the strait in which Juliet Sparling was will endeavor, out of mortal fear, to keep the ruffian who has her in his power in a good-humor."

"However, I have now confirmatory evidence for my theory of the matter—evidence which has never been produced—and which I tell you now simply because the happiness of her child—and of your son—is at stake."

Lady Lucy moved a little. The color returned to her cheeks. Sir James, however, gave her no time to interrupt. He stood before her, smiting one hand against another, to emphasize his words, as he continued:

"Francis Wing lived for some eighteen years after Mrs. Sparling's death. Then, just as the police were at last on his track as the avengers of a long series of frauds, he died at Antwerp in extreme poverty and degradation. The day before he died he dictated a letter to me, which reached me, through a priest, twenty-four hours after his death. For his son's sake, he invited me to regard it as confidential. If Mrs. Sparling had been alive I should, of course, have taken no notice of the request. But she had been dead for eighteen years; I had lost sight completely of Sparling and the child, and, curiously enough, I knew something of Wing's son. He was about ten years old at the death of his mother, and was then rescued from his father by the Wing kindred and decently brought up. At the time the letter reached me he was a promising young man of eight-and-twenty, he had just been called to the Bar, and he was in the chambers of a friend of mine. By publishing Wing's confession I could do no good to the dead, and I might harm the living. So I held my tongue. Whether, now, I should still hold it is, no doubt, a question.

"However, to go back to the statement. Wing declared to me in this letter that Juliet Sparling's relation to him had been absolutely innocent, that he had persecuted her with his suit, and she had never given him a friendly word, except out of fear. On the fatal evening he had driven her out of her mind, he said, by his behavior in the garden; she was not answerable for her actions; and his evidence at the trial was merely dictated either by the desire to make his own case look less black or by the fiendish wish to punish Juliet Sparling for her loathing of him.

"But he confessed something else!—more important still. I must go back a little. You will remember my version of the dagger incident? I represented Mrs. Sparling as finding the dagger on the wall as she was pushed or dragged up against the panelling by her antagonist—as it were, under her hand. Wing swore at the trial that the dagger was not there, and had never been there. The house belonged to an old traveller and sportsman who had brought home arms of different sorts from all parts of the world. The house was full of them. There were two collections of them on the wall of the dining-room, one in the hall, and one or two in the gallery. Wing declared that the dagger used was taken by Juliet Sparling from the hall trophy, and must have been carried up-stairs with a deliberate purpose of murder. According to him, their quarrel in the garden had been a quarrel about money matters, and Mrs. Sparling had left him, in great excitement, convinced that the chief obstacle in the way of her complete control of Wing and his money lay in the wife. There again—as to the weapon—I had no means of refuting him. As far as the appearance—after the murder—of the racks holding the arms was concerned, the weapon might have been taken from either place. And again—on the whole—the jury believed Wing. The robbery of the sister's money—the incredible rapidity of Juliet Sparling's deterioration—had set them against her. Her wild beauty, her proud and dumb misery in the dock, were of a kind rather to alienate the plain man than to move him. They believed her capable of anything—and it was natural enough.

"But Wing confessed to me that he knew perfectly well that the dagger belonged to the stand in the gallery. He had often examined the arms there, and was quite certain of the fact. He swore this to the priest. Here, again, you can only explain his evidence by a desire for revenge."

Sir James paused. As he moved a little away from his companion his expression altered. It was as though he put from him the external incidents and considerations with which he had been dealing, and the vivacity of manner which fitted them. Feelings and forces of another kind emerged, clothing themselves in the beauty of an incomparable voice, and in an aspect of humane and melancholy dignity.

He turned to Lady Lucy.

"Now then," he said, gently, "I am in a position to put the matter to you finally, as—before God—it appears to me. Juliet Sparling—as I said to Oliver last night—was not a bad woman! She sinned deeply, but she was never false to her husband in thought or deed; none of her wrong-doing was deliberate; she was tortured by remorse; and her murderous act was the impulse of a moment, and partly in self-defence. It was wholly unpremeditated; and it killed her no less than her victim. When, next day, she was removed by the police, she was already a dying woman. I have in my possession a letter—written to me by her—after her release, in view of her impending death, by the order of the Home Office—a few days before she died. It is humble—it is heart-rending—it breathes the sincerity of one who had turned all her thoughts from earth; but it thanked me for having read her aright; and if ever I could have felt a doubt of my own interpretation of the case—but, thank God, I never did!—that letter would have shamed it out of me! Poor soul, poor soul! She sinned, and she suffered—agonies, beyond any penalty of man's inflicting. Will you prolong her punishment in her child?"

Lady Lucy had covered her face with her hand. He saw her breath flutter in her breast. And sitting down beside her, blanched by the effort he had made, and by the emotion he had at last permitted himself, yet fixing his eyes steadily on the woman before him, he waited for her reply.



CHAPTER XII

Lady Lucy did not reply at once. She slowly drew forward the neglected tea-table, made tea, and offered it to Sir James. He took it impatiently, the Irish blood in him running hot and fast; and when she had finished her cup, and still the silence lasted, except for the trivial question-and-answer of the tea-making, he broke in upon it with a somewhat peremptory—

"Well?"

Lady Lucy clasped her hands on her lap. The hand which had been so far bare was now gloved like the other, and something in the spectacle of the long fingers, calmly interlocked and clad in spotless white kid, increased the secret exasperation in her companion.

"Believe me, dear Sir James," she said at last, lifting her clear brown eyes, "I am very grateful to you. It must have been a great effort for you to tell me this awful story, and I thank you for the confidence you have reposed in me."

Sir James pushed his chair back.

"I did it, of course, for a special reason," he said, sharply. "I hope I have given you cause to change your mind."

She shook her head slowly.

"What have you proved to me? That Mrs. Sparling's crime was not so hideous as some of us supposed?—that she did not fall to the lowest depths of all?—and that she endured great provocation? But could anything really be more vile than the history of those weeks of excitement and fraud?—of base yielding to temptation?—of cruelty to her husband and child?—even as you have told it? Her conduct led directly to adultery and violence. If, by God's mercy, she was saved from the worst crimes imputed to her, does it make much difference to the moral judgment we must form?"

He looked at her in amazement.

"No difference!—between murder and a kind of accident?—between adultery and fidelity?"

Lady Lucy hesitated—then resumed, with stubbornness: "You put it—like an advocate. But look at the indelible facts—look at the future. If my son married the daughter of such a woman and had children, what must happen? First of all, could he, could any one, be free from the dread of inherited lawlessness and passion? A woman does not gamble, steal, and take life in a moment of violence without some exceptional flaw in temperament and will, and we see again and again how such flaws reappear in the descendants of weak and wicked people. Then again—Oliver must renounce and throw away all that is implied in family memories and traditions. His wife could never speak to her children and his of her own mother and bringing up. They would be kept in ignorance, as she herself was kept, till the time came that they must know. Say what you will, Juliet Sparling was condemned to death for murder in a notorious case—after a trial which also branded her as a thief. Think of a boy at Eton or Oxford—a girl in her first youth—hearing for the first time—perhaps in some casual way—the story of the woman whose blood ran in theirs!—What a cloud on a family!—what a danger and drawback for young lives!"

Her delicate features, under the crown of white hair, were once more flooded with color, and the passion in her eyes held them steady under Sir James's penetrating look. Through his inner mind there ran the cry: "Pharisee!—Hypocrite!"

But he fought on.

"Lady Lucy!—your son loves this girl—remember that! And in herself you admit that she is blameless—all that you could desire for his wife—remember that also."

"I remember both. But I was brought up by people who never admitted that any feeling was beyond our control or ought to be indulged—against right and reason."

"Supposing Oliver entirely declines to take your view?—supposing he marries Miss Mallory?"

"He will not break my heart," she said, drawing a quicker breath. "He will get over it."

"But if he persists?"

"He must take the consequences. I cannot aid and abet him."

"And the girl herself? She has accepted him. She is young, innocent, full of tender and sensitive feeling. Is it possible that you should not weigh her claim against your fears and scruples?"

"I feel for her most sincerely."

Sir James suddenly threw out a restless foot, which caught Lady Lucy's fox terrier, who was snoozing under the tea-table. He hastily apologized, and the speaker resumed:

"But, in my opinion, she would do a far nobler thing if she regarded herself as bound to some extent to bear her mother's burden—to pay her mother's debt to society. It may sound harsh—but is it? Is a dedicated life necessarily an unhappy life? Would not everybody respect and revere her? She would sacrifice herself, as the Sister of Mercy does, or the missionary, and she would find her reward. But to enter a family with an unstained record, bearing with her such a name and such associations, would be, in my opinion, a wrong and selfish act!"

