"My dear fellow, about such men as de Tocqueville and Rochambeau there can be no possible question."

"Ah! I'm extremely glad to hear you say so. I feared, perhaps, the way they managed their table-napkins—"

"Not at all. I was thinking rather of your bold attitude towards Sunday observance. What does Milliton say?"

Endymion's eyebrows went up. Mr. Milliton was the vicar of Axcester and the living lay in the Westcotes' gift. I am not—ah—aware that I consulted Milliton. On such questions I recognise no responsibility save to my own conscience. He has not been complaining, I trust?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Ah!" Endymion looked as if Mr. Milliton had better not. "I take, you must know, a somewhat broad view on such matters—may I, without offence, term it a liberal one? As a matter of fact I intend going yet farther in the direction and granting permission for a small reunion on Sunday evenings at 'The Dogs,' when selections of purely sacred music will be performed. I shall, of course, deprecate the name 'concert '; and even 'performance' may seem to carry with it some—ah— suggestions of a theatrical nature. But, as Shakespeare says, 'What's in a name?' Perhaps you can suggest a more suitable one?"

"A broad-minded fellow," was the general verdict; and some admirers added that ideas which in weaker men might seem to lean towards free thought, and even towards Jacobinism, became Mr. Westcote handsomely enough. He knew how to carry them off, to wear them lightly as flourishes and ornaments of his robust common sense, and might be trusted not to go too far. Endymion, who had an exquisite flair for the approval of his own class, soon learned to take an honest pride in his liberalism and to enjoy its discreet display. 'The entertainment at Bayfield' was nothing—a private experiment only; the unfamiliar must be handled gently; a good rule to try it on your own household before tackling the world. As a matter of fact, old Narcissus had enjoyed it. But if the neighbouring families were really curious, and would promise not to be shocked, they must come to "The Dogs" some Sunday evening: No, not next Sunday, but in a week or two's time when the prisoners, as intelligent fellows, would have grasped his notions.'

Sure enough, on the third Sunday he brought a round dozen of guests; and the entrance of the Bayfield party (punctually five minutes late), and their solemn taking of seats in the two front rows, thereafter became a feature of these entertainments. On the first occasion the musicians stopped, out of respect, in the middle of a motet of Scarlatti's; but Endymion gave orders that in future this was not to be.

"I have been something of an amateur myself," he explained, "and know what is due to Art."

It vexed Dorothea to note that after the first two or three performances some of her best friends among the prisoners absented themselves, General Rochambeau for one. Indeed, the General had taken to declining all invitations, and rarely appeared abroad. One March morning, meeting him in the High Street, she made bold to tax him with the change and ask his reasons.

The hour was eleven in the forenoon, the busiest of the day. In twenty minutes the London coach would be due with the mails, and this always brought the prisoners out into the street. The largest crowd gathered in front of "The Dogs," waiting to see the horses changed and the bags unloaded. But a second hung around the Post Office, where the Commissary received and distributed the prisoners' letters, while lesser groups shifted and moved about at the tail of the butchers' carts, and others laden with milk, eggs, and fresh vegetables from the country; for Axcester had now a daily market, and in the few minutes before the mail's arrival the salesmen drove their best trade.

General Rochambeau tapped his snuffbox meditatively, like a man in two minds. But he kept a sidelong eye upon Dorothea, as she turned to acknowledge a bow from the Vicomte de Tocqueville. The Vicomte, with an air of amused contempt, was choosing a steak for his dinner, using his gold-ferruled walking-stick to direct the butcher how to cut it out, while his servant stood ready with a plate.

"To tell you the truth, Mademoiselle, I find a hand at picquet with the Admiral less fatiguing for two old gentlemen than these public gaieties."

"In other words, you are nursing him. They tell me he has never been well since that night of the snowstorm."

"Your informants may now add that he is better; these few Spring days have done wonders for his rheumatism, and, indeed, he is dressed and abroad this morning."

"Which explains why you are willing to stop and chat with me, instead of hurrying off to the Post Office to ask for his letter—that letter which never comes."

"So M. Raoul has been telling you all about us?"

Dorothea blushed.

"He happened to speak of it, at one of my working parties—"

"He has a fine gift for the pathetic, that young man; oh, yes, and a pretty humour too! I can fancy what he makes of us—poor old Damon and Pythias—while he holds the skeins; with a smile for poor old Pythias' pigtail, and a tremor of the voice for the Emperor's tabatiere, and a tear, no doubt, for the letter which never comes. M. Raoul is great with an audience."

"You do him injustice, General. An audience of half-a-dozen old women!"

General Rochambeau had an answer to this on his tongue, but repressed it.

"Ah, here comes the Admiral!" he cried, as the gaunt old man came shuffling down the street towards them, with his stoop, his cross- grained features drawn awry with twinges of rheumatism, his hands crossed above his tall cane. All Axcester laughed at his long blue surtout, his pigtail and little round hat. But Dorothea always found him formidable, and wanted to run away. "Admiral, I was just about to tell Miss Westcote that the time is come to congratulate her. Here is winter past—except that of two years ago, the hardest known in Axcester; and, thanks to her subscription lists and working parties, our countrymen have never gone so well fed and warmly clad."

"Which," growled the Admiral, "does not explain why no less than eight of them have broken their parole. An incredible, a shameful number!"

"As time goes on, Admiral, they grow less patient. Hope deferred—"

Ta-ra, tara-ra! Ta-ra, tara-ra-ra! The notes of the guard's horn broke in upon Dorothea's excuse. Groups scattered, market carts were hastily backed alongside the pavement, and down the mid-thoroughfare came the mail at a gallop, with crack of whip and rushing chime of bits and swingle-bars.

Dorothea watched the crowd closing round it as it drew up by "The Dogs," and turned to note that the Admiral's face was pale and his eyes sought those of his old friend.

"Better leave it to me to-day, if Miss Westcote will excuse me."

General Rochambeau lifted his hat and hurried after the crowd.

Then Dorothea understood. The old man beside her had lost courage to pick up his old habit; at the last moment his friend must go for the letter which never came. She cast about to say something; her last words had been of hope deferred—it would not do to take up her speech there . . .

The Admiral seemed to meet her eyes with an effort. He put out a hand.

"It is not good, Mademoiselle, that a man should pity himself. Beware how you teach that; beware how you listen to him then."

He turned from her abruptly and tottered away. Glancing aside, she met the Vicomte de Tocqueville's tired smile; he was using his cane to prod the butcher and recall his attention to the half-cut steak. But the butcher continued to stare down the street.

"Eh? But, dear me, it sounds like an emeute," said the Vicomte, negligently; at the same time stepping to Dorothea's side.

The murmur of the crowd in front of "The Dogs" had been swelling, and now broke into sharp, angry cries for a moment; then settled into a dull roar, and rose in a hoarse crescendo. The mail coach was evidently not the centre of disturbance, though Dorothea could see its driver waving his arm and gesticulating from the box. The noise came ahead of it, some twenty yards lower down the hill, where the street had suddenly grown black with people pressing and swaying.

"There seems no danger here, whatever it is," said the Vicomte, glancing up at the house-front above.

"Please go and see what is the matter. I am safe enough," Dorothea assured him. "The folks in the house will give me shelter, if necessary."

The Vicomte lifted his hat. "I will return and report promptly, if the affair be serious."

But it was not serious. The tumult died down, and Dorothea with her riding-switch was guarding the half-cut steak from a predatory dog when the Vicomte and the butcher returned together.

"Reassure yourself, Miss Westcote," said M. de Tocqueville. "There has been no bloodshed, though bloodshed was challenged. It appears that almost as the coach drew up there arrived from the westward a post- chaise conveying a young naval officer from Plymouth, with despatches and (I regret to tell it) a flag. His Britannic Majesty has captured another of our frigates; and the high spirited young gentleman was making the most of it in all innocence, and without an idea that his triumph could offend anyone in Axcester. Unfortunately, on his way up the street, he waved the captured tricolor under the nose of your brother's protege, M. Raoul—"

"M. Raoul!" Dorothea caught her breath on the name.

"And M. Raoul leapt into the chaise, then and there wrested the flag from him—the more easily no doubt because he expected nothing so little and holding it aloft, challenged him to mortal combat. Theatrically, and apart from the taste of it (I report only from hearsay), the coup must have been immensely successful. When I arrived, your brother was restoring peace, the young Briton holding out his hand—swearing he was sorry, begad! but how the deuce was he to have known ?—and M. Raoul saving the situation, and still demanding blood with a face as long as an Alexandrine:

"'Ce drapeau glorieux auquel, en sanglotant, Se prosternent affaises vos membres, veterans!'

"'Vary sorry, damitol, shake hands, beg your pardon.'"

The Vicomte forgot his languor, and burlesqued the scene with real talent.

Dorothea, however, was not amused.

"You say my brother is at 'The Dogs,' Monsieur? I think I will go to him."

"You must allow me, then, to escort you."

"Oh, the street is quite safe. Your countrymen will not suspect me of exulting over their misfortunes."

"Nevertheless—" he insisted, and walked beside her.

