She was in no pain physical or mental, and she had probably no conception of what he had endured these six days and nights. But one would have thought that mere instinctive sympathy with the man to whom she was secretly engaged.

For they were secretly engaged. It was during one of their early drives, in the canvassing of the first election, that he had lost his head one June afternoon, as they found themselves alone, crossing a beech wood on one of the private roads of the Tallyn estate; the groom having been despatched on a message to a farm-house. Alicia was in her most daring and provocative mood, tormenting and flattering him by turns; the reflections from her rose-colored parasol dappling her pale skin with warm color; her beautiful ungloved hands and arms, bare to the elbow, teasing the senses of the man beside her. Suddenly he had thrown his arm round her, and crushed her to him, kissing the smooth cool face and the dazzling hair. And she had nestled up to him and laughed—not the least abashed or astonished; so that even then, through his excitement, there had struck a renewed and sharp speculation as to her twenty-four hours' engagement to the Curate, in the spring of the year; as to the privileges she must have allowed him; and no doubt to others before him.

At that time, it was tacitly understood between them that no engagement could be announced. Alicia was well aware that Brookshire was looking on; that Brookshire was on the side of Diana Mallory, the forsaken, and was not at all inclined to forgive either the deserting lover or the supplanting damsel; so that while she was not loath to sting and mystify Brookshire by whatever small signs of her power over Oliver Marsham she could devise; though she queened it beside him on his coach, and took charge with Lady Lucy of his army of women canvassers; though she faced the mob with him at Hartingfield, on the occasion of the first disturbance there in June, and had stood beside him, vindictively triumphant on the day of his first hard-won victory, she would wear no ring, and she baffled all inquiries, whether of her relations or her girl friends. Her friendship with her cousin Oliver was nobody's concern but her own, she declared, and all they both wanted was to be let alone.

Meanwhile she had been shaken and a little frightened by the hostile feeling shown toward her, no less than Oliver, in the first election. She had taken no part in the second, although she had been staying at Tallyn all through it, and was present when Oliver was brought in, half fainting and agonized with pain, after the Hartingfield riot.

* * * * *

Oliver, now lying with closed eyes on his sofa, lived again through the sensations and impressions of that first hour: the pain—the arrival of the doctor—the injection of morphia—the blessed relief stealing through his being—and then Alicia's face beside him. Delivered from the obsession of intolerable anguish, he had been free to notice with a kind of exultation the tears in the girl's eyes, her pale tremor and silence. Never yet had Alicia wept for him or anything that concerned him. Never, indeed, had he seen her weep in his whole life before. He triumphed in her tears.

Since then, however, their whole relation had insensibly and radically changed; their positions toward each other were reversed. Till the day of his injury and his defeat, Marsham had been in truth the wooed and Alicia the wooer. Now it seemed to him as though, through his physical pain, he were all the time clinging to something that shrank away and resisted him—something that would ultimately elude and escape him.

He knew well that Alicia liked sickness and melancholy no more than he did; and he was constantly torn between a desire to keep her near him and a perception that to tie her to his sick-room was, in fact, the worst of policies.

Persistently, in the silence of the hot room, there rang through his brain the questions: "Do I really care whether she stays or goes?—do I love her?—shall I ever marry her?" Questions that were immediately answered, it seemed, by the rise of a wave of desolate and desperate feeling. He was maimed and ruined; life had broken under his feet. What if also he were done forever with love and marriage?

There were still some traces in his veins of the sedative drug which had given him a few hours' sleep during the night. Under its influence a feverish dreaminess overtook him, alive with fancies and images. Ferrier and Diana were among the phantoms that peopled the room. He saw Ferrier come in, stoop over the newspaper on the floor, raise it, and walk toward the fire with it. The figure stood with its back to him; then suddenly it turned, and Marsham saw the well-known face, intent, kindly, a little frowning, as though in thought, but showing no consciousness of his, Oliver's, presence or plight. He himself wished to speak, but was only aware of useless effort and some intangible hinderance. Then Ferrier moved on toward a writing-table with drawers that stood beyond the fireplace. He stooped, and touched a handle. "No!" cried Oliver, violently—"no!" He woke with shock and distress, his pulse racing. But the feverish state began again, and dreams with it—of the House of Commons, the election, the faces in the Hartingfield crowd. Diana was among the crowd—looking on—vaguely beautiful and remote. Yet as he perceived her a rush of cool air struck on his temples, he seemed to be walking down a garden, there was a scent of limes and roses.

"Oliver!" said his mother's voice beside him—"dear Oliver!"

He roused himself to find Lady Lucy bending over him. The pale dismay in her face excited and irritated him.

He turned away from her.

"Is Nixon come?"

"Dearest, he has just arrived. Will you see him at once?"

"Of course!" he said, angrily. "Why doesn't Richard do as he's told?"

He raised himself into a sitting posture, while Lady Lucy went to the door. The local doctor entered—a stranger behind him. Lady Lucy left her son and the great surgeon together.

* * * * *

Nearly an hour later, Mr. Nixon, waylaid by Lady Lucy, was doing his best to compromise, as doctors must, between consideration for the mother and truth as to the Son. There was, he hoped, no irreparable injury. But the case would be long, painful, trying to everybody concerned. Owing to the mysterious nerve-sympathies of the body, the sight was already affected and would be more so. Complete rest, certain mechanical applications, certain drugs—he ran through his recommendations.

"Avoid morphia, I implore you," he said, earnestly, "if you possibly can. Here a man's friends can be of great help to him. Cheer him and distract him in every way you can. I think we shall be able to keep the pain within bounds."

Lady Lucy looked piteously at the speaker.

"And how long?" she said, trembling.

Mr. Nixon hesitated. "I am afraid I can hardly answer that. The blow was a most unfortunate one. It might have done a worse injury. Your son might be now a paralyzed invalid for life. But the case is very serious, nor is it possible yet to say what all the consequences of the injury may be. But keep your own courage up—and his. The better his general state, the more chance he has."

A few minutes more, and the brougham had carried him away. Lady Lucy, looking after it from the window of her sitting-room, knew that for her at last what she had been accustomed to describe every Sunday as "the sorrows of this transitory life" had begun. Till now they had been as veiled shapes in a misty distance. She had accepted them with religious submission, as applying to others. Her mind, resentful and astonished, must now admit them—pale messengers of powers unseen and pitiless!—to its own daily experience; must look unprotected, unscreened, into their stern faces.

"John!—John!" cried the inner voice of agonized regret. And then: "My boy!—my boy!"

* * * * *

"What did he say?" asked Alicia's voice, beside her.

The sound—the arm thrown round her—were not very welcome to Lady Lucy. Her nature, imperious and jealously independent, under all her sweetness of manner, set itself against pity, especially from her juniors. She composed herself at once.

"He does not give a good account," she said, withdrawing herself gently but decidedly. "It may take a long time before Oliver is quite himself again."

Alicia persisted in a few questions, extracting all the information she could. Then Lady Lucy sat down at her writing-table and began to arrange some letters. Alicia's presence annoyed her. The truth was that she was not as fond of Alicia as she had once been. These misfortunes, huddling one on another, instead of drawing them together, had in various and subtle ways produced a secret estrangement. To neither the older nor the younger woman could the familiar metaphor have been applied which compares the effects of sorrow or sympathy on fine character to the bruising of fragrant herbs. Ferrier's death, sorely and bitterly lamented though it was, had not made Lady Lucy more lovable. Oliver's misfortune had not—toward Lady Lucy, at any rate—liberated in Alicia those hidden tendernesses that may sometimes transmute and glorify natures apparently careless or stubborn, brought eye to eye with pain. Lady Lucy also resented her too long exclusion from Alicia's confidence. Like all the rest of the world, she believed there was an understanding between Oliver and Alicia. Of course, there were reasons for not making anything of the sort public at present. But a mother, she thought, ought to have been told.

"Does Mr. Nixon recommend that Oliver should go abroad for the winter?" asked Alicia, after a pause. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, her slender feet hanging, and the combination of her blue linen dress with the fiery gold of her hair reminded Lady Lucy of the evening in the Eaton Square drawing-room, when she had first entertained the idea that Alicia and Oliver might marry. Oliver, standing erect in front of the fire looking down upon Alicia in her blue tulle—his young vigor and distinction—the carriage of his handsome head—was she never to see that sight again—never? Her heart fluttered and sank; the prison of life contracted round her.

She answered, rather shortly.

"He made no plan of the kind. Travelling, in fact, is absolutely forbidden for the present."

"Poor Oliver!" said Alicia, gently, her eyes on the ground. "How horrid it is that I have to go away!"

"You! When?" Lady Lucy turned sharply to look at the speaker.

"Oh! not till Saturday," said Alicia, hastily; "and of course I shall come back again—if you want me." She looked up with a smile.

"Oliver will certainly want you; I don't know whom he could—possibly—want—so much." Lady Lucy spoke the words with slow emphasis.

"Dear old boy!—I know," murmured Alicia. "I needn't be long away."