Lady Lucy drew herself to her full height. In the dusk of the declining afternoon the black satin and white ruffles of her dress, her white head in its lace cap, her thin neck and shoulders, her tall slenderness, and the rigidity of her attitude, made a formidable study in personality. Sir James's whole soul rose in one scornful and indignant protest. But he felt himself beaten. The only hope lay in Oliver himself.

He rose slowly from his chair.

"It is useless, I see, to try and argue the matter further. But I warn you: I do not believe that Oliver will obey you, and—forgive me Lady Lucy!—but—frankly—I hope he will not. Nor will he suffer too severely, even if you, his mother, desert him. Miss Mallory has some fortune—"

"Oliver will not live upon his wife!"

"He may accept her aid till he has found some way of earning money. What amazes me—if you will allow me the liberty of an old friend—is that you should think a woman justified in coercing a son of mature age in such a matter!"

His tone, his manner pierced Lady Lucy's pride. She threw back her head nervously, but her tone was calm:

"A woman to whom property has been intrusted must do her best to see that the will and desires of those who placed it in her hands are carried out!"

"Well, well!"—Sir James looked for his stick—"I am sorry for Oliver—but"—he straightened himself—"it will make a bigger man of him."

Lady Lucy made no reply, but her expression was eloquent of a patience which her old friend might abuse if he would.

"Does Ferrier know? Have you consulted him?" asked Sir James, turning abruptly.

"He will be here, I think, this afternoon—as usual," said Lady Lucy, evasively. "And, of course, he must know what concerns us so deeply."

As she spoke the hall-door bell was heard.

"That is probably he." She looked at her companion uncertainly. "Don't go, Sir James—unless you are really in a hurry."

The invitation was not urgent; but Sir James stayed, all the same. Ferrier was a man so interesting to his friends that no judgment of his could be indifferent to them. Moreover, there was a certain angry curiosity as to how far Lady Lucy's influence would affect him. Chide took inward note of the fact that his speculation took this form, and not another. Oh! the hypocritical obstinacy of decent women!—the lack in them of heart, of generosity, of imagination!

The door opened, and Ferrier entered, with Marsham and the butler behind him. Mr. Ferrier, in his London frock-coat, appeared rounder and heavier than ever but for the contradictory vigor and lightness of his step, the shrewd cheerfulness of the eyes. It had been a hard week in Parliament, however, and his features and complexion showed signs of overwork and short sleep.

For a few minutes, while tea was renewed, and the curtains closed, he maintained a pleasant chat with Lady Lucy, while the other two looked at each other in silence.

But when the servant had gone, Ferrier put down his cup unfinished. "I am very sorry for you both," he said, gravely, looking from Lady Lucy to her son. "I need not say your letter this morning took me wholly by surprise. I have since been doing my best to think of a way out."

There was a short pause—broken by Marsham, who was sitting a little apart from the others, restlessly fingering a paper-knife.

"If you could persuade my mother to take a kind and reasonable view," he said, abruptly; "that is really the only way out."

Lady Lucy stiffened under the attack. Drawn on by Ferrier's interrogative glance, she quietly repeated, with more detail, and even greater austerity, the arguments and considerations she had made use of in her wrestle with Sir James. Chide clearly perceived that her opposition was hardening with every successive explanation of it. What had been at first, no doubt, an instinctive recoil was now being converted into a plausible and reasoned case, and the oftener she repeated it the stronger would she become on her own side and the more in love with her own contentions.

Ferrier listened attentively; took note of what she reported as to Sir James's fresh evidence; and when she ceased called upon Chide to explain. Chide's second defence of Juliet Sparling as given to a fellow-lawyer was a remarkable piece of technical statement, admirably arranged, and unmarked by any trace of the personal feeling he had not been able to hide from Lady Lucy.

"Most interesting—most interesting," murmured Ferrier, as the story came to an end. "A tragic and memorable case."

He pondered a little, his eyes on the carpet, while the others waited. Then he turned to Lady Lucy and took her hand.

"Dear lady!" he said, gently, "I think—you ought to give way!"

Lady Lucy's face quivered a little. She decidedly withdrew her hand.

"I am sorry you are both against me," she said, looking from one to the other. "I am sorry you help Oliver to think unkindly of me. But if I must stand alone, I must. I cannot give way."

Ferrier raised his eyebrows with a little perplexed look. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he went to stand by the fire, staring down into it a minute or two, as though the flames might bring counsel.

"Miss Mallory is still ignorant, Oliver—is that so?" he said, at last.

"Entirely. But it is not possible she should continue to be so. She has begun to make inquiries, and I agree with Sir James it is right she should be told—"

"I propose to go down to Beechcote to-morrow," put in Sir James.

"Have you any idea what view Miss Mallory would be likely to take of the matter—as affecting her engagement?"

"She could have no view that was not unselfish and noble—like herself," said Marsham, hotly. "What has that to do with it?"

"She might release you," was Ferrier's slow reply.

Marsham flushed.

"And you think I should be such a hound as to let her!"

Sir James only just prevented himself from throwing a triumphant look at his hostess.

"You will, of course, inform her of your mother's opposition?" said Ferrier.

"It will be impossible to keep it from her."

"Poor child!" murmured Ferrier—"poor child!"

Then he looked at Lady Lucy.

"May I take Oliver into the inner room a little while?" he asked, pointing to a farther drawing-room.

"By all means. I shall be here when you return."

Sir James had a few hurried words in private with Marsham, and then took his leave. As he and Lady Lucy shook hands, he gave her a penetrating look.

"Try and think of the girl!" he said, in a low voice; "the girl—in her first youth."

"I think of my son," was the unmoved reply. "Good-bye, Sir James. I feel that we are adversaries, and I wish it were not so."

Sir James walked away, possessed by a savage desire to do some damage to the cathedral in pith, as he passed it on his way to the door; or to shake his fist in the faces of Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury, whose portraits adorned the staircase. The type of Catholic woman which he most admired rose in his mind; compassionate, tender, infinitely soft and loving—like the saints; save where "the faith" was concerned—like the saints, again. This Protestant rigidity and self-sufficiency were the deuce!

But he would go down to Beechcote, and he and Oliver between them would see that child through.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Ferrier and Marsham were in anxious conclave. Ferrier counselled delay. "Let the thing sleep a little. Don't announce the engagement. You and Miss Mallory will, of course, understand each other. You will correspond. But don't hurry it. So much consideration, at least, is due to your mother's strong feeling."

Marsham assented, but despondently.

"You know my mother; time will make no difference."

"I'm not so sure—I'm not so sure," said Ferrier, cheerfully. "Did your mother say anything about—finances?"

Marsham gave a gloomy smile.

"I shall be a pauper, of course—that was made quite plain to me."

"No, no!—that must be prevented!" said Ferrier, with energy.

Marsham was not quick to reply. His manner as he stood with his back to the fire, his distinguished head well thrown back on his straight, lean shoulders, was the manner of a proud man suffering humiliation. He was thirty-six, and rapidly becoming a politician of importance. Yet here he was—poor and impotent, in the midst of great wealth, wholly dependent, by his father's monstrous will, on his mother's caprice—liable to be thwarted and commanded, as though he were a boy of fifteen. Up till now Lady Lucy's yoke had been tolerable; to-day it galled beyond endurance.

Moreover, there was something peculiarly irritating at the moment in Ferrier's intervention. There had been increased Parliamentary friction of late between the two men, in spite of the intimacy of their personal relations. To be forced to owe fortune, career, and the permission to marry as he pleased to Ferrier's influence with his mother was, at this juncture, a bitter pill for Oliver Marsham.

Ferrier understood him perfectly, and he had never displayed more kindness or more tact than in the conversation which passed between them. Marsham finally agreed that Diana must be frankly informed of his mother's state of mind, and that a waiting policy offered the only hope. On this they were retiring to the front drawing-room when Lady Lucy opened the communicating door.

"A letter for you, Oliver."

He took it, and turned it over. The handwriting was unknown to him.

"Who brought this?" he asked of the butler standing behind his mother.

"A servant, sir, from Beechcote Manor, He was told to wait for an answer."

"I will send one. Come when I ring."

The butler departed, and Marsham went hurriedly into the inner room, closing the door behind him. Ferrier and Lady Lucy were left, looking at each other in anxiety. But before they could put it into words, Marsham reappeared, in evident agitation. He hurried to the bell and rang it.

Lady Lucy pointedly made no inquiry. But Ferrier spoke.

"No bad news, I hope?"

Marsham turned.

"She has been told?" he said, hoarsely, "Mrs. Colwood, her companion, speaks of 'shock.' I must go down at once."

Lady Lucy said nothing. She, too, had grown white.