A mixed crowd of French and English still surrounded the chaise, to which a couple of postboys were attaching the relay: the French no longer furious, now that an apology had been offered and the flag hidden, but silent and sulky yet; the English inclined to think the young lieutenant hardly served, not to say churlishly. Frenchmen might be thin-skinned; but war was war, and surely Britons had a right to raise three cheers for a victory. Besides he had begged pardon at once, and offered to shake hands like a gentleman—that is, as soon as he discovered whose feelings were hurt; for naturally the fisticuffs had come first, and in these Master Raoul had taken as good as he brought. As the Vicomte cleared a path for her to the porch, where Endymion stood shaking hands and bidding adieu, Dorothea caught her first and last glimpse of this traveller, who—without knowing it, without seeing her face to remember it, or even learning her name—was to deflect the slow current of her life, and send it whirling down a strange channel, giddy, precipitous, to an end unguessed.

She saw a fresh-complexioned lad, somewhat flushed and red in the face, but of frank and pleasant features; dressed in a three-cornered cocked- hat, blue coat piped with white and gilt-buttoned, white breeches and waistcoat, and broad black sword-belt; a youngster of the sort that loves a scrimmage or a jest, but is better in a scrimmage than in a jest when the laugh goes against him. He was eying the chaise just now, and obviously cursing the hour in which he had decorated it with laurel.

Yet on the whole in a trying situation he bore himself well.

"Ah, much obliged to you, Vicomte!" Endymion hailed the pair. "There has been a small misunderstanding, my dear Dorothea; not the slightest cause for alarm! Still, you had better pass through to the coffee-room and wait for me."

Dorothea dismissed M. de Tocqueville with a bow, passed into the dark passage and pushed open the coffee-room door.

Within sat a young man, his elbows on the table, and his face bowed upon his arms. His fingers convulsively twisted a torn scrap of bunting; his shoulders heaved. It was M. Raoul.

Dorothea paused in the doorway and spoke his name. He did not look up.

She stepped towards him.

"M. Raoul!"

A sob shook him. She laid a hand gently on his bowed head, on the dark wave of hair above his strong, shapely neck. She was full of pity, longing to comfort . . .

"M. Raoul!"

He started, gazed up at her, and seized her hand. His eyes swam with tears, but behind the tears blazed a light which frightened her. Yet— oh, surely!—she could not mistake it.

"Dorothea!"

He held both her hands now. He was drawing her towards him. She could not speak. The room swam; outside the window she heard the noise of starting hoofs, of wheels, of the English crowd hurrahing as the chaise rolled away. Her head almost touched M. Raoul's breast. Then she broke loose, as her brother's step sounded in the passage.



CHAPTER VII

LOVE AND AN OLD MAID

I pray you be gentle with Dorothea. Find, if you can, something admirable in this plain spinster keeping, at the age of thirty-seven, a room in her breast adorned and ready for first love; find it pitiful, if you must, that the blind boy should mistake his lodging; only do not laugh, or your laughter may accuse you in the sequel.

She had a most simple heart. Wonder filled it as she rode home to Bayfield, and by the bridge she reined up Mercury as if to take her bearings in an unfamiliar country. At her feet rushed the Axe, swollen by spring freshets; a bullfinch, wet from his bath, bobbed on the sand- stone parapet, shook himself, and piped a note or two; away up the stream, among the alders, birds were chasing and courting; from above the Bayfield elms, out of spaces of blue, the larks' song fell like a din of innumerable silver hammers. Either new sense had been given her, or the rains had washed the landscape and restored obliterated lines, colours, meanings. The very leaves by the roadside were fragrant as flowers.

For the moment it sufficed to know that she was loved, and that she loved. She was no fool. At the back of all her wonder lay the certainty that in the world's eyes such love as hers was absurd; that it must end where it began; that Raoul could never be hers, nor she escape from a captivity as real as his. But, perhaps because she knew all this so certainly, she could put it aside. This thing had come to her: this happiness to which, alone, in darkness, depressed by every look into the mirror, by every casual proof that her brothers and intimates accepted the verdict as final, her soul had been loyal—a forgotten servant of a neglectful lord. In the silence of her own room, in her garden, in the quiet stir of household duties, and again during the long evenings while she sat knitting by the fire and her brothers talked, she had pondered much upon love and puzzled herself with many questions. She had watched girls and their lovers, wives and their husbands. Can love (she had asked) draw near and pass and go its way unrecognised? She had conned the signs. Now the hour had come, and she had needed none of her learning—eyes, hands, and voice, she had known the authentic god.

And she knew that it was not absurd; she knew herself worthy of love's belated condescension—not Raoul's; for the moment she scarcely thought of Raoul; for the moment Raoul's image grew faint and indefinite in the glory of being loved. Instinct, too, thrust it into the background; for as Raoul grew definite so must his youth, his circumstances, the world's laughter, the barriers never to be overcome. But merely to be loved, and to rest in that knowledge awhile—here were no barriers. The thing had happened: it was: nothing could forbid or efface it.

Yet when she reached home, after forcing the astonished Mercury to canter up the entire length of Bayfield hill, she must walk straight to her room, and study her face in the glass.

"It has happened to you—to you! Why has it not transfigured you?— but then people would guess. Your teeth stand out—well, not so very prominently—but they stand out, and that is why foreigners laugh at Englishwomen. Yes, it has happened to you; but why? how?" It so happened that she must meet him the next day. Narcissus had engaged him to make drawings of the Bayfield pavement, a new series to supersede hers in an enlarged edition of the treatise. Every one of the tessellae was to be drawn to scale, and she must meet him to-morrow in the library with her brother and receive instructions, for she had promised to help in taking measurements.

When the time came, and she entered the library, she did not indeed dare to lift her eyes. But Narcissus, already immersed in calculations, scarcely looked up from his paper. "Ah, there you are! Have you brought the India-ink?" he asked, and after a minute she marvelled at her own self-possession. Even when he left them to work out the measurements together (and it flashed upon her that henceforth they would often be left together, her immunity being taken for granted), she kept her head bowed over the papers and managed to control her voice to put one or two ordinary questions—until the pencil dropped from her fingers and she felt her hand imprisoned.

"Dorothea!"

"Oh, please, no!" she entreated hoarsely. "M. Raoul—!"

"Charles—" She attempted to draw her hand away; but, failing, lifted her eyes for mercy. They were sick and troubled. "Charles," he insisted.

"Charles, then." She relented and he kissed her gaily. It was as if she drank in the kiss and, the next moment, recoiled from it. He released her hand and waited, watching her. She stood upright by the table, her shoulder turned to him, her eyes gazing through the long window upon the green stretch of lawn. She was trembling slightly.

"It—it hurts like a wound," she murmured, and her hand went up to her breast. "But you must listen, please. You know—better than I—that this is the end. Oh, yes"—as he would have interrupted—"it is beautiful—for me. But I am old and you are a boy, and it is all quite silly. Please listen: even apart from this, it would be quite silly and could end nowhere."

He caught at her hand again, and she let it lie in his.

"Nowhere," she repeated, and, lifting her head, nodded twice. Her eyes were brimming.

"But if you love me?" he began.

She waited a moment, but he did not finish. "Ah! there it is, you see: you cannot finish. I was afraid to meet you to-day; but now I am glad, because we can talk about it once and for all. Charles"—she hesitated over the name—"dear, I have been thinking. Since we see this so clearly, it can be no treachery to my brothers to let our love stand where it does. At my age"—and Dorothea laughed nervously—"one is more easily contented than at yours."

"I cannot bear your talking in this way."

"Oh yes, you can," she assured him with a practical little nod. "I don't like it myself, but it has to be done. Now in the first place, when we meet like this there must be no kissing." She blushed, while her voice wavered again over the word; then, as again his hand closed upon hers, she laughed. "Well—yes, you may kiss my hand. But I must not have it on my conscience that I am hiding from Endymion and Narcissus what they have a right to know. Of course they would be angry if they knew that I—that I was fond of you at all; but they would have no right, for they could not have forbidden or prevented it. Now if our prospects were what folks would call happier, why then in earnest of them you might kiss me, but then you would be bound to go to my brothers and tell them. But since it can all come to nothing—" A ghost of a smile finished the sentence.

"This war cannot last for ever."

"It seems to have lasted ever since I can remember. But what difference could its ending make? Ah, yes, then I should lose you!" she cried in dismay, but added with as sudden remorse: "Forgive my selfishness!"

"You are adorable," said he, and they laughed and picked up their pencils.

Dorothea's casuistry might prove her ignorant of love and its perils, as a child is of fire; but having, as she deemed, discovered the limits of her duty and set up her terms with Raoul upon them, she soon developed a wonderful cunning in the art of being loved. Her plainness and the difference in their ages she took for granted, and subtly persuaded Raoul to take for granted; she had no affectations, no minauderies; by instinct she avoided setting up any illusion which he could not share; unconsciously and naturally she rested her strength on the maternal, protective side of love. Raoul came to her with his woes, his difficulties, his quarrel against fate; and she talked them over with him, and advised him almost as might a wise elder sister. She had read the Confessions; and, in spite of the missing pages, with less of fascination than disgust; yet had absorbed more than she knew. In Raoul she recognised certain points of likeness to his great countryman—points which had puzzled, her in the book. Now the book helped her to treat them, though she was unaware of its help. Still less aware was she of any likeness between her and Madame de Warens, of whom (again in spite of the missing pages) she had a poor opinion.

The business of the drawings brought Raoul to Bayfield almost daily, and, as she had foreseen, they were much alone.