"Why must you go at all? I am sure the Treshams—Lady Evelyn—would understand—"

"Oh, I promised so faithfully!" pleaded Alicia, joining her hands. "And then, you know, I should be able to bring all sorts of gossip back to Oliver to amuse him."

Lady Lucy pressed her hand to her eyes in a miserable bewilderment. "I suppose it will be an immense party. You told me, I think, that Lady Evelyn had asked Lord Philip Darcy. I should be glad if you would make her understand that neither I, nor Sir James Chide, nor any other old friend of Mr. Ferrier can ever meet that man on friendly terms again." She looked up, her wrinkled cheeks flushed with color, her aspect threatening and cold.

"Of course!" said Alicia, soothingly. "Hateful man! I too loathe the thought of meeting him. But you know how delicate Evelyn is, and how she has been depending on me to help her. Now, oughtn't we to go back to Oliver?" She rose from her chair.

"Mr. Nixon left some directions to which I must attend," said Lady Lucy, turning to her desk. "Will you go and read to him?"

Alicia moved away, but paused as she neared the door.

"What did Mr. Nixon say about Oliver's eyes? He has been suffering from them dreadfully to-day."

"Everything is connected. We can only wait."

"Are you—are you thinking of a nurse?"

"No," said Lady Lucy, decidedly. "His man Richard is an excellent nurse. I shall never leave him—and you say"—she turned pointedly to look at Alicia—"you say you will come back?"

"Of course!—of course I will come back!" cried Alicia. Then, stepping up briskly to Lady Lucy, she stooped and kissed her. "And there is you to look after, too!"

Lady Lucy allowed the kiss, but made no reply to the remark. Alicia departed.

* * * * *

She went slowly up the wide oak staircase. How stifling the house was on this delicious afternoon! Suddenly, in the distance, she heard the sound of guns—a shooting-party, no doubt, in the Melford woods. Her feet danced under her, and she gave a sigh of longing for the stubbles and the sunny fields, and the companionship of handsome men, of health and vigor as flawless and riotous as her own.

Oliver was lying still, with closed eyes, when she rejoined him. He made no sign as she opened the door, and she sank down on a stool beside him and laid her head against his shoulder.

"Dear Oliver, you must cheer up," she said, softly. "You'll be well soon—quite soon—if you are only patient."

He made no reply.

"Did you like Mr. Nixon?" she asked, in the same caressing voice, gently rubbing her cheek against his arm.

"One doesn't exactly like one's executioner," he said, hoarsely and suddenly, but without opening his eyes.

"Oliver!—dearest!" She dropped a protesting kiss on the sleeve of his coat.

Silence for a little, Alicia felt as if she could hardly breathe in the hot room. Then Oliver raised himself.

"I am going blind!"—he said, violently. "And nothing can be done. Did that man tell my mother that?"

"No, no!—Oliver!" She threw her arm round him, hastily repeating and softening Nixon's opinion.

He sank back on his cushions, gloomily listening—without assent. Presently he shook his head.

"The stuff that doctors talk when they can do no good, and want to get comfortably out of the house! Alicia!"

She bent forward startled.

"Alicia!—are you going to stick to me?"

His eyes held her.

"Oliver!—what a cruel question!"

"No, it is not cruel." He spoke with a decision which took no account of her caresses. "I ought to give you up—I know that perfectly well. But I tell you frankly I shall have no motive to get well if you leave me. I think that man told me the truth—I did my best to make him. There is a chance of my getting well—the thing is not hopeless. If you'll stand by me, I'll fight through. Will you?" He looked at her with a threatening and painful eagerness.

"Of course I will," she said, promptly.

"Then let us tell my mother to-night that we are engaged? Mind, I am not deceiving you. I would give you up at once if I were hopelessly ill. I am only asking you to bear a little waiting—and wretchedness—for my sake."

"I will bear anything. Only, dear Oliver—for your sake—for mine—wait a little longer! You know what horrible gossip there's been!" She clung to him, murmuring: "I couldn't bear that anybody should speak or think harshly of you now. It can make no difference to you and me, but two or three months hence everybody would take it so differently. You know we said in June—six months."

Her voice was coaxing and sweet. He partly withdrew himself from her, however.

"At least, you can tell my mother," he said, insisting. "Of course, she suspects it all."

"Oh, but, dear Oliver!"—she brought her face nearer to his, and he saw the tears in her eyes—"one's own mother ought to know first of all. Mamma would be so hurt—she would never forgive me. Let me pay this horrid visit—and then go home and tell my people—if you really, really wish it. Afterward of course, I shall come back to you—and Cousin Lucy shall know—and at Christmas—everybody."

"What visit? You are going to Eastham?—to the Tresham's?" It was a cry of incredulous pain.

"How can I get out of it, dear Oliver? Evelyn has been so ill!—and she's been depending on me—and I owe her so much. You know how good she was to me in the Season."

He lifted himself again on his cushions, surveying her ironically—his eyes sunken and weak—his aspect ghastly.

"Well, how long do you mean to stay? Is Lord Philip going to be there?"

"What do I care whether he is or not!"

"You said you were longing to know him."

"That was before you were ill."

"I don't see any logic in that remark." He lay looking at her. Then suddenly he put out an arm, pulled her down to him feebly, and kissed her. But the movement hurt him. He turned away with some broken words—or, rather, moans—stifled against his pillows.

"Dear, do lie still. Shall I read to you?"

He shook his head.

"Don't stay with me. I shall be better after dinner."

She rose obediently, touched him caressingly with her hand, drew a light shawl over him, and stole away.

* * * * *

When she reached her own room she stood a moment, frowning and absorbed; beside the open window. Then some one knocked at her door. It was her maid, who came in carrying a large light box.

Alicia flew toward her.

"From Cosette! Heavens! Oh, Benson, quick! Put it down. I'll help you."

The maid obeyed, and ran to the dressing-table for scissors. Cords and tapes were soon cut in the hurry of unpacking, and from the crackling tissue-paper there emerged an evening gown of some fresh snowy stuff, delicately painted and embroidered, which drew from the maid little shrieks of admiration.

Alicia looked at it more critically.

"The lace is not good enough," she said, twisting her lip, "and I shall make her give me some more embroidery than that on the bodice—for the money—I can tell her! However, it is pretty—much prettier, isn't it, Benson, than that gown of Lady Evelyn's I took it from? She'll be jealous!" The girl laughed triumphantly. "Well, now, look here, Benson, we're going on Saturday, and I want to look through my gowns. Get them out, and I'll see if there's anything I can send home."

The maid's face fell.

"I packed some of them this morning, miss—in the large American trunk. I thought they'd keep better there than anywhere. It took a lot of time."

"Oh, never mind. You can easily pack them again. I really must go through them."

The maid unwillingly obeyed; and soon the room—bed, sofa, chairs—was covered with costly gowns, for all hours of the day and night: walking-dresses, in autumn stuffs and colors, ready for the moors and stubbles; afternoon frocks of an elaborate simplicity, expensively girlish; evening dresses in an amazing variety of hue and fabric; with every possible adjunct in the way of flowers, gloves, belt, that dressmakers and customer could desire.

Alicia looked at it all with glowing cheeks. She reflected that she had really spent the last check she had made her father give her to very great Advantage. There were very few people of her acquaintance, girls or married women, who knew how to get as much out of money as she did.

In her mind she ran over the list of guests invited to the Eastham party, as her new friend Lady Evelyn had confided it to her. Nothing could be smarter, but the competition among the women would be terribly keen. "Of course, I can't touch duchesses," she thought, laughing to herself, "or American millionaires. But I shall do!"

And her mind ran forward in a dream of luxury and delight. She saw herself sitting or strolling in vast rooms amid admiring groups; mirrors reflected her; she heard the rustle of her gowns on parquet or marble, the merry sound of her own laughter; other girls threw her the incense of their envy and imitation; and men, fresh and tanned from shooting, breathing the joy of physical life, devoted themselves to her pleasure, or encircled her with homage. Not always chivalrous, or delicate, or properly behaved—these men of her imagination! What matter? She loved adventures! And moving like a king among the rest, she saw the thin, travel-beaten, eccentric form of Lord Philip—the hated, adored, pursued; Society's idol and bugbear all in one; Lord Philip, who shunned and disliked women; on whom, nevertheless, the ambitions and desires of some of the loveliest women in England were, on that account alone, and at this moment of his political triumph, the more intently and the more greedily fixed.

A flash of excitement ran through her. In Lady Evelyn's letter of that morning there was a mention of Lord Philip. "I told him you were to be here. He made a note of it, and I do at last believe he won't throw us over, as he generally does."

She dressed, still in a reverie, speechless under her maid's hands. Then, as she emerged upon the gallery, looking down upon the ugly hall of Tallyn, she remembered that she had promised to go back after dinner and read to Oliver. Her nature rebelled in a moral and physical nausea, and it was all she could do to meet Lady Lucy at their solitary dinner with her usual good temper.