The butler appeared. Marsham asked for the Sunday trains, ordered some packing, went down-stairs to speak to the Beechcote messenger, and returned.

Ferrier retired into the farthest window, and Marsham approached his mother.

"Good-bye, mother. I will write to you from Beechcote, where I shall stay at the little inn in the village. Have you no kind word that I may carry with me?"

Lady Lucy looked at him steadily.

"I shall write myself to Miss Mallory, Oliver."

His pallor gave place to a flush of indignation.

"Is it necessary to do anything so cruel, mother?"

"I shall not write cruelly."

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"Considering what you have made up your mind to do, I should have thought least said, soonest mended. However, if you must, you must. I can only prepare Diana for your letter and soften it when it comes."

"In your new love, Oliver, have you quite forgotten the old?" Lady Lucy's voice shook for the first time.

"I shall be only too glad to remember it, when you give me the opportunity," he said, sombrely.

"I have not been a bad mother to you, Oliver. I have claims upon you."

He did not reply, and his silence wounded Lady Lucy to the quick. Was it her fault if her husband, out of an eccentric distrust of the character of his son, and moved by a kind of old-fashioned and Spartan belief that a man must endure hardness before he is fit for luxury, had made her and not Oliver the arbiter and legatee of his wealth? But Oliver had never wanted for anything. He had only to ask. What right had she to thwart her husband's decision?

"Good-bye, mother," said Marsham again. "If you are writing to Isabel you will, I suppose, discuss the matter with her. She is not unlikely to side with you—not for your reason, however—but because of some silly nonsense about politics. If she does, I beg she will not write to me. It could only embitter matters."

"I will give her your message. Good-bye, Oliver." He left the room, with a gesture of farewell to Ferrier.

* * * * *

Ferrier came back toward the fire. As he did so he was struck—painfully struck—by a change in Lady Lucy. She was not pale, and her eyes were singularly bright. Yet age was, for the first time, written in a face from which Time had so far taken but his lightest toll. It moved him strangely; though, as to the matter in hand, his sympathies were all with Oliver. But through thirty years Lady Lucy had been the only woman for him. Since first, as a youth of twenty, he had seen her in her father's house, he had never wavered. She was his senior by five years, and their first acquaintance had been one of boy-adoration on his side and a charming elder-sisterliness on hers. Then he had declared himself, and she had refused him in order to marry Henry Marsham and Henry Marsham's fortune. It seemed to him then that he would soon forget her—soon find a warmer and more generous heart. But that was mere ignorance of himself. After awhile he became the intimate friend of her husband, herself, and her child. Something, indeed, had happened to his affection for her. He felt himself in no danger beside her, so far as passion was concerned; and he knew very well that she would have banished him forever at a moment's notice rather than give her husband an hour's uneasiness. But to be near her, to be in her world, consulted, trusted, and flattered by her, to slip daily into his accustomed chair, to feel year by year the strands of friendship and of intimacy woven more closely between him and her—between him and hers—these things gradually filled all the space in his life left by politics or by thought. They deprived him of any other home, and this home became a necessity.

Then Henry Marsham died. Once more Ferrier asked Lady Lucy to marry him, and again she refused. He acquiesced; their old friendship was resumed; but, once more, with a difference. In a sense he had no longer any illusions about her. He saw that while she believed herself to be acting under the influence of religion and other high matters, she was, in truth, a narrow and rather cold-hearted woman, with a strong element of worldliness, disguised in much placid moralizing. At the bottom of his soul he resented her treatment of him, and despised himself for submitting to it. But the old habit had become a tyranny not to be broken. Where else could he go for talk, for intimacy, for rest? And for all his disillusion there were still at her command occasional felicities of manner and strains of feeling—ethereally delicate and spiritual, like a stanza from the Christian Year—that moved him and pleased his taste as nothing else had power to move and please; steeped, as they were, in a far-off magic of youth and memory.

So he stayed by her, and she knew very well that he would stay by her to the end.

He sat down beside her and took her hand.

"You are tired."

"It has been a miserable day."

"Shall I read to you? It would be wise, I think, to put it out of your mind for a while, and come back to it fresh."

"It will be difficult to attend." Her smile was faint and sad. "But I will do my best."

He took up a volume of Dean Church's sermons, and began to read. Presently, as always, his subtler self became conscious of the irony of the situation. He was endeavoring to soothe her trouble by applying to it some of the noblest religious thought of our day, expressed in the noblest language. Such an attempt implied some moral correspondence between the message and the listener. Yet all the time he was conscious himself of cowardice and hypocrisy. What part of the Christian message really applied to Lady Lucy this afternoon but the searching words: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

Yet he read on. The delicate ascetic face of his companion grew calmer; he himself felt a certain refreshment and rest. There was no one else in the world with whom he could sit like this, to whom he could speak or read of the inner life. Lucy Marsham had made him what he was, a childless bachelor, with certain memories in his past life of which he was ashamed—representing the revenge of a strong man's temperament and physical nature. But in the old age she had all but reached, and he was approaching, she was still the one dear and indispensable friend. If she must needs be harsh and tyrannical—well, he must try and mitigate the effects, for herself and others. But his utmost effort must restrain itself within certain limits. He was not at all sure that if offended in some mortal point, she might not do without him. But so long as they both lived, he could not do without her.

* * * * *

Early the following morning Alicia Drake appeared in Eaton Square, and by two o'clock Mrs. Fotheringham was also there. She had rushed up from Leeds by the first possible train, summoned by Alicia's letter. Lady Lucy and her daughter held conference, and Miss Drake was admitted to their counsels.

"Of course, mamma," said Isabel Fotheringham, "I don't at all agree with you in the matter. Nobody is responsible for their mothers and fathers. We make ourselves. But I shall not be sorry if the discovery frees Oliver from a marriage which would have been a rope round his neck. She is a foolish, arrogant, sentimental girl, brought up on the most wrong-headed principles, and she could never have made a decent wife for him. She will, I hope, have the sense to see it—and he will be well out of it."

"Oliver, at present, is very determined," said Lady Lucy, in a tone of depression.

"Oh, well, of course, having just proposed to her, he must, of course, behave like a gentleman—and not like a cad. But she can't possibly hold him to it. You will write to her, mamma—and so shall I."

"We shall make him, I fear, very angry."

"Oliver? Well, there are moments in every family when it is no use shirking. We have to think of Oliver's career, and what he may do for his party, and for reform. You think he proposed to her in that walk on the hill?" said Mrs. Fotheringham, turning to her cousin Alicia.

Alicia woke up from a brown-study of her own. She was dressed with her usual perfection in a gray cloth, just suggesting the change of season. Her felt hat with its plume of feathers lay on her lap, and her hair, slightly loosened by the journey, captured the eye by its abundance and beauty. The violets on her breast perfumed the room, and the rings upon her hands flashed just as much as is permitted to an unmarried girl, and no more. As Mrs. Fotheringham looked at her, she said to herself: "Another Redfern! Really Alicia is too extravagant!"

On that head no one could have reproached herself. A cheap coat and skirt, much worn, a hat of no particular color or shape, frayed gloves and disreputable boots, proclaimed both the parsimony of her father's will and the independence of her opinions.

"Oh, of course he proposed on the hill," replied Alicia, thoughtfully. "And you say, Aunt Lucy, that he guessed—and she knew nothing? Yes!—I was certain he guessed."

"But she knows now," said Lady Lucy; "and, of course, we must all be very sorry for her."

"Oh, of course!" said Isabel. "But she will soon get over it. You won't find it will do her any harm. People will make her a heroine."

"I should advise her not to go about with that cousin," said Alicia, softly.

"The girl who told you?"

"She was an outsider! She told me, evidently, to spite her cousin, who seemed not to have paid her enough attention, and then wanted me to swear secrecy."

"Well, if her mother was a sister of Juliet Sparling, you can't expect much, can you? What a mercy it has all come out so soon! The mess would have been infinitely greater if the engagement had gone on a few weeks."

"My dear," said her mother, gravely, "we must not reckon upon Oliver's yielding to our persuasions."

Isabel smiled and shrugged her shoulders. Oliver condemn himself to the simple life!—to the forfeiture of half a million of money—for the sake of the beaux yeux of Diana Mallory! Oliver, who had never faced any hardship or gone without any luxury in his life!

Alicia said nothing; but the alertness of her brilliant eyes showed the activity of the brain behind them. While Mrs. Fotheringham went off to committees, Miss Drake spent the rest of the day in ministering to Lady Lucy, who found her company, her gossip about Beechcote, her sympathetic yet restrained attitude toward the whole matter, quite invaluable. But, in spite of these aids, the hours of waiting and suspense passed heavily, and Alicia said to herself that Cousin Lucy was beginning to look frail.