After all, since it could end in nothing, the situation had its advantages; no one in the household gave it a thought, apparently. Dorothea was not altogether sure about Polly; once or twice she had caught Polly eying her with an odd expression—once especially, when she had looked up as the girl was plaiting her hair, and their eyes met in the glass. And once again Dorothea had sent her to the library with a note of instructions left that morning by Narcissus, and, following a few minutes later, had found her standing and talking with M. Raoul in an attitude which, without being familiar, was not quite respectful.

"What was she saying?" her mistress asked, a moment or two later.

"Oh, nothing," he answered negligently. "I suppose that class of person cannot be troubled to show respect to prisoners."

That evening Dorothea rated the girl soundly for her pertness. "And I shall speak to Zeally," she threatened, "if anything of the kind happens again. If Mr. Endymion is to let you two have a house when you marry, and take in the Frenchmen as lodgers, he will want to know that you treat them respectfully."

Polly wept, and was forgiven.

April, May, June, went by, and still Dorothea lived in her dream, troubled only by dread of the day which must bring her lover's task to an end, and, with it, his almost daily visits. Bit by bit she learned his story. He told her of Arles, his birthplace, with its Roman masonry and amphitheatre; of a turreted terraced chateau and a family of aristocrats lording it among the vineyards; conspiring a little later with other noble families, entertaining them at secret meetings of the Chiffonne, where oaths were taken; later again, defending itself behind barricades of paving-stones; last of all, marched or carried in batches to the guillotine or the fusillade. He told of Avignon and its Papal Castle overhanging the Rhone, the city where he had spent his school days, and at the age of nine had seen Patriot L'Escuyer stabbed to death in the Cordeliers' Church with women's scissors; had seen Jourdan, the avenger, otherwise Coupe-tete, march flaming by at the head of his brave brigands d'Avignon. He told of the sequel, the hundred and thirty men, women and babes slaughtered in the dungeon of the Glaciere; of Choisi's Dragoons and Grenadiers at the gates, and how, with roses scattered before them, they marched through the streets to the Castle, entered the gateway and paused, brought to a stand by the stench of putrefying flesh. He and his school mates had taken a holiday—their master being in hiding—to see the bodies lifted out. Also he had seen the search party ride out through the gates and return again, bringing Jourdan, with feet strapped beneath his horse's belly. He told of his journey to, Paris—his purpose to learn to paint (at such a time!); of the great David, fat and wheezy, back at his easel, panting from civil blood-shed; of the call to arms, his enlistment, his first campaign of 1805; of the foggy morning of Austerlitz, his wound, and he long hours he lay in the rear of a battery on the height of Pratzen, writhing, watching the artillerymen at work and so on, with stories of marching and fighting, nights slept out by him at full length on the sodden turf beside his arms.

She had no history to tell him in exchange; she asked only to listen and to comfort. Yet so cleverly he addressed his story that the longest monologue became, by aid of a look or pressure of the hand, a conversation in which she, his guardian angel, bore her part. Did he talk of Avignon, for instance? It was the land of Laura and Petrarch, and she, seated with half-closed eyes beneath the Bayfield elms, saw the pair beside the waters of Vaucluse, saw the roses and orange-trees and arid plains of Provence, and wondered at the trouble in their spiritual love. She was not troubled; love as "a dureless content and a trustless joy" lay outside of her knowledge, and she had no desire to prove it. In this only she forgot the difference between Raoul's age and hers.

The day came when his work was ended. They spent a great part of that afternoon in the garden, now in the height of its midsummer glory. Raoul was very silent.

"But this must not end. It cannot end so!" he groaned once or twice.

He never forgot for long his old spite against Time.

"It will never end for me," she murmured.

"Of what are you made, then, that you look forward to living on shadows?—one would say, almost cheerfully! I believe you could be happy if you never saw me again!"

"Even if that had to be," she answered gravely, "while I knew you loved me I should never be quite unhappy. But you must find a way, while you can, to come sometimes; yes, you must come."



CHAPTER VIII

CORPORAL ZEALLY INTERVENES

Dorothea sat in the great hall of Bayfield, between the lamplight and the moonlight, listening to the drip of the fountain beneath its tiny cupola. A midsummer moon-ray fell through the uncurtained lantern beneath the dome and spread in a small pool of silver at her feet. Beneath one of the two shaded lamps Endymion lounged in his armchair and read the Sherborne Mercury. Narcissus had carried off the other to a table across the hall by the long bookcase, and above the pot-plants banked about the fountain she saw it shining on his shapely grey head as he bent over a copy of the Antonine Itinerary and patiently worked out a new theory of its distances. Her own face rested in deep shadow, and she felt grateful for it as she leaned back thinking her own thoughts. It was a whole week now since Charles had visited Bayfield, but she had encountered him that morning in Axcester High Street as she passed up it on horseback with her brothers. Narcissus had reined up to put some question or other about the drawings, but Endymion (who did not share his brother's liking for M. Raoul) had ridden on, and she had ridden on too, though reluctantly. She recalled his salute, his glance at her, and down-dropped eyes; she wondered what point Narcissus and he had discussed, and blamed herself for not having found courage to ask. . . .

The stable clock struck ten. She arose and kissed her brothers good- night. By Narcissus she paused.

"Be careful of your eyes, dear. And if you are going to be busy with that great book these next few evenings I will have the table brought across to the other side where you will be cosier."

Narcissus came out of his calculations and looked up at her gently. "Please do not disarrange the furniture for me; a change always fidgets me, even before I take in precisely what has happened." He smiled. "In that I resemble my old friend Vespasian, who would have no alterations made when he visited his home—manente villa qualis fuerat olim, ne quid scilicet oculorum consuetudini deperiret. A pleasant trait, I have always thought."

He lit her candle and kissed her, and Dorothea went up the broad staircase to her own room. Half-way along the corridor she stayed a moment to look down upon the hall. Endymion had dropped his newspaper and was yawning; a sure sign that Narcissus, already reabsorbed in the Itinerary, would in a few moments be hurried from it to bed.

She reached the door of her room and opened it, then checked an exclamation of annoyance. For some mysterious reason Polly had forgotten to light her candle. This was her rule, never broken before.

She stepped to the bellpull. Her hand was on it, when she heard the girl's voice muttering in the next room—the boudoir. At least, it sounded like Polly's voice, though its tone was strangely subdued and level. "Talking to herself," Dorothea decided, and smiled, in spite of her annoyance, as everyone smiles who catches another in this trick. She dropped the bellpull and opened the boudoir door.

Polly was not talking to herself. She was leaning far out of the open window, and at the sound of the door started back into the room with a gasp and a short cry.

"To whom were you talking?"

Dorothea had set the candle down in the bedroom. Outside the window the park lay spread to the soft moonshine, but the moon did not look directly into the boudoir. In the half-light mistress and maid sought each other's eyes.

"To whom were you talking?" Dorothea demanded, sternly.

Polly was silent for a second or two, then her chin went up defiantly.

"To Mr. Raoul," she muttered.

"To M. Raoul!—to M. Raoul? I don't understand. Is M. Raoul—Oh, for goodness sake speak, girl! What is that? I see a piece of paper in your hand."

Polly twisted it in her fingers, and made a movement to hide it in her pocket; but with the movement she seemed to reflect.

"He gave it to me; I don't understand anything about it. I was shutting the window, when he whistled to me; he gave me this. I—I think he meant it for you."

Polly's tone suddenly became saucy, but her voice shook.

Dorothea was shaking too, as her fingers closed on the note. She vainly sought to read the girl's eyes. Her own cheeks were burning; she felt the blood rushing into them and singing in her ears. Yet in her abasement she kept her dignity, and, motioning Polly to follow, stepped into the bedroom, unfolded the letter slowly, and read it by the candle there.

_"My Angel,

"I have hungered now for a week. Be at your window this evening and let me, at least, be fed with a word. See what I risk for you.

"Yours devotedly and for ever."_

There was no signature, but well enough Dorothea knew the handwriting. A wave of anger swelled in her heart—the first she had ever felt towards him. He had behaved selfishly. "See what I risk for you!"— but to what risk was he exposing her! He was breaking their covenant too; demanding that which he must know her conscience abhorred. She had not believed he could understand her so poorly, held her so cheap. Cheap indeed, since he had risked her secret in Polly's hand!

She turned the paper over, noting its creases. Suddenly—"You have opened and read this!" she said.

Polly admitted it with downcast eyes. The girl, after the first surprise, had demeaned herself admirably, and now stood in the attitude proper to a confidential servant; solicitous, respectful, prepared to blink the peccadillo, even to sympathise discreetly at a hint given.

"I'm sorry, Miss, that I opened it; I ought to have told you, but you took me by surprise. You know, Miss, that you gave me leave to run down to my aunt's this evening; and on my way back—just as I was letting myself in by the nursery gate, Mr. Raoul comes tearing up the hill after me and slips this into my hand. To tell you the truth, it rather frightened me being run after like that. And he said something and ran back—for nine was just striking, and in a moment the Ting-tang would be ringing and he must be back to answer his name. So in my fluster I didn't catch what he meant. When I got home and opened it, I saw my mistake. But you were downstairs at dinner—I couldn't get to speak with you alone—I waited to tell you; and just now, when I was drawing the blinds, I heard a whistle—"

"M. Raoul had no right to send me such a message, Polly. I cannot think what he means by it. Nothing that I have ever said to him—"

"No, Miss," Polly assented readily. After a pause she added: "I suppose you'd like me to go now? You won't be wanting your hair done to-night?"