CHAPTER XXII

Sir James Chide was giving tea to a couple of guests at Lytchett Manor. It was a Saturday in late September. The beech-trees visible through the drawing-room windows were still untouched and heavily green; but their transformation was approaching. Soon, steeped in incredible splendors of orange and gold, they would stand upon the leaf-strewn grass, waiting for the night of rain or the touch of frost which should at last disrobe them.

"If you imagine, Miss Ettie," said Sir James, severely, to a young lady beside him, "that I place the smallest faith in any of Bobbie's remarks or protestations—"

The girl addressed smiled into his face, undaunted. She was a small elfish creature with a thin face, on the slenderest of necks. But in her queer little countenance a pair of laughing eyes, out of all proportion to the rest of her for loveliness and effect, gave her and kept her the attention of the world. They lent distinction—fascination even—to a character of simple virtues and girlish innocence.

Bobbie lounged behind her chair, his arms on the back of it. He took Sir James's attack upon him with calm. "Shall I show him the letter of my beastly chairman?" he said, in the girl's ear.

She nodded, and Bobbie drew from his breast-pocket a folded sheet of blue paper, and pompously handed it to Sir James.

The letter was from the chairman of a leading bank in Berlin—a man well known in European finance. It was couched in very civil terms, and contained the offer to Mr. Robert Forbes of a post in the Lindner bank, as an English correspondence clerk, at a salary in marks which, when translated, meant about L140 a year.

Sir James read it, and handed it back. "Well, what's the meaning of that?"

"I'm giving up the Foreign Office," said Bobbie, an engaging openness of manner. "It's not a proper place for a young man. I've learned nothing there but a game we do with Blue-Books, and things you throw at the ceiling—where they stick—I'll tell you about it presently. Besides, you see, I must have some money, and it don't grow in the Foreign Office for people like me. So I went to my uncle, Lord Forestier—"

"Of course!" growled Sir James. "I thought we should come to the uncles before long. Miss Wilson, I desire to warn you against marrying a young man of 'the classes.' They have no morals, but they have always uncles."

Miss Wilson's eyes shot laughter at her fiance. "Go on, Bobbie, and don't make it too long!"

"I decline to be hustled." Bobbie's tone was firm, though urbane. "I repeat: I went to my uncle. And I said to him, like the unemployed: 'Find me work, and none of your d——d charity!'"

"Which means, I suppose, that the last time you went to him, you borrowed fifty pounds?" said Sir James.

"I shouldn't dream, sir, of betraying my uncle's affairs. On this occasion—for an uncle—he behaved well. He lectured me for twenty-seven minutes and a half—I had made up my mind beforehand not to let it go over the half-hour—and then he came to business. After a year's training and probation in Berlin he thought he could get me a post in his brother-in-law's place in the City. Awfully warm thing, you know," said Bobbie, complacently; "worth a little trouble. So I told him, kindly, I'd think of it. Ecco!" He pointed to the letter. "Of course, I told my uncle I should permit him to continue my allowance, and in a year I shall be a merchant prince—in the egg; I shall be worth marrying; and I shall allow Ettie two hundred a year for her clothes."

"And Lady Niton?"

Bobbie sat down abruptly; the girl stared at the carpet.

"I don't see the point of your remark," said Bobbie at last, with mildness. "When last I had the honor of hearing of her, Lady Niton was taking the air—or the waters—at Strathpeffer."

"As far as I know," remarked Sir James, "she is staying with the Feltons, five miles off, at this moment."

Bobbie whistled. "Close quarters!" He looked at Miss Ettie Wilson, and she at him. "May I ask whether, as soon as Ettie and I invited ourselves for the day, you asked Lady Niton to come to tea?"

"Not at all. I never play Providence unless I'm told to do so. Only Miss Mallory is coming to tea."

Bobbie expressed pleasure at the prospect; then his amiable countenance—the face of an "Idle Apprentice," whom no god has the heart to punish—sobered to a real concern as the association of ideas led him to inquire what the latest news might be of Oliver Marsham.

Sir James shook his head; his look clouded. He understood from Lady Lucy that Oliver was no better; the accounts, in fact, were very bad.

"Did they arrest anybody?" asked Bobbie.

"At Hartingfield? Yes—two lads. But there was not evidence enough to convict. They were both released, and the village gave them an ovation."

Bobbie hesitated.

"What do you think was the truth about that article?"

Sir James frowned and rose.

"Miss Wilson, come and see my garden. If you don't fall down and worship the peaches on my south wall, I shall not pursue your acquaintance."

It was a Saturday afternoon. Briefs were forgotten. The three strolled down the garden. Sir James, in a disreputable shooting-coat and cap, his hands deep in his pockets, took the middle of the path—the two lovers on either side. Chide made himself delightful to them. On that Italian journey of which he constantly thought, Ferrier had been amused and cheered all through by Bobbie's nonsense; and the young fellow had loyally felt his death—and shown it. Chide's friendly eye would be on him and his Ettie henceforward.

* * * * *

Five or ten minutes afterward, a brougham drove up to the door of Lytchett, and a small lady emerged. She had rung the bell, and was waiting on the steps, when a pony-carriage also turned into the Lytchett avenue and drew near rapidly.

A girl in a shady hat was driving it.

"The very creature!" cried Lady Niton, under her breath, smartly tapping her tiny boot with the black cane she carried, and referring apparently to some train of meditation in which she had been just engaged. She waved to her own coachman to be off, and stood awaiting Diana.



"How do you do, Miss Mallory? Are you invited? I'm not."

Diana descended, and they shook hands. They had not met since the evening at Tallyn when Diana, in her fresh beauty, had been the gleaming princess, and Lady Niton the friendly godmother, of so promising a fairy tale. The old woman looked at her curiously, as they stood in the drawing-room together, while the footman went off to find Sir James. Frail—dark lines under the eyes—a look as of long endurance—a smile that was a mere shield and concealment for the heart beneath—alack!

And there was no comfort to be got out of calling down fire from heaven on the author of this change, since it had fallen so abundantly already!

"Sit down; you look tired," said the old lady, in her piping, peremptory voice. "Have you been here all the summer?"

"Yes—since June."

"Through the election?"

"Yes." Diana turned her face away. Lady Niton could see the extreme delicacy to which the profile had fined down, the bluish or purple shadows here and there on the white skin. Something glittered in the old woman's eyes. She put out a hand from the queer flounced mantle, made out of an ancient evening dress, in which she was arrayed, and touched Diana's.

"You know—you've heard—about those poor things at Tallyn?"

Diana made a quick movement. Her eyes were on the speaker.

"How is Mr. Marsham?"

Lady Niton shook her head. She opened a hand-bag on her wrist, took out a letter, and put on her eye-glasses.

"This is Lucy—arrived this morning. It don't sound well. 'Come when you can, my dear Elizabeth—you will be very welcome. But I do not know how I have the courage to ask you. We are a depressing pair, Oliver and I. Oliver has been in almost constant pain this last week. If it goes on we must try morphia. But before that we shall see another doctor. I dread to think of morphia. Once begin it, and what will be the end? I sit here alone a great deal—thinking. How long did that stone take to throw?—a few seconds, perhaps? And here is my son—my poor son!—broken and helpless—perhaps for life. We have been trying a secretary to write for him and read to him, for the blindness increases, but it has not been a success.'"

Diana rose abruptly and walked to the window, where she stood, motionless—looking out—her back turned to Lady Niton. Her companion glanced at her—lifted her eyebrows—hesitated—and finally put the letter back into her pocket. There was an awkward silence, when Diana suddenly returned to Lady Niton's side.

"Where is Miss Drake?" she said, sharply. "Is the marriage put off?"

"Marriage!" Lady Niton laughed. "Alicia and Oliver? H'm. I don't think we shall hear much more of that!"

"I thought it was settled."

"Well, as soon as I heard of the accident and Oliver's condition, I wondered to myself how long that young woman would keep it up. I have no doubt the situation gave her a disturbed night or two, Alicia never can have had: the smallest intention of spending her life, or the best years of it, in nursing a sick husband. On the other hand, money is money. So she went off to the Treshams', to see if there was no third course—that's how I read it."

"The Treshams'?—a visit?—since the accident?"

"Don't look so astonished, my dear. You don't know the Alicias of this world. But I admit we should be dull without them. There's a girl at the Feltons' who has just come down from the Treshams', and I wouldn't have missed her stories of Alicia for a great deal. She's been setting her cap, it appears, at Lord Philip. However" (Lady Niton chuckled) "there she's met her match."

"Rut they are engaged?" said Diana, in bewildered interrogation.

The little lady's laugh rang out—shrill and cracked—like the crow of a bantam.

"She and Lord Philip? Trust Lord Philip!"

"No, I didn't mean that!"

"She and Oliver? I've no doubt Oliver thinks—or thought—they were. What view he takes now, poor fellow, I'm sure I don't know. But I don't somehow think Alicia will be able to carry on the game indefinitely. Lady Lucy is losing patience."