CHAPTER XIII

Owing to the scantiness of Sunday trains, Marsham did not arrive at Beechcote village till between nine and ten at night. He left his bag at the village inn, tried to ignore the scarcely concealed astonishment with which the well-known master—or reputed master—of Tallyn was received within its extremely modest walls, and walked up to the manor-house. There he had a short conversation with Mrs. Colwood, who did not propose to tell Diana of his arrival till the morning.

"She does not know that I wrote to you," said the little lady, in her pale distress. "She wrote to you herself this evening. I hope I have not done wrong."

Marsham reassured her, and they had a melancholy consultation. Diana, it seemed, had insisted on getting up that day as usual. She had tottered across to her sitting-room and had spent the day there alone, writing a few letters, or sitting motionless in her chair for hours together. She had scarcely eaten, and Mrs. Colwood was sure she had not slept at all since the shock. It was to be hoped that out of sheer fatigue she might sleep, on this, the second night. But it was essential there should be no fresh excitement, such as the knowledge of Marsham's arrival would certainly arouse.

Mrs. Colwood could hardly bring herself to speak of Fanny Merton. She was, of course, still in the house—sulking—and inclined to blame everybody, her dead uncle in particular, rather than herself. But, mercifully, she was departing early on the Monday morning—to some friends in London.

"If you come after breakfast you will find Miss Mallory alone. I will tell her first thing that you are here."

Marsham assented, and got up to take his leave. Involuntarily he looked round the drawing-room where he had first seen Diana the day before. Then it was flooded by spring sunshine—not more radiant than her face. Now a solitary lamp made a faint spot of light amid the shadows of the panelled walls. He and Mrs. Colwood spoke almost in whispers. The old house, generally so winning and sympathetic, seemed to hold itself silent and aloof—as though in this touch of calamity the living were no longer its master and the dead generations woke. And, up-stairs, Diana lay perhaps in her white bed, miserable and alone, not knowing that he was there, within a few yards of her.

Mrs. Colwood noiselessly opened a garden door and so dismissed him. It was moonlight outside, and instead of returning to the inn he took the road up the hill to the crest of the encircling down. Diverging a little to the left, he found himself on the open hill-side, at a point commanding the village and Beechcote itself, ringed by its ancient woods. In the village two dim lights, far apart, were visible; lights, he thought, of sickness or of birth?—for the poor sleep early. One of the Beechcote windows shone with a dim illumination. Was she there, and sleepless? The sky was full of light; the blanched chalk down on which he stood ran northward in a shining curve, bare in the moon; but in the hollow below, and on the horizon, the dark huddled woods kept watch, guarding the secrets of night. The owls were calling in the trees behind him—some in faint prolonged cry, one in a sharp shrieking note. And at whiles a train rushed upon the ear, held it, and died away; or a breeze crept among the dead beech leaves at his feet. Otherwise not a sound or show of life; Marsham was alone with night and himself.

Twenty-four hours—little more—since on that same hill-side he had held Diana in his arms in the first rapture of love. What was it that had changed? How was it—for he was frank with himself—that the love which had been then the top and completion of his life, the angel of all good-fortune within and without, had become now, to some extent, a burden to be borne, an obligation to be met?

Certainly, he loved her well. But she came to him now, bringing as her marriage portion, not easy joy and success, the full years of prosperity and ambition, but poverty, effort, a certain measure of disgrace, and the perpetual presence of a ghastly and heart-breaking memory. He shrank from this last in a positive and sharp impatience. Why should Juliet Sparling's crime affect him?—depress the vigor and cheerfulness of his life?

As to the effort before him, he felt toward it as a man of weak unpractised muscle who endeavors with straining to raise a physical weight. He would make the effort, but it would tax his whole strength. As he strolled along the down, dismally smoking and pondering, he made himself contemplate the then and now—taking stock, as it were, of his life. In this truth-compelling darkness, apart from the stimulus of his mother's tyranny, he felt himself to be two men: one in love with Diana, the other in love with success and political ambition, and money as the agent and servant of both. He had never for one moment envisaged the first love—Diana—as the alternative to, or substitute for the second love—success. As he had conceived her up to twenty-four hours before, Diana was to be, indeed, one of the chief elements and ministers of success. In winning her, he was, in fact, to make the best of both worlds. A certain cool analytic gift that he possessed put all this plainly before him. And now it must be a choice between Diana and all those other desirable things.

Take the poverty first. What would it amount to? He knew approximately what was Diana's fortune. He had meant—with easy generosity—to leave it all in her hands, to do what she would with. Now, until his mother came to her senses, they must chiefly depend upon it. What could he add to it? He had been called to the Bar, but had never practised. Directorships no doubt, he might get, like other men; though not so easily now, if it was to be known that his mother meant to make a pauper of him. And once a man whom he had met in political life, who was no doubt ignorant of his private circumstances, had sounded him as to whether he would become the London correspondent of a great American paper. He had laughed then, good-humoredly, at the proposal. Perhaps the thing might still be open. It would mean a few extra hundreds.

He laughed again as he thought of it, but not good-humoredly. The whole thing was so monstrous! His mother had close on twenty thousand a year! For all her puritanical training she liked luxury—of a certain kind—and had brought up her son in it. Marsham had never gambled or speculated or raced. It was part of his democratic creed and his Quaker Ancestry to despise such modes of wasting money, and to be scornful of the men who indulged in them. But the best of housing, service, and clothes; the best shooting, whether in England or Scotland; the best golfing, fishing, and travelling: all these had come to him year after year since his boyhood, without question. His mother, of course, had provided the majority of them, for his own small income and his allowance from her were absorbed by his personal expenses, his Parliamentary life, and the subscriptions to the party, which—in addition to his mother's—made him, as he was well aware, a person of importance in its ranks, quite apart from his record in the House.

Now all that must be given up. He would be reduced to an income—including what he imagined to be Diana's—of less than half his personal spending hitherto; and those vast perspectives implied in the inheritance at his mother's death of his father's half million must also be renounced.

No doubt he could just maintain himself in Parliament. But everything—judged by the standards he had been brought up in—would be difficult where everything till now had been ease.

He knew his mother too well to doubt her stubbornness, and his feeling was bitter, indeed. Bitter, too, against his father, who had left him in this plight. Why had his father distrusted and wronged him so? He recalled with discomfort certain collisions of his youth; certain disappointments at school and college he had inflicted on his father's ambition; certain lectures and gibes from that strong mouth, in his early manhood. Absurd! If his father had had to do with a really spendthrift and unsatisfactory son, there might have been some sense in it. But for these trifles—these suspicions—these foolish notions of a doctrinaire—to inflict this stigma and this yoke on him all his days!

Suddenly his wanderings along the moon-lit hill came to a stand-still. For he recognized the hollow in the chalk—the gnarled thorn—the wide outlook. He stood gazing about him—a shamed lover; conscious of a dozen contradictory feelings. Beautiful and tender Diana!—"Stick to her, Oliver!—she is worth it!" Chide's eager and peremptory tone smote on the inward ear. Of course he would stick to her. The only thing which it gave him any pleasure to remember in this nightmare of a day was his own answer to Ferrier's suggestion that Diana might release him: "Do you imagine I could be such a hound as to let her?" As he said it, he had been conscious that the words rang well; that he had struck the right attitude, and done the right thing. Of course he had done the right thing! What would he, or any other decent person, have thought of a man who could draw back from his word, for such a cause?

No!—he resigned himself. He would do nothing mean and ungentlemanly. A policy of waiting and diplomacy should be tried. Ferrier might be of some use. But, if nothing availed, he must marry and make the best of it. He wondered to what charitable societies his mother would leave her money!

Slowly he strolled back along the hill. That dim light, high up on the shrouded walls of Beechcote, seemed to go with him, softly, insistently reminding him of Diana. The thought of her moved him deeply. He longed to have her in his arms, to comfort her, to feel her dependent on him for the recovery of joy and vitality. It was only by an obstinate and eager dwelling upon her sweetness and charm that he could protect himself against the rise of an invading wave of repugnance and depression; the same repugnance, the same instinctive longing to escape, which he had always felt, as boy or man, in the presence of sickness, or death, or mourning.

* * * * *

Marsham had been long asleep in his queer little room at "The Green Man." The last lights were out in the village, and the moon had set. Diana stole out of bed; Muriel must not hear her, Muriel whose eyes were already so tired and tear-worn with another's grief. She went to the window, and, throwing a shawl over her, she knelt there, looking out. She was dimly conscious of stars, of the hill, the woods; what she really saw was a prison room as she was able to imagine it, and her mother lying there—her young mother—only four years older than she, Diana, was now. Or again she saw the court of law—the judge in the black cap—and her mother looking up. Fanny had said she was small and slight—with dark hair.