"Certainly I wish you to stay. Is he—is M. Raoul outside?"

"I think so, Miss. Oh, yes—for certain he is."

"Then I must insist on your staying with me while I dismiss him."

"Very good, Miss. Would you wish me to stay here, or to come with you?"

Dorothea felt herself blushing, and her temper rose again. "For the moment, stay here. I will leave the door open and call you when you are wanted."

She passed into the boudoir and bent to the open window. At this corner the foundations of the house stood some feet lower than the slope out of which they had been levelled, and she looked down upon a glacis of smooth turf, capped by a glimmering parapet of Bath stone. Beyond stretched the moonlit park.

"M. Raoul!" she called, but scarcely above a whisper.

A figure crept out from the dark angle below and climbed to the parapet.

"Dorothea! Forgive me! Another night and no word with you—I could not bear it."

"You are mad. You are breaking your parole and risking shame for me. Nay, you have shamed me already. Polly is here."

"Polly is a good girl; she understands. A word, then, if you must drive me away."

"Your parole!"

"I can pass the sentries. No fear of the patrol hereabouts. Your hand— let down your hand to me. I can reach it from the parapet here—with my fingers only, not with my lips, though even that you never forbade!"

Weakly, she lowered her arm over the sill. He reached to touch it, and she leaned her face towards his—hers in shadow, his pale in the moonlight.

Before their fingers met, a yellow flame leapt from the angle to the left; a loud report banged in her ears and echoed across the park; and Raoul, after swaying a second, pitched forward with a sharp cry and rolled to the foot of the glacis.

Dorothea forced herself back in the room, and stood there upright and shook, with Polly beside her holding her two hands.

"They have shot him!"

The two women listened for a moment. All was still now. Polly stepped to the window and, closed it softly.

"But why? What are you doing?" Dorothea asked, in a hoarse whisper.

"They will find quite enough without that," said the practical girl, but her voice quavered.

"Yet if they had seen—Ah, how selfish to think of that now! Hush— that was a groan! He is alive still."

She moved towards the window, but Polly dragged her back by main force.

"Listen, Miss!"

Below they heard the sudden unbarring of doors, and Endymion's voice calling for Mudge, the butler. A bell pealed in the servants' hall, stopped, and began ringing again in short and violent jerks.

"Let me go," commanded Dorothea. "They will never find him, under the slope there. He may be bleeding to death. I must tell—"

But Polly clung to her. "They'll find him safe enough, Miss Dorothea. There's Sam, now—hark!—at the backdoor bell: he'll tell them."

"Sam!"

"Sam Zeally, Miss."

"But I don't understand," Dorothea stammered; with a sharp suspicion of treachery, she pushed the girl from her. "Was Zeally mounting guard tonight? If I thought—don't tell me it was a trap! Oh, you wicked girl!"

"No; it wasn't," answered Polly, sulkily. "I don't know nothing of Sam's movements. But he might be hanging about the house; and if he saw a man talking to me, he's just as jealous as fire."

She broke off at the sound of voices below the window. The ray of a lantern, as the search-party jolted it, flashed and danced on wall and ceiling of the dim boudoir. A sharp exclamation announced that Raoul was discovered. A confused muttering followed; and then Dorothea heard Endymion's voice calling up to Mudge from the bottom of the trench.

"Run to Miss Westcote's room and tell her we shall require lint and bandages. There is no cause for alarm, assure her; say there has been an accident—a Frenchman overtaken out of bounds and wounded—I think, not seriously. If she be gone to bed, get the medicine chest and the key and bring them into the kitchen."

Dorothea had charge of the Bayfield medicine chest, and kept it in a cupboard of the boudoir. She groped for it, pulled open drawer after drawer, rifled them for lint and linen, and by the time Mudge tapped on the door, stood ready with the chest under one arm and a heap of bandages in the other.

"In the kitchen, Mr. Endymion said. I am coming at once; take the chest, run, and have as many candles lit as possible."

Mudge ran; Dorothea followed—with Polly behind her, trembling like a leaf.

The two women reached the kitchen as the party entered with Raoul, and supported him to a chair beside the dying fire. His face was colourless, and he lay back and closed his eyes weakly as Endymion stooped to examine the wounded leg, with Narcissus in close attendance, and the others standing respectfully apart—Mudge, the two footmen (in their shirt sleeves), an under-gardener named Best, one of the housemaids, and Corporal Zeally by the door in regimentals, with his japanned shako askew and his Brown Bess still in his hand. Behind his shoulder, three or four of the women servants hung about the doorway and peered in, between curiosity and terror.

It was a part of Endymion's fastidiousness that the sight of blood— that is, of human blood—turned his stomach. In her distress Dorothea could not help admiring how he conquered this aversion; how he knelt in his spick-and-span evening dress, and, after turning back his ruffles, unlaced the prisoner's soaked shoe and rolled down the stocking.

He looked up gratefully as she entered. In such emergencies Narcissus was worse than useless; but Dorothea had the nursing instinct, and her brothers recognised it. The sight of a wound or a hurt steadied her wits, and she became practical and helpful at once.

"A flesh wound only, I think; just above the ankle—the tendon cut, but the bone apparently not broken."

"It may be splintered, though," said Dorothea. "Has anyone thought of sending for Doctor Ibbetson? He must be fetched at once. A towel, please—three or four—from the dresser there." A footman brought the towels. She knelt, folded two on her lap, and, resting Raoul's foot there, drew the stocking gently from the wound. "A basin and warm water, not too hot. Polly, you will find a small sponge in the, second drawer . . ." She nodded towards the medicine chest. "One of you, make up a better fire and set on a fresh kettle . . ."

She gave her orders in a low firm voice, and continued to direct everyone thus, while she sponged the wound and drew off the stocking. Neither towards them nor towards Raoul did she lift her eyes. The bare foot of her beloved rested in her lap. She heard him groan twice, but with no pain inflicted by her fingers; if their slightest pressure had hurt him she would have known. She went on bathing the wound—she, who could have bathed it with her tears. As time passed, and still the doctor did not come, she began to bandage it. She called on Polly for the bandages; then, still without looking up, she divined that Polly was useless—was engaged in trying to catch Zeally's eye, and warn him or get a word with him.

"He's pale as a ghost yet," said Endymion. "Another dose of brandy might set him up. I gave him some from my flask before bringing him in."

"He is not going to faint," she answered.

"Well, I won't bother him with questions until he comes round a bit. You, Zeally, had better step into my room though, and give me your version of the affair."

But as the Corporal saluted and took a step forward, the prisoner opened his eyes.

"Before you examine Zeally, sir, let me save you what trouble I can." He spoke faintly, but with deliberation. "I wish to deny nothing. I was escaping, and he tracked me. He came on me as I cut across the park, and challenged. I did not answer, but ran around a corner of the house and jumped the parapet, thinking to double along the trench there and put him off the scent—at least to dodge the bullet, if he fired. But as I jumped for it, he winged me. A very pretty shot, too. With your leave, sir, I 'd like to shake hands with him on it. Shake hands, Corporal!" Raoul stretched out a hand, sideways. "You're a smart fellow, and no malice between soldiers."

Dorothea heard Polly's gasp: it seemed to her that all the room must hear it. Her own hand trembled on the bandage. She had forgotten her danger—the all but inevitable scandal—until Raoul brought it back to her, and in the same breath saved her by his heroic lie. She could not profit by it, though. Her lips parted to refute it, and for the first time she gazed up at him, her eyes brimming with sudden love, gratitude, pride, even while they entreated against the sacrifice. He was smiling down with an air of faint amusement; yet beneath the lashes she read a command which mastered her will, imposed silence. He had taken on a new manliness, and for the first time in the story of their loves she felt herself dominated by something stronger than passion. He had swept her off her feet, before now, by boyish ardour: her humility, the marvel of being loved, had aided him; but hitherto in her heart she had always felt her own character to be the stronger. Now he challenged her on woman's own ground—that of self-abnegation; he commanded her to his own hurt, he towered above her. She had never dreamed of a love like this. Beaten, despairing for him, yet proud as she had never been in her life, she held her breath.

Corporal Zeally was merely bewildered. His was a deliberate mind and had hatched out the night's catastrophe after incubating it for weeks. Unconvinced by Polly's explanation of her meeting with M. Raoul at the Nursery gate, he had nursed a dull jealousy and set himself to watch, and had dogged his man down at length with the slow cunning of a yokel bred of a line of poachers. Raoul's tribute to his smartness perplexed him and almost he scented a trap.

"Beg your pardon, Squire," he began heavily, forgetting military forms of address, "but the gentleman don't put it right."

"Oh, hang your British modesty!" put in Raoul with a wry laugh. "If it pleases you to represent that the whole thing was accidental and you don't deserve to be promoted sergeant for tonight's work, at least you might respect my vanity."

Polly saw her opportunity. She crossed boldly and made as if to lay over the Corporal's mouth the hand that would fain have boxed his ears. "Reckon this is my affair," she announced, with an effrontery at which one of the footmen guffawed openly. "Be modest as you please, my lad, when I've married 'ee; but I won't put up with modesty from anyone under a sergeant, and that I warn 'ee!"

The Corporal eyed his sweetheart without forgiveness. His mouth was open, but upon the word "sergeant," he shut it again and began to digest the idea.