Diana sat in silence. Lady Niton could not exactly decipher her. But she guessed at a conflict between a scrupulous or proud unwillingness to discuss the matter at all or hear it discussed, and some motive deeper still and more imperative.

"Lady Lucy has been ill too?" Diana inquired at last, in the same voice of constraint.

"Oh, very unwell indeed. A poor, broken thing! And there don't seem to be anybody to look after them. Mrs. Fotheringham is about as much good as a broomstick. Every family ought to keep a supply of superfluous girls. They're like the army—useless in peace and indispensable in war. Ha! here's Sir James."

Both ladies perceived Sir James, coming briskly up the garden path. As she saw him a thought struck Diana—a thought which concerned Lady Niton. It broke down the tension of her look, and there was the gleam of a smile—sad still, and touching—in the glance she threw at her companion. She had been asked to tea to meet a couple of guests from London with whose affairs she was well acquainted; and she too thought Sir James had been playing Providence.

Sir James, evidently conscious, saw the raillery in her face, pinched her fingers as she gave him her hand, and Diana, passing him, escaped to the garden, very certain that she should find the couple in question somewhere among its shades.

Lady Niton examined Sir James—looked after Diana.

"Look here!" she said, abruptly; "what's up? You two understand something I don't. Out with it!"

Sir James, who could always blush like a girl, blushed.

"I vow that I am as innocent as a babe unborn!"

"What of?" The tone of the demand was like that of a sword in the drawing.

"I have some guests here to-day."

"Who are they?"

"A young man you know—a young woman you would like to know."

Silence. Lady Niton sat down again.

"Kindly ring the bell," she said, lifting a peremptory hand, "and send for my carriage."

"Let me parley an instant," said Sir James, moving between her and the bell. "Bobbie is just off to Berlin. Won't you say good-bye to him?"

"Mr. Forbes's movements are entirely indifferent to me—ring!" Then, shrill-voiced—and with sudden fury, like a bird ruffling up: "Berlin, indeed! More waste—more shirking! He needn't come to me! I won't give him another penny."

"I don't advise you to offer it," said Sir James, with suavity. "Bobbie has got a post in Berlin through his uncle, and is going off for a twelvemonth to learn banking."

Lady Niton sat blinking and speechless. Sir James drew the muslin curtain back from the window.

"There they are, you see—Bobbie—and the Explanation. And if you ask me, I think the Explanation explains."

Lady Niton put up her gold-rimmed glasses.

"She is not in the least pretty!" she said, with hasty venom, her old hand shaking.

"No, but fetching—and a good girl. She worships her Bobbie, and she's sending him away for a year."

"I won't allow it!" cried Lady Niton. "He sha'n't go."

Sir James shrugged his shoulders.

"These are domestic brawls—I decline them. Ah!" He turned to the window, opening it wide. She did not move. He made a sign, and two of the three persons who had just appeared on the lawn came running toward the house. Diana loitered behind.

Lady Niton looked at the two young faces as they reached her side—the mingling of laughter and anxiety in the girl's, of pride and embarrassment in Bobbie's.

"You sha'n't go to Berlin!" she said to him, vehemently, as she just allowed him to take her hand.

"Dear Lady Niton!—I must."

"You sha'n't!—I tell you! I've got you a place in London—a, thousand times, better than your fool of an uncle could ever get you. Uncle, indeed! Read that letter!" She tossed him one from her bag.

Bobbie read, while Lady Niton stared hard at the girl. Presently Bobbie began to gasp.

"Well, upon my word!"—he put the letter down—"upon my word!"' He turned to his sweetheart. "Ettie!—you marry me in a month!—mind that! Hang Berlin! I scorn their mean proposals. London requires me." He drew himself up. "But first" (he looked at Lady Niton, his flushed face twitching a little) "justice!" he said, peremptorily—"justice on the chief offender."

And walking across to her, he stooped and kissed her. Then he beckoned to Ettie to do the same. Very shyly the girl ventured; very stoically the victim, submitted. Whereupon, Bobbie subsided, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and a violent quarrel began immediately between him and Lady Niton on the subject of the part of London in which he and Ettie were to live. Fiercely the conflict waxed and waned, while the young girl's soft irrepressible laughter filled up all the gaps and like a rushing stream carried away the detritus—the tempers and rancors and scorns—left by former convulsions.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Diana and Sir James paced the garden. He saw that she was silent and absent-minded, and guessed uneasily at the cause. It was impossible that any woman of her type, who had gone through the experience that she had, should remain unmoved by the accounts now current as to Oliver Marsham's state.

As they returned across the lawn to the house the two lovers came out to meet them. Sir James saw the look with which Diana watched them coming. It seemed to him one of the sweetest and one of the most piteous he had ever seen on a human face.

"I shall descend upon you next week," said Lady Niton abruptly, as Diana made her farewells. "I shall be at Tallyn."

Diana did not reply. The little fiancee insisted on the right to take her to her pony-carriage, and kissed her tenderly before she let her go. Diana had already become as a sister to her and Bobbie, trusted in their secrets and advising in their affairs.

Lady Niton, standing by Sir James, looked after her.

"Well, there's only one thing in the world that girl wants; and I suppose nobody in their senses ought to help her to it."

"What do you mean?"

She murmured a few words in his ear.

"Not a bit of it!" said Sir James, violently. "I forbid it. Don't you go and put anything of the sort into her head. The young man I mean her to marry comes back from Nigeria this very day."

"She won't marry him!"

"We shall see."

* * * * *

Diana drove home through lanes suffused with sunset and rich with autumn. There had been much rain through September, and the deluged earth steamed under the return of the sun. Mists were rising from the stubbles, and wrapping the woods in sleep and purple. To her the beauty of it all was of a mask or pageant—seen from a distance across a plain or through a street-opening—lovely and remote. All that was real—all that lived—was the image within the mind; not the great earth-show without.

As she passed through the village she fell in with the Roughsedges: the doctor, with his wide-awake on the back of his head, a book and a bulging umbrella under his arm; Mrs. Roughsedge, in a new shawl, and new bonnet-strings, with a prodigal flutter of side curls beside her ample countenance. Hugh, it appeared, was expected by an evening train. Diana begged that he might be brought up to see her some time in the course of the following afternoon. Then she drove on, and Mrs. Roughsedge was left staring discontentedly at her husband.

"I think she was glad, Henry?"

"Think it, my dear, if it does you any good," said the doctor, cheerfully.

* * * * *

When Diana reached home night had fallen—a moon-lit night, through which all the shapes and even the colors of day were still to be seen or divined in a softened and pearly mystery. Muriel Colwood was not at home. She had gone to town, on one of her rare absences, to meet some relations. Diana missed her, and yet was conscious that even the watch of those kind eyes would—to-night—have added to the passionate torment of thought.

As she sat alone in the drawing-room after her short and solitary meal her nature bent and trembled under the blowing of those winds of fate, which, like gusts among autumn trees, have tested or strained or despoiled the frail single life since time began; winds of love and pity, of desire and memory, of anguish and of longing.

Only her dog kept her company. Sometimes she rose out of restlessness, and moved about the room, and the dog's eyes would follow her, dumbly dependent. The room was dimly lit; in the mirrors she saw now and then the ghostly passage of some one who seemed herself and not herself. The windows were open to a misty garden, waiting for moonrise; in the house all was silence; only from the distant road and village came voices sometimes of children, or the sounds of a barrel-organ, fragmentary and shrill.

Loneliness ached in her heart—spoke to her from the future. And five miles away Oliver, too, was lonely—and in pain. Pain!—the thought of it, as of something embodied and devilish, clutching and tearing at a man already crushed and helpless—gave her no respite. The tears ran down her cheeks as she moved to and fro, her hands at her breast.

Yet she was helpless. What could she do? Even if he were free from Alicia, even if he wished to recall her, how could he—maimed and broken—take the steps that could alone bring her to his side? If their engagement had subsisted, horror, catastrophe, the approach of death itself, could have done nothing to part them. Now, how was a man in such a plight to ask from a woman what yet the woman would pay a universe to give? And in the face of the man's silence, how could the woman speak?

No!—she began to see her life as the Vicar saw it: pledged to large causes, given to drudgeries—necessary, perhaps noble, for which the happy are not meant. This quiet shelter of Beechcote could not be hers much longer. If she was not to go to Oliver, impossible that she could live on in this rose-scented stillness of the old house and garden, surrounded by comfort, tranquillity, beauty, while the agony of the world rang in her ears—wild voices!—speaking universal, terrible, representative things, yet in tones piteously dear and familiar, close, close to her heart. No; like Marion Vincent, she must take her life in her hands, offering it day by day to this hungry human need, not stopping to think, accepting the first task to her hand, doing it as she best could. Only so could she still her own misery; tame, silence her own grief; grief first and above all for Oliver, grief for her own youth, grief for her parents. She must turn to the poor in that mood she had in the first instance refused to allow the growth of in herself—the mood of one seeking an opiate, an anaesthetic. The scrubbing of hospital floors; the pacing of dreary streets on mechanical errands; the humblest obedience and routine; things that must be done, and in the doing of them deaden thought—these were what she turned to as the only means by which life could be lived.