The strange frozen horror of it made tears—or sleep—or rest—impossible. She did not think much of Marsham; she could hardly remember what she had written to him. Love was only another anguish. Nor could it protect her from the images which pursued her. The only thought which seemed to soothe the torture of imagination was the thought stamped on her brain tissue by the long inheritance of centuries—the thought of Christ on Calvary. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The words repeated themselves again and again. She did not pray in words. But her agony crept to the foot of what has become through the action and interaction of two thousand years, the typical and representative agony of the world, and, clinging there, made wild appeal, like the generations before her, to a God in whose hand lie the creatures of His will.

* * * * *

"Mrs. Colwood said I might come and say good-bye to you," said Fanny Merton, holding her head high.

She stood on the threshold of Diana's little sitting-room, looking in. There was an injured pride in her bearing, balanced by a certain anxiety which seemed to keep it within bounds.

"Please come in," said Diana.

She rose with difficulty from the table where she was forcing herself to write a letter. Had she followed her own will she would have been up at her usual time and down to breakfast. But she had turned faint while dressing, and Mrs. Colwood had persuaded her to let some tea be brought up-stairs.

Fanny came in, half closing the door.

"Well, I'm off," she said, flushing. "I dare say you won't want to see me again."

Diana came feebly forward, clinging to the chairs.

"It wasn't your fault. I must have known—some time."

Fanny looked at her uneasily.

"Well, of course, that's true. But I dare say I—well I'm no good at beating about the bush, never was! And I was in a temper, too—that was at the bottom of it."

Diana made no reply. Her eyes, magnified by exhaustion and pallor, seemed to be keeping a pitiful shrinking watch lest she should be hurt again—past bearing. It was like the shrinking of a child that has been tortured, from its tormentor.

"You are going to London?"

"Yes. You remember those Devonshire people I went to stay with? One of the girls is up in London with her aunt. I'm going to board with them a bit."

"My lawyers will send the thousand pounds to Aunt Merton when they have arranged for it," said Diana, quietly. "Is that what you wish?"

A look of relief she could not conceal slipped into Fanny's countenance.

"You're going to give it us—after all?" she said, stumbling over the words.

"I promised to give it you."

Fanny fidgeted, but even her perceptions told her that further thanks would be out of place.

"Mother'll write to you, of course. And you'd better send fifty pounds of it to me. I can't go home under three months, and I shall run short."

"Very well," said Diana.

"Good-bye," said Fanny, coming a little nearer. Then she looked round her, with a first genuine impulse of something like remorse—if the word is not too strong. It was rather, perhaps, a consciousness of having managed her opportunities extremely badly. "I'm sorry you didn't like me." she said, abruptly, "and I didn't mean to be nasty."

"Good-bye." Diana held out her hand; yet trembling involuntarily as she did so. Fanny broke out:

"Diana, why do you look like that? It's all so long ago—you can't do anything—you ought to try and forget it."

"No, I can't do anything," said Diana, withdrawing her right hand from her cousin, and clasping both on her breast. "I can only—"

But the word died on her lips; she turned abruptly away, adding, hurriedly, in another tone: "If you ever want anything, you know we're always here—Mrs. Colwood and I. Please give us your address."

"Thanks." Fanny retreated; but could not forbear, as she reached the door, from letting loose the thought which burned her inner mind. She turned round deliberately. "Mr. Marsham'll cheer you up, Diana!—you'll see. Of course, he'll behave like a gentleman. It won't make a bit of difference to you. I'll just ask Mrs. Colwood to tell me when it's all fixed up."

Diana said nothing. She was hanging over the fire, and her face was hidden. Fanny waited a moment, then opened the door and went.

* * * * *

As soon as the carriage conveying Miss Merton to the station had safely driven off, Mrs. Colwood, who, in no conventional sense, had been speeding the parting guest, ran up-stairs again to Diana's room.

"She's gone?" said Diana, faintly. She was standing by the window. As she spoke the carriage came into view at a bend of the drive and disappeared into the trees beyond. Mrs. Colwood saw her shiver.

"Did she leave you her address?"

"Yes. Don't think any more about her. I have something to tell you."

Diana's painful start was the measure of her state. Muriel Colwood put her arms tenderly round the slight form.

"Mr. Marsham will be here directly. He came last night—too late—I would not let him see you. Ah!" She released Diana, and made a rapid step to the window. "There he is!—coming by the fields."

Diana sat down, as though her limbs trembled under her.

"Did you send for him?"

"Yes. You forgive me?"

"Then—he hasn't got my letter."

She said it without looking up, as though to herself.

Mrs. Colwood knelt down beside her.

"It is right he should be here," she said, with energy, almost with command; "it is the right, natural thing."

Diana stooped, mechanically, and kissed her; then sprang up, quivering, the color rushing into her cheeks. "Why, he mayn't even know!" She threw a piteous look at her companion.

"He does know, dear—he does know."

Diana composed herself. She lifted her hands to a tress of hair that was unfastened, and put it in its place. Instinctively she straightened her belt, her white collar. Mrs. Colwood noticed that she was in black again, in one of the dresses of her mourning.

* * * * *

When Marsham turned, at the sound of the latch, to see Diana coming in, all the man's secret calculations and revolts were for the moment scattered and drowned in sheer pity and dismay. In a few short hours can grief so work on youth? He ran to her, but she held up a hand which arrested him half-way. Then she closed the door, but still stood near it, as though she feared to move, or speak, looking at him with her appealing eyes.

"Oliver!"

He held out his hands.

"My poor, poor darling!"

She gave a little cry, as though some tension broke. Her lips almost smiled; but she held him away from her.

"You're not—not ashamed of me?"

His protests were the natural, the inevitable protests that any man with red blood in his veins must need have uttered, brought face to face with so much sorrow and so much beauty. She let him make them, while her left hand gently stroked and caressed his right hand which held hers; yet all the time resolutely turning her face and her soft breast away, as though she dreaded to be kissed, to lose will and identity in the mere delight of his touch. And he felt, too, in some strange way, as though the blow that had fallen upon her had placed her at a distance from him; not disgraced—but consecrate.

"Will you please sit down and let us talk?" she said, after a moment, withdrawing herself.

She pushed a chair forward, and sat down herself. The tears were in her eyes, but she brushed them away unconsciously.

"If papa had told me!" she said, in a low voice—"if he had only told me—before he died."

"It was out of love," said Marsham; "but yes—it would have been wiser—kinder—to have spoken."

She started.

"Oh no—not that. But we might have sorrowed—together. And he was always alone—he bore it all alone—even when he was dying."

"But you, dearest, shall not bear it alone!" cried Marsham, finding her hand again and kissing it. "My first task shall be to comfort you—to make you forget."

He thought she winced at the word "forget."

"When did you first guess—or know?"

He hesitated—then thought it best to tell the truth.

"When we were in the lime-walk."

"When you asked—her name? I remember"—her voice broke—"how you wrung my hand! And you never had any suspicion before?"

"Never. And it makes no difference, Diana—to you and me—none. I want you to understand that now—at once."

She looked at him, smiling tremulously. His words became him; even in her sorrow her eyes delighted in his shrewd thin face; in the fair hair, prematurely touched with gray, and lying heavily on the broad brow; in the intelligence and distinction of his whole aspect.

"You are so good to me—" she said, with a little sob. "No—no!—please, dear Oliver!—we have so much to talk of." And again she prevented him from taking her in his arms. "Tell me"—she laid her hand on his persuasively: "Sir James, of course, knew from the beginning?"

"Yes—from the beginning—that first night at Tallyn. He is coming down this afternoon, dearest. He knew you would want to see him. But it may not be till late."

"After all, I know so little yet," she said, bewildered. "Only—only what Fanny told me."

"What made her tell you?"

"She was angry with me—I forget about what. I did not understand at first what she was saying. Oliver"—she grasped his hand tightly, while the lids dropped over the eyes, as though she would shut out even his face as she asked her question—"is it true that—that—the death sentence—"

"Yes," said Marsham, reluctantly. "But it was at once commuted. And three weeks after the sentence she was released. She lived, Sir James tells me, nearly two months after your father brought her home."

"I wrote last night to the lawyers"—Diana breathed it almost in a whisper. "I am sure there is a letter for me—I am sure papa wrote."

"Promise me one thing!" said Marsham. "If they send you newspapers—for my sake, don't read them. Sir James will tell you, this afternoon, things the public have never known—facts which would certainly have altered the verdict if the jury had known. Your poor mother struck the blow in what was practically an impulse of self-defence, and the evidence which mainly convicted her was perjured evidence, as the liar who gave it confessed years afterward. Sir James will tell you that. He has the confession."