"You know, of course, sir," Endymion Westcote addressed the prisoner coldly, "to what such a confession commits you? I do not see what other construction the facts admit, but it is so serious in itself and in its consequences that I warn you—"

"I have broken my parole, sir," said Raoul, simply. "Of the temptations you cannot judge. Of the shame I am as profoundly sensible as you can be. The consequences I am ready to suffer."

He sank back in his chair as Dr. Ibbetson entered.

An hour later Dorothea said goodnight to her brother in the great hall. He had lit his candle and was mixing himself a glass of brandy and water.

"The sight of blood—" he excused himself. "I am sorry for the fellow, though I never liked him. I suppose, now, there was nothing between him and that girl Polly? For a moment—from Zeally's manner—" He gulped down the drink. "His confession was honest enough, anyhow. Poor fool! he's safe in hospital for a week, and his friends, if he has any, and they know what it means, will pray for that week to be prolonged."

"What does it mean?" Dorothea managed to ask.

"It means Dartmoor."

Dorothea's candlestick shook in her hand, and the extinguisher fell on the floor. Her brother picked it up and restored it.

"Naturally," he murmured with brotherly concern, "your nerves! It has been a trying night, but you comported yourself admirably, Dorothea. Ibbetson assures me he could not have tied the bandage better himself. I felt proud of my sister." He kissed her gallantly and pulled out his watch. "Past twelve o'clock!—time they were round with the barouche. The sooner we get Master Raoul down to the Infirmary and pack him in bed, the better."

As Dorothea went up the stairs she heard the sound of wheels on the gravel.

She could not accept his sacrifice. No; a way must be found to save him, and in her prayers that night she began to seek it. But while she prayed, her heart was bowed over a great joy. She had a hero for a lover!



CHAPTER IX

DOROTHEA CONFESSES

She saw no more of him, and heard very little, before the Court Martial met. No one acquainted with the code of that age—so strait-laced in its proprieties, so full-blooded in its vices—will need to be told that she never dreamed of asking her brother's permission to visit the Prisoners' Infirmary. He reported—once a day, perhaps, and casually— that the patient was doing well. Dorothea ventured once to sound General Rochambeau, but the old aristocrat answered stiffly that he took no interest in declasses, and plainly hinted that, in his judgment, M. Raoul had sinned past pardon; which but added to her remorse. From time to time she obtained some hearsay news through Polly; but Polly's chief interest now lay in her approaching marriage.

For the Commissary, while accepting Raoul's version of his capture, had an intuitive gift which saved him from wholly believing in it. Indeed, his conduct of the affair, if we consider the extent of his knowledge, was nothing less than masterly. Corporal Zeally found himself a sergeant within forty-eight hours, and within an hour of the announcement he and Polly were given an audience in the Bayfield library, with the result that Parson Milliton cried their banns in Axcester Church on the following Sunday, and the bride-elect received a month's wages and three weeks' notice of dismissal, with a hint that the reason for her short retention—to instruct her successor in Miss Dorothea's ways—was ostensible rather than real. With Raoul's fate he declined to meddle. "Here," he said in effect, "is my report, including the prisoner's confession. I do my simple duty in presenting it. But the young man was captured in my grounds; he was known to be a protege of my brother's. Finding him wounded and faint with loss of blood, we naturally did our best for him, and this again renders me perhaps too sympathetic. The law is the law, however, and must take its course." No attitude could have been more proper or have shown better feeling.

So Raoul, who made a rapid recovery—barring the limp which he carried to the end of his days—was tried, condemned, and sentenced in the space of two hours. He stuck to his story, and the court had no alternative. Dartmoor or Stapleton inevitably awaited the prisoner who broke parole and was retaken. The night after his sentence Raoul was marched past the Bayfield gates under escort for Dartmoor. And Dorothea had not intervened.

This, of course, proves that she was of no heroical fibre. She knew it. Night after night she had lain awake, vainly contriving plans for his deliverance; and either she lacked inventiveness or was too honest, for no method could she discover which avoided confession of the simple truth. As the days passed without catastrophe and without news save that her lover was bettering in hospital, she staved off the truth, trusting that the next night would bring inspiration. Almost she hoped—being quite unwise in such matters—that his sufferings would be accepted as cancelling his offence. So she played the coward. The blow fell on the evening when Endymion announced, in casual tones, that the Court Martial was fixed for the day after next.

That night, indeed, brought something like an inspiration; and on the morrow she rode into Axcester and called upon Polly, now a bride of six days' standing and domiciled in one of the Westcote cottages in Church Street, a little beyond the bridge. For a call of state this was somewhat premature, but it might pass.

Polly appeared to think it premature. Her furniture was topsy-turvy, and her hair in curl-papers; she obviously did not expect visitors, and resented this curtailment of the honeymoon. She showed it even when Dorothea, after apologies, came straight to the point:

"Polly, I am very unhappy."

"Indeed, Miss?"

"You know that I must be, since M. Raoul is going to that horrible war-prison rather than let the truth be known."

"But since you didn't encourage him, Miss—"

"Of course I didn't encourage him to come," said Dorothea, quickly.

"Why then it was his own fault, and he broke his word by breaking bounds."

"Yes, strictly his parole was broken; but the meaning of parole is, that a prisoner promises to make no attempt to escape. M. Raoul never dreamed of escaping, yet that is the ground of his punishment."

"Well," said Polly, "if he chooses to say he was escaping, I don't see how we—I mean, how you—can help."

"Why, by telling the truth; and that's what we ought to do, though it was wrong of him to expose us to it."

"To be sure it was," Polly assented.

"But," urged Dorothea, "couldn't we tell the truth of what happened without anyone's wanting to know more? He gave you a note, which you took without guessing what it contained. He wished to have speech with me. Before you could give me the note and I could refuse to see him— as I should certainly have done—he had arrived. His folly deserves punishment, but no such punishment as being sent to Dartmoor."

Polly eyed her ex-mistress shrewdly.

"Have you burnt the note?" she asked.

Dorothea, blushing to the roots of her hair, stammered:

"No; I kept it—it was evidence for him, you see. I wish, now—"

She broke off as Polly nodded her head.

"I guessed you'd have kept it. And now you'll never make up your mind to burn it. You're too honest."

"But, surely the note itself would not be called for?"

"I don't know. Folks ask curious questions in courts of law, I've always heard. Beggin' your pardon, Miss, but your face tells too many tales, and anyone but a fool would ask for that note before he'd been dealing with you three minutes. If he didn't, he'd ask you what was in it. And then you'd be forced to tell lies—which you couldn't, to save your soul!"

Dorothea knew this to be true. She reflected a moment. "I should decline to show it, or to answer."

Mrs. Zeally thought it about time to assert herself. "Very good, Miss. And now, how about me? They'd ask me questions, too; and I'd have you consider, Miss Dorothea, that though not shaken down to it yet—not, as you might say, in a state to expect callers or make them properly welcome—I'm a respectable married woman. I don't mind confessing to you, Zeally isn't a comfortable man. He's pleased enough to be sergeant, though he don't quite know how it came about; and he's that sullen with brooding over it, that for sixpence he'd give me the strap to ease his feelings. I ain't complaining. Mr. Endymion chose to take me on the hop and hurry up the banns, and I'm going to accommodate myself to the man. He's three-parts of a fool, and you needn't fear but I'll manage him. But I ain't for taking no risks, and that I tell you fair."

Dorothea was stunned. "You don't mean to say that Zeally suspects you?"

"Why, of course he does!" said Polly. Prudence urged her to repeat that Zeally was three-parts of a fool; but, being nettled, she spoke the words uppermost: "Who d'ee think he'd suspect?"

Dorothea, however, was too desperately dejected to feel the prick of this shaft. "You will not help me, then?" was all her reply to it.

"Why, no, Miss! if you put it in that point-blank way. A married woman's got to think of her reputation first of all."

Polly's attitude might be selfish, unfeeling; but the fundamental incapacity for gratitude in girls of Polly's class will probably surprise and pain their mistresses until the end of the world. After all, Polly was right. An attempt to clear Raoul by telling the superficial truth must involve terrible risks, and might at any turn enforce a choice between full confession and falsehood.

Dorothea could not bring herself to lie, even heroically; and there would be no heroism in lying to save herself. On the other hand, the thought of a forced confession—it might he before a tribunal—was too hideous. No, the suggestion had been a mad one, and Polly had rightly thrown cold water on it. Also, it had demanded too much of Polly, who could not be expected to jeopardise her matrimonial prospects to right a wrong for which she was not in truth responsible.

Dorothea loved a hero, but knew she was no heroine. She called herself a pitiful coward—unjustly, because, nurtured as she had been on the proprieties, surrounded all her days by men and women of a class most sensitive to public opinion, who feared the breath of scandal worse than a plague, confession for her must mean a shame unspeakable. What! Admit that she, Dorothea Westcote, had loved a French prisoner almost young enough to be her son! that she had given him audience at night! that he had been shot and captured beneath her window!

Unjustly, too, she accused herself, because it is the decision, not the terror felt in deciding, which distinguishes the brave from the cowardly. If you doubt the event with Dorothea, the fault, must be mine. She was timid, but she came of a race which will endure anything rather than the conscious anguish of doing wrong.