Oliver!—No hope for him?—at thirty-six! His career broken—his ambition defeated. Nothing before him but the decline of power and joy; nights of barren endurance, separating days empty and tortured; all natural pleasures deadened and destroyed; the dying down of all the hopes and energies that make a man.

She threw herself down beside the open window, burying her face on her knees. Would they never let her go to him?—never let her say to him: "Oliver, take me!—you did love me once—what matters what came between us? That was in another world. Take my life—crush out of it any drop of comfort or of ease it can give you! Cruel, cruel—to refuse! It is mine to give and yours to spend!"

Juliet Sparling's daughter. There was the great consecrating, liberating fact! What claim had she to the ordinary human joys? What could the ordinary standards and expectations of life demand from her? Nothing!—nothing that could stem this rush of the heart to the beloved—the forsaken and suffering and overshadowed beloved. Her future?—she held it dross—apart from Oliver. Dear Sir James!—but he must learn to bear it—to admit that she stood alone, and must judge for herself. What possible bliss or reward could there ever be for her but just this: to be allowed to watch and suffer with Oliver—to bring him the invention, the patience, the healing divination of love? And if it were not to be hers, then what remained was to go down into the arena, where all that is ugliest and most piteous in life bleeds and gasps, and throw herself blindly into the fight. Perhaps some heavenly voice might still speak through it; perhaps, beyond its jar, some ineffable reunion might dawn—

"First a peace out of pain—then a light—then thy breast!..."

She trembled through and through. Restraining herself, she rose, and went to her locked desk, taking from it the closely written journal of her father's life, which had now been for months the companion of her thoughts, and of the many lonely moments in her days and nights. She opened on a passage tragically familiar to her:

"It is an April day. Everything is very still and balmy. clouds are low, yet suffused with sun. They seem to be tangled among the olives, and all the spring green and flowering fruit trees are like embroidery on a dim yet shining background of haze, silvery and glistening in the sun, blue and purple in the shadows. The beach-trees in the olive garden throw up their pink spray among the shimmering gray leaf and beside the gray stone walls. Warm breaths steal to me over the grass and through the trees; the last brought with it a strong scent of narcissus. A goat tethered to a young tree in the orchard has reared its front feet against the stem, and is nibbling at the branches. His white back shines amid the light spring shade.

"Far down through the trees I can see the sparkle of the waves—beyond, the broad plain of blue; and on the headland, a mile away, white foam is dashing.

"It is the typical landscape of the South, and of spring, the landscape, with only differences in detail, of Theocritus or Vergil, or the Greek anthologists, those most delicate singers of nature and the South. From the beginning it has filled man with the same joy, the same yearning, the same despair.

"In youth and happiness we are the spring—the young green—the blossom—the plashing waves. Their life is ours and one with ours.

"But in age and grief? There is no resentment, I think; no anger, as though a mourner resented the gayety around him; but, rather, a deep and melancholy wonder at the chasm that has now revealed itself between our life and nature. What does the breach mean?—the incurable dissonance and alienation? Are we greater than nature, or less? Is the opposition final, the prophecy of man's ultimate and hopeless defeat at the hands of nature?—or is it, in the Hegelian sense, the mere development of a necessary conflict, leading to a profounder and intenser unity? The old, old questions—stock possessions of the race, yet burned anew by life into the blood and brain of the individual.

"I see Diana in the garden with her nurse. She has been running to and fro, playing with the dog, feeding the goat. Now I see her sitting still, her chin on her hands, looking out to sea. She seems to droop; but I am sure she is not tired. It is an attitude not very natural to a child, especially to a child so full of physical health and vigor; yet she often falls into it.

"When I see it I am filled with dread. She knows nothing, yet the cloud seems to be upon her. Does she already ask herself questions—about her father—about this solitary life?

"Juliet was not herself—not in her full sane mind—when I promised her. That I know. But I could no more have refused the promise than water to her dying lips. One awful evening of fever and hallucination I had been sitting by her for a long time. Her thoughts, poor sufferer, had been full of blood—it is hard to write it—but there is the truth—a physical horror of blood—the blood in which her dress—the dress they took from her, her first night in prison—was once steeped. She saw it everywhere, on her hands, the sheets, the walls; it was a nausea, an agony of brain and flesh; and yet it was, of course, but a mere symbol and shadow of the manifold agony she had gone through. I will not attempt to describe what I felt—what the man who knows that his neglect and selfishness drove her the first steps along this infernal road must feel to his last hour.—But at last we were able—the nurse and I—to soothe her a little. The nightmare lifted, we gave her food, and the nurse brushed her poor brown hair, and tied round it, loosely, the little black scarf she likes to wear. We lifted her on her pillows, and her white face grew calm, and so lovely—though, as we thought, very near to death. Her hair, which was cut in prison, had grown again a little—to her neck, and could not help curling. It made her look a child again—poor, piteous child!—so did the little scarf, tied under her chin—and the tiny proportions to which all her frame had shrunk.

"She lifted her face to mine, as I bent over her, kissed me, and asked for you. You were brought, and I took you on my knee, showing you pictures, to keep you quiet. But every other minute, almost, your eyes looked away from the book to her, with that grave considering look, as though a question were behind the look, to which your little brain could not yet give shape. My strange impression was that the question was there—in the mind—fully formed, like the Platonic 'ideas' in heaven; but that, physically, there was no power to make the word-copy that could have alone communicated it to us. Your mother looked at you in return, intently—quite still. When you began to get restless, I lifted you up to kiss her; you were startled, perhaps, by the cold of her face, and struggled away. A little color came into her cheeks; she followed you hungrily with her eyes as you were carried off; then she signed to me, and it was my hand that brushed away her tears.

"Immediately afterward she began to speak, with wonderful will and self-control, and she asked me that till you were grown up and knowledge became inevitable, I should tell you nothing. There was to be no talk of her, no picture of her, no letters. As far as possible, during your childhood and youth, she was to be to you as though she had never existed. What her thought was exactly she was too feeble to explain; nor was her mind strong enough to envisage all the consequences—to me, as well as to you—of what she proposed. No doubt it tortured her to think of you as growing up under the cloud of her name and fate, and with her natural and tragic impetuosity she asked what she did.

"'One day—there will come some one—who will love her—in spite of me. Then you and he—shall tell her.'

"I pointed out to her that such a course would mean that I must change my name and live abroad. Her eyes assented, with a look of relief. She knew that I had already developed the tastes of the nomad and the sun-worshipper, that I was a student, happy in books and solitude; and I have no doubt that the picture her mind formed at the moment of some such hidden life together, as we have actually led, you and I, since her death, soothed and consoled her. With her intense and poetic imagination, she knew well what had happened to us, as well as to herself.

"So here we are in this hermitage; and except in a few passing perfunctory words, I have never spoken to you of her. Whether what I have done is wise I cannot tell. I could not help it; and if I had broken my word, remorse would have killed me. I shall not die, however, without telling you—if only I have warning enough.

"But supposing there is no warning—then all that I write now, and much else, will be in your hands some day. There are moments when I feel a rush of comfort at the notion that I may never have to watch your face as you hear the story; there are others when the longing to hold you—child as you still are—against my heart, and feel your tears—your tears for her—mingling with mine, almost sweeps me off my feet.

"And when you grow older my task in all its aspects will be harder still. You have inherited her beauty on a larger, ampler scale, and the time will come for lovers. You will hear of your mother then for the first time; my mind trembles even now at the thought of it. For the story may work out ill, or well, in a hundred different ways; and what we did in love may one day be seen as an error and folly, avenging itself not on us, but on our child.

"Nevertheless, my Diana, if it had to be done again, it must still be done. Your mother, before she died, was tortured by no common pains of body and spirit. Yet she never thought of herself—she was tormented for us. If her vision was clouded, her prayer unwise—in that hour, no argument, no resistance was possible.

"The man who loves you will love you well, my child. You are not made to be lightly or faithlessly loved. He will carry you through the passage perilous if I am no longer there to help. To him—in the distant years—I commit you. On him be my blessing, and the blessing, too, of that poor ghost whose hands I seem to hold in mine as I write. Let him not be too proud to take it!"

Diana put down the book with a low sob that sounded through the quiet room. Then she opened the garden door and stepped on to the terrace. The night was cold but not frosty; there was a waning moon above the autumnal fulness of the garden and the woods.