Her face relaxed, her mouth trembled violently.

"Oh, Oliver!—Oliver!" She was unable to bear the relief his words brought her: she broke down under it.

He caught her in his arms at last, and she gave way—she let herself be weak—and woman. Clinging to him with all the pure passion of a woman and all the trust of a child, she felt his kisses on her cheek, and her deep sobs shook her upon his breast. Marsham's being was stirred to its depths. He gave her the best he had to give; and in that moment of mortal appeal on her side and desperate pity on his, their natures met in that fusion of spirit and desire wherewith love can lend even tragedy and pain to its own uses.

* * * * *

And yet—and yet!—was it in that very moment that feeling—on the man's side—"o'erleaped itself, and fell on the other"? When they resumed conversation, Marsham's tacit expectation was that Diana would now show herself comforted; that, sure of him and of his affection, she would now be ready to put the tragic past aside; to think first and foremost of her own present life and his, and face the future cheerfully. A misunderstanding arose between them, indeed, which is, perhaps, one of the typical misunderstandings between men and women. The man, impatient of painful thoughts and recollections, eager to be quit of them as weakening and unprofitable, determined to silence them by the pleasant clamor of his own ambitions and desires; the woman, priestess of the past, clinging to all the pieties of memory, in terror lest she forget the dead, feeling it a disloyalty even to draw the dagger from the wound—between these two figures and dispositions there is a deep and natural antagonism.

It showed itself rapidly in the case of Marsham and Diana; for their moment of high feeling was no sooner over, and she sitting quietly again, her hand in his, the blinding tears dashed away, than Marsham's mind flew inevitably to his own great sacrifice. She must be comforted, indeed, poor child! yet he could not but feel that he, too, deserved consolation, and that his own most actual plight was no less worthy of her thoughts than the ghastly details of a tragedy twenty years old.

Yet she seemed to have forgotten Lady Lucy!—to have no inkling of the real situation. And he could find no way in which to break it.

For, in little broken sentences of horror and recollection, she kept going back to her mother's story—her father's silence and suffering. It was as though her mind could not disentangle itself from the load which had been flung upon it—could not recover its healthiness of action amid the phantom sights and sounds which beset imagination. Again and again she must ask him for details—and shrink from the answers; must hide her eyes with the little moan that wrung his heart; and break out in ejaculations, as though of bewilderment, under a revelation so singular and so terrible.

It was to be expected, of course; he could only hope it would soon pass. Secretly, after a time, he was repelled and wearied. He answered her with the same tender words, he tried to be all kindness; but more perfunctorily. The oneness of that supreme moment vanished and did not return.

Meanwhile, Diana's perceptions, stunned by the one overmastering thought, gave her no warning. And, in truth, if Marsham could have understood, the process of mental recovery was set going in her by just this freedom of utterance to the man she loved—these words and looks and tears—that brought ease after the dumb horror of the first hours.

At last he made an effort, hiding the nascent impatience in a caress.

"If I could only persuade you not to dwell upon it too persistently—to put it from your thoughts as soon and as much as you can! Dear, we shall have our own anxieties!"

She looked up with a sudden start.

"My mother," he said, reluctantly, "may give us trouble."

The color rushed into Diana's cheeks, and ebbed with equal suddenness.

"Lady Lucy! Oh!—how could I forget? Oliver!—she thinks—I am not fit!"

And in her eyes he saw for the first time the self-abasement he had dreaded, yet perhaps expected, to see there before. For in her first question to him there had been no real doubt of him; it had been the natural humility of wounded love that cries out, expecting the reply that no power on earth could check itself from giving were the case reversed.

"Dearest! you know my mother's bringing up: her Quaker training, and her rather stern ideas. We shall persuade her—in time."

"In time? And now—she—she forbids it?"

Her voice faltered. And yet, unconsciously, she had drawn herself a little together and away.

Marsham began to give a somewhat confused and yet guarded account of his mother's state of mind, endeavoring to prepare her for the letter which might arrive on the morrow. He got up and moved about the room as he spoke, while Diana sat, looking at him, her lips trembling from time to time. Presently he mentioned Ferrier's name, and Diana started.

"Does he think it would do you harm—that you ought to give me up?"

"Not he! And if anybody can make my mother hear reason, it will be Ferrier."

"Lady Lucy believes it would injure you in Parliament?" faltered Diana.

"No, I don't believe she does. No sane person could."

"Then it's because—of the disgrace? Oliver!—perhaps—you ought to give me up?"

She breathed quick. It stabbed him to see the flush in her cheeks contending with the misery in her eyes. She could not pose, or play a part. What she could not hide from him was just the conflict between her love and her new-born shame. Before that scene on the hill there would have been her girlish dignity also to reckon with. But the greater had swallowed up the less; and from her own love—in innocent and simple faith—she imagined his.

So that when she spoke of his giving her up, it was not her pride that spoke, but only and truly her fear of doing him a hurt—by which she meant a hurt in public estimation or repute. The whole business side of the matter was unknown to her. She had never speculated on his circumstances, and she was constitutionally and rather proudly indifferent to questions of money. Vaguely, of course, she knew that the Marshams were rich and that Tallyn was Lady Lucy's. Beyond, she had never inquired.

This absence of all self-love in her attitude—together with her complete ignorance of the calculation in which she was involved—touched him sharply. It kept him silent about the money; it seemed impossible to speak of it. And yet all the time the thought of it clamored—perhaps increasingly—in his own mind.

He told her that they must stand firm—that she must be patient—that Ferrier would work for them—and Lady Lucy would come round. And she, loving him more and more with every word, seeing in him a god of consolation and of chivalry, trusted him wholly. It was characteristic of her that she did not attempt heroics for the heroics' sake; there was no idea of renouncing him with a flourish of trumpets. He said he loved her, and she believed him. But her heart went on its knees to him in a gratitude that doubled love, even in the midst of her aching bewilderment and pain.

* * * * *

He made her come out with him before luncheon; he talked with her of politics and their future; he did his best to scatter the nightmare in which she moved.

But after awhile he felt his efforts fail. The scenes that held her mind betrayed themselves in her recurrent pallor, the trembling of her hand in his, her piteous, sudden looks. She did not talk of her mother, but he could not presently rouse her to talk of anything else; she sat silent in her chair, gazing before her, her slender hands on her knee, dreaming and forlorn.

Then he remembered, and with involuntary relief, that he must get back to town, and to the House, for an important division. He told her, and she made no protest. Evidently she was already absorbed in the thought of Sir James Chide's visit. But when the time came for him to go she let herself be kissed, and then, as he was moving away, she caught his hand, and held it wildly to her lips.

"Oh, if you hadn't come!—if you hadn't come!" Her tears fell on the hand.

"But I did come!" he said, caressing her. "I was here last night—did Mrs. Colwood tell you? Afterward—in the dark—I walked up to the hill, only to look down upon this house, that held you."

"If I had known," she murmured, on his breast, "I should have slept."

He went—in exaltation; overwhelmed by her charm even in this eclipse of grief, and by the perception of her passion.

But before he was half-way to London he felt that he had been rather foolish and quixotic in not having told her simply and practically what his mother's opposition meant. She must learn it some day; better from him than others. His mother, indeed, might tell her in the letter she had threatened to write. But he thought not. Nobody was more loftily secret as to business affairs than Lady Lucy; money might not have existed for the rare mention she made of it. No; she would base her opposition on other grounds.

These reflections brought him back to earth, and to the gloomy pondering of the situation. Half a million!—because of the ill-doing of a poor neurotic woman—twenty years ago!

It filled him with a curious resentment against Juliet Sparling herself, which left him still more out of sympathy with Diana's horror and grief. It must really be understood, when they married, that Mrs. Sparling's name was never to be mentioned between them—that the whole grimy business was buried out of sight forever.

And with a great and morbid impatience he shook the recollection from him. The bustle of Whitehall, as he drove down it, was like wine in his veins; the crowd and the gossip of the Central Lobby, as he pressed his way through to the door of the House of Commons, had never been so full of stimulus or savor. In this agreeable, exciting world he knew his place; the relief was enormous; and, for a time, Marsham was himself again.

* * * * *

Sir James Chide came in the late afternoon; and in her two hours with him, Diana learned, from lips that spared her all they could, the heart-breaking story of which Fanny had given her but the crudest outlines.

The full story, and its telling, taxed the courage both of hearer and speaker. Diana bore it, as it seemed to Sir James, with the piteous simplicity of one in whose nature grief had no pretences to overcome. The iron entered into her soul, and her quick imagination made her torment. But her father had taught her lessons of self-conquest, and in this first testing of her youth she did not fail. Sir James was astonished at the quiet she was able to maintain, and touched to the heart by the suffering she could not conceal.