Nor, had her conscience needed them, did it lack reminders. Narcissus had been persuaded to send the drawings to London to be treated by lithography, a process of which he knew nothing, but to which M. Raoul, during his studies in Paris, had given much attention, and apparently not without making some discoveries—unimportant perhaps, and such as might easily reward an experimenter in an art not well past its infancy. At any rate, he had drawn up elaborate instructions for the London firm of printers, and when the proofs arrived with about a third of these instructions neglected and another third misunderstood, Narcissus was at his wits' end, aghast at the poorness of the impressions, yet not knowing in the least how to correct them.

He gave Dorothea no peace with them. Evening after evening she was invited to pore upon the drawings over which she and her lover had bent together; to criticise here and offer a suggestion there; while every line revived a memory, inflicted a pang. What suggestion could she find save the one which must not be spoken?—to send, fetch the artist back from Dartmoor, and remedy all this, with so much beside!

"But," urged Narcissus, "you and he spent hours together. I quite understood that he had explained the process to you, and on the strength of this I gave it too little attention. Of course, if one could have foreseen—" He broke off, and added with some testiness: "I'd give fifty pounds to have the fellow back, if only for ten minutes' talk."

"But why couldn't we?" Dorothea asked suddenly, breathlessly.

They were alone by the table under the bookcase. On the far side of the hall, before the fire, Endymion dozed after a long day with the partridges. Narcissus's words awoke a wild hope.

"But why couldn't we?" she repeated, her voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

"Well, that's an idea!" he chuckled. "Confound the fellow, he imposed on all of us! If we had only guessed what he intended, we might have signed a petition telling him how necessary he had made himself, and imploring him, for our sakes, to behave like a gentleman."

"But supposing—supposing he was innocent—that he had never meant—" She put out a hand to lay it on her brother's. "Hush!" she could have cried; but it was too late.

"Endymion!" Narcissus called across the room, jocosely.

"Eh! What is it?" Endymion came out of his doze.

"We're in a mess with these drawings, a complete mess; and we want Master Raoul fetched out of Dartmoor to set us right. Come now—as Commissary, what'll you take to work it for us? Fifty pounds has already been offered."

Dorothea turned from the table with a sigh for her lost chance.

"He'd like it," answered Endymion, grimly. "But, my dear fellow,"— he slewed himself in his chair for a look around the hall,—"pray moderate your tones. I particularly deprecate levity on such matters within possible hearing of the servants; that class of person never understands a joke."

Narcissus rubbed the top of his head—a trick of his in perplexity.

"But, seriously: it has only this moment occurred to me. Couldn't the drawings be conveyed to him, in due form, through the Commandant of the Prison? The poor fellow owes us no grudge. I believe he would be eager to do us this small service. And, really, they have made such a mess of the stones—"

"Impossible! Out of the question! And I may say now, and once for all, that the mention of that unhappy youth is repugnant to me. By good fortune, we escaped being compromised by him; and I have refrained from reminding you that your patronage of him was, to say the least, indiscreet."

"God bless me! You don't suggest, I hope, that I encouraged him to escape!"

"I suggest nothing. But I am honestly glad to be quit of him, and take some satisfaction in remembering that I detested the fellow from the first. He had too much cleverness with his bad style, or, if you prefer it, was sufficiently like a gentleman to be dangerous. Pah! For his particular offence, I would have had the old hulks maintained in the Hamoaze, with all their severities; as it is, the posturer may find Dartmoor pretty stiff, but will yet have the consolation of herding with his betters."

Strangely enough this speech did more to fix Dorothea's resolve than all she had read or heard of the rigours of the war-prison. Gently reared though she was, physical suffering seemed to her less intolerable than to be unjustly held in this extreme of scorn.. This was the deeper wrong; and putting herself in her lover's place, feeling with his feelings, she knew it to be by far the deeper. In Dartmoor he shared the sufferings of men unfortunate but not despicable, punished for fighting in their country's cause. But here was a moral punishment, deserved by none but the vilest; and she had helped to bring it—was allowing it to rest—upon a hero!

In the long watches of that night it never occurred to her that the brutality of her brother's contempt was over-done. And Endymion, not given to self-questioning at any time, was probably unconscious of a dull wrath revenging itself for many pin-pricks of Master Raoul's clever tongue. Endymion Westcote, like many pompous men, usually hurt somebody when he indulged in a joke, and for this cause, perhaps, had a nervous dislike of wit in others. Dull in taking a jest, but almost preternaturally clever in suspecting one, he had disliked Raoul's sallies in proportion as they puzzled him. The remembrance of them rankled, and this had been his bull-roar of revenge.

He spent the next morning in his office; and returning at three in the afternoon, retired to the library to draw up the usual monthly report required of him as Commissary. He had been writing tor an hour or more, when Dorothea tapped at the door and entered.

Endymion did not observe her pallor; indeed, he scarcely looked up.

"Ah! You have come for a book? Make as little noise, then, as possible, that's a good soul. You interrupted me in a column of figures."

He began to add them up afresh, tapping the table with the fingers of his left hand, as his custom was when counting. Dorothea waited. The addition made, he entered it, resting three shapely finger-tips on the table's edge for the number to be carried over.

"I wish to speak with you particularly."

He laid down his pen resignedly. Her voice was urgent, and he knew well enough that the occasion must be urgent when Dorothea interrupted his work.

"Anything wrong?"

"It—it's about M. Raoul."

His eyebrows went up, but only to contract again upon a magisterial frown.

"Really, after the request I was obliged to make to Narcissus last night—you were present, I believe? Is it possible that I failed to make plain my distaste?"

"Ah, but listen! It is no question of distaste, but of a great wrong. He was not trying to escape; he told you an untruth, to—to save—"

Endymion had picked up a paper-knife, and leaned back, tapping his teeth with it.

"Do you know?" he said, "I suspected something of this kind from the first, though I had no idea you shared the knowledge. Zeally's cleverness struck me as a trifle too—ah—phenomenal for belief. I scented some low intrigue; and Polly's dismissal may indicate my pretty shrewd guess at the culprit."

"But it was not Polly!"

"Eh?"

Endymion sat bolt upright.

"You must not blame Polly. It was I whom M. Raoul came to see that night."

He stared at her, incredulous.

"My dear Dorothea, are you quite insane?"

"He wished to see me—to speak with me; he gave the girl a note for me. I knew nothing about it until I went upstairs that night, and found her at the boudoir window. M. Raoul was outside. He had arrived before she could deliver the message."

"Quite so!" with a nasally derisive laugh. "And you really need me to point out how prettily those turtles were befooling you?"

"Indeed, no; it was not that."

He struck the table impatiently with the paper-knife.

"My dear woman, do exert some common sense! What in the name of wonder could the fellow have to discuss with you at that hour? Your pardon if, finding no apparent limits to your innocence, I assume it to be illimitable, and point out that he would scarcely break bounds and play Romeo beneath the window of a middle-aged lady for the purpose of discussing water-colours with her, or the exploits of Vespasian."

The taunt brought red to Dorothea's cheeks, and stung her into courage.

"He came to see me," she persisted. Her voice dropped a little. "I had come to feel a regard for M. Raoul; and he—" She could not go on. Her eyes met her brother's for a moment, then fell before them.

What she expected she could not tell. Certainly she did not expect what happened, and his sudden laughter smote her like a whip. It broke in a shout of high, incontrollable mirth, and he leaned back and shook in his chair until the tears streamed down his cheeks.

"You!" he gasped. "You! Oh, oh, oh!"

She stood beneath the scourge, silent. She felt it curl across and bite the very flesh, and thought it was killing her, Her bosom heaved.

It ceased. He sat upright again, wiping his eyes.

"But it's incredible!" he protested; "the scoundrel has fooled you all along. Yes, of course," he pondered; "that explains the success of the trick, which otherwise was clumsy beyond belief; in fact, its clumsiness puzzled me. But how was I to guess?" He pulled himself up on the edge of another guffaw. "Look here, Dorothea, be sensible. It's clear as daylight the fellow was after Polly, and made you his cats- paw. Face it, my dear; face it, and conquer your illusions. I understand it must cost you some suffering, but, after all, you must find some blame in yourself—in your heart, I mean, not in your conduct. Doubtless your conduct showed weakness, or he would never have dared—but, there, I can trust my sister. Face it; the thing's absurd! You, a woman of thirty-eight (or is it thirty-nine?), and he, if I may judge from appearances, young enough to be your son! Polly was his game—the deceitful little slut! You must see it for yourself. And after all, it's more natural. Immoral, I've no doubt—"

He paused in the middle of his harangue. A parliamentary candidate (unsuccessful) for Axcester had once dared to poke fun at Endymion Westcote for having asserted, in a public speech, that indecency was worse than immorality. For the life of him Endymion could never see where the joke came in; but the fellow had illustrated it with such a wealth of humorous instances, and had kept his ignorant audience for twenty minutes in such fits of laughter, that he never afterwards approached the antithesis but he skirted it with a red face.

And Dorothea?

The scourge might cut into her heart; it could not reach the image of Raoul she shielded there. She knew her lover too well, and that he was incapable of this baseness. But the injurious charge, diverted from him, fell upon her own defences, and, breaking them, let in the cruel light at length on her passion, her folly. This was how the world would see it. . . . Yes! Raoul was right—there is no enemy comparable with Time. Looks, fortune, birth, breed, unequal hearts and minds—all these Love may confound and play with; but Time which divides the dead from the living, sets easily between youth and age a gulf which not only forbids love but derides:

Age, I do abhor thee; Youth, I do adore thee; O, my Love, my Love is young!