A "spirit in her feet" impelled her. She went back to the house, found a cloak and hat, put out the lamps, and sent the servants to bed. Then noiselessly she once more undid the drawing-room door, and stole out into the garden and across the lawn. Soon she was in the lime-walk, the first yellow leaves crackling beneath her feet; then in the kitchen garden, where the apples shone dimly on the laden boughs, where sunflowers and dahlias and marigolds, tall white daisies and late roses—the ghosts of their daylight selves—dreamed and drooped under the moon; where the bees slept and only great moths were abroad. And so on to the climbing path and the hollows of the down. She walked quickly along the edge of it, through hanging woods of beech that clothed the hill-side. Sometimes the trees met in majestic darkness above her head, and the path was a glimmering mystery before her. Sometimes the ground broke away on her left—abruptly—in great chasms, torn from the hill-side, stripped of trees, and open to the stars. Down rushed the steep slopes to the plain, clad in the decaying leaf and mast of former years, and at the edges of these precipitous glades, or scattered at long intervals across them, great single trees emerged, the types and masters of the forest, their trunks, incomparably tall, and all their noble limbs, now thinly veiled by a departing leafage, drawn sharp, in black and silver, on the pale background of the chalk plain. Nothing so grandiose as these climbing beech woods of middle England!—by day, as it were, some vast procession marching joyously over hill and dale to the music of the birds and the wind; and at night, a brooding host, silent yet animate, waiting the signal of the dawn.

Diana passed through them, drinking in the exaltation of their silence and their strength, yet driven on by the mere weakness and foolishness of love. By following the curve of the down she could reach a point on the hill-side whence, on a rising ground to the north, Tallyn was visible. She hastened thither through the night. Once she was startled by a shot fired from a plantation near the path, trees began to rustle and dogs to bark, and she fled on, in terror lest the Tallyn keepers might discover her. Alack!—for whose pleasure were they watching now?

The trees fell back. She reached the bare shoulder of the down. Northward and eastward spread the plain; and on the low hill in front her eyes discerned the pale patch of Tallyn, flanked by the darkness of the woods. And in that dim front, a light—surely a light?—in an upper window. She sank down in a hollow of the chalk, her eyes upon the house, murmuring and weeping.

So she watched with Oliver, as once—at the moment of her sharpest pain—he had watched with her. But whereas in that earlier night everything was in the man's hands to will or to do, the woman felt herself now helpless and impotent. His wealth, his mother hedged him from her. And if not, he had forgotten her altogether for Alicia; he cared for her no more; it would merely add to his burden to be reminded of her. As to Alicia—the girl who could cruelly leave him there, in that house of torture, to go and dance and amuse herself—leave him in his pain, his mother in her sorrow—Diana's whole being was shaken first with an anguish of resentful scorn, in which everything personal to herself disappeared. Then—by an immediate revulsion—the thought of Alicia was a thought of deliverance. Gone?—gone from between them?—the flaunting, triumphant, heartless face?

Suddenly it seemed to Diana that she was there beside him, in the darkened room—that he heard her, and looked up.

"Diana!"

"Oliver!" She knelt beside him—she raised his head on her breast—she whispered to him; and at last he slept. Then hostile forms crowded about her, forbidding her, driving her away—even Sir James Chide—in the name of her own youth. And she heard her own answer: "Dear friend!—think!—remember! Let me stay!—let me stay! Am I not the child of sorrow? Here is my natural place—my only joy."

And she broke down into bitter helpless tears, pleading, it seemed, with things and persons inexorable.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in Beechcote village, that night, a man slept lightly, thinking of Diana. Hugh Roughsedge, bronzed and full of honors, a man developed and matured, with the future in his hands, had returned that afternoon to his old home.



CHAPTER XXIII

"How is she?"

Mrs. Colwood shook her head sadly.

"Not well—and not happy."

The questioner was Hugh Roughsedge. The young soldier had walked up to Beechcote immediately after luncheon, finding it impossible to restrain his impatience longer. Diana had not expected him so soon, and had slipped out for her daily half-hour with Betty Dyson, who had had a slight stroke, and was failing fast. So that Mrs. Colwood was at Roughsedge's discretion. But he was not taking all the advantage of it that he might have done. The questions with which his mind was evidently teeming came out but slowly.

Little Mrs. Colwood surveyed him from time to time with sympathy and pleasure. Her round child-like eyes under their long lashes told her everything that as a woman she wanted to know. What an improvement in looks and manner—what indefinable gains in significance and self-possession! Danger, command, responsibility, those great tutors of men, had come in upon the solid yet malleable stuff of which the character was made, moulding and polishing, striking away defects, disengaging and accenting qualities. Who could ever have foreseen that Hugh might some day be described as "a man of the world"? Yet if that vague phrase were to be taken in its best sense, as describing a personality both tempered and refined by the play of the world's forces upon it, it might certainly be now used of the man before her.

He was handsomer than ever; bronzed by Nigerian sun, all the superfluous flesh marched off him; every muscle in his frame taut and vigorous. And at the same time a new self-confidence—apparently quite unconscious, and the inevitable result of a strong and testing experience—was enabling him to bring his powers to bear and into play, as he had never yet done.

She recalled, with some confusion, that she—and Diana?—had tacitly thought of him as good, but stupid. On the contrary, was she, perhaps, in the presence of some one destined to do great things for his country? to lay hold—without intending it, as it were, and by the left hand—oh high distinction? Were women, on the whole, bad judges of young men? She recalled a saying of Dr. Roughsedge, that "mothers never know how clever their sons are." Perhaps the blindness extends to other eyes than mothers?

Meanwhile, she got from him all the news she could. He had been, it seemed, concerned in the vast operation of bringing a new African Empire into being. She listened, dazzled, while in the very simplest, baldest phrases he described the curbing of slave-raiders, the winning of populations, the grappling with the desert, the opening out of river highways, whereof in his seven months he had been the fascinated beholder. As to his own exploits, he was ingeniously silent; but she knew them already. A military expedition against two revolted and slave-raiding emirs, holding strong positions on the great river; a few officers borrowed from home to stiffen a local militia; hot fighting against great odds; half a million of men released from a reign of hell; tyranny broken, and the British pax extended over regions a third as large as India—smiling prosperity within its pale, bestial devastation and cruelty without—these things she knew, or had been able to imagine from the newspapers. According to him, it had been all the doing of other men. She knew better; but soon found it of no use to interrupt him.

Meanwhile she dared not ask him why he had come home. The campaign, indeed, was over; but he had been offered, it appeared, an administrative appointment.

"And you mean to go back?"

"Perhaps." He colored and looked restlessly out of the window.

Mrs. Colwood understood the look, and felt it was, indeed, hard upon him that he must put up with her so long. In reality, he too was conscious of new pleasure in an old acquaintance. He had forgotten what a dear little thing she was: how prettily round-faced, yet delicate—ethereal—in all her proportions, with the kindest eyes. She too had grown—by the mere contact with Diana's fate. Within her tiny frame the soul of her had risen to maternal heights, embracing and sustaining Diana.

He would have given the world to question her. But after her first answer to his first inquiry he had fallen tongue-tied on the subject of Diana, and Nigeria had absorbed conversation. She, on her side, wished him to know many things, but did not see how to begin upon them.

At last she attempted it.

"You have heard of our election? And what happened?"

He nodded. His mother had kept him informed. He understood Marsham had been badly hurt. Was it really so desperate?

In a cautious voice, watching the window, Muriel told what she knew. The recital was pitiful; but Hugh Roughsedge sat impassive, making no comments. She felt that in this quarter the young man was adamant.

"I suppose"—he turned his face from her—"Miss Mallory does not now go to Tallyn."

"No." She hesitated, looking at her companion, a score of feelings mingling in her mind. Then she broke out: "But she would like to!"

His startled look met hers; she was dismayed at what she had done. Yet, how not to give him warning?—this loyal young fellow, feeding himself on futile hopes!

"You mean—she still thinks—of Marsham?"

"Of nothing else," she said, impetuously—"of nothing else!"

He frowned and winced.

She resumed: "It is like her—so like her!—isn't it?"

Her soft pitiful eyes, into which the tears had sprung, pressed the question on him.

"I thought there was a cousin—Miss Drake?" he said, roughly.

Mrs. Colwood hesitated.

"It is said that all that is broken off."

He was silent. But his watch was on the garden. And suddenly, on the long grass path, Diana appeared, side by side with the Vicar. Roughsedge sprang up. Muriel was arrested by Diana's face, and by something rigid in the carriage of the head. What had the Vicar been saying to her?—she asked herself, angrily. Never was there anything less discreet than the Vicar's handling of human nature!—female human nature, in particular.

Hugh Roughsedge opened the glass door, and went to meet them. Diana, at sight of him, gave a bewildered look, as though she scarcely knew him—then a perfunctory hand.

"Captain Roughsedge! They didn't tell me—"

"I want to speak to you," said the Vicar, peremptorily, to Mrs. Colwood; and he carried her off round the corner of the house.

Diana gazed after them, and Roughsedge thought he saw her totter.

"You look so ill!" he said, stooping over her. "Come and sit down."

His boyish nervousness and timidity left him. The strong man emerged and took command. He guided her to a garden seat, under a drooping lime. She sank upon the seat, quite unable to stand, beckoning him to stay by her. So he stood near, reluctantly waiting, his heart contracting at the sight of her.

At last she recovered herself and sat up.

"It was some bad news," she said, looking at him piteously, and holding out her hand again. "It is too bad of me to greet you like this."

He took her hand, and his own self-control broke down. He raised it to his lips with a stifled cry.