Nothing was said of his own relation to her mother's case; but he saw that she understood it, and their hearts moved together. When he rose to take his leave she held his hand in hers with such a look in her eyes as a daughter might have worn; and he, with an emotion to which he gave little outward expression, vowed to himself that henceforward she should lack no fatherly help or counsel that he could give her.

He gathered, with relief, that the engagement persisted, and the perception led him to praise Marsham in a warm Irish way. But he could not find anything hopeful to say of Lady Lucy. "If you only hold to each other, my dear young lady, things will come right!" Diana flushed and shrank a little, and he felt—helplessly—that the battle was for their fighting, and not his.

Meanwhile, as he had seen Mr. Riley, he did his best to prepare her for the letters and enclosures, which had been for twenty years in the custody of the firm, and would reach her on the morrow.

But what he did not prepare her for was the letter from Lady Lucy Marsham which reached Beechcote by the evening post, after Sir James had left.

The letter lay awhile on Diana's knee, unopened. Muriel Colwood, glancing at her, went away with the tears in her eyes, and at last the stumbling fingers broke the seal.

"MY DEAR MISS MALLORY,—I want you to understand why it is that I must oppose your marriage with my son. You know well, I think, how gladly I should have welcomed you as a daughter but for this terrible revelation. As it is, I cannot consent to the engagement, and if it is carried out Oliver must renounce the inheritance of his father's fortune. I do not say this as any vulgar threat. It is simply that I cannot allow my husband's wealth to be used in furthering what he would never have permitted. He had—and so have I—the strongest feeling as to the sacredness of the family and its traditions. He held, as I do, that it ought to be founded in mutual respect and honor, and that children should have round about them the help that comes from the memory of unstained and God-fearing ancestors. Do you not also feel this? Is it not a great principle, to which personal happiness and gratification may justly be sacrificed? And would not such a sacrifice bring with it the highest happiness of all?

"Do not think that I am cruel or hard-hearted. I grieve for you with all my soul, and I have prayed for you earnestly, though, perhaps, you will consider this mere hypocrisy. But I must first think of my son—and of my husband. Very possibly you and Oliver may disregard what I say. But if so, I warn you that Oliver is not indifferent to money, simply because the full development of his career depends on it. He will regret what he has done, and your mutual happiness will be endangered. Moreover, he shrinks from all painful thoughts and associations; he seems to have no power to bear them; yet how can you protect him from them?

"I beg you to be counselled in time, to think of him rather than yourself—if, indeed, you care for him. And should you decide rightly, an old woman's love and gratitude will be yours as long as she lives.

"Believe me, dear Miss Mallory, very sincerely yours,

"LUCY MARSHAM."

Diana dragged herself up-stairs and locked her door. At ten o'clock Mrs. Colwood knocked, and heard a low voice asking to be left alone. She went away wondering, in her astonishment and terror, what new blow had fallen. No sound reached her during the night—except the bluster of a north wind rushing in great gusts upon the hill-side and the woods.



CHAPTER XIV

Late on Monday afternoon Lady Niton paid a call in Eaton Square. She and Lady Lucy were very old friends, and rarely passed a week when they were both in town without seeing each other.

Mr. Ferrier lunched with her on Monday, and casually remarked that Lady Lucy was not as well as usual. Lady Niton replied that she would look her up that afternoon; and she added: "And what about that procrastinating fellow Oliver? Is he engaged yet?"

"Not to my knowledge," said Mr. Ferrier, after a pause.

"Then he ought to be! What on earth is he shilly-shallying for? In my days young men had proper blood in their veins."

Ferrier did not pursue the subject, and Lady Niton at once jumped to the conclusion that something had happened. By five o'clock she was in Eaton Square.

Only Alicia Drake was in the drawing-room when she was announced.

"I hear Lucy's seedy," said the old lady, abruptly, after vouchsafing a couple of fingers to Miss Drake. "I suppose she's been starving herself, as usual?"

Oliver's mother enjoyed an appetite as fastidious as her judgments on men and morals, and Lady Niton had a running quarrel with her on the subject.

Alicia replied that it had been, indeed, unusually difficult of late to persuade Lady Lucy to eat.

"The less you eat the less you may eat," said Lady Niton, with vigor. "The stomach contracts unless you give it something to do. That's what's the matter with Lucy, my dear—though, of course, I never dare name the organ. But I suppose she's been worrying herself about something?"

"I am afraid she has."

"Is Oliver engaged?" asked Lady Niton, suddenly, observing the young lady.

Alicia replied demurely that that question had perhaps better be addressed to Lady Lucy.

"What's the matter? Can't the young people make up their minds? Do they want Lucy to make them up for them?"

Alicia looked at her companion a little under her brows, and did not reply. Lady Niton was so piqued by the girl's expression that she immediately threw herself on the mystery she divined—tearing and scratching at it, like a dog in a rabbit-hole. And very soon she had dragged it to the light. Miss Drake merely remarked that it was very sad, but it appeared that Miss Mallory was not really a Mallory at all, but the daughter of a certain Mrs. Sparling—Juliet Sparling, who—"

"Juliet Sparling!" cried Lady Niton, her queer small eyes starting in their sockets. "My dear, you must be mad!"

Alicia smiled, though gravely. She was afraid Lady Niton would find that what she said was true.

A cross-examination followed, after which Lady Niton sat speechless for a while. She took a fan out of her large reticule and fanned herself, a proceeding by which she often protested against the temperature at which Lady Lucy kept her drawing-room. She then asked for a window to be opened, and when she had been sufficiently oxygenated she delivered herself:

"Well, and why not? We really didn't have the picking and choosing of our mothers or fathers, though Lucy always behaves as though we had—to the fourth generation. Besides, I always took the side of that poor creature, and Lucy believed the worst—as usual. Well, and so she's going to make Oliver back out of it?"

At this point the door opened, and Lady Lucy glided in, clad in a frail majesty which would have overawed any one but Elizabeth Niton. Alicia discreetly disappeared, and Lady Niton, after an inquiry as to her friend's health—delivered, as it were, at the point of the bayonet, and followed by a flying remark on the absurdity of treating your body as if it were only given you to be harried—plunged headlong into the great topic. What an amazing business! Now at last one would see what Oliver was made of!

Lady Lucy summoned all her dignity, expounded her view, and entirely declined to be laughed or rated out of it. For Elizabeth Niton, her wig much awry, her old eyes and cheeks blazing, took up the cause of Diana with alternate sarcasm and eloquence. As for the social disrepute—stuff! All that was wanting to such a beautiful creature as Diana Mallory was a story and a scandal. Positively she would be the rage, and Oliver's fortune was made.

Lady Lucy sat in pale endurance, throwing in an occasional protest, not budging by one inch—and no doubt reminding herself from time to time, in the intervals of her old friend's attacks, of the letter she had just despatched to Beechcote—until, at last, Lady Niton, having worked herself up into a fine frenzy to no purpose at all, thought it was time to depart.

"Well, my dear," she said, leaning on her stick, the queerest rag-bag of a figure—crooked wig, rusty black dress, and an unspeakable bonnet—"you are a saint, of course, and I am a quarrelsome old sinner; I like society, and you, I believe, regard it as a grove of barren fig-trees. I don't care a rap for my neighbor if he doesn't amuse me, and you live in a puddle of good works. But, upon my word, I wouldn't be you when it comes to the sheep and the goats business! Here is a young girl, sweet and good and beautifully brought up—money and manners and everything handsome about her—she is in love with Oliver, and he with her—and just because you happen to find out that she is the daughter of a poor creature who made a tragic mess of her life, and suffered for it infinitely more than you and I are ever likely to suffer for our intolerably respectable peccadilloes—you will break her heart and his—if he's the good-luck to have one!—and there you sit, looking like a suffering angel, and expecting all your old friends, I suppose, to pity and admire you. Well, I won't, Lucy!—I won't! That's flat. There's my hand. Good-bye!"

Lady Lucy took it patiently, though from no other person in the world save Elizabeth Niton would she have so taken it.

"I thought, Elizabeth, you would have tried to understand me."

Elizabeth Niton shook her head.

"There's only your Maker could do that, Lucy. And He must be pretty puzzled to account for you sometimes. Good-bye. I thought Alicia looked uncommonly cheerful!"

This last remark was delivered as a parting shot as Lady Niton hobbled to the door. She could not, however, resist pausing to see its effect. Lady Lucy turned indignantly.

"I don't know what you mean by that remark. Alicia has behaved with great kindness and tact!"

"I dare say! We're all darlings when we get our way. What does Ferrier say?"