She could give counsel, sympathy, care; could delight in his delights, hope in his hopes, melt with his woes, and, having wept a little, find comfort for them. She could thrill at his footsteps, blush at his salutation, sit happily beside him and talk or be silent, reading his moods. He might fill her waking day, haunt her dreams, in the end pass into prison for her sake, having crowned love with martyrdom. And the world would laugh as Endymion had laughed! Her hands went up to shut out the roar of it. A coarse amour with Polly—that could be understood. Polly was young. Polly . . .

"What will you do?" she heard herself asking, and could scarcely believe the voice belonged to her.

"Do? Why, if my theory be right—and I hope I've convinced you—I see no use in meddling. The girl is respectably married. It will cause her quite unnecessary trouble if we rip this affair open again. Her husband will have just ground for complaint, and it might—I need not point out—be a little awkward, eh?"

For the first time in her life Dorothea regarded her brother with something like contempt. But the flash gave way to a look of weary resolve.

"Then I must tell the truth—to others," she said.

It confounded him for a moment. But although here was a new Dorothea, belying all experience, his instinct for handling men and women told him at once what had happened. He had driven her too far. He was even clever enough to foresee that winning her back to obedience would be a ticklish, almost desperate, business; and even sensitive enough to redden at his blunder.

"You do not agree with my view?" he asked, tapping the table slowly.

"I disbelieve it. I have no right to believe it, even if I had the power. He is in prison. You must help me to set him free. If not—"

"He cannot, possibly return to Axcester."

"Oh, what is that to me?" she cried with sudden impatience. Then her tone fell back to its dull level. "I have not been pleading for myself."

"No, no: I understand." His brow cleared, as a man's who faces a bad business and resolves to go through with it. "Well, there is only one way to spare you and everyone. We must get him a cartel."

"A cartel?"

"Yes—get him exchanged, and sent home to his friends. The War Office owes me something, and will no doubt oblige me in a small affair like this without asking questions. Oh, certainly it can be managed. I will write at once."



CHAPTER X

DARTMOOR

Dorothea had the profoundest faith in her brother's ability. That he hit at once on this simple solution which had eluded her through many wakeful nights did not surprise her in the least. Nor did she doubt for a moment that he would manage it as he promised.

But she could not thank him. He had beaten her spirit sorely—so sorely, that for days her whole body ached with the bruise. She did not accuse him: her one flash of contempt had lasted for an instant only, and the old habit of reverence quickly effaced it. But he had exposed her weakness; had forced her to see it, naked and pitiful, with no chivalry—either manly or brotherly—covering it; and seeing it with nothing to depend upon, she learned for the first time in her life the high, stern lesson of independence.

She learned it unconsciously, but she never forgot it. And it is to Endymion's credit that he recognised the great alteration and allowed for it. He had driven her too far. She would never again be the same Dorothea. And never again by word or look did he remind her of that hour of abasement.

An exchange of prisoners was not to be managed in a day, and would take weeks, perhaps six weeks or a couple of months. He discussed this with her, quietly, as a matter of business entrusted to him, explained what steps he had taken, what letters he had written; when he expected definite news from the War Office. She met him on the same ground. "Yes, he could not have done better." She trusted him absolutely.

And in fact he had been better than his word. Ultimate success, to be sure, was certain. It were strange if Mr. Westcote, who had opened his purse to support a troop of Yeomanry, who held two parliamentary seats at the Government's service and two members at call to bully the War Office whenever he desired, who might at any time have had a baronetcy for the asking—it were strange indeed if Mr. Westcote could not obtain so trivial a favour as the exchange of a prisoner. He could do this, but he could not appreciably hurry the correspondence by which Pall Mall bargained a Frenchman in the forest of Dartmoor against an Englishman in the fortress of Briancon in the Hautes Alpes. Foreseeing delays, he had written privately to the Commandant at Dartmoor—a Major Sotheby, with whom he had some slight acquaintance—advising him of his efforts and requesting him to show the prisoner meanwhile all possible indulgence. The letter contained a draft, for ten pounds, to be spent upon small comforts at the Commandant's discretion; but M. Raoul was not to be informed of the donor, or of his approaching liberty.

In theory—such was the routine—Raoul remained one of the Axcester contingent of prisoners, and all reports concerning him must pass through the Commissary's hands. In the last week of October, when brother and sister daily expected the cartel, arrived a report that the prisoner was in hospital with a sharp attack of pleurisy. Major Sotheby added a private note:-

"I feared yesterday that the exchange would come too late for him; but to-day the Medical Officer, who has just left me, speaks hopefully. I have no doubt, however, that a winter in this climate would be fatal. The fellow's lungs are breaking down, and even if they could stand the fogs, the cold must finish him."

Dorothea stood by a window in the library when Endymion read this out to her; the very window through which she had been gazing that spring morning when Raoul first kissed her. To-day the first of the winter's snow fell gently, persistently, out of a leaden and windless sky.

She turned. "I must go to him," she said.

"But to what purpose—"

"Oh, you may trust me!"

"My dear girl, that was not in my mind." He spoke gently. "But until the warrant arrives—"

"We will give it until to-morrow; by every account it should reach us to-morrow. You shall take it with me. I must see him once more; only once—in your presence, if you wish."

Next morning they rode into the town together, an hour before the mail's arrival. Endymion alighted at the Town House to write a business letter or two before strolling down to the post office. Dorothea cantered on to the top of the hill, and then walked Mercury to and fro, while she watched the taller rise beyond. The snow had ceased falling; but a crisp north wind skimmed the drifts and powdered her dark habit.

Twice she pulled out her watch; but the coach was up to time in spite of the heavy roads; and as it topped the rise she reined Mercury to the right-about and cantered back to await it. Already the street had begun to fill as usual; and, as usual, there was General Rochambeau picking his way along the pavement to present himself for the Admiral's letter—the letter which never arrived.

Would her letter never arrive?

He halted on the kerb by her stirrup. She asked after the Admiral's health.

"Ah, Mademoiselle, if ever he leaves his bed again, it will be a miracle."

She was not listening. Age, age again!—it makes all the difference. Here came the coach—did it hold a letter for Raoul? Raoul was young.

The coach rolled by with less noise than usual, on the carpet of snow churned brown with traffic. As it passed, the guard lifted his horn and blew cheerily. She followed, telling herself it was a good omen. During the long wait outside the post office she rebuked herself more than once for building a hope upon it. Name after name was called, and at each call a prisoner pushed forward to the doorway for his letter. She caught sight of the General on the outskirts of the crowd. Her brother would not come out until every letter had been distributed.

But when he appeared in the doorway she read the good news in his face. He made his way briskly towards her, the prisoners falling back to give passage.

"Right; it has come," he said. "Trot away home and have the valises packed, while I run into 'The Dogs' and order the chaise."

Once clear of the town, she galloped. There was little need to hurry, for her own valise had been packed overnight.

Having sent Mudge to attend to her brother's, she ran to Narcissus' room—his scriptorium, as he called it.

Narcissus was at home to-day, busy with the cellar accounts. He took stock twice a year and composed a report in language worthy of a survey of the Roman Empire. Before he could look up, Dorothea had kissed him on the crown of his venerable head.

"Such news, dear! Endymion has ordered a chaise from 'The Dogs,' and is going to take me to Dartmoor!"

"Dartmoor—God bless my soul!" He rubbed his head, and added with a twinkle: "Why, what have you been doing?"

"Endymion has a cartel of exchange for M. Raoul, and we are to carry it."

"Ah, so that is what you two have been conspiring over? I smelt a rat somewhere. But, really, this is delightful of you—delightful of you both. Only, why on earth should you be carrying the release yourselves, in this weather."

"He is very ill," said Dorothea, seriously.

"Indeed? Poor fellow, poor fellow. Still, that scarcely explains—"

"And you will be good, and take your meals regularly when Mudge beats the gong? And you won't sit up late and set fire to the house? But I must run off and tell everyone to take care of you."

She kissed him again, and was half-way down the corridor before he called after her:

"Dorothea, Dorothea! the drawings!"

"Ah, to be sure; I forgot," she murmured, as he thrust the parcel into her hand.

"Forgot? Forgot the drawings? But, God bless my soul!—"

He passed his hand over his grey hairs and stared down the corridor after her.

The roads were heavy to start, with, and beyond Chard they grew heavier. At Honiton, which our travellers reached at midnight, it was snowing; and Dorothea, when the sleepy chamber-maid aroused her at dawn, looked out upon a forbidding world of white. The postboys were growling, and she half feared that Endymion would abandon the journey for the day. But if he lacked her zeal, he had the true Englishman's hatred of turning back. She, who had known him always for a master of men, learned a new awe of her splendid brother. He took command; he cross-examined landlord and postboys, pooh-poohed their objections, extracted from them in half-a-dozen curt questions more information than, five minutes before, they were conscious of possessing, to judge from the scratching of heads which produced it; finally, he handed Dorothea into the chaise, sprang in himself, and closed discussion with a slam of the door. They were driven off amid the salaams of ostler, boots, waiter, and two chambermaids, among whom he had scattered largess with the lordliest hand.

So the chaise ploughed through Exeter to Moreton Hampstead, where they supped and rested for another night. But before dawn they were off again. Snow lay in thick drifts on the skirts of the great moor, and snow whirled about them as they climbed, until day broke upon a howling desert, across which Dorothea peered but could discern no features. Not leagues but years divided Bayfield from this tableland, high over all the world, uninhabited, without tree or gate or hedge. Her eyes were heavy with lack of sleep, smarting with the bite of the north wind, which neither ceased nor eased until, towards ten o'clock, the carriage began to lumber downhill towards Two Bridges, under the lee of Crockern Tor. Beyond came a heavy piece of collar work, the horses dropping to a walk as they heaved through the drifts towards a depression between two tors closing the view ahead. Dorothea's eyes, avoiding the wind, were fixed on the tor to the left, when Endymion touched her hand and pointed towards the base of the other. There, grey—almost black—against the white hillside, a mass of masonry loomed up through the weather; the great circle of the War Prison.

The road did not lead them to it direct. They must halt first at the bare village of Prince Town, and drink coffee and warm themselves at the "Plume of Feathers Inn," before facing the last few hundred yards beneath the lee of North Hessary. But a little before noon, Dorothea— still with a sense of being lifted on a platform miles above the world she knew—alighted before a tremendous archway of piled granite set in a featureless wall, and closed with a sheeted gate of iron. A grey- coated sentry, pacing here in front of his snow-capped box, challenged and demanded their business.

"Visitors for the Commandant!" The sentry tugged at an iron bellpull, and a bell tolled twice within. Dorothea's feet were half-frozen in spite of her wraps—she stamped them in the snow while she studied the gateway and the enormous blocks which arched it, unhewn save for two words carved in Roman capitals—"PARCERE SUBJECTIS."

A key turned in the wicket. "Visitors for the Commandant!" They stepped through, and after pausing a moment while the porter shot the lock again behind them, followed him across the yard to the Commandant's quarters.

The outer wall of the great War Prison enclosed a circle of thirty acres; within it a second wall surrounded an acre in which stood the five rectangular blocks of the prison proper, with two slightly smaller buildings—the one a hospital, the other set apart for the petty officers; and between the inner and outer walls ran a via militaris, close on a mile in circumference, constantly paraded by the guard, and having raised platforms from which the sentinels could overlook the inner wall and the area. The area was not completely circular, since, where it faced the great gate, a segment had been cut out of it for the Commandant's quarters and outbuildings and the entrance yard, across which, our travellers now followed their guide.

The Commandant hurried out from his office to welcome them—a bustling little officer with sandy hair and the kindliest possible face; a trifle self-important, obviously proud of his prison, and, after a fashion, of his prisoners too; anxiously, elaborately polite in his manner, especially towards Dorothea.

"Major Westcote!"—he gave Endymion his full title—"My dear sir, this is indeed—And Miss Westcote?" he bowed as he was introduced, "Delighted—honoured! But what a journey! You must be famished, positively; you will be wanting luncheon at once—yes, really you must allow me. No? A glass of sherry, then, and a biscuit at least . . ." He ran to the door, called to his orderly to bring some glasses, and came back rubbing his hands. "It's an ill wind, as they say . . ."

"We have come with the order about which we have corresponded."

"For that poor fellow Raoul?" The Commandant nodded gaily and smiled; and Dorothea, who had been watching his face, felt the load dissolve and roll off her heart, as a pile of snow slides from a bough in the sunshine. "He is better, I am glad to report—out of bed and fairly convalescent indeed. But I hope my message did not alarm you needlessly. It was touch-and-go with him for twenty-four hours; still, he was bettering when I wrote. And to bring you all this way, and in such weather!"

"My sister and I," explained Endymion, "take a particular interest in his case."

But the voluble officer was not so easily silenced.

"So, to be sure, I gathered." He bowed gallantly to Dorothea. "'O woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please'—not, of course, that I attribute any such foibles to Miss Westcote, but for the sake of the conclusion."

"Can we see him?"

"Eh? Before luncheon? Oh, most assuredly, if you wish it. He has been transferred to the Convalescents' Ward. We will step across at once." He drew from his pocket a small master-key, attached by a steel chain to his belt, and blew into the wards thoughtfully while he studied the paper handed to him by Endymion. "Quite in order, of course. No doubt, you and Miss Westcote would prefer to break the good news to him in private? Yes, yes; I will have him sent up to the Consulting Room. The Doctor has finished his morning rounds, and you will be quite alone there."

He picked up his cap and escorted them out and across the court to the gate of the main prison. Beyond this Dorothea found herself in a vast snowy yard, along two sides of which ran covered ways or piazzas open to the air, but faced with iron bars, and behind these bars flitted the forms of the prisoners at exercise, stamping the flagged pavement to keep their starved blood in circulation. At a sight of the Commandant with his two visitors—so small a spectacle had power to divert them— all this movement, this stamping, was hushed suddenly. Voices broke into chatter; faces appeared between the bars and stared.

"Yes," said the Commandant, reading Dorothea's thought, "a large family to be responsible for! How many would you guess, now?"

"A thousand, at least," she murmured.

"Six thousand! Each of those blocks yonder will accommodate fifteen hundred men. And then there is the hospital—usually pretty full at this season, I regret to say. Come, I won't detain you; but really in passing you must have a look at one of our dormitories."

He threw open a door, and she gazed in upon a long-drawn avenue of iron pillars slung with double tiers of hammocks. The place seemed clean enough: at the far end of the vista a fatigue gang of prisoners was busy with pails and brushes; but either it had not been thoroughly ventilated, or the dense numbers packed in it for so many hours a day had given the building an atmosphere of its own, warm and unpleasant, if not precisely foetid, after the pure, stinging air of the moorland.

"We can sleep seven hundred here," said the Commandant; "and another dormitory of the same size runs overhead. The top story they use as a promenade and for indoor recreation." He pointed to a number of grilles set in the wall at the back, at equal distances. "For air," he explained, "and also for keeping watch on messieurs. Yes, we find that necessary. Behind each is a small chamber, hollowed most scientifically, quite a little temple of acoustics. If Miss Westcote, now, would care to step into one and listen, while I stand below with the Major and converse in ordinary tones—"

"No, no," Dorothea declined, hurriedly, and with a shiver.

It hurt her to think of Raoul herded among seven hundred miserables in this endless barrack, his every movement overlooked, his smallest speech overheard, by an eaves-dropping sentry.

"I think, Endymion chimed in, my sister feels her long journey, and would be glad to get our business over."

"Ah, to be sure—a thousand pardons!"

The Commandant shut the door and piloted them across to the hospital block. Here on the threshold the same warm, acrid atmosphere assailed Dorothea's nostrils, and almost choked her breathing. Their guide led the way up a flight of stone steps to the first floor, and down a whitewashed corridor, lit along one side with narrow barred casements. A little more than half-way down the corridor the blank wall facing these casements was pierced by a low arched passage. Into this burrow the Commandant dived; and, standing outside, they heard a key turned in a lock. He reappeared and beckoned to them.

"From the gallery here," he whispered, "you look right down into the Convalescent Ward."

Through the iron bars of the gallery Dorothea caught a glimpse of a long bare room, with twenty or thirty dejected figures in suits and caps of greyish-blue flannel, huddled about a stove. Some were playing at cards, others at dominoes. The murmur of their voices ascended and hummed in the little passage.

"Hist! Your friend is below there, if you care to have a peep at him."

But Dorothea had already drawn back. All this spying and listening revolted her. The polite Commandant noted the movement.

"You prefer that he should be fetched at once?" He stepped past them into the corridor. "Smithers!" he called. "Smithers!"

A hospital orderly appeared at a door almost opposite the passage, and saluted.

"Run down to the Convalescent Ward and fetch up Number Two-six-seven- two.—I know the number of each of my children. I never make a mistake," he confided in Dorothea's ear. "As quick as you can, please! Stay; you may add that some visitors have called and wish to speak with him."

The orderly saluted again, and hurried off.

"You wish, of course, to see him alone together?"

"I think," answered Endymion, slowly, "my sister would prefer a word or two with him alone."

"Certainly. Will you step into the surgery, Miss Westcote?" He indicated the door at which the orderly had appeared. "Smithers will not take two minutes in fetching the prisoner; and perhaps, if you will excuse us, a visit to the hospital itself will repay your brother. We are rather proud of our sanitation here: a glance over our arrangements—five minutes only—"

Endymion, at a nod from Dorothea, permitted himself to be led away by the inexorable man.

She watched them to the end of the corridor, and had her hand on the surgery door to push it open, when a voice from below smote her ears.

"Number Two-six-seven-two to come to the surgery at once, to see visitors!"

The voice rang up through the little passage behind her. She turned; the door at the end of it stood half-open; beyond it she saw the bars of the gallery, and through these a space of whitewashed wall at the end of the ward.

She was turning again, when a babble of voices answered the orderly's announcement. "Raoul! Raoul!" half-a-dozen were calling, and then one spoke up sharp and distinct:

"Tenez, mon bonhomme, ce sera votre gilet, a coup sur!"

A burst of laughter followed.

"C'est son gilet—his little Waistcoat—a chauffer la poitrine—"

"Des visiteurs, dit il? Voyons, coquin, n'y-a-t-il pas par hasard une visiteuse de la partie."

"Une 'Waistcoat' par example?—de quarante ans environ, le drap un peu rape . . ."

"Qui se nomme Dorothee—ce que veut dire le gilet dieudonne . . ."

"Easy now!" the Orderly's voice remonstrated. "Easy, I tell you, ye born mill-clappers! There's a lady in the party, if that's what you're asking."