"Don't!—don't!" said Diana, helplessly. "Indeed—there is nothing the matter—I am only foolish. It is so—so good of you to care." She drew her hand from his, raised it to her brow, and, drawing a long breath, pushed back the hair from her face. She was like a person struggling against some torturing restraint, not knowing where to turn for help.



But at the word "care" he pulled himself together. He sat down beside her, and plunged straight into his declaration. He went at it with the same resolute simplicity that he was accustomed to throw into his military duty, nor could she stop him in the least. His unalterable affection; his changed and improved prospects; a staff appointment at home if she accepted him; the Nigerian post if she refused him—these things he put before her in the natural manly speech of a young Englishman sorely in love, yet quite incapable of "high flights," It was very evident that he had pondered what he was to say through the days and nights of his exile; that he was doing precisely what he had always planned to do, and with his whole heart in the business. She tried once or twice to interrupt him, but he did not mean to be interrupted, and she was forced to hear it out.

At the end she gave a little gasp.

"Oh, Hugh!" His name, given him for the first time, fell so forlornly—it was such a breathing out of trouble and pity and despair—that his heart took another and a final plunge downward. He had known all through that there was no hope for him; this tone, this aspect settled it. But she stretched out her hands to him, tenderly—appealing. "Hugh—I shall have to tell you—but I am ashamed."

He looked at her in silence a moment, then asked her why. The tears rose brimming in her eyes—her hands still in his.

"Hugh—I—I—have always loved Oliver Marsham—and I—cannot think of any one else. You know what has happened?"

He saw the sob swelling in her white throat.

"Yes!" he said, passionately. "It is horrible. But you cannot go to him—you cannot marry him. He was a coward when he should have stood by you. He cannot claim you now."

She withdrew her hands.

"No!" The passion in her voice matched his own. "But I would give the world if he could—and would!"

There was a pause. Steadily the woman gained upon her own weakness and beat it down. She resumed:

"I must tell you—because—it is the only way—for us two—to be real friends again—and I want a friend so much. The news of Oliver is—is terrible. The Vicar had just seen Mr. Lankester—who is staying there. He is nearly blind—and the pain!" Her hand clinched—she threw her head back. "Oh! I can't speak of it! And it may go on for years. The doctors seem to be all at sea. They say he ought to recover—but they doubt whether he will. He has lost all heart—and hope—he can't help himself. He lies there like a log all day—despairing. And, please—what am I doing here?" She turned upon him impetuously, her cheeks flaming. "They want help—there is no one. Mrs. Fotheringham hardly ever comes. They think Lady Lucy is in a critical state of health too. She won't admit it—she does everything as usual. But she is very frail and ill, and it depresses Oliver. And I am here!—useless—and helpless. Oh, why can't I go?—why can't I go?" She laid her face upon her arms, on the bench, hiding it from him; but he saw the convulsion of her whole frame.

Beside a passion so absolute and so piteous he felt, his own claim shrink into nothingness—impossible, even, to give it voice again. He straightened himself in silence; with an effort of the whole man, the lover put on the friend.

"But you can go," he said, a little hoarsely, "if you feel like that."

She raised herself suddenly.

"How do I know that he wants me?—how do I know that he would even see me?"

Once more her cheeks were crimson. She had shown him her love unveiled; now he was to see her doubt—the shame that tormented her. He felt that it was to heal him she had spoken, and he could do nothing to repay her. He could neither chide her for a quixotic self-sacrifice, which might never be admitted or allowed; nor protest, on Marsham's behalf, against it, for he knew, in truth, nothing of the man; least of all could he plead for himself. He could only sit, staring like a fool, tongue-tied; till Diana, mastering, for his sake, the emotion to which, partly also for his sake, she had given rein, gradually led the conversation back to safer and cooler ground. All the little involuntary arts came in by which a woman regains command of herself, and thereby of her companion. Her hat tired her head; she removed it, and the beautiful hair underneath, falling into confusion, must be put in its place by skilled instinctive fingers, every movement answering to a similar self-restraining effort in the mind within. She dried her tears; she drew closer the black scarf round the shoulders of her white dress; she straightened the violets at her belt—Muriel's mid-day gift—till he beheld her, white and suffering indeed, but lovely and composed—queen of herself.

She made him talk of his adventures, and he obeyed her, partly to help her in the struggle he perceived, partly because in the position—beneath and beyond all hope—to which she had reduced him, it was the only way by which he could save anything out of the wreck. And she bravely responded. She could and did lend him enough of her mind to make it worth his while. A friend should not come home to her from perils of land and sea, and find her ungrateful—a niggard of sympathy and praise.

So that when Dr. and Mrs. Roughsedge appeared, and Muriel returned with them, Mrs. Roughsedge, all on edge with anxiety, could make very little of what had—what must have—occurred. Diana, carved in white wax, but for the sensitive involuntary movements of lip and eyebrow, was listening to a description of an English embassy sent through the length and breadth of the most recently conquered province of Nigeria. The embassy took the news of peace and Imperial rule to a country devastated the year before by the most hideous of slave-raids. The road it marched by was strewn with the skeletons of slaves—had been so strewn probably for thousands of years. "One night my horse trod unawares on two skeletons—women—locked in each other's arms," said Hugh; "scores of others round them. In the evening we camped at a village where every able-bodied male had been killed the year before."

"Shot?" asked the doctor.

"Oh, dear, no! That would have been to waste ammunition. A limb was hacked off, and they bled to death."

His mother was looking at the speaker with all her eyes, but she did not hear a word he said. Was he pale or not?

Diana shuddered.

"And that is stopped—forever?" Her eyes were on the speaker.

"As long as our flag flies there," said the soldier, simply.

Her look kindled. For a moment she was the shadow, the beautiful shadow, of her old Imperialist self—the proud, disinterested lover of her country.

The doctor shook his head.

"Don't forget the gin, and the gin-traders on the other side, Master Hugh."

"They don't show their noses in the new provinces," said the young man, quietly; "we shall straighten that out too, in the long run—you'll see."

But Diana had ceased to listen. Mrs. Roughsedge, turning toward her, and with increasing foreboding, saw, as it were, the cloud of an inward agony, suddenly recalled, creep upon the fleeting brightness of her look, as the evening shade mounts upon and captures a sunlit hill-side. The mother, in spite of her native optimism, had never cherished any real hope of her son's success. But neither had she expected, on the other side, a certainty so immediate and so unqualified. She saw before her no settled or resigned grief. The Tallyn tragedy had transformed what had been almost a recovered serenity, a restored and patient equilibrium, into something violent, tumultuous, unstable—prophesying action. But what—poor child!—could the action be?

* * * * *

"Poor Hugh!" said Mrs. Roughsedge to her husband on their return, as she stood beside him, in his study. Her voice was low, for Hugh had only just gone up-stairs, and the little house was thinly built.

The doctor rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and then looked round him for a cigarette.

"Yes," he said, slowly; "but he enjoyed his walk home."

"Henry!"

Hugh had walked back to the village with Mrs. Colwood, who had an errand there, and it was true that he had talked much to her out of earshot of his parents, and had taken a warm farewell of her at the end.

"Why am I to be 'Henry'-ed?"—inquired the doctor, beginning on his cigarette.

"Because you must know," said his wife, in an energetic whisper, "that Hugh had almost certainly proposed to Miss Mallory before we arrived, and she had refused him!"

The doctor meditated.

"I still say that Hugh enjoyed his walk," he repeated; "I trust he will have others of the same kind—with the same person."

"Henry, you are really incorrigible!" cried his wife. "How can you make jokes—on such a thing—with that girl's face before you!"

"Not at all," said the doctor, protesting. "I am not making jokes, Patricia. But what you women never will understand is, that it was not a woman but a man that wrote—

"'If she be not fair for me— What care I—'"

"Henry!" and his wife, beside herself, tried to stop his mouth with her hand.

"All right, I won't finish," said the doctor, placidly, disengaging himself. "But let me assure you, Patricia, whether you like it or not, that that is a male sentiment. I quite agree that no nice woman could have written it. But, then, Hugh is not a nice woman—nor am I."

"I thought you were so fond of her!" said his wife, reproachfully.

"Miss Mallory? I adore her. But, to tell the truth, Patricia, I want a daughter-in-law—and—and grand-children," added the doctor, deliberately, stretching out his long limbs to the fire. "I admit that my remarks may be quite irrelevant and ridiculous—but I repeat that—in spite of everything—Hugh enjoyed his walk."

* * * * *

One October evening, a week later, Lady Lucy sat waiting for Sir James Chide at Tallyn Hall. Sir James had invited himself to dine and sleep, and Lady Lucy was expecting him in the up-stairs sitting-room, a medley of French clocks and china figures, where she generally sat now, in order to be within quick and easy reach of Oliver.

She was reading, or pretending to read, by the fire, listening all the time for the sound of the carriage outside. Meanwhile, the silence of the immense house oppressed her. It was broken only by the chiming of a carillon clock in the hall below. The little tune it played, fatuously gay, teased her more insistently each time she heard it. It must really be removed. She wondered Oliver had not already complained of it.

A number of household and estate worries oppressed her thoughts. How was she to cope with them? Capable as she was, "John" had always been there to advise her, in emergency—or Oliver. She suspected the house-steward of dishonesty. And the agent of the estate had brought her that morning complaints of the head gamekeeper that were most disquieting. What did they want with gamekeepers now? Who would ever shoot at Tallyn again? With impatience she felt herself entangled in the endless machinery of wealth and the pleasures of wealth, so easy to set in motion, and so difficult to stop, even when all the savor has gone out of it. She was a tired, broken woman, with an invalid son; and the management of her great property, in which her capacities and abilities had taken for so long an imperious and instinctive delight, had become a mere burden. She longed to creep into some quiet place, alone with Oliver, out of reach of this army of servants and dependents, these impassive and unresponsive faces.

The crunching of the carriage wheels on the gravel outside gave her a start of something like pleasure. Among the old friends there was no one now she cared so much to see as Sir James Chide. Sir James had lately left Parliament and politics, and had taken a judgeship. She understood that he had lost interest in politics after and in consequence of John Ferrier's death; and she knew, of course, that he had refused the Attorney-Generalship, on the ground of the treatment meted out to his old friend and chief. During the month of Oliver's second election, moreover, she had been very conscious of Sir James's hostility to her son. Intercourse between him and Tallyn had practically ceased.

Since the accident, however, he had been kind—very kind.

The door opened, and Sir James was announced. She greeted him with a tremulous and fluttering warmth that for a moment embarrassed her visitor, accustomed to the old excess of manner and dignity, wherewith she kept her little world in awe. He saw, too, that the havoc wrought by age and grief had gone forward rapidly since he had seen her last.

"I am afraid there is no better news of Oliver?" he said, gravely, as he sat down beside her.

She shook her head.

"We are in despair, Nothing touches the pain but morphia. And he has lost heart himself so much during the last fortnight."

"You have had any fresh opinion?"

"Yes. The last man told me he still believed the injury was curable, but that Oliver must do a great deal for himself. And that he seems incapable of doing. It is, of course, the shock to the nerves, and—the general—disappointment—"

Her voice shook. She stared into the fire.

"You mean—about politics?" said Sir James, after a pause.

"Yes. Whenever I speak cheerfully to him, he asks me what there is to live for. He has been driven out of politics—by a conspiracy—"

Sir James moved impatiently.

"With health he would soon recover everything," he said, rather shortly.

She made no reply, and her shrunken faded look—as of one with no energy for hope—again roused his pity.

"Tell me," he said, bending toward her—"I don't ask from idle curiosity—but—has there been any truth in the rumor of Oliver's engagement to Miss Drake?"

Lady Lucy raised her head sharply. The light came back to her eyes.

"She was engaged to him, and three weeks after his accident she threw him over."

Sir James made a sound of amazement. Lady Lucy went on:

"She left him and me, barely a fortnight afterward, to go to a big country-house party in the north. That will show you—what she's made of. Then she wrote—a hypocritical letter—putting it on him. He must not be agitated, nor feel her any burden upon him; so, for his sake, she broke it off. Of course, they were to be cousins and friends again just as before. She had arranged it all to her own satisfaction—and was meanwhile flirting desperately, as we heard from various people in the north, with Lord Philip Darcy. Oliver showed me her letter, and at last told me the whole story. I persuaded him not to answer it. A fortnight ago, she wrote again, proposing to come back here—to 'look after' us—poor things! This time, I replied. She would like Tallyn, no doubt, as a place of retreat, should other plans fail; but it will not be open to her!"

It was not energy now—vindictive energy—that was lacking to the personality before him!

"An odious young woman" exclaimed Sir James, lifting hands and eyebrows. "I am afraid I always thought so, saving your presence, Lady Lucy. However, she will want a retreat; for her plans—in the quarter you name—have not a chance of success."

"I am delighted to hear it!" said Lady Lucy, still erect and flushed. "What do you know?"

"Simply that Lord Philip is not in the least likely to marry her, having, I imagine, views in quite other quarters—so I am told. But he is the least scrupulous of men—and no doubt if, at Eastham, she threw herself into his arms—'what mother's son,' et cetera. Only, if she imagined herself to have caught him—such an old and hardened stager!—in a week—her abilities are less than I supposed."

"Alicia's self-conceit was always her weak point."

But as she spoke the force imparted by resentment died away. Lady Lucy sank back in her chair.

"And Oliver felt it very much?" asked Sir James, after a pause, his shrewd eyes upon her.

"He was wounded, of course—he has been more depressed since; but I have never believed that he was in love with her."

Sir James did not pursue the subject, but the vivacity of the glance bent now on the fire, now on his companion, betrayed the marching thoughts behind.

"Will Oliver see me this evening?" he inquired, presently.

"I hope so. He promised me to make the effort."

A servant knocked at the door. It was Oliver's valet.

"Please, my lady, Mr. Marsham wished me to say he was afraid he would not be strong enough to see Sir James Chide to-night. He is very sorry—and would Sir James be kind enough to come and see him after breakfast to-morrow?"

Lady Lucy threw up her hands in a little gesture of despair, Then she rose, and went to speak to the servant in the doorway.

When she returned she looked whiter and more shrivelled than before.

"Is he worse to-night?" asked Sir James, gently.

"It is the pain," she said, in a muffled voice; "and we can't touch it—yet. He mustn't have any more morphia—yet."

She sat down once more. Sir James, the best of gossips, glided off into talk of London, and of old common friends, trying to amuse and distract her. But he realized that she scarcely listened to him, and that he was talking to a woman whose life was being ground away between a last affection and the torment it had power to cause her. A new Lady Lucy, indeed! Had any one ever dared to pity her before?

Meanwhile, five miles off, a girl whom he loved as a daughter was eating her heart out for sorrow over this mother and son—consumed, as he guessed, with the wild desire to offer them, in any sacrificial mode they pleased, her youth and her sweet self. In one way or another he had found out that Hugh Roughsedge had been sent about his business—of course, with all the usual softening formulae.

And now there was a kind of mute conflict going on between himself and Mrs. Colwood on the one side, and Diana on the other side.

No, she should not spend and waste her youth in the vain attempt to mend this house of tragedy!—it was not to be tolerated—not to be thought of. She would suffer, but she would get over it; and Oliver would probably die. Sooner or later she would begin life afresh, if only he was able to stand between her and the madness in her heart.

But as he sat there, looking at Lady Lucy, he realized that it might have been better for his powers and efficacy as a counsellor if he, too, had held aloof from this house of pain.



CHAPTER XXIV

It was about ten o'clock at night. Lankester, who had arrived from London an hour before, had said good-night to Lady Lucy and Sir James, and had slipped into Marsham's room. Marsham had barred his door that evening against both his mother and Sir James. But Lankester was not excluded.

Off and on and in the intervals of his parliamentary work he had been staying at Tallyn for some days. A letter from Lady Lucy, in reply to an inquiry, had brought him down. Oliver had received him with few words—indeed, with an evident distaste for words; but at the end of the first day's visit had asked him abruptly, peremptorily even, to come again.

When he entered Marsham's room he found the invalid asleep under the influence of morphia. The valet, a young fellow, was noiselessly putting things straight. Lankester noticed that he looked pale.

"A bad time?" he said, in a whisper, standing beside the carefully regulated spinal couch on which Marsham was sleeping.

"Awful, sir. He was fair beside himself till we gave him the morphia."

"Is there anybody sitting up?"

"No. He'll be quiet now for six or seven hours. I shall be in the next room."

The young man spoke wearily. It was clear that the moral strain of what he had just seen had weighed upon him as much as the fatigue of the day's attendance.

"Come!" said Lankester, looking at him. "You want a good night. Go to my room. I'll lie down there." He pointed to Marsham's bedroom, now appropriated to the valet, while the master, for the sake of space and cheerfulness, had been moved into the sitting-room. The servant hesitated, protested, and was at last persuaded, being well aware of Marsham's liking for this queer, serviceable being.

Lankester took various directions from him, and packed him off. Then, instead of going to the adjoining room, he chose a chair beside a shaded lamp, and said to himself that he would sleep by the fire.

Presently the huge house sank into a silence even more profound than that in which it was now steeped by day. A cold autumn wind blew round about it. After midnight the wind dropped, and the temperature with it. The first severe frost laid its grip on forest and down and garden. Silently the dahlias and the roses died, the leaves shrivelled and blackened, and a cold and glorious moon rose upon the ruins of the summer.

Lankester dozed and woke, keeping up the fire, and wrapping himself in an eider-down, with which the valet had provided him. In the small hours he walked across the room to look at Marsham. He was lying still and breathing heavily. His thick fair hair, always slightly gray from the time he was thirty, had become much grayer of late; the thin handsome face was drawn and damp, the eyes cavernous, the lips bloodless. Even in sleep his aspect showed what he had suffered.