Lady Lucy hesitated.

"If my old friends cannot see it as I do—if they blame me—I am very sorry. But it is my responsibility."

"A precious good thing, my dear, for everybody else! But as far as I can make out, they are engaged?"

"Nothing is settled," said Lady Lucy, hastily; "and I need not say, Elizabeth, that if you have any affection for us—or any consideration for Miss Mallory—you will not breathe a word of this most sad business to anybody."

"Well, for Oliver's sake, if he doesn't intend to behave like a man, I do certainly hope it may be kept dark!" cried Lady Niton. "For if he does desert her, under such circumstances, I suppose you know that a great many people will be inclined to cut him? I shall hold my tongue. But, of course, it will come out."

With which final shaft she departed, leaving Lady Lucy a little uneasy. She mentioned Elizabeth Niton's "foolish remark" to Mrs. Fotheringham in the course of the evening. Isabel Fotheringham laughed it to scorn.

"You may be quite sure there will be plenty of ill-natured talk either way, whether Oliver gives her up or doesn't. The real thing to bear in mind is that if Oliver yields to your wishes, mamma—as you certainly deserve that he should, after all you have done for him—he will be delivered from an ignorant and reactionary wife who might have spoiled his career. I like to call a spade a spade. Oliver belongs to his party, and his party have a right to count upon him. He has no right to jeopardize either his opinions or his money; we have a claim on both."

Lady Lucy gave an unconscious sigh. She was glad of any arguments, from anybody, that offered her support. But it did occur to her that if Diana Mallory had not shown a weakness for the soldiers of her country, and if her heart had been right on Women's Suffrage, Isabel would have judged her case differently; so that her approval was not worth all it might have been.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, Isabel Fotheringham's arguments was being put in other forms.

On the Tuesday morning Marsham went down to the House, for a Committee, in a curious mood—half love, half martyrdom. The thought of Diana was very sweet; it warmed and thrilled his heart. But somehow, with every hour, he realized more fully what a magnificent thing he was doing, and how serious was his position.

In a few hurried words with Ferrier, before the meeting of the House, Marsham gave the result of his visit to Beechcote. Diana had been, of course, very much shaken, but was bearing the thing bravely. They were engaged, but nothing was to be said in public for at least six months, so as to give Lady Lucy time to reconsider.

"Though, of course, I know, as far as that is concerned, we might as well be married to-morrow and have done with it!"

"Ah!—but it is due to her—to your mother."

"I suppose it is. But the whole situation is grotesque. I must look out for some way of making money. Any suggestions thankfully received!"

Marsham spoke with an irritable flippancy. Ferrier's hazel eyes, set and almost lost in spreading cheeks, dwelt upon him thoughtfully.

"All right; I will think of some. You explained the position to Miss Mallory?"

"No," said Marsham, shortly. "How could I?"

The alternatives flew through Ferrier's mind: "Cowardice?—or delicacy?" Aloud, he said: "I am afraid she will not be long in ignorance. It will be a big fight for her, too."

Marsham shrugged his thin shoulders.

"Of course. And all for nothing. Hullo, Fleming!—do you want me?"

For the Liberal Chief Whip had paused beside them where they stood, in a corner of the smoking-room, as though wishing to speak to one or other of them, yet not liking to break up their conversation.

"Don't let me interrupt," he said to Marsham. "But can I have a word presently?"

"Now, if you like."

"Come to the Terrace," said the other, and they went out into the gray of a March afternoon. There they walked up and down for some time, engaged in an extremely confidential conversation. Signs of a general election were beginning to be strong and numerous. The Tory Government was weakening visibly, and the Liberals felt themselves in sight of an autumn, if not a summer, dissolution. But—funds!—there was the rub. The party coffers were very poorly supplied, and unless they could be largely replenished, and at once, the prospects of the election were not rosy.

Marsham had hitherto counted as one of the men on whom the party could rely. It was known that his own personal resources were not great, but he commanded his mother's ample purse. Lady Lucy had always shown herself both loyal and generous, and at her death it was, of course, assumed that he would be her heir. Lady Lucy's check, in fact, sent, through her son, to the leading party club, had been of considerable importance in the election five years before this date, in which Marsham himself had been returned; the Chief Whip wanted to assure himself that in case of need it would be repeated.

But for the first time in a conversation of this kind Marsham's reply was halting and uncertain. He would do his best, but he could not pledge himself. When the Chief Whip, disappointed and astonished, broke up their conference, Marsham walked into the House after him, in the morbid belief that a large part of his influence and prestige with his party was already gone. Let those fellows, he thought, who imagine that the popular party can be run without money, inform themselves, and not talk like asses!

* * * * *

In the afternoon, during an exciting debate on a subject Marsham had made to some extent his own, and in which he was expected to speak, two letters were brought to him. One was from Diana. He put it into his pocket, feeling an instinctive recoil—with his speech in sight—from the emotion it must needs express and arouse. The other was from the chairman of a Committee in Dunscombe, the chief town of his division. The town was, so far, without any proper hall for public meetings. It was proposed to build a new Liberal Club with a hall attached. The leading local supporter of the scheme wrote—with apologies—to ask Marsham what he was prepared to subscribe. It was early days to make the inquiry, but—in confidence—he might state that he was afraid local support for the scheme would mean more talk than money. Marsham pondered the letter gloomily. A week earlier he would have gone to his mother for a thousand pounds without any doubt of her reply.

It was just toward the close of the dinner-hour that Marsham caught the Speaker's eye. Perhaps the special effort that had been necessary to recall his thoughts to the point had given his nerves a stimulus. At any rate, he spoke unusually well, and sat down amid the cheers of his party, conscious that he had advanced his Parliamentary career. A good many congratulations reached him during the evening; he "drank delight of battle with his peers," for the division went well, and when he left the House at one o'clock in the morning it was in a mood of tingling exhilaration, and with a sense of heightened powers.

It was not till he reached his own room, in his mother's hushed and darkened house, that he opened Diana's letter.

The mere sight of it, as he drew it out of his pocket, jarred upon him strangely. It recalled to him the fears and discomforts, the sense of sudden misfortune and of ugly associations, which had been, for a time, obliterated in the stress and interest of politics. He opened it almost reluctantly, wondering at himself.

"MY DEAR OLIVER,—This letter from your mother reached me last night. I don't know what to say, though I have thought for many hours. I ought not to do you this great injury; that seems plain to me. Yet, then, I think of all you said to me, and I feel you must decide. You must do what is best for your future and your career; and I shall never blame you, whatever you think right. I wish I had known, or realized, the whole truth about your mother when you were still here. It was my stupidity.

"I have no claim—none—against what is best for you. Just two words, Oliver!—and I think they ought to be 'Good-bye.'

"Sir James Chide came after you left, and was most dear and kind. To-day I have my father's letter—and one from my mother—that she wrote for me—twenty years ago. I mustn't write any more. My eyes are so tired.

"Your grateful DIANA."

He laid down the blurred note, and turned to the enclosure. Then he read his mother's letter. And he had imagined, in his folly, that his mother's refinement would at least make use of some other weapon than the money! Why, it was all money!—a blunderbuss of the crudest kind, held at Diana's head in the crudest way. This is how the saints behave—the people of delicacy—when it comes to a pinch! He saw his mother stripped of all her pretensions, her spiritual airs, and for the first time in his life—his life of unwilling subordination—he dared to despise her.

But neither contempt nor indignation helped him much. How was he to answer Diana? He paced up and down for an hour considering it, then sat down and wrote.

His letter ran as follows:

"DEAREST DIANA,—I asked you to be my wife, and I stand by my word. I did not like to say too much about my mother's state of mind when we were together yesterday, but I am afraid it is very true that she will withdraw her present allowance to me, and deprive me of the money which my father left. Most unjustly, as it has always seemed to me, she has complete control over it. Never mind. I must see what can be done. No doubt my political career will be, for a time, much affected. We must hope it will only be for a time.

"Ferrier and Sir James believe that my mother cannot maintain her present attitude. But I do not, alack! share their belief. I realize, as no one can who does not live in the same house with her, the strength and obstinacy of her will. She will, I suppose, leave my father's half-million to some of the charitable societies in which she believes, and we must try and behave as though it had never existed. I don't regret it for myself. But, of course, there are many public causes one would have liked to help.

"If I can, I will come down to Beechcote on Saturday again. Meanwhile, do let me urge you to take care of your health, and not to dwell too much on a past that nothing can alter. I understand, of course, how it must affect you; but I am sure it will be best—best, indeed, for us both—that you should now put it as much as possible out of your mind. It may not be possible to hide the sad truth. I fear it will not be. But I am sure that the less said—or even thought—about it, the better. You won't think me unkind, will